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Purpose This study aimed to compare the effects of ground and treadmill running on energy metabolism and muscle contractile properties, providing a basis for the general public to choose running venues. Methods Ten male college students (age, 20.10 ± 1.53 years; height, 176.20 ± 5.49 cm; weight, 72.14 ± 8.25 kg; body fat percent, 12.41% ± 4.65%) were recruited in this study. Energy expenditure (EE) was measured using the accelerometer (GT9X) combined with specific estimation equations. Average heart rate (HR) was measured using a heart rate band (Polar). Muscle contractile properties were assessed by measuring muscle displacement (Dm) and contraction velocity (Vc) using tensiomyography (TMG-S1). Blood glucose (Glu) and lactate (Lac) were measured by portable devices (eB-G and Lactate Scout). The running speed was 9 km/h and the duration was 25 min. Two-way ANOVA (protocol × time) was used to analyze the effect of running protocols on energy metabolism and muscle contractile properties. Results EE of treadmill running was significantly higher than EE of ground running (protocol main effect, P < 0.001), and HR of treadmill running was significantly higher than that of ground running in the first testing time (protocol simple effect, P = 0.026; protocol × time interaction P = 0.043). The decrease in Dm of the rectus femoris after treadmill running was significantly higher than that of ground running (protocol main effect, P = 0.009). The interaction of different running protocols and testing times on Lac was significant (P = 0.025), but all results of the simple effects analysis were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Conclusion Our study found a difference in energy expenditure between treadmill and ground running at 9 km/h with duration of 25 min. In addition, treadmills are more likely to cause a decrease in muscle displacement distance of the rectus femoris measured after exercise than ground running. Future studies are needed to further investigate whether the differences are induced by internal metabolism or the environmental conditions of running.

Indoor scene understanding is an active research topic that has recently gained increasing attention in both computer graphics and computer vision community. This paper presents a novel automatic point cloud instance abstraction and segmentation of indoor scenes using learned pairwise planar patch relations. Planar patches have sufficient representative power to abstract the semantics in mostly man-made 3D indoor scenes. To exploit the planar patch relationships, a new indoor point clouds dataset is automatically derived from the public dataset ScanNet, which can be adopted for training a pairwise patch relation classifier. Given the pre-processed indoor scene point clouds, a set of planar patches are generated to provide robust and compact representation of indoor objects and parts. For each extracted planar patch, a feature descriptor in view of its geometric properties and appearance is calculated. Owing to the proposed feature descriptors, the relations of pairwise planar patch are measured and can be fed into the pre-trained patch relation classifier. To yield the instance segmentation of indoor scenes, a robust graph-based algorithm is adopted to group these planar patches which incorporate the learned patch relations. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach can produce instance semantic segmentation of various cluttered indoor scenes robustly and efficiently.

Background: Restricted outdoor activities and online learning during COVID-19 pandemic may pose threats on the physical and mental health of Chinese adolescents in middle schools. The study was to explore the relationship of Physical Activity (PA) and Sedentary Time (SED) with mood states among Chinese adolescents during the pandemic. Methods: A total of 4898 adolescents (16.3 ± 1.3 years old) from 49 middle schools in 13 urban and rural areas in Yan’an, China volunteered to participate in this study and completed online questionnaires. International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) were used to measure PA and SED, and Profile of Mood States were used to evaluate mood states. We used Mann–Whitney U-test and Kruskal–Wallis test to assess differences in PA and SED in different sex and grade group, respectively. Mixed linear regression was used to analyze the relationship between PA/SED and mood states. Results: Participants in our study accumulated 23.4 ± 52.5 min of moderate-to-vigorous PA and 363.6 ± 148.4 min of SED per day. The mood states of boys were better than that of girls (p < 0.01). The mood states of the students in Senior High School Grade 3 were at the highest level of mood disturbance. Higher levels of PA were significantly associated with lower levels of total mood disturbance in this population (High PA group according to IPAQ: B = −3.22, SE = 0.40, p < 0.001; Moderate: B = −1.47, SE = 0.37, p < 0.001, compared to Low PA group). Conclusion: Chinese adolescents maintained a sedentary lifestyle during the COVID-19 pandemic. Girls and students in Grade 3 Senior High School had higher level of mood disturbance. More PA was associate with improving mood state among adolescents in the pandemic. The present study may assist policymakers and healthcare professionals understand PA and mood states of Chinese adolescents during the epidemic and take targeted actions in case of emergencies in future.

Purpose The delineation of the clinical target volume (CTV) is a crucial, laborious and subjective step in cervical cancer radiotherapy. The aim of this study was to propose and evaluate a novel end-to-end convolutional neural network (CNN) for fully automatic and accurate CTV in cervical cancer. Methods A total of 237 computed tomography (CT) scans of patients with locally advanced cervical cancer were collected and evaluated. A novel 2.5D CNN network, called DpnUNet, was developed for CTV delineation and further applied for CTV and organ-at-risk (OAR) delineation simultaneously. Comprehensive comparisons and experiments were performed. The mean Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), 95th percentile Hausdorff distance (95HD) and subjective evaluation were used to assess the performance of this method. Results The mean DSC and 95HD values were 0.86 and 5.34 mm for the delineated CTVs. The clinical experts’ subjective assessments showed that 90% of the predicted contours were acceptable for clinical usage. The mean DSC and 95HD values were 0.91 and 4.05 mm for bladder, 0.85 and 2.16 mm for bone marrow, 0.90 and 1.27 mm for left femoral head, 0.90 and 1.51 mm for right femoral head, 0.82 and 4.29 mm for rectum, 0.85 and 4.35 mm for bowel bag, 0.82 and 4.96 mm for spinal cord respectively. The average delineation time for one patient’s CT images was within 15 seconds. Conclusion The experimental results demonstrate that the CTV and OARs delineated for cervical cancer by DpnUNet was in close agreement with the ground truth. DpnUNet could significantly reduce the radiation oncologists’ contouring time.

This study aimed to establish a stable animal model of intrauterine adhesion (IUA) using a minimally invasive method that recapitulates the clinicopathologic characteristics of IUA. Mice were randomly divided into groups based on the ethanol treatment time (the EtOH-10 s, EtOH-20 s, EtOH-40 s, EtOH-1 min, and sham operation groups), and after the cervix was relaxed with phloroglucinol, the uterine horn was perfused with 95% ethanol through the cervix to induce endometrial injury. Eight days after the procedure, routine biochemical assays were performed to assess liver and kidney function; HE and Masson staining were used to assess uterine morphology and fibrosis; and immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the expression of CD31 and F4/80 in the endometrium. Furthermore, the fertility of mice in the EtOH-40 s group and the sham operation group was compared. As expected, the ethanol treatment time was positively correlated with the degree of uterine damage and kidney dysfunction in mice. In particular, the endometria of mice in the EtOH-40 s group were significantly thinner than those of mice in the sham operation group and exhibited severe necrosis, glandular loss, incomplete epithelial and glandular epithelial cell structure, severe tissue fibrosis, an activated inflammatory response, and a significant decrease in the number of fetuses, consistent with the clinical characteristics of severe IUA. In conclusion, this study resulted in successful establishment, by a minimally invasive transcervical ethanol perfusion technique, of a mouse model of endometrial injury, which could support an in-depth study of IUA pathogenesis and further promote the development of IUA therapies.

