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Purpose: To explore the effects of kiwifruit peel polyphenols (KPP) on the antioxidant capacity of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stressed Caco-2 cells. Methods: The viability of Caco-2 cells in different treatment groups was determined by the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial membrane potential by fluorescence spectrophotometry, the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), and the contents of glutathione (GSH) and malonaldehyde (MDA) by spectrophotometry, the gene expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (Keap1), NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1), superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) and SOD2 by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and the protein expression levels of Nrf2, Keap1, and NQO1 by Western blot. Results: Compared with the LPS group, cell viability was elevated after 50 µg/mL KPP intervention (P < 0.05); the levels of ROS and MDA were decreased to 1.82 ± 0.28 and 5.08 nmol/mg (P < 0.05), respectively; mitochondrial membrane potential, SOD activity and GSH content were increased to 1.84 ± 0.10, 52.57 U/mg and 69.46 µmol/g (P < 0.05), respectively. Meanwhile, KPP intervention increased the gene and protein expression of Nrf2 and NQO1 (P < 0.05) and decreased Keap1 gene and protein expression (P < 0.05). Conclusion: KPP can enhance the antioxidant capacity of Caco-2 cells through the Keap1/Nrf2/NQO1 signaling pathway, thereby alleviating the cellular damage caused by LPS stress.

Objective To explore the effect of case-based leaning (CBL) combined with mind mapping in anesthesia practice teaching using high-fidelity human patient simulation. Methods Totally 20 undergraduate interns of anesthesiology in grade 2018 were randomly divided into control group and observation group, with 10 students in each group. The control group adopted CBL combined with high-fidelity human patient simulation teaching mode, while the observation group adopted CBL combined with mind map in high-fidelity human patient simulation teaching mode. After the teaching, the teaching effects of the two groups were compared by examination, reaction time of complications and questionnaire. Results The theoretical basic scores and case analysis scores in the observation group were higher than those in the control group (92. 14±2. 81 vs. 89. 89±1. 32) and (92. 03 ± 2. 75 vs. 89. 23 ± 1. 42), with statistically significant differences (P

Background: Our previous study reported that histamine H2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) exposure was associated with decreased mortality in critically ill patients with heart failure (HF) through the same pharmacological mechanism as β-blockers. However, population-based clinical study directly comparing the efficacy of H2RAs and β-blockers on mortality of HF patients are still lacking. This study aims to compare the association difference of H2RAs and β-blockers on mortality in critically ill patients with HF using the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database (MIMIC-III).Methods: Study population was divided into 4 groups: β-blockers + H2RAs group, β-blockers group, H2RAs group, and Non-β-blockers + Non-H2RAs group. Kaplan–Meier curves and multivariable Cox regression models were employed to evaluate the differences of all-cause mortalities among the 4 groups. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to increase comparability of four groups.Results: A total of 5593 patients were included. After PSM, multivariate analyses showed that patients in H2RAs group had close all-cause mortality with patients in β-blockers group. Furthermore, 30-day, 1-year, 5-year and 10-year all-mortality of patients in β-blockers + H2RAs group were significantly lower than those of patients in β-blockers group, respectively (HR: 0.64, 95%CI: 0.50–0.82 for 30-day; HR: 0.80, 95%CI: 0.69–0.93 for 1-year mortality; HR: 0.83, 95%CI: 0.74–0.93 for 5-year mortality; and HR: 0.85, 95%CI: 0.76–0.94 for 10-year mortality, respectively).Conclusion: H2RAs exposure exhibited comparable all-cause mortality-decreasing effect as β-blockers; and, furthermore, H2RAs and β-blockers had additive or synergistic interactions to improve survival in critically ill patients with HF.

In this paper, we research a (2+1)-dimensional variable-coefficient Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation in fluid dynamics and plasma physics. The lump, lump-soliton and lump-periodic solutions are derived based on the variable-coefficient polynomial function method. The effect of variable coefficients on the amplitude and velocity of solitons is analyzed and shown by some 3D graphs, contour plots and density graphs.

