Search

Hepatocelluar carcinoma presenting as a biliary duct tumor thrombus is a relatively rare entity, with poor prognosis. The primary clinical manifestation of this disease is obstructive jaundice, which can often be misdiagnosed. A 59-year-old female patient was admitted with sudden onset of abdominal pain. Laboratory tests suggested obstructive jaundice, and enhanced magnetic resonance imaging of the upper abdomen did not show obvious biliary dilatation. Endoscopic ultrasound and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography suggested an occupying lesion in the upper bile duct. SpyGlass and biopsy finally confirmed hepatocellular carcinoma with right hepatic duct tumor thrombus hemorrhage. The SpyGlass Direct Visualization System, as an advanced biliary cholangioscopy device, showed the advantages of single-person operation as well as easy access to and visualization of the lesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Preventing relapse of schizophrenic patients is really a challenge. The present study sought to provide more explicit evidence and factors of different grades and weights by a series of step-by-step analysis through χ2 test, logistic regression analysis and decision-tree model. The results of this study may contribute to controlling relapse of schizophrenic patients. Methods: A total of 1,487 schizophrenia patients were included who were 18–65 years of age and discharged from 10 hospitals in China from January 2009 to August 2009 and from September 2011 to February 2012 with improvements or recovery of treatment effect. We used a questionnaire to collect information about relapse and correlative factors during one year after discharge by medical record collection and telephone interview. The χ2 test and logistic regression analysis were used to identify risk factors and high-risk factors firstly, and then a decision-tree model was used to find predictive factors. Results: The χ2 test found nine risk factors which were associated with relapse. Logistic regression analysis also showed four high-risk factors further (medication adherence, occupational status, ability of daily living, payment method of medical costs). At last, a decision-tree model revealed four predictors of relapse; it showed that medication adherence was the first grade and the most powerful predictor of relapse (relapse rate for adherence vs. nonadherence: 22.9 vs. 55.7%, χ2 = 116.36, p < 0.001). The second grade factor was occupational status (employment vs. unemployment: 19.7 vs. 42.7%, χ2 = 17.72, p < 0.001); the third grade factors were ability of daily living (normal vs. difficult: 28.4 vs. 54.3%, χ2 = 8.61, p = 0.010) and household income (household income ≥ 3000 RMB vs. <3000 RMB: 28.6 vs. 42.4%, χ2 = 6.30, p = 0.036). The overall positive predictive value (PPV) of the logistic regression was 0.740, and the decision-tree model was 0.726. Both models were reliable. Conclusions: For schizophrenic patients discharged from hospital, who had good medication adherence, more higher household income, be employed and normal ability of daily living, would be less likely to relapse. Decision tree provides a new path for doctors to find the schizophrenic inpatient's relapse risk and give them reasonable treatment suggestions after discharge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the occurrence and genetic characteristics of the blaIMP-26-positive plasmid from a multidrug-resistant clinical isolate, Enterobacter hormaechei L51. Methods: Species identification was determined by MALDI-TOF MS and Sanger sequencing. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by the agar dilution and broth microdilution. Whole-genome sequencing was conducted using Illumina HiSeq 4000-PE150 and PacBio Sequel platforms, and the genome was annotated by the RAST annotation server. The ANI analysis of genomes was performed using OAT. Phylogenetic reconstruction and analyses were performed using the Harvest suite based on the core-genome SNPs of 61 publicly available E. hormaechei genomes. Results: The E. hormaechei L51 genome consists of a 5,018,729 bp circular chromosome and a 343,918 bp conjugative IncHI2/2A plasmid pEHZJ1 encoding blaIMP-26 which surrounding genetic context was intI1-blaIMP-26-ltrA-qacE∆1-sul1. A new sequence type (ST1103) was assigned for the isolate L51 which was resistant to cephalosporins, carbapenems, but sensitive to piperacillin-tazobactam, amikacin, tigecycline, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and colistin. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that E. hormaechei L51 belonged to the same subspecies as the reference strain E. hormaechei SCEH020042, however 18,248 divergent SNP were identified. Resistance genes in pEHZJ1 including aac(3)-IIc, aac(6ʹ)-IIc, blaSHV-178, blaDHA-1, blaTEM-1, blaIMP-26, ereA2, catII, fosA5, qnrB4, tet(D), sul1 and dfrA19. Conclusion: In our study, we identified a conjugative IncHI2/2A plasmid carrying blaIMP-26 and blaSHV-178 in E. hormaechei ST1103, a novel multidrug-resistant strain isolated from China, and describe the underlying resistance mechanisms of the strain and detailed genetic context of mega plasmid pEHZJ1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isothermal crystallization behavior of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) nucleated with three cyclic carboxylate nucleating agents, namely, sodium bicyclic[2,2,1] heptane dicarboxylate (HPN-68), sodium benzoate (Be-Na), and sodium salt of hexahydrophthalic acid (HHPA-Na), was investigated by using differential scanning calorimetry. The classical Avarmi method was used to evaluate the isothermal crystallization behavior of iPP. The nucleus density was obtained by the calculation model of Lamberti based on the Avrami method of crystallization kinetics from calorimetric crystallization curves recorded under isothermal conditions. This method was able to measure nucleus density and growth rate of nucleated iPP, for which the nucleation phenomenon was substantially heterogeneous. The addition of nucleating agents shortened the crystallization halftime (t1/2) and increased the crystallization rate of iPP under isothermal crystallization, eventually increasing the nucleus density of iPP nucleated with nucleating agents for finishing crystallization under higher crystallization temperature, which was larger than that of virgin iPP. The results of polarized optical microscopy also showed that the nucleus density and crystallization rate were greatly increased with addition of nucleating agents. In these three nucleating agents, HPN-68 had the best nucleation effect, and iPP nucleated with HPN-68 had shorter crystallization halftime and higher nucleus density than iPP nucleated with Be-Na and HHPA-Na. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incorporation of a nucleating agent into isotactic polypropylene (iPP) is one of the most important and widely used methods to improve performance in the polypropylene industry. Aromatic heterocyclic phosphate salt is a kind of highly effective nucleating agent for iPP and one of the typical products is a compound nucleating agent based on 2, 2-methylene-bis (4, 6-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphate hydroxyl aluminum (commercial product name: ADK NA-21). In this paper the isothermal crystallization kinetics of iPP nucleated with the α-nucleating agent NA-21, investigated using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), is described with the crystallization data being analyzed by using the classic Avrami method. During isothermal crystallization the addition of nucleating agent NA-21 dramatically shortened the crystallization half time (t1/2) of iPP under the same conditions and the crystallization activation energy, ΔE, decreased from 422 kJ/mol for virgin iPP to 369 kJ/mol with the addition of NA-21. Thus, the addition of NA-21 significantly increased the crystallization rate of iPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The calcium salt of hexahydrophthalic acid (Hyperform HPN-20E) is an effective nucleating agent for polyethylene which was developed by Milliken Chemical Co., (USA) in recent years. In this paper, the properties and crystallization behaviors of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) in the presence of Hyperform HPN-20E were investigated by using differential scanning calorimetry and polarized optical microscopy. Addition of Hyperform HPN-20E improved the tensile, flexural and optical properties of iPP significantly and increased the crystallization rate of iPP greatly. The nucleation effects were comparable to the nucleation efficiency of a highly effective commercial iPP nucleating agent Hyperform HPN-68. When the addition amount of Hyperform HPN-20E in iPP was 0.2 wt.%, the tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, and flexural modulus of iPP were increased by 10.81%, 8.65%, 16.67%, and 11.96%, respectively, compared to those of pure iPP; the haze value was decreased by 42.44% and the crystallization peak temperature was increased by 11.2°C. In addition, incorporation of Hyperform HPN-20E in iPP greatly reduced the spherulite size of iPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Gaussian vector field (GVF) snake algorithm was proposed to solve the shortcomings of weak edge and high computation in snake model, which combines the region information with GVE to efficiently solve the weak edge problem, and is implemented by multi-scale Level Set method to improve the speed of computation. The experimental results show that this algorithm efficiently implements the image segmentation, and greatly decreases the cost-time of the snake algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient method was proposed to solve the over-segmentation problem of watershed segmentation algorithm, which is based on the region merger combining region and boundary information. In the merger processing, an adaptive threshold between the neighboring regions is used as the merging criteria, which is based on the Webber perception principle in human visual model, and the gradient is used to judge the true boundary of the image to avoid the merging regions of difference object. The experimental results show that this method can efficiently solve the over-segmentation problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic mesoporous carbonated hydroxyapatite microspheres have been fabricated hydrothermally by using CaCO3/Fe3O4microspheres as sacrificial templates. The high drug-loading capacity and sustained drug release property suggest that the multifunctional microspheres have great potentials for bone-implantable drug-delivery applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence indicates an increased cancer risk among type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients, yet studies in mainland China are scarce. Based on Diabetes Surveillance System linking to Cancer Surveillance System of Zhejiang Province in China, we explored the cancer risk among T2DM patients. Totally, 327,268 T2DM patients were identified and followed from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2013. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were reported. Overall cancer risk was found significantly increased with an SIR of 1.15 (95% CI 1.12-1.19) and 1.25 (95% CI 1.21-1.30) in males and females, respectively. Regarding specific cancer sites, risks of liver, colon, rectum, pancreas, and kidney were significantly increased with SIRs of 1.26 (95% CI 1.16-1.36), 1.47 (95% CI 1.29-1.67), 1.25 (95% CI 1.09-1.43), 2.81 (95% CI 2.50-3.16) and 1.61 (95% CI 1.28-2.03) in males, 1.53 (95% CI 1.35-1.73), 1.33 (95% CI 1.15-1.54), 1.29 (95% CI 1.10-1.51), 3.62 (95% CI 3.20-4.09) and 1.71 (95% CI 1.28-2.29) in females, respectively. A significant increased SIR was noted for prostate (1.80, 95% CI 1.58-2.06). Significant increased SIRs for lung (1.32, 95% CI 1.20-1.44) and stomach (1.16, 95% CI 1.03-1.30) were observed in females. We suggested an increased cancer risk among T2DM patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Xenorhabdus budapestensis can produce a variety of proteins that help this bacterium and its mutualistic nematode vector kill the host insect. In this report, we purified one protein fraction from the intracellular extract of X. budapestensis D43, which was designated HIP57. By injection, HIP57 caused Galleria mellonella larval bodies to blacken and die with an LD50 of 206.81ng/larva. Analyzes of HIP57 by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis showed that this protein was a single spot on the gel with a molecular weight of 57kDa and a pI of ∼5. Sequencing and bioinformatic analysis suggested that the HIP57 toxin was homologous to GroEL. GroEL has been accepted as molecule chaperon; however, our research revealed that HIP57 (GroEL) possesses another novel function as an insecticide. A GroEL phylogenetic tree defined the relationship among the related species of mutualistic bacteria (Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus) from the entomopathogenic nematodes and the evolution within the family Enterobacteriaceae. Thus, GroEL could be a complement to 16S rDNA for studying the molecular phylogenies of the family Enterobacteriaceae. Phenoloxidase (PO) activity analysis of G. mellonella larvae injected with HIP57 suggested that the toxin activates the PO cascade, which provides an extensive defense reaction that potentially responsible for G. mellonella larval death. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]