Semantic segmentation of 3D point clouds is a crucial task in scene understanding and is also fundamental to indoor scene applications such as indoor navigation, mobile robotics, augmented reality. Recently, deep learning frameworks have been successfully adopted to point clouds but are limited by the size of data. While most existing works focus on individual sampling points, we use surface patches as a more efficient representation and propose a novel indoor scene segmentation framework called patch graph convolution network (PGCNet). This framework treats patches as input graph nodes and subsequently aggregates neighboring node features by dynamic graph U-Net (DGU) module, which consists of dynamic edge convolution operation inside U-shaped encoder–decoder architecture. The DGU module dynamically update graph structures at each level to encode hierarchical edge features. Incorporating PGCNet, we can segment the input scene into two types, i.e., room layout and indoor objects, which is afterward utilized to carry out final rich semantic labeling of various indoor scenes. With considerable speedup training, the proposed framework achieves effective performance equivalent to state-of-the-art for segmenting standard indoor scene dataset.

Purpose We introduced and evaluated an end-to-end organs-at-risk (OARs) segmentation model that can provide accurate and consistent OARs segmentation results in much less time. Methods We collected 105 patients’ Computed Tomography (CT) scans that diagnosed locally advanced cervical cancer and treated with radiotherapy in one hospital. Seven organs, including the bladder, bone marrow, left femoral head, right femoral head, rectum, small intestine and spinal cord were defined as OARs. The annotated contours of the OARs previously delineated manually by the patient’s radiotherapy oncologist and confirmed by the professional committee consisted of eight experienced oncologists before the radiotherapy were used as the ground truth masks. A multi-class segmentation model based on U-Net was designed to fulfil the OARs segmentation task. The Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and 95th Hausdorff Distance (HD) are used as quantitative evaluation metrics to evaluate the proposed method. Results The mean DSC values of the proposed method are 0.924, 0.854, 0.906, 0.900, 0.791, 0.833 and 0.827 for the bladder, bone marrow, femoral head left, femoral head right, rectum, small intestine, and spinal cord, respectively. The mean HD values are 5.098, 1.993, 1.390, 1.435, 5.949, 5.281 and 3.269 for the above OARs respectively. Conclusions Our proposed method can help reduce the inter-observer and intra-observer variability of manual OARs delineation and lessen oncologists’ efforts. The experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms the benchmark U-Net model and the oncologists’ evaluations show that the segmentation results are highly acceptable to be used in radiation therapy planning.

Objective: Most camptodactyly patients require surgical treatment with skin-grafting, but the result remains unsatisfactory. The serrated palmar promoted flap was explored to treat camptodactyly as a new strategy for surgical treatment. We will make a retrospective analysis of the treatment effect after serrated palmar promoted flap. Methods: A total of 12 children (five males and seven females) with camptodactyly, who had a mean age of 5.7 years old, were treated with serrated palmar promoted flaps between 2013 and 2016 in our department. Five children had little finger involvement, while seven children had multiple digital involvement. All patients (20 fingers) received a serrated palmar promoted flap, a zigzag incision was made in the lateral side, and a V-Y flap was designed in the palmar. Then, the abnormal subcutaneous fibrous cords were cut, and the palmar flap was promoted to distal end, accompanied by PDP joint extension. Skin grafting was also performed for some severely contracted fingers. The total passive motion (TPM) and total active motion (TAM) of the proximal interphalangeal joints were preoperatively measured and calculated at each follow-up. Results: At postoperative follow-up 18 months, all flaps survived. All digitals met the cosmetic and function requirement, and the flexion and extension of the digitals were significantly improved. The mean TPM and TAM was 41 and 25 degrees preoperatively, respectively, and 95 and 65 degrees at final follow-up, respectively. One patient exhibited adhesion after surgery, but improved after functional exercise. Conclusion: The application of a serrated palmar promoted flap to treat camptodactyly is a simple and practical method, which results in minimal trauma and good function. This procedure is suitable for patients with moderate-severe contractures.

The COVID-19 epidemic adversely affects the lifestyle of people. This study aimed to examine the impacts of social isolation on physical activity (PA) levels and mood states of children and adolescents and to explore the correlation between them during the COVID-19 epidemic. A total of 9979 children and adolescents (11.63 &plusmn, 1.23 years old) from Yan&rsquo, an, China volunteered to participate in this study and completed online questionnaires. PA and mood states were measured by International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF) and Profile of Mood States (POMS), respectively. The results showed that the mean of students&rsquo, moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) was 23.19 min per day. The total mood disturbance in the moderate and high-level PA groups were significantly lower than those in the low-level PA group (p &lt, 0.05). Additionally, boys and girls had significant differences in PA levels (p &lt, 0.01), and the PA levels of students in different grades were also significantly different (p &lt, 0.01). Meanwhile, boys&rsquo, mood states were worse than girls&rsquo, The Grade 4 in primary schools had the worst mood states while Grade 5 had the best mood states. The results suggested that the MVPA of students has dropped badly, compared with the results of previous studies investigated in normal times. In addition, the PA level had a significantly positive impact on the mood states of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 epidemic. Sex and grades were factors which affected the PA levels and mood states. This study can help policymakers and healthcare professionals understand PA and mood states of Chinese children and adolescents during the epidemic. We should pay attention to the changes in PA levels and mood states of children and adolescents.

This study was to investigate the association of built environment (BE) with physical activity (PA) and physical fitness of residents inside the city wall of Xi&rsquo, an, one of the most historic cities in China. The cross-sectional study was conducted among 728 adults in this area. BE and PA were measured by Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale and International Physical Activity Questionnaire, respectively. Body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, blood pressure (BP), lung capacity, curl up, sit and reach, reaction time, balance, and grip strength were also measured. The results showed, for men, aesthetics was positively associated with total and leisure-time PA, and curl-up tests, respectively. Walking/cycling facilities were positively associated with leisure-time PA. Street connectivity was negatively associated with leisure-time PA and BMI. Residential density was positively correlated with BMI. Access to service was positively associated with lung capacity. Crime safety was negatively correlated with reaction time. For women, residential density was negatively associated with transportation PA and BP. Street connectivity was positively associated with curl-up test. The results suggest some BE attributes are positively related to PA and physical fitness in this population. Creating more PA-supportive BEs is recommended in this historic area along with urban conservation.

In this paper, a multi-feature encoder for gesture recognition based on a 60 GHz frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar system is proposed to extract the gesture characteristics, i.e., range, Doppler, azimuth and elevation, from the low-level raw data. The radar system updates the hand information for every measurement-cycle on all the scattering centers in its field of view, and our proposed encoder is devised to only focus on those essential scattering centers. After observing the hand over several measurement-cycles, we encode the gesture characteristics sequentially into a 2-D feature matrix, which is successively fed into a shallow convolutional neural network (CNN) for classification. For the purpose of distinguishing relevant gestures, the proposed multi-feature encoder is able to efficiently extract adequate information from a multi-dimensional feature space. Thus, the proposed approach is practical for industrial applications where the available dataset is mostly small-scale. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-feature encoder could guarantee a promising performance for a gesture dataset with 12 gestures.