Purpose/Objective(s)The aim of this study was to improve the accuracy of the clinical target volume (CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) segmentation for rectal cancer preoperative radiotherapy.Materials/MethodsComputed tomography (CT) scans from 265 rectal cancer patients treated at our institution were collected to train and validate automatic contouring models. The regions of CTV and OARs were delineated by experienced radiologists as the ground truth. We improved the conventional U-Net and proposed Flex U-Net, which used a register model to correct the noise caused by manual annotation, thus refining the performance of the automatic segmentation model. Then, we compared its performance with that of U-Net and V-Net. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), Hausdorff distance (HD), and average symmetric surface distance (ASSD) were calculated for quantitative evaluation purposes. With a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we found that the differences between our method and the baseline were statistically significant (P< 0.05).ResultsOur proposed framework achieved DSC values of 0.817 ± 0.071, 0.930 ± 0.076, 0.927 ± 0.03, and 0.925 ± 0.03 for CTV, the bladder, Femur head-L and Femur head-R, respectively. Conversely, the baseline results were 0.803 ± 0.082, 0.917 ± 0.105, 0.923 ± 0.03 and 0.917 ± 0.03, respectively.ConclusionIn conclusion, our proposed Flex U-Net can enable satisfactory CTV and OAR segmentation for rectal cancer and yield superior performance compared to conventional methods. This method provides an automatic, fast and consistent solution for CTV and OAR segmentation and exhibits potential to be widely applied for radiation therapy planning for a variety of cancers.

Introduction: Depressive symptoms are most common non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD), which is often overlooked due to absence of rapid and objective diagnostic biomarkers. Electroencephalography (EEG)-based event-related potentials (ERPs) is commonly used to assess emotional processes. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in ERPs in PD patients exhibiting depressive symptoms and to provide a reliable biomarker for assisting in the diagnosis of PD with depressive symptoms. Methods: We conducted a case–control study involving 30 PD patients with (dPD group) or without depressive symptoms (nPD group) and 13 age matched healthy controls (HC). We recorded EEG of the patients during the emotional picture stimulation task and analyzed the difference in the early ERPs potentials (P1, N170, early posterior negativity) and their correlation with the severity of symptoms in PD patients. Results: Our results found that P1 amplitude in the occipital region of the dPD group in response to emotional faces was significantly higher than that of nPD and HC group, and it was positively correlated with severity of depressive symptoms in PD patients. Conclusion: Our study shows that facial expression-induced enhancement of P1 amplitude can be utilized as a rapid and objective indicator to screen for depressive symptoms in PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate warming and high-intensity human activities threaten the stability of alpine meadow ecosystems. The stability of the soil microbial community is crucial for maintaining ecological service function. However, the effects of warming and litter removal on microbial interactions, community-building processes, and species coexistence strategies remain unclear. In this study, we used a fiberglass open-top chamber to simulate global change, and moderate grazing in winter was simulated by removing above-ground litter from all plants in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, China, to investigate the effects of warming, litter removal, and interactions on soil microbial communities. The treatments included (1) warming treatment (W); (2) litter removal treatment (L); (3) the combined treatment (WL); and (4) control (CK). The results show that compared with the control treatment, warming, litter removal, and the combined treatments increased bacterial Shannon diversity but reduced fungal Shannon diversity, and warming treatment significantly changed the bacterial community composition. Warming, litter removal, and the combined treatments reduced the colinear network connectivity among microorganisms but increased the modularity of the network, and the average path distance and average clustering coefficient were higher than those in the control group. Stochastic processes played a more important role in shaping the microbial community composition, and soil–available phosphorus and soil ammonium contributed more to the βNTI of the bacterial community, while total phosphorus and NAG enzyme in the soil contributed more to the βNTI of the fungal community. Notably, litter removal counteracts the effects of warming on bacterial communities. These results suggest that litter removal may enhance bacterial community stability under warming conditions, providing insights for managing alpine meadow ecosystems in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the imbalance of the livestock–forage–environment system on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), the extensive replacement of natural grasslands with artificial grasslands has been pursued to enhance forage yield and quality. Recognizing their pivotal role in soil ecology, soil nematodes serve as sensitive indicators of the soil ecosystem structure and function. In this context, we embarked on a field investigation aimed at discerning the impact of varying artificial grasslands on soil nematode communities and food webs, with the intent of identifying an optimal forage species through the lens of soil nematode dynamics in the temperate steppe of the QTP. Our findings indicate that artificial grasslands, on the whole, tend to augment the soil nematode diversity—as reflected in the increased Margalef richness—and modify the community structure. Notable enhancements were observed in the abundance of bacterivores and omnivores, the fungivore and omnivore biomass carbon, and the connectance within fungal and bacterial channels. Specific insights reveal that grasslands established with Elymus nutans and Elymus sinosubmuticus notably boost the Margalef richness, omnivore biomass carbon, and both functional and structural metabolic footprints, with E. sinosubmuticus grasslands uniquely elevating the fungal channel connectivity. Elymus sibiricus grasslands, in particular, were associated with increased fungivore biomass carbon and metabolic footprints, as well as increased connectance in fungal and omnivore–predator channels. In summation, E. sibiricus, E. nutans, and E. sinosubmuticus emerge as superior choices for artificial grassland cultivation on the QTP, as suggested by soil nematode indicators. The adoption of mixed-species sowing incorporating these three candidates potentially offers enhanced benefits to the soil food web, although this hypothesis warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background We aimed to develop radiomic models based on different phases of computed tomography (CT) imaging and to investigate the efficacy of models for diagnosing mediastinal metastatic lymph nodes (LNs) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods Eighty-six NSCLC patients were enrolled in this study, and we selected 231 mediastinal LNs confirmed by pathology results as the subjects which were divided into training (n = 163) and validation cohorts (n = 68). The regions of interest (ROIs) were delineated on CT scans in the plain phase, arterial phase and venous phase, respectively. Radiomic features were extracted from the CT images in each phase. A least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithm was used to select features, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to build models. We constructed six models (orders 1–6) based on the radiomic features of the single- and dual-phase CT images. The performance of the radiomic model was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV). Results A total of 846 features were extracted from each ROI, and 10, 9, 5, 2, 2, and 9 features were chosen to develop models 1–6, respectively. All of the models showed excellent discrimination, with AUCs greater than 0.8. The plain CT radiomic model, model 1, yielded the highest AUC, specificity, accuracy and PPV, which were 0.926 and 0.925; 0.860 and 0.769; 0.871 and 0.882; and 0.906 and 0.870 in the training and validation sets, respectively. When the plain and venous phase CT radiomic features were combined with the arterial phase CT images, the sensitivity increased from 0.879 and 0.919 to 0.949 and 0979 and the NPV increased from 0.821 and 0.789 to 0.878 and 0.900 in the training group, respectively. Conclusions All of the CT radiomic models based on different phases all showed high accuracy and precision for the diagnosis of LN metastasis (LNM) in NSCLC patients. When combined with arterial phase CT, the sensitivity and NPV of the model was be further improved.

