Search

Despite the rapid advancement and extensive applications of online Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) projects such as OpenStreetMap (OSM), the persistence of data inequality remains a significant challenge, compromising the global reliability of their data products. This study examines the influence of contributions made by organizations, which have notably risen within the OSM community, on data inequality. The Gini coefficient is utilized to quantify data inequality, while a suite of statistical methods, including spectral analysis and robust correlation analysis, is applied to evaluate the distribution and impact of organizational efforts across various nations. Our findings indicate that organizations predominantly allocate their resources to nations with less complete data and surpass collective efforts of average contributors in mitigating OSM data inequality. Furthermore, the phenomena appears to be particularly significant for NGOs or corporations with humanitarian visions. • OpenStreetMap data exhibit significant inequality among countries, with a reduction within the span of our study (2015–2020). • Organizations contribute more to countries with incomplete data, reducing data inequality more effectively than the crowd. • Organizations with humanitarian visions prioritize countries with the most substantial data gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmenopausal women taking estrogen supplements are at a lower risk of advanced colorectal cancer, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Thus, this study examined the role of estrogen in colorectal cancer. Estrogen receptor expression levels in in situ colorectal cancer tissue from female patients increased significantly, indicating their estrogen sensitivity. Compared with the sham-operated group, the growth of MC38 tumors was enhanced in ovariectomized mice, which was reversed in ovariectomized mice with E2 supplementation. The PD-L1+ M2-like macrophage, regulatory T (Treg) cell, and myeloid-derived suppressor cell (MDSC) populations significantly increased, and the population of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells declined in MC38 tumors in ovariectomized mice, which were all reversed in ovariectomized mice with E2 supplementation. MC38 cell-derived extracellular vesicles (MC38-EVs), but not EVs derived from MC38 cells treated with E2 (E2-MC38-EVs), were involved in the establishment of immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. E2-MC38-EVs contained lower TGF-β1 levels and were less capable of inducing Treg cells than MC38-EVs in vitro. Overall, these results show that estrogen treatment prevents MC38 tumor growth via regulating the tumor immune microenvironment through MC38-EVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intraovarian injection of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) has been applied and with promising therapeutic effects, but its toxicity and safety remain uncertain. This study evaluated the toxic effects and the affected target organs after a single injection of hUC-MSCs into bilateral rat ovaries. Sixty Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups and intraovarian injected with three different doses of hUC-MSC suspension. Toxicity-related manifestations occurred over the following 14 days postinjection. On day (D)5 and D15, we assessed the clinical pathology; immunotoxicity, including the cytokine IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-4, and IL-6 levels; the immune organs, and the organ weights. On D5, inflammatory cells mainly infiltrated the ovaries of the low- and medium-dose groups, whereas inflammatory cells infiltrated the oviduct in the medium- and high-dose groups. On D15, inflammatory cells infiltrated the corpus luteal cysts, ovarian sacs and oviducts in each group. Body weights; organ weights; immunotoxicity; clinical pathology and histopathological examinations of the immune organs did not significantly differ among the groups. No obvious hUC-MSC-related clinical symptoms were observed except in the rats that died. The high-dose group exhibited significantly higher mortality than did the control and low-dose groups. Deaths in the high-dose group, who received approximately 50 times the standard clinical dose, were related to the intraovarian hUC-MSC injection. The maximum tolerated dose was approximately ten times the standard clinical dose. The ovary and oviduct may be the target organs for this toxicity. This report provides dosage references and guidance for clinical applications of intraovarian hUC-MSC injections. • Rats died after an intraovarian hUC-MSC injection of ~50 times the clinical dose. • The MTD of an intraovarian hUC-MSC injection was ~10 times the clinical dose. • The ovary and oviduct may be the target organs for this toxicity. • hUC-MSCs may exert therapeutic effects by regulating inflammatory responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual exploration of geospatial vector data has become an increasingly important part of the management and analysis of geospatial vector big data (GVBD). With the rapid growth of data scale, it is difficult to realize efficient visual exploration of GVBD by current visualization technologies even if parallel distributed computing technology is adopted. To fill the gap, this paper proposes a visual exploration approach of GVBD on the web map. In this approach, we propose the display-driven computing model and combine the traditional data-driven computing method to design an adaptive real-time visualization algorithm. At the same time, we design a pixel-quad-R tree spatial index structure. Finally, we realize the multilevel real-time interactive visual exploration of GVBD in a single machine by constructing the index offline to support the online computation for visualization, and all the visualization results can be calculated in real-time without the external cache occupation. The experimental results show that the approach outperforms current mainstream visualization methods and obtains the visualization results at any zoom level within 0.5 s, which can be well applied to multilevel real-time interactive visual exploration of the billion-scale GVBD. • A Pixel-Quad-R-tree structure is designed to support the efficient visual exploration of geospatial vector big data (GVBD), the index can adapt to the computational requirements in the subsequent tile drawing process and provide efficient data organization support for GVBD visual exploration. • The PQR-tree-based Adaptive Tile Drawing (PATD) algorithm is proposed, PATD adaptively adopts the optimal pixel generation strategy to determine and achieve efficient visualization performance on a single machine. Meanwhile, the visualization results at each zoom level can be generated in real-time without pre-computation for caching. • An open-source visual exploration tool of GVBD is designed, which can browse data in real-time. Users can either zoom out to inspect the overall distribution or zoom in to view the individual details. Moreover, the tool also supports real-time interactive customization of data styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]