In this paper, a real-time signal processing frame-work based on a 60 GHz frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar system to recognize gestures is proposed. In order to improve the robustness of the radar-based gesture recognition system, the proposed framework extracts a comprehensive hand profile, including range, Doppler, azimuth and elevation, over multiple measurement-cycles and encodes them into a feature cube. Rather than feeding the range-Doppler spectrum sequence into a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) connected with recurrent neural networks, the proposed framework takes the aforementioned feature cube as input of a shallow CNN for gesture recognition to reduce the computational complexity. In addition, we develop a hand activity detection (HAD) algorithm to automatize the detection of gestures in real-time case. The proposed HAD can capture the time-stamp at which a gesture finishes and feeds the hand profile of all the relevant measurement-cycles before this time-stamp into the CNN with low latency. Since the proposed framework is able to detect and classify gestures at limited computational cost, it could be deployed in an edge-computing platform for real-time applications, whose performance is notedly inferior to a state-of-the-art personal computer. The experimental results show that the proposed framework has the capability of classifying 12 gestures in real-time with a high F1-score., Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Sensors Journal. A video is available on https://youtu.be/IR5NnZvZBLk

Purpose The Herceptin Adjuvant study is an international multicenter randomized trial that compared 1 or 2 years of trastuzumab given every 3 weeks with observation in women with human epidermal growth factor 2–positive (HER2+) breast cancer after chemotherapy. Identification of biomarkers predictive of a benefit from trastuzumab will minimize overtreatment and lower health care costs. Methods To identify possible single-gene biomarkers, an exploratory analysis of 3,669 gene probes not expected to be expressed in normal breast tissue was conducted. Disease-free survival (DFS) was used as the end point in a Cox regression model, with the interaction term between C8A mRNA and treatment as a categorical variable split on the cohort mean. Results A significant interaction between C8A mRNA and treatment was detected ( P < .001), indicating a predictive response to trastuzumab treatment. For the C8A-low subgroup (mRNA expression lower than the cohort mean), no significant treatment benefit was observed ( P = .73). In the C8A-high subgroup, patients receiving trastuzumab experienced a lower hazard of a DFS event by approximately 75% compared with those in the observation arm (hazard ratio [HR], 0.25; P < .001). A significant prognostic effect of C8A mRNA also was seen ( P < .001) in the observation arm, where the C8A-high group hazard of a DFS event was three times the respective hazard of the C8A-low group (HR, 3.27; P < .001). C8A mRNA is highly prognostic in the Hungarian Academy of Science HER2+ gastric cancer cohort (HR, 1.72; P < .001). Conclusion C8A as a single-gene biomarker prognostic of DFS and predictive of a benefit from trastuzumab has the potential to improve the standard of care in HER2+ breast cancer if validated by additional studies. Understanding the advantage of overexpression of C8A related to the innate immune response can give insight into the mechanisms that drive cancer.

Successful isolation of human endometrial stem cells from menstrual blood, namely menstrual blood‐derived endometrial stem cells (MenSCs), has provided enticing alternative seed cells for stem cell‐based therapy. MenSCs are enriched in the self‐regenerative tissue, endometrium, which shed along the periodic menstrual blood and thus their acquisition involves no physical invasiveness. However, the impact of the storage duration of menstrual blood prior to stem cell isolation, the age of the donor, the number of passages on the self‐renewing of MenSCs, the paracrine production of biological factors in MenSCs and expression of adhesion molecules on MenSCs remain elusive. In this study, we confirmed that MenSCs reside in shedding endometrium, and documented that up to 3 days of storage at 4°C has little impact on MenSCs, while the age of the donor and the number of passages are negatively associated with proliferation capacity of MenSCs. Moreover, we found that MenSCs were actually immune‐privileged and projected no risk of tumour formation. Also, we documented a lung‐ and liver‐dominated, spleen‐ and kidney‐involved organic distribution profile of MenSC 3 days after intravenous transfer into mice. At last, we suggested that MenSCs may have potentially therapeutic effects on diseases through paracrine effect and immunomodulation.

High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) could work as heat source for petrochemical industry. In this article, the preliminary feasibility of a 600 MW modular HTGR (HTR-PM600) working as heat source for a typical hypothetical Chinese petrochemical factory is discussed and it is found that the joint of HTR-PM600 and petrochemical industry is achievable. In detail, the heat and water balance analysis of the petrochemical factory is given. Furthermore, the direct cost of heat supplied by HTR-PM600 is calculated and corresponding economy is estimated. The results show that though there are several challenges, the application of process heat of HTGR to petrochemical industry is practical in sense of both technology and economy.

Highlights • Two-legged pedaling crank torque pattern altered when pedaling with 1 leg only. • Reduced downstroke crank torque led to reduced extension-related leg muscle activities. • Greater flexion-related muscle activities explained larger upstroke crank torque. • In the upstroke, 1-legged pedaling would require greater joint stiffness. • At the top of the crank cycle, greater hip flexor activity would stabilize the pelvis., Background One-legged pedaling is of interest to elite cyclists and clinicians. However, muscular usage in 1-legged vs. 2-legged pedaling is not fully understood. Thus, the study was aimed to examine changes in leg muscle activation patterns between 2-legged and 1-legged pedaling. Methods Fifteen healthy young recreational cyclists performed both 1-legged and 2-legged pedaling trials at about 30 Watt per leg. Surface electromyography electrodes were placed on 10 major muscles of the left leg. Linear envelope electromyography data were integrated to quantify muscle activities for each crank cycle quadrant to evaluate muscle activation changes. Results Overall, the prescribed constant power requirements led to reduced downstroke crank torque and extension-related muscle activities (vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and soleus) in 1-legged pedaling. Flexion-related muscle activities (biceps femoris long head, semitendinosus, lateral gastrocnemius, medial gastrocnemius, tensor fasciae latae, and tibialis anterior) in the upstroke phase increased to compensate for the absence of contralateral leg crank torque. During the upstroke, simultaneous increases were seen in the hamstrings and uni-articular knee extensors, and in the ankle plantarflexors and dorsiflexors. At the top of the crank cycle, greater hip flexor activity stabilized the pelvis. Conclusion The observed changes in muscle activities are due to a variety of changes in mechanical aspects of the pedaling motion when pedaling with only 1 leg, including altered crank torque patterns without the contralateral leg, reduced pelvis stability, and increased knee and ankle stiffness during the upstroke., Graphical abstract Image, graphical abstract

Background Many older adults in the U.S. do not achieve the recommended amount of physical activity (PA) to fully realize a myriad of health benefits. Adiposity is one of those important correlates of PA and sedentary behaviors. However, the full extent to which adiposity is associated with PA and stationary time (STA) is uncertain. Therefore, we examined the association of adiposity with objectively measured PA and STA in black and white older adults. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of older adults enrolled in the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study 2003–2007 who participated in an ancillary accelerometer study 2009–2013. Assessment of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) was completed during an in-home visit in the parent study. PA was measured by Actical™ accelerometers, which provided estimates of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA), light-intensity PA (LPA), and STA for 4–7 consecutive days. Data from accelerometers were standardized to square root percentages of total wear time per day (SqrtMVPA%, SqrtLPA%, and SqrtSTA%). Interactions were tested for BMI and WC by race and sex, separately. Results Data were available for 7873 participants (69.8 ± 8.7 yr, 54.2% women, 31.5% African American). In mixed linear regression models, significant interactions existed in BMI by race and sex for the SqrtMVPA%, WC by race and sex for the SqrtMVPA% and the SqrtLPA% model(p Conclusions Adiposity was inversely associated with higher levels of MVPA/LPA and positively associated with higher levels of STA among black and white older adults. Prevention efforts aimed at promoting weight control may be beneficial to prevent physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyle among older adults.