Alpine grassland ecosystems are the most important ecosystem type, exhibiting a high sensitivity to anthropogenic nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) inputs into terrestrial ecosystems and significantly affecting the carbon (C) cycle within these ecosystems. However, the effects of N and P additions on soil C stability and the processes of organic C transformation remain unclear. This study measured the soil enzyme activities and oxidizable C fractions over a 9-year period following N and P additions to an alpine meadow in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. It included four treatments: control (CK), N addition, P addition, and combined N and P addition (NP), utilizing statistical methods such as analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis, and redundancy analysis. The findings indicated that NP addition significantly increased the non-labile soil oxidizable C fraction in the topsoil layer. Redundancy and correlation analyses revealed strong associations between the vegetation characteristics, C-cycling enzyme activities, soil-oxidized C fractions, and SOC stability index. These results underscore the role of NP addition in enhancing SOC accumulation and stability in grassland ecosystems, with the soil vegetation properties and C source enzyme activities serving as key regulators of the SOC stability. This study offers valuable insights into predicting the SOC dynamics amid rising N and P availability, thereby elucidating the effect of nutrient addition on soil C-cycling mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ObjectiveWhole lung irradiation (WLI) plays a crucial role in local control in pediatric patients with lung metastases and improves patient survival. The intention of this research was to explore the advantage of cardiac sparing between photons and protons during WLI. We also propose a new solution for cardiac sparing with proton techniques.MethodsEleven patients with pediatric tumors and pulmonary metastasis treated with 12 Gy WLI (all received volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT)) in our institute between 2010 and 2019 were retrospectively selected. Each patient was replanned with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), helical tomotherapy (HT), and two intensity-modulated proton radiotherapy (IMPT) plans (IMPT-1 and IMPT-2). IMPT-1 considered the whole lung as the planning target volume (PTV), utilizing the anteroposterior technique (0/180°). IMPT-2 was a new proton solution that we proposed in this research. This approach considered the unilateral lung as the PTV, and 3 ipsilateral fields were designed for each lung. Then, IMPT-2 was generated by summing two unilateral lung plans. The primary objective was to obtain adequate coverage (95% of the prescription dose to the PTV) while maximally sparing the dose to the heart. The PTV coverage, conformity index (CI), homogeneity index (HI), and dose–volume statistics of the heart and substructures were assessed by means of the averages of each comparison parameter.ResultsAll treatment techniques achieved the target volume coverage required by clinical practice. HT yielded the best coverage and homogeneity for the target structure compared with other techniques. The CI from IMRT was excellent. For photon radiation therapy, the HT plan afforded superior dose sparing for the V5, V6, V7, V8, and Dmean of the heart and Dmean of the right ventricle (RV). IMRT displayed the most notable dose reductions in the V9, V10, V11, and V12 of the heart and Dmean of the right atrium (RA). The VMAT plan was the least effective on the heart and substructures. However, compared with photon radiation therapy, IMPT-1 did not show an advantage for heart protection. Interestingly, IMPT-2 provided significant superiority in cardiac sparing, including maximum dose sparing for the V5, V6, V7, V8, V9 and Dmean of the heart and Dmean of the RA, RV, left atrium (LA) and left ventricle (LV) compared to all other techniques.ConclusionsConsidering the complex anatomical relation between target volumes and organs at risk (OARs), IMPT can provide a dose advantage for organs located outside of the target area rather than within or surrounding the area. It is hoped that advances in proton therapy (PT) plan design will lead to further improvements in radiotherapy approaches and provide the best treatment choice for individual patients.

