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Objective: Immune checkpoint inhibitors are rapidly being used in solid and hematologic malignancies, including gynecologic cancers. The high mortality and relapsing rates of advanced gynecologic malignancies remain a challenging issue. This study aimed to identify the predicting factors associated with survival prognosis and disease control in patients with refractory/relapsing (R/R) gynecologic malignancies receiving anti PD-1 therapy. Materials and methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 49 patients diagnosed with R/R gynecologic malignancies between July 2012 and June 2019 in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan. Among the 49 patients, 6 were excluded due to incomplete medical records or not receiving anti PD-1 therapy. The remaining 43 patients were further divided into responsive and non-responsive groups according to disease control for predicting prognostic factor analysis. Results: For the 43 cases, the median age at diagnosis and disease follow-up length were 54 years and 29 months, respectively. Among them, 23 (53%) were categorized into the responsive group, and the remaining 20 (47%) were categorized into the non-responsive group. The mortality rates were 17% and 25% in the responsive and non-responsive groups, respectively. The responsive group had significantly higher absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), higher absolute neutrophil count (ANC) and low platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) than the non-responsive group. A superior long-term survival trend was also observed in the responsive group, but the difference was not statistically significant. Conclusions: This study reinforced the hypothesis that high ALC, high ANC and low PLR are associated with superior disease control in patients with R/R gynecologic malignancies receiving anti PD-1 therapy.

Reducing environmental impacts and improving N utilization are critical to ensuring food security in China. Although root-zone fertilization has been considered an effective strategy to improve nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), the effect of controlled-release urea (CRU) applied in conjunction with normal urea in this mode is unclear. Therefore, a 3-year field experiment was conducted using a no-N-added as a control and two fertilization modes (FF, furrow fertilization by manual trenching, i.e., farmer fertilizer practice; HF: root-zone hole fertilization by point broadcast manually) at 210 kg N ha–1 (controlled-release:normal fertilizer=5:5), along with a 1-year in-situ microplot experiment. Maize yield, NUE and N loss were investigated under different fertilization modes. The results showed that compared with FF, HF improved the average yield and N recovery efficiency by 8.5 and 22.3% over three years, respectively. HF had a greater potential for application than FF treatment, which led to increases in dry matter accumulation, total N uptake, SPAD value and LAI. In addition, HF remarkably enhanced the accumulation of 15N derived from fertilizer by 17.2% compared with FF, which in turn reduced the potential loss of 15N by 43.8%. HF increased the accumulation of N in the tillage layer of soils at harvest for potential use in the subsequent season relative to FF. Hence, HF could match the N requirement of summer maize, sustain yield, improve NUE and reduce environmental N loss simultaneously. Overall, root-zone hole fertilization with blended CRU and normal urea can represent an effective and promising practice to achieve environmental integrity and food security on the North China Plain, which deserves further application and investigation.

In recent years, more and more attention had been paid to the combination of proteins and flavonoids, and several flavonoids had been reported to improve the physicochemical and emulsifying properties of proteins. This study investigated the effects of ultrasonic treatment (450 W for 10 min, 20 min, and 30 min) on the physicochemical properties, antioxidant activity, and emulsifying properties of soy protein isolate (SPI) -hawthorn flavonoids (HF) non-covalent complexes. The results showed that the addition of HF to SPI and 20 min of ultrasound could reduce α-helix and random coil, increase β-sheet and β-turn, and enhance fluorescence quenching. In addition, it decreased the particle size, zeta potential, surface hydrophobicity, and turbidity to 88.43 or 95.27 nm, −28.80 mV, 1250.42, and 0.23, respectively. The protein solubility, free sulfhydryl group, antioxidant activity, emulsifying activity index, and emulsifying stability index all increased to 73.93%, 15.07 μmol/g, 71.00 or 41.91%, 9.81 m2/g, and 67.71%, respectively. Moreover, high-density small and low-flocculation droplets were formed. Therefore, the combined ultrasound treatment and addition of HF to SPI is a more effective method for protein modification compared to ultrasound treatment alone. It provides a theoretical basis for protein processing and application in the future.

The physical and chemical heterogeneities of soils make the soil spectral different and complicated, and it is valuable to increase the accuracy of prediction models for soil organic matter (SOM) based on pre-classification. This experiment was conducted under a controllable environment, and different soil samples from northeast of China were measured using ASD2500 hyperspectral instrument. The results showed that there are different reflectances in different soil types. There are statistically significant correlation between SOM and reflectence at 0.05 and 0.01 levels in 550–850 nm, and all soil types get significant at 0.01 level in 650–750 nm. The results indicated that soil types of the northeast can be divided into three categories: The first category shows relatively flat and low reflectance in the entire band; the second shows that the spectral reflectance curve raises fastest in 460–610 nm band, the sharp increase in the slope, but uneven slope changes; the third category slowly uplifts in the visible band, and its slope in the visible band is obviously higher than the first category. Except for the classification by curve shapes of reflectance, principal component analysis is one more effective method to classify soil types. The first principal component includes 62.13–97.19% of spectral information and it mainly relates to the information in 560–600, 630–690 and 690–760 nm. The second mainly represents spectral information in 1 640–1 740, 2 050–2 120 and 2 200–2 300 nm. The samples with high OM are often in the left, and the others with low OM are in the right of the scatter plot (the first principal component is the horizontal axis and the second is the longitudinal axis). Soil types in northeast of China can be classified effectively by those two principles; it is also a valuable reference to other soil in other areas.