In this paper, a region-based deep convolutional neural network (R-DCNN) is proposed to detect and classify gestures measured by a frequency-modulated continuous wave radar system. Micro-Doppler (µD) signatures of gestures are exploited, and the resulting spectrograms are fed into a neural network. We are the first to use the R-DCNN for radar-based gesture recognition, such that multiple gestures could be automatically detected and classified without manually clipping the data streams according to each hand movement in advance. Further, along with the µD signatures, we incorporate phase-difference information of received signals from an L-shaped antenna array to enhance the classification accuracy. Finally, the classification results show that the proposed network trained with spectrogram and phase-difference information can guarantee a promising performance for nine gestures.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a poor prognosis because of limited treatment options. The combination of a poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor with a DNA-damaging agent has shown promise in treating TNBC; however, not all patients respond to this combination. The Src protein kinase modulates multiple cancer cell properties and plays a key role in tumorigenic processes. However, Src inhibitors as single agents have shown limited effects in solid tumors. Here, we examined the antitumor effects of the Src inhibitor dasatinib, the PARP inhibitor veliparib, and the DNA-damaging agent carboplatin in TNBC models to try and identify the combination with the most clinical potential. Dasatinib, veliparib and carboplatin were tested in TNBC cells in vitro and in xenograft tumors in vivo. Surprisingly, treatment with the combination of veliparib plus carboplatin led to an increase in Src phosphorylation. Importantly, dasatinib attenuated Src overexpression induced by veliparib plus carboplatin and further inhibited the downstream signaling of Src. In xenograft models, the triple combination of dasatinib with veliparib plus carboplatin showed greater tumor growth inhibitory effects compared with single agents or double combinations. No systemic toxicity was observed in mice treated with the triple combination. This study emphasizes the merit of evaluating the triple combination therapy, dasatinib with veliparib plus carboplatin, in TNBC clinical trials.

PPP projects are currently an important part of a country's socialist market economy and play an important role in the income generation of a country's national economy. Under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development, the concept of green finance was born. The purpose of this article is to study the construction of a green financial innovation system based on the PPP environmental protection industry fund. This article mainly focuses on the PPP-based green financial innovation system and the environmental protection industry fund as the main research content, discusses the important role of the green financial innovation system and the environmental protection industry in the current social development, and then combines the two to build a green financial innovation system. A simulation experiment was carried out using the green investment development indicator system, and the results showed that the use of the system constructed in this paper to implement PPP projects reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.

With an increase in rural-to-urban migration, a rapidly aging population, and the rising risk of developing noncommunicable diseases in China, it is important to understand the epidemiology of physical activity (PA) and health in the context of disease prevention and population health. Despite its public health importance, there is a significant lack of knowledge about PA in older Chinese adults that may hamper primary prevention efforts of health promotion in an increasingly aging population. To fill this gap, this article presents a narrative review of PA in the older Chinese adult population with a special focus on residential settings (i.e., urban and rural). Using existing studies, the review examines overall PA patterns and their correlates and discusses public health implications and future research. Although there are some preliminary indications of urban and rural differences in PA in the aging population in China, continued research efforts are needed to facilitate primary prevention efforts aimed at reducing noncommunicable diseases and promoting an active lifestyle among the largest population of older people in the world.

Typically, relief generation from an input 3D scene is limited to either bas-relief or high-relief modeling. This paper presents a novel unified scheme for synthesizing reliefs guided by the geometric texture richness of 3D scenes; it can generate both basand high-reliefs. The type of relief and compression coefficient can be specified according to the user’s artistic needs. We use an energy minimization function to obtain the surface reliefs, which contains a geometry preservation term and an edge constraint term. An edge relief measure determined by geometric texture richness and edge z-depth is utilized to achieve a balance between these two terms. During relief generation, the geometry preservation term keeps local surface detail in the original scenes, while the edge constraint term maintains regions of the original models with rich geometric texture. Elsewhere, in highreliefs, the edge constraint term also preserves depth discontinuities in the higher parts of the original scenes. The energy function can be discretized to obtain a sparse linear system. The reliefs are obtained by solving it by an iterative process. Finally, we apply non-linear compression to the relief to meet the user’s artistic needs. Experimental results show the method’s effectiveness for generating both bas- and high-reliefs for complex 3D scenes in a unified manner.

This paper deals with gesture recognition using a 77 GHz FMCW radar system based on the micro-Doppler (μ D) signatures. In addition to the Doppler information, the range information is also available in the FMCW radar. Therefore, it is utilized to filter out the irrelevant targets. We have proposed five micro-Doppler based handcrafted features for gesture recognition. Finally, a simple k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) classifier is applied to evaluate the importance of the five features. The classification results demonstrate that the proposed features can guarantee a promising recognition accuracy.

We aimed to analyze the outcomes of hypofractionated high-energy electron beam radiotherapy for the treatment of keloids. From February 1998 to January 2012, 568 patients with a total of 834 keloids underwent radiotherapy: 826 lesions with postoperative radiotherapy, and 36 with skin-grafting. Lesion size was >5 cm in 335 keloids. An electron-beam of 6 or 7 MeV was used, with a total dose of 18 Gy (two fractions with a 1-week interval) covering the lesion with a 1-cm margin. The time between surgery and radiotherapy was 24–48 h. Skin-grafted patients underwent radiotherapy 10–15 days after the operation. The median follow-up was 40 months (range: 12–160 months). The local control rate was 88.25% (736/834). The relapse rate was 9.59% (80/834), and the time to relapse was 6–28 months (median: 12 months). Univariate analyses showed that gender, age, keloid size, keloid site, skin grafting, and operation-to-irradiation interval influenced the local control rate. Multivariate analysis showed that the relapse rate was correlated with gender (P = 0.048), age (P < 0.01), operation-to-irradiation interval (P < 0.01), keloid site (P < 0.01), surgical method (P = 0.04) and keloid size (P < 0.02). Adverse effects were observed in 9.83% (82/834). No radiation-induced cancers were observed. Hypofractionated high-energy electron beam radiotherapy for keloids yielded excellent outcomes, especially in cases without skin grafting. Early postoperative radiotherapy with limited hypofractionation could be a good choice for keloid treatment.