ObjectivePrevious studies have shown that increased cardiac uptake of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) on positron emission tomography (PET) may be an indicator of myocardial injury after radiotherapy (RT). The primary objective of this study was to quantify cardiac subvolume dosimetry and 18F-FDG uptake on oncologic PET using a 17-segment model of the left ventricle (LV) and to identify dose limits related to changes in cardiac 18F-FDG uptake after RT.MethodsTwenty-four esophageal cancer (EC) patients who underwent consecutive oncologic 18F-FDG PET/CT scans at baseline and post-RT were enrolled in this study. The radiation dose and the 18F-FDG uptake were quantitatively analyzed based on a 17-segment model. The 18F-FDG uptake and doses to the basal, middle and apical regions, and the changes in the 18F-FDG uptake for different dose ranges were analyzed.ResultsA heterogeneous dose distribution was observed, and the basal region received a higher median mean dose (18.36 Gy) than the middle and apical regions (5.30 and 2.21 Gy, respectively). Segments 1, 2, 3, and 4 received the highest doses, all of which were greater than 10 Gy. Three patterns were observed for the myocardial 18F-FDG uptake in relation to the radiation dose before and after RT: an increase (5 patients), a decrease (13 patients), and no change (6 patients). In a pairing analysis, the 18F-FDG uptake after RT decreased by 28.93 and 12.12% in the low-dose segments (0–10 Gy and 10–20 Gy, respectively) and increased by 7.24% in the high-dose segments (20–30 Gy).ConclusionThe RT dose varies substantially within LV segments in patients receiving thoracic EC RT. Increased 18F-FDG uptake in the myocardium after RT was observed for doses above 20 Gy.

Increased atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition caused by human activities has potentially important effects on ecosystem carbon (C) dynamics and different effects on C fractions with different stabilities and chemical compositions. A better understanding of the responses of different C fractions to N addition is vital for maintaining soil quality and protecting vegetation. In order to investigate the differential effects of N addition on total soil organic carbon (SOC) and four SOC fractions with increasing degrees of oxidisability in Pinus tabuliformis rhizospheric and bulk soils, a 6-year pot experiment was performed testing the effects of the addition of N at rates of 2.8, 5.6, 11.2, 22.4 and 44.8 g [m.sup.-2] [year.sup.-1] compared with a control (CK) group (no N addition). Addition of N addition had significant (P Additional keywords: Pinus tabuliformis, rhizosphere, nitrogen deposition, carbon stabilization., Introduction Global emissions of reactive nitrogen (N), such as N[H.sub.3], [N.sub.2]O, urea, amines and proteins, have increased three-to fivefold over the past century because of anthropogenic activities such as the [...]

Feline calicivirus (FCV) is an important pathogen of cats that has two genogroups (GI and GII). To investigate the prevalence and molecular characteristics of FCVs in southwestern China, 162 nasal swab samples were collected from cats in animal shelters and pet hospitals. In total, 38 of the clinical samples (23.46%) were identified as FCV positive using nested RT-PCR. Phylogenetic analyses using 10 capsid protein VP1 sequences revealed that 8 GI and 2 GII strains formed two independent clusters. Additionally, three separated FCVs that were not clustered phylogenetically (two GI and one GII strains) were successfully isolated from clinical samples and their full-length genomes were obtained. Phylogenetic and recombinant analyses of a GI FCV revealed genomic breakpoints in ORF1 and ORF2 regions with evidence for recombinant events between GI sub-genogroups, which is reported in China for the first time. Furthermore, sera obtained from mice immunized independently with the three FCV isolates and a commercial vaccine were used to evaluate the cross-reactivity of neutralizing antibodies. The three separate FCVs were neutralized by each other at a 1:19 to 1:775 titer range, whereas the triple-inactivated vaccine was at a titer of 1:16, which suggested that different genogroup/sub-genogroup FCV strains exhibit significantly different titers of neutralizing antibodies, including the commercial FCV vaccine. Thus, our study revealed the genetic diversity and complex cross-reactivity levels of FCVs in southwestern China, which provides new insights for application in vaccination strategies.