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Nox4 has been associated with tumor progression in various types of malignancies. This study aimed to evaluate the importance of the expression of Nox4 in patients undergoing curative esophagectomy for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.We reviewed retrospectively 121 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who had undergone a curative esophagectomy, including 67 patients with overexpression and 54 patients with low expression of Nox4 as evaluated by immunohistochemical analysis. In addition, 2 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines, TE11 and KYSE270, were treated with the Nox4 inhibitor GKT-137831 to explore the expression of Nox4, cell proliferative activity, and selected downstream pathways in these esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines by Western blot analysis.Univariate analysis showed that T1-2 status, absence of nodal metastasis, and low Nox4 expression were associated with greater disease-free survival (P = .001) and overall survival (P.001), and Nox4 overexpression was an independent prognostic factor of worse disease-free survival and overall survival (P = .013 and P = .007, respectively). The esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines treated with the Nox4 inhibitor GKT-137831 showed decreased cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner (P.01). Western blot analysis demonstrated that expression of AKT, phosphorylated AKT, mammalian target of rapamycin, and phosphorylated mammalian target of rapamycin were less in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cells treated with the Nox4 inhibitor (P.01).This study suggests that Nox4 overexpression is a poor prognostic factor for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma undergoing curative esophagectomy.

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection and establishment of strict policy measures requiring more than 85% recovery rate of wastewater in the Science Park, water recycling has become an important issue in several electronic industries such as semiconductor, photovoltaic, and solar energy industries. Among the different types of wastewater, the dicing and grinding wastewater generated in the IC packaging and testing industry is a colloid containing insoluble SiO2 particles. Such wastewater exhibits high turbidity and low electrical conductivity, and can be recovered by simple physical methods. However, the recovery efficiency of the equipment used for recycling wastewater is often degraded by clogging due to the high turbidity of wastewater. In addition, the high chemical stability of the suspended SiO2 particles makes it difficult for them to sediment from the suspension state and presents a greater challenge to remove these, even by conventional methods such as the addition of chemicals which facilitate coagulation and sedimentation. Therefore, the SiO2 particles produce a considerable amount of sludge which causes secondary pollution. In view of the above, recycling tests of cutting and grinding wastewater were performed in this study, using a suitable ultrafiltration (UF) membrane without the addition of any extra chemicals. The results of the study show that the most important factors associated with the application of a UF membrane, in addition to basic material strength, selection of pore size, low water turbidity, and good water quality, are the performance recovery of the membrane after it is blocked and methods for improving the recycling rate of the device. To avoid the formation of a permanent blockage, the UF membrane must be backwashed within 2 h of its use for collecting wastewater. In addition, the effect of cleaning on the UF membrane after it is blocked is related linearly to the concentration of the chemical used for cleaning and the temperature of the cleaning agent, when the concentration and temperature are lower than 0.15% and 45℃, respectively. To increase the recovery rate, the wastewater is collected and recycled in the dead-end mode, whereas the collection time and backwashing frequency are reduced or increased according to the increase in turbidity of the wastewater. In this study, it was observed that the UF membrane was very effective in reducing the turbidity and Suspended solids of wastewater due to the presence of pore structures in the membrane; however, the appropriate filtration mode of the UF membrane should be selected based on the actual quality of the wastewater and results of pilot tests. The use of a UF membrane was established to be the most environmentally benign method for recycling wastewater, without the addition of chemicals.

Background/Purpose Thymectomy may benefit patients with generalized myasthenia gravis (MG) or myasthenia with thymomas. Currently, video-assisted (VA) thoracic surgery is popular and plays an important role in thymectomy. We compared the clinical outcomes of VA thymectomy with conventional transsternal (TS) approach to investigate the effectiveness of VA technology in the current era. Methods A retrospective review of our thymectomy results for patients with MG from 1998 to 2011 was conducted. A total of 83 consecutive patients were enrolled. According to the surgeons’ and patients’ preference, 39 patients received conventional TS thymectomy and 44 were operated on in a VA fashion. The results were categorized and analyzed according to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America (MGFA) postintervention statuses with some modification. Results No obvious difference between conventional TS thymectomy and VA thymectomy was noted regarding the remission statuses and the clinical outcomes by the modified MGFA score. However, the patients who received VA thymectomy showed shorter intensive care unit (ICU) stays (4.2 ± 3.3 days vs. 2.3 ± 1.5 days, p = 0.001). Conclusion Compared with the conventional TS thymectomy, the VA approach is similarly effective with shorter ICU stays.

Varied methods for total chordal preservation in mitral valve replacement (MVR) have been presented with significant long-term advantage. However, it is difficult to preserve whole the mitral apparatus in the case of rheumatic mitral valvulopathy. Previously, we reported a technique for redo MVR referred to as conduit-onvalve replacement with satisfactory result. Based on the same concept, a procedure wherein a valved conduit is implanted on the undisturbed mitral apparatus was developed for preserving the whole mitral apparatus in the most physiologic orientation with minimal technical demand.

Previous studies of the adsorption of metals on metals, by a mass spectrometric molecular beam technique, have been extended to the case of silver adsorbing on tungsten (110). The adsorption process has been studied by both the adsorption transient technique and the flash filament technique. Two adsorbed phases were observed, having heats of desorption of 66 and 41 kcal/mol. The more tightly bound phase saturated in coverage at 6 × 10 14 molecules/cm 2 . The other phase showed no fixed coverage limit. The equilibrium total coverage, n a , at any value of impingement rate, I , and substrate temperature, T , can be represented by the relation n a = I τ 1 1+ I τ 1 n 0 1+ I τ 2 (T) n 0 , in which τ 1 ( T ) and τ 2 ( T ) are the mean-stay-times for adsorption in the two adsorbed phases and no is the saturation coverage in the tightly bound phase. It was also observed that at impingement rates greater than the equilibrium evaporation rate of the bulk crystal phase of silver, this phase nucleated and grew without requiring an observable critical supersaturation, with a material accommodation coefficient of unity, and epitaxially with the substrate.