Background: The optimal treatment strategy for patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is currently unknown. Resistance to standard therapies like anthracyclines and taxanes limit the number of treatment options in many patients to a small number of non-cross-resistant regimens. We hypothesized that genomic and proteomic profiling of clinical MBC samples would identify genomic alterations that are linked to targeted therapies, and that this could facilitate a personalized approach to therapy for our patients. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 31 consecutive metastatic breast cancer patients that had genomic and/or proteomic studies sent over a 4 month period from February to May 2014. All patients were seen in our Genomic Oncology Clinic and subsequently underwent a rebiopsy of a metastatic site. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue was sent to either Foundation Medicine for genomic profiling, Theranostics for reverse-phase protein microarray, or both. Standard immunohistochemistry for ER, PR, and HER2 was also performed on all patients. Results: Genomic or proteomic alterations were identified in all 31 patients. All patients harbored at least one actionable target and a treatment recommendation for a currently available FDA approved drug or drug combination was able to be suggested in all but one patient. The most commonly observed genomic alterations were within PIK3CA (26%), TP53 (23%), CCND1 (19%), and MYC (16%). Over 30 distinct genomic alterations were identified. Proteomic results were available from 16 patients. Activation of the AKT/mTOR pathway was evident in a majority of patients. A change in HER2 status was also found in 26% of patients. 16% of cases underwent a negative to positive conversion in HER2 status while 10% of cases underwent a positive to negative conversion. It is notable that all 5 patients that underwent a negative to positive conversion in HER2 status had biopsies taken from metastatic disease in the liver. Conclusions: All patients in this retrospective study harbored genomic or proteomic alterations that are associated with targeted therapies. Treatment recommendations were suggested in all but one patient and a majority of patients are receiving the suggested therapy. Our data demonstrate that routine genomic and proteomic analysis in a clinical setting makes a significant positive impact for patients. Citation Format: Casey B Williams, Pradip De, Nandini Dey, Kirstin A Williams, Jessica Klein, Michelle King, Misty Small, Brigitte Cyr, Scooter Willis, Yuliang Sun, Jennifer Carlson, Brandon M Young, Amy Krie, Brian Leyland-Jones. New treatment options for metastatic breast cancer revealed by reverse-phase protein microarray and genomic profiling [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2014 Dec 9-13; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(9 Suppl):Abstract nr P2-05-14.

Down's syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of significant intellectual disability in children and adults is caused by the trisomy of either all or a part of human chromosome 21 (HSA21). Patients with DS mostly suffer from characteristic tumor types. Although individual patients of DS are at a higher risk for acute leukemia and testicular cancers, other types of solid tumors including breast cancers are mostly uncommon and have significantly lower-than-expected age-adjusted incidence rates. Except for an increased risk of retinoblastomas, and lymphomas, the risk of developing solid tumors has been found to be lower in both children and adults, and breast cancer was found to be almost absent (Hasle H., The Lancet Oncology, 2001). A study conducted in the United States found only one death when 11.65 were expected (Scholl T et al., Dev Med Child Neurol. 1982). A recent study examined mammogram reports of women with DS treated in the largest medical facility specifically serving adults with DS in the United States. It was found that only 0.7% women with DS had been diagnosed with breast cancers (Chicoine B et al., Intellect Dev Disabil. 2015). Here we describe a case of breast cancer in a 25-year-old patient with DS. The disease was presented as lymph node positive carcinoma with alterations of tumor suppressor genes characteristic to the triple negative breast cancer subtype. Comprehensive Genomic Profiling (CGP) revealed a wild-type status for BRCA1. The CGP report showed a frameshift mutation, A359fs*10 of the tumor suppressor gene INPP4B and another frameshift mutation, R282fs*63 of tumor suppressor gene TP53 in the tumor biopsy as characteristically found in triple-negative breast cancers. The VUS (Variance of Unknown Significance) alteration(s) were identified in ASXL1 (L1395V), NTRK1 (G18E), DDR2 (I159T), RUNX1 (amplification), ERG (amplification), SOX2 (T26A), FAM123B (G1031D), and HNF1A (A301T). Bonafide cancer-related genes of chromosome 21 amplified in the patient's tumor are RUNX1 and ERG genes. After the completion of the radiation, the patient was placed on everolimus which was based on the result of her CGP report. Thus, post-mastectomy radiation therapy was completed with a recommendation for everolimus for one year. During the time of writing of this report, no metastatic lesions were identified. The patient currently has no evidence of disease.

The pebble-bed reactor HTR-PM is being built in China and is planned to be critical in one or two years. At present, one emphasis of engineering design is to determine the fuel management scheme of the initial core and running-in phase. There are many possible schemes, and many factors need to be considered in the process of scheme evaluation and analysis. Based on the experience from the constructed or designed pebble-bed reactors, the fuel enrichment and the ratio of fuel spheres to graphite spheres are important. In this paper, some relevant physical considerations of the initial core and running-in phase of HTR-PM are given. Then a typical scheme of the initial core and running-in phase is proposed and simulated with VSOP code, and some key physical parameters, such as the maximum power per fuel sphere, the maximum fuel temperature, the refueling rate, and the discharge burnup, are calculated. Results of the physical parameters all satisfy the relevant design requirements, which means the proposed scheme is safe and reliable and can provide support for the fuel management of HTR-PM in the future.

Background: The PI3K-AKT-mTOR and the RAF-MEK-ERK signaling pathways are critical for normal physiology and also commonly dysregulated in several cancers including breast cancer. Inhibition of one pathway can still result in the maintenance of signaling and tumor progression via the other reciprocal pathway. Here, we hypothesize that due to the existence of such "escape" mechanisms a dual targeting of these pathways may lead to superior therapeutic activity in HER2+ breast tumors. Methodology: This study evaluated the combination of a pan-PI3K inhibitor GDC-0941 and a MEK1/2 inhibitor GDC-0973 in different HER2+ breast cancer cell lines. HER2+/trastuzumab (T)-sensitive (BT474), HER2+/trastuzumab-resistant (BT474HerR) and HER2+/PIK3CA mutated (HCC1954) cells were used for this study. Growth inhibition/survival, apoptosis, signal transduction and antitumor efficacy were examined using 3D-ON-TOP assays, annexinV staining and mouse xenografts respectively, in T-sensitive, T-resistant and HER2+/PIK3CA mutated breast cancer cell lines. Results: 1) treatment with GDC-0941 caused dose dependent inhibition of phosphorylation of AKT (S473, T308), P70S6K, S6RP, and 4EBP1 (T37/46) and the combination of GDC-0941 plus GDC-0973 more effectively blocked p-S6RP and p-4EBP1, especially in BT474HerR and HCC1954 cells, 2) GDC-0973 inhibited activation of ERK and this inhibition was sustained when combined with GDC-0941, 3) all cell lines showed an increase in annexin V positivity (index of apoptosis) following the treatment of GDC-0941 alone and a combination of GDC-0941 plus GDC-0973 more effectively induced apoptosis in HER2+ cell lines, 4) similar to anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic signals, a combination of GDC-0941 plus GDC-0973 more effectively abrogated anchorage-independent colony formation in 3D-ON-TOP assay and 5) xenograft data exhibited that the combination of T plus GDC-0941 has an enhanced anti-tumor effect in T-sensitive (80%), T-resistant (82%) and PIK3CA mutated models (58%), and most importantly, tumor regression was more pronounced in all three models when mice were treated with T plus GDC-0941 plus GDC-0973. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that simultaneous administration of MEK1/2 inhibitor may enhance the antitumor activity of PI3K targeted drug and may delay the appearance of resistance of HER2-targeted therapy in HER2 amplified breast cancer. Citation Format: Pradip De, Yuliang Sun, Jennifer Carlson, Lori Friedman, Nandini Dey, Brian Leyland-Jones. Targeting the PI3K-AKT-mTOR and RAF-MEK-ERK pathways in HER2 amplified breast cancer models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2014 Dec 9-13; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(9 Suppl):Abstract nr P4-06-04.

We investigated antitumor activity of trastuzumab (T)/T-DM1 + pertuzumab (P) + bevacizumab (B) in T-sensitive (BT474) and T-resistant (BT474HerR) BC models in order to test whether or not the addition of an anti-angiogenic drug can provide a supplementary advantage to the antitumor activity of double HER2–mAB combination.In addition to the antitumor activity (xenograft model), we tested antiproliferative effect, and HER2-mediated signals of different antibodies (T or P or T-DM1) in HER2-amplified T-sensitive, T-resistant and HER2-amplified/PIK3CA mutated (HCC1954) BT cell lines by 3D ON-TOP clonogenic growth assay and Western blots.Data show (1) T, T-DM1 or P blocked p-AKT (60 %), p-ERK (50 %) following heregulin in only T-sensitive cells, (2) T/T-DM1 + P, T/T-DM1 + B, and P + B reduced tumor growth as compared to any single-agent treatment, (3) T + P + B achieved almost complete regression of tumor growth, decreased cell proliferation, and inhibited tumor-induced angiogenesis, in both models, (4) antitumor activity of T + P + B was associated with the pharmacodynamic knockdown of p-AKT, and (5) T-DM1 + P caused complete regression of tumor volume in both models.Our data demonstrate that B imparts a significant advantage when combined with T + P in the resistant model, in contrast to T-DM1 + P, as the triple combination of T-DM1 + P + B and the double combination of T-DM1 + P showed a comparable antitumor activity. Our study reveals the preclinical evidence in favor of the inclusion of B when combined with T + P in T-resistant BC patients.

Patient derived xenograft (PDX) is defined as a growth of patients’ tumor in the xenograft setting. The evolution of cancer model in animal has a century old history. The most single reason that exerted the pressure on the traditional animal model of cancer to evolve to PDX is that the traditional models have not delivered as expected and traditional models have not predicted clinical success. In spite of well above 50 drugs developed and approved for oncology over the last several decades, there remains a nirking paucity of clinical success as a reminder that this war on cancer riding on the animal model is far from won. In a backbreaking attempt to analyze the failure, the limitation of the “model” system appeared to be the most rational cause of this shortcoming. It was more of a failure to test a drug rather than a failure to make a drug that stunted our collective growth and success in cancer research. PDX is the product of this age-old failure and its fitness is currently tested in virtually all organ-type solid tumors. This review will present and appraise PDX model in the context of its evolution, its future promise, its limitations and more specifically, the current content of PDX in different solid tumors including breast, lung, colorectal, prostrate, GBM, pancreatic, hepatocellular carcinoma and melanoma.

Donghai Wang,1 Jian Zhang,1 Yuliang Sun,2 Wenfei Zhu,2 Shiliu Tian,1 Yu Liu1 1Key Laboratory of Exercise and Health Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, People’s Republic ofChina; 2School of Physical Education, Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, People’s Republic of China Abstract: Falls during daily activities are often associated with injuries and physical disabilities, thereby affecting quality of life among elder adults. Balance control, which is crucial in avoiding falls, is composed of two elements: muscle strength and central nervous system (CNS) control. Anumber of studies have reported that reduced muscle strength raises the risk of falling. However, to date there has been only limited research focused on the relationship between fall risk and the CNS. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between CNS and risk of falling among the elderly. A total of 140 elderly people (92 females and 48 males) were divided into faller and nonfaller groups based on questionnaire responses concerning falls in their daily life. Participants undertook a choice step reaction test in which they were required to respond to random visual stimuli using foot movements as fast as possible in the left or right directions. Response time was quantified as premotor time (PMT) and motor time (MT). Inaddition, the participants’ electromyography data were recorded during the choice step reaction test. A maximal isokinetic torque test was also performed. PMT was greater in the fallers than in the nonfallers group. There was a significant difference between fall status and direction on PMT. PMT of the left limb in nonfallers was faster than the right, but in fallers there was no difference between left and right limbs. Asimilar phenomenon was also observed for MT. There were significant differences between fallers and nonfallers in maximum isokinetic torque at knee and ankle joints. The correct rate of PMT was higher than other variables, such as MT and maximal isokinetic torque, in evaluating elderly fall risk by using logistic regression analyses. The results suggest that PMT in the choice step reaction test could be a useful parameter to assess risk of fall among elder adults. Inaddition, decreased maximal isokinetic torque was related to greater PMT and disappearance of asymmetry in older adults who were at higher risk of fall, especially in the lower limb. Keywords: falling, elderly, choice step reaction test, premotor time

With the exponential growth of data size, data storage and analysis have been exposed to more challenges due to the lack of disk capacity and the limited network bandwidth. Data compression technique provides a good solution to mitigate these effects. In this paper, we propose a self-aware data compression system on FPGA for typical data warehousing, such as Hive, with column stored data and multi-threading requirements. The hardware accelerators can change the degree and hierarchy of parallelism depending on the data to be compressed (during the runtime). We test the system performance on a Xilinx VC707 FPGA board and the experimental results show that, up to 16 3-parallelism accelerators can be implemented and the throughput could be improved up to 432 MB/s. It is 6.25X speedup compared with the software solution under the same number of threads.

Background: Recently, poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors have shown potential to increase the sensitivity of platinum-based agents in tumor cells and provide therapeutic benefit for patients with advanced malignancies in BRCA or DNA repair pathway genes altered or WT condition (Basourakos et al., 2017; Gampenrieder et al., 2017). Src, a non-receptor tyrosine kinase, is involved in the regulation of cell proliferation, survival and apoptotic ability of cancer cells (Tryfonopoulos et al., 2011; Pusztai et al., 2014). Dasatinib (D) is a short-acting dual ABL/SRC family tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), which has displayed anti-proliferative and anti-metastatic effectiveness against TNBC in both preclinical and clinical studies (Finn et al., 2011). Our current study examines whether combinational inhibition of Src pathway (D) would exhibit greater antitumor activity of PARP inhibitor [veliparib (V)] plus carboplatin (C) in TNBC xenograft models with different genetic back grounds. Methodology: a) We utilized MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468 and SUM149PT cells for in vivo study. b) TNBC cells were implanted subcutaneously into immune-compromised mice (NCr Nu/Nu, Taconic) to generate tumor xenografts. c) We evaluated the effects on tumor growth inhibition of D (12.5 mg/kg, i.p., Qd for 4 weeks) / V (25 mg/kg, oral, Bid for 5 days) / C (40mg/kg, i.v., once) as single agent or in combinations (Chan et al., 2012; De et al., 2014). d) For IHC studies, tumor tissue sections were stained with respective antibodies for proliferation, cell survival, angiogenesis and apoptosis, including: phospho-Src, Ki-67, phospho-S6 RP, phospho-Akt, phospho-ERK, CD31, cyclin D1 and cleaved caspase3. e) Student's t test was used for data analyses. Results: We observed that 1) MDA-MB-231(KRAS/BRAF mutated) xenograft model: D alone or combined with V or C or in triple combination inhibited tumor growth, the best tumor inhibition result was induced by triple combination (p < 0.004); 2) MDA-MB-468 (PTEN null) xenograft model: D alone or combined with V or C or in triple combination significantly inhibited tumor growth, the best tumor inhibition result was observed by triple combination (p < 0.00006); 3) SUM149PT (BRCA1 mutated, PTEN null) xenograft model: D alone or combined with V or C or in triple combination inhibited tumor growth, and triple combination, as well as D plus C, showed greater (p < 0.0025) than other combinations / single agents; 4) Single agent of D / V / C was well tolerated with less than 10% mean body weight loss compared with control groups in all models. Conclusion: Our in vivo study suggests that D may enhance the antitumor activity of PARP inhibitor plus standard cytotoxic agent in TNBC xenograft tumors with different genetic backgrounds. Immunohistochemical studies of xenograft tumor samples are ongoing, the results of which will be presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Yuliang Sun, Xiaoqian Lin, Jennifer Carlson, Pradip De, Nandini Dey, Casey Williams, Brian Leyland-Jones. In vivo study of dasatinib in combination with veliparib plus carboplatin in triple-negative breast cancer xenograft models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1622.

Background: Blockade of tumor immune evasion by immune checkpoints inhibitors (ICI) which target PD-L1/2 and PD-1 signaling axis ensured durable clinical benefit in solid tumors including melanoma, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, and colorectal cancers which led to the approval of Atezolizumab, Nivolumab, and Pembrolizumab. Studies revealed that response to PD-1/PD-L1 blockade might correlate with PD-L1 expression in tumor cells (Herbst et al., Nature 2014; Robert et al., NEJM 2015a, 2015b; KEYNOTE-001; -012; -040 Trials). Currently, assays for the prognostic/predictive role of tumor PD-L1 expression are “not standardized with respect to either quantity or distribution of expression” (McLaughlin et al., JAMA Oncol. 2016). Objective: We aimed to standardize, validate and set up criteria for the evaluation of PD-L1 protein expression using conventional immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining to demonstrate PD-L1 protein distribution in cultured ex vivo tumors obtained from surgically resected tumor samples. Methods: We used cell lines, their xenografts tumors, and Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded tumor samples from patients with different solid tumors to compare results from two different PD-L1 antibodies (Rb Anti-Human PD-L1/CD274 Mono-Ab Clone SP142 from SPRING BIOSCIENCE CATALOG# M4420; Mono-Mouse Anti-Human PD-L1 [Concentrate] Clone 22C3 from DAKO Code: M3653).TNBC (MDA-MB231, MDA-MB468, SUM149) and NSCLC (H1975 and H2228) cell lines, human term placenta and tonsil whole tissue sections were used for antibody validation. PD-L1 protein expression in tumor and stroma was assessed using diaminobenzidine chromogenic IHC in FFPE sections/ fixed cells. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in tissue and ex vivo samples were scored in hematoxylin-eosin slides using current consensus guidelines. Finally, we validated PD-L1 expression in ex vivo cultured live tumor samples from patients with lung cancers. Results: With both PD-L1 antibodies, we find that PD-L1 IHC expression was heterogeneous. When validated using human tonsil sections, a focal and sporadic predominantly membranous positivity was observed in xenograft tissues and tumor cells. Both antibodies showed limited concordance, significant intra-assay heterogeneity, and significant interassay discordance. We also observed a markedly high non-specific staining in both necrotic tumor areas and scars. Conclusion: We had standardized and validated IHC method for the PD-L1 protein expression in (1) xenografts of several breast cancer cell lines, (2) FFPE from different solid tumors and (3) finally in ex vivo cultured tumors from lung cancer patients. Expression of PD-L1 is currently being correlated with TILs / inflammatory response in tumors the result of which will be presented at the meeting. This evaluation of PD-L1 expression based on ex vivo model may help to stratify patients for the treatment with ICI. Citation Format: Xiaoqian lin, Jennifer Carlson, Megan Quast, Yuliang Sun, Tyler Jepperson, Casey Williams, Luis RojasEspaillat, Benjamin Solomon, David Starks, Amy Krie, Pradip De, Raed Sulaiman, Nandini Dey, Brian Leyland-Jones. Validation of PD-L1 staining by IHC in solid tumors: A journey from xenograft model to ex vivo culture of clinical samples [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 644.

After the nuclear accidents of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl the world nuclear community made great efforts to increase research on nuclear reactors and to develop advanced nuclear power plants with much improved safety features. Following the successful construction and a most gratifying operation of the 10 MWth high-temperature gas-cooled test reactor (HTR-10), the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology (INET) of Tsinghua University has developed and designed an HTR demonstration plant, called the HTR-PM (high-temperature-reactor pebble-bed module). The design, having jointly been carried out with industry partners from China and in collaboration of experts worldwide, closely follows the design principles of the HTR-10. Due to intensive engineering and RD the procurement of long-lead components has already been started. After the successful operation of the demonstration plant, commercial HTR-PM plants are expected to be built at the same site. These plants will comprise many NSSS modules and, correspondingly, a larger turbine.

Modular reactors with improved safety features have been developed after the Three-Mile Island accident. Economics of small modular reactors compared to large light water reactors whose power output is 10 times higher is the major issue for these kind of reactors to be introduced into the market. Based on the Chinese high temperature gas-cooled reactor pebble-bed module (HTR-PM) project, this paper analyzes economical potentials of modular reactor nuclear power plants. The reactor plant equipments are divided into 6 categories such as RPV and reactor internals, other NSSS components and so on. The economic impact of these equipments is analyzed. It is found that the major difference between an HTR-PM plant and a PWR is the capital costs of the RPV and the reactor internals. The fact, however, that RPV and reactor internals costs account for only 2% of the total plant costs in PWR plants demonstrates the limited influence of this difference. On the premise of multiple NSSS modules forming a nuclear power plant with a plant capacity equivalent to a typical PWR plant, an upper value and a target value of the total plant capital costs are estimated. A comparison is made for two design proposals of the Chinese HTR-PM project. It is estimated that the specific costs of a ready-to-build 2 × 250 MWth modular plant will be only 5% higher than the specific costs of one 458 MWth plant. When considering the technical uncertainties of the latter, a 2 × 250 MWth modular plant seems to be more attractive. Finally, four main points are listed for MHTGRs to achieve economic viability.

The modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) has distinct advantages in terms of inherent safety, economics potential, high efficiency, potential usage for hydrogen production, etc. The Chinese design of the MHTGR, named as high-temperature gas-cooled reactor-pebble bed module (HTR-PM), based on the technology and experience of the HTR-10, is currently in the conceptual phase. The HTR-PM demonstration plant is planned to be finished by 2012. The main philosophy of the HTR-PM project can be pinned down as: (1) safety, (2) standardization, (3) economy, and (4) proven technology. The work in the categories of marketing, organization, project and technology is done in predefined order. The biggest challenge for the HTR-PM is to ensure its economical viability while maintaining its inherent safety. A design of a 450 MWth annular pebble bed core connected with steam turbine is aimed for and presented in this paper.

LPT (Lanzhou Penning Trap) is an ion-trap facility in Lanzhou, China. As ions can be cooled to an extremely small phase space and can be stored for a very long time, ion traps are a perfect instrument for high precision mass measurements. A system with specialized electronics for LPT is under construction now. This system could be used for voltage and timing control to make ions moving in a special mode, and the data acquisition and analysis online/offline could be achieved in the mean time. The requirements of control system, the distribution of hardware, the overview of software, and the latest progress of LPTCtrlSys (Lanzhou Penning Trap Control System) are presented.

Background: Prognostic factors are capable of providing information on clinical outcomes at the time of diagnosis; they are usually indicators of growth, invasion, and metastatic potential (Gasparini G. et al. 1993; Hayes DF. et al. 1998). Tissue marker is one of the prognostic factors; to date, only a small proportion of markers are ultimately clinically useful, including Ki-67 and HER2. Faciogenital dysplasia 3 protein (FGD3), a putative regulator of cell morphology and motility, has been shown to regulate cell migration. In a study of 3,256 tumors, low expression of FGD3 mRNA indicates poor outcome (Hayakawa M. et al. 2008; Scooter W. et al. 2014). However, an immunohistochemistry (IHC) study to evaluate FGD3 protein expression has not been done. We hypothesize that the expression levels of FGD3 protein by IHC might improve the prediction of patient outcomes, and FGD3 might be a potentially prognostic marker of breast cancer. Materials and Methods: 322 cases of breast cancer Tissue Microarrays (TMA) (BR1504a, BR1505b, HBre-Duc068Bch-01, and BR20837) were purchased from US Biomax, Inc (Rockville, MD). Rabbit polyclonal antibody against FGD3 was purchased from Novus Biologicals, LLC (Littleton, CO). Tissue cores were stained for FGD3 with Dako’s EnVision + Dual Link System. Image acquisition was performed using an Olympus camera and software. FGD3 protein expression by IHC was quantitatively determined in the range of 0-4. Unpaired t-test was used for data analyses. Results: 1) Benign tumor and breast adenocarcinomas in lower stages showed strong expression of FGD3, whereas the breast adenocarcinomas in higher stages showed mild ~ weak expression. 2) Invasive breast cancer in stage IIA showed strong FGD3 expression compared to matched metastatic carcinoma which showed mild expression of FGD3. 3) FGD3 protein levels for tumors (n=135) with N0 indicating no regional lymph node metastasis were compared with tumors with lymph node metastasis (N1-3; n=98) and corresponding matched metastatic tissue (n=103). An unpaired t-test comparing N0 vs. N1-3 showed lymph node metastasis is associated with lower FGD3 protein levels (p Conclusion: FGD3 protein expression levels within breast tumors were different according to metastatic status. Our IHC results suggest the possibility of FGD3 to be a prognostic marker in patients with breast cancer. Citation Format: Yuliang Sun, Scooter Willis, Xiaoqian Lin, Justin Achua, Casey Williams, Brian Leyland-Jones. Is FGD3 a potentially prognostic marker for breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3926. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-3926

e23151 Background: Evolution of tumor occurs in two phases, pretreatment phase, and posttreatment phase.Tumorigenic history and path of tumorigenic evolution determine the response of tumor cells to antitumor drug and thus the outcome of treatment. Carcinomas from the same organ-site with similar genomic alterations in different patients may vary in their tumorigenic history and their diverse paths of tumorigenic evolution which cause them respond differently to the same antitumor drugs. Uniqueness of tumorigenic history and paths of tumorigenic evolution in individual patient makes it ideal to test drugs, N-of-1. Here we present our experience with 3D organotypic ex vivo culture of tumor tissue from post-operated tumor samples. Methods: Informed consent was obtained from patients ( NCT02470715). The investigation was approved by IRB of the Avera Cancer Institute and the Western IRB. Surgically resected tissue was obtained from patients with different tumors of different organ sites including ovarian, breast, lung, endometrium, and cervix at the Avera Cancer Institute, SF, SD. Tissues from patients were collected in two formats, paired samples (tumor and tumor-adjacent normal) and unpaired samples. Results: As extracellular matrix lost in cell cultures, provide important signals for cell survival, differentiation and drug resistance we have established a protocol to culture slices in the 3D format. We have established 3D slice cultures (3x3 mm) of tumor-derived tissues which can be maintained ex vivo for at least three days. Tumor cells / normal cells from different tumors/tumor-adjacent normal tissues from day zero (non-cultured) were used to compare day1, day2, and day3 cultures. At the end of the culture period, slices were embedded in paraffin for histological analysis following H&E staining as well as IHC-staining for proliferation index (Ki-67), cellular proliferation signals (pS6RP), apoptosis (activated caspase 3), or tumor angiogenesis (CD31). Ki67 staining was characteristically different in cultured normal and cultured tumor tissues. Conclusions: Here, we show that tumor-derived tissues survive in 3D Matrigel culture for a minimum of 6 hours and maximum up to 3 days. Clinical trial information: NCT02470715.

SUN, Y., S. WEI, Y. ZHONG, W. FU, L. LI, and Y. LIU. How Joint Torques Affect Hamstring Injury Risk in Sprinting Swing–Stance Transition. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 373–380, 2015. Purpose: The potential mechanisms of hamstring strain injuries in athletes are not well understood. The study, therefore, was aimed at understanding hamstring mechanics by studying loading conditions during maximum-effort overground sprinting. Methods: Three-dimensional kinematics and ground reaction force data were collected from eight elite male sprinters sprinting at their maximum effort. Maximal isometric torques of the hip and knee were also collected. Data from the sprinting gait cycle were analyzed via an intersegmental dynamics approach, and the different joint torque components were calculated. Results: During the initial stance phase, the ground reaction force passed anteriorly to the knee and hip, producing an extension torque at the knee and a flexion torque at the hip joint. Thus, the active muscle torque functioned to produce flexion torque at the knee and extension torque at the hip. The maximal muscle torque at the knee joint was 1.4 times the maximal isometric knee flexion torque. During the late swing phase, the muscle torque counterbalanced the motion-dependent torque and acted to flex the knee joint and extend the hip joint. The loading conditions on the hamstring muscles were similar to those of the initial stance phase. Conclusions: During both the initial stance and late swing phases, the large passive torques at both the knee and hip joints acted to lengthen the hamstring muscles. The active muscle torques generated mainly by the hamstrings functioned to counteract those passive effects. As a result, during sprinting or high-speed locomotion, the hamstring muscles may be more susceptible to high risk of strain