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Representation learning with small labeled data have emerged in many problems, since the success of deep neural networks often relies on the availability of a huge amount of labeled data that is expensive to collect. To address it, many efforts have been made on training sophisticated models with few labeled data in an unsupervised and semi-supervised fashion. In this paper, we will review the recent progresses on these two major categories of methods. A wide spectrum of models will be categorized in a big picture, where we will show how they interplay with each other to motivate explorations of new ideas. We will review the principles of learning the transformation equivariant, disentangled, self-supervised and semi-supervised representations, all of which underpin the foundation of recent progresses. Many implementations of unsupervised and semi-supervised generative models have been developed on the basis of these criteria, greatly expanding the territory of existing autoencoders, generative adversarial nets (GANs) and other deep networks by exploring the distribution of unlabeled data for more powerful representations. We will discuss emerging topics by revealing the intrinsic connections between unsupervised and semi-supervised learning, and propose in future directions to bridge the algorithmic and theoretical gap between transformation equivariance for unsupervised learning and supervised invariance for supervised learning, and unify unsupervised pretraining and supervised finetuning. We will also provide a broader outlook of future directions to unify transformation and instance equivariances for representation learning, connect unsupervised and semi-supervised augmentations, and explore the role of the self-supervised regularization for many learning problems., Comment: published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is the most recognized inherited retinal disorder involving progressive photoreceptors degeneration which eventually causes blindness. However, the pathogenesis of RP is still unclear, making it difficult to establish satisfying treatments. Evidence have been found to support the theory that vascular dysfunction is associated with the progression of RP. Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a newly developed technology that enables visualization as well as quantitative assessment of retinal and choroidal vasculature non-invasively. Advances in OCTA have opened a window for in-depth understanding of RP pathogenesis. Here, we propose a hypothesis of RP pathogenesis based on the current OCTA findings in RP, which includes four stages and two important key factors, vascular dysfunction and microglia activation. Further, we discuss the future animal experiments needed and how advanced OCTA technology can help to further verity the hypothesis. The final goal is to explore potential treatment options with enhanced understanding of RP pathogenesis.

By using a low CO2 concentration as a C1 source, the design of a plasmonic catalyst that can effectively photocatalytic CO2 reduction is of great significance for sustainable and ecological development. Herein, the space confinement effect and liquid environment of the molten salt result in uniform hollow structure, while the strong aggressive force furnished via using molten salt enhances the formation of line defects. This special structure can not only provide a large number of active sites but also greatly accelerate the transport of photoinduced charge carriers. The hollow copper ball with line defects (CCu) shows excellent photocatalytic activity with pure water (1028.57 μmol g−1), and it also shows good catalytic activity even under ultra-low CO2 content, which far exceeds the catalytic activity of most semiconductor-based catalysts. This work is designed to simultaneously construct line defect and hollow structure in plasmatic metal nanoparticles for efficient photocatalytic CO2 reduction.

Aim: To identify risk factors and establish a concise prognostic scoring system in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Methods: A total of 131 DLBCL patients were enrolled with long-term follow-up who were treated in Shengjing Hospital of the China Medical University. The relationship between clinical parameters and outcomes was analyzed. Results: Multivariate analysis showed that patient age, BMI, CA125 and rituximab application were independent risk factors. Thereafter, a concise scoring system was established, and the new system could identify high-risk patients (p

A convenient and efficient strategy for the synthesis of dibenzoxazepinamines and dibenzothiazepinamines has been developed. This three-component approach started from 2-nitrobenzaldehydes, 2-aminophenols, and methoxyammonium chlorides under metal-free conditions. The protocol has the advantages of readily available starting materials, simple and facile conditions, gram-scale synthesis, and broad substrate scope, providing an efficient and practical strategy for the preparation of potential drug-active dibenzoxazepinamines and dibenzothiazepinamines in one pot.

In this paper, a novel type of isolator, named segmented intelligent isolation bearing (SIIB), is designed and manufactured, which can meet the requirements of seismic fortification under three seismic intensities, i.e. frequent intensity, basic intensity, and rare intensity. A theoretical formula for the output of the SIIB is established to provide a basis for the determination of the size of the SIIB. MRE and STMP used in SIIB were prepared, of which the changes of shear storage modulus and damping factor with the magnetic field under different strain are analyzed. The mechanical properties of the SIIB under small displacement, medium displacement, and large displacement are tested, respectively, and the hysteretic characteristics of force–displacement are analyzed. The dynamic mechanical model combining the rheological model, phenomenological model, and bilinear restoring force model is established to represent the behavior of the SIIB. The results showed that the theoretical results agree well with the experimental results, and the model can significantly reflect the dynamic characteristics of SIIB.

Background The uncertainty of how neurosyphilis is diagnosed and treated in clinical settings led us to investigate whether this serious manifestation of syphilis infection is properly managed in China. Methods: This national cross-sectional study of the diagnosis and treatment of neurosyphilis included 1392 clinicians at 398 hospitals located in 116 cities in China. Results: Of 398 hospitals, 244 (61.3%) failed to perform diagnostic laboratory tests and 181 (45.5%) failed to provide recommended treatment for neurosyphilis. Of 1392 clinicians, 536 (38.5%) had previously diagnosed patients with neurosyphilis, but 419 (78.2%) of the latter provided diagnoses that did not meet the criteria set by national guidelines. Of the 485 clinicians who had previously treated patients with neurosyphilis, 280 (57.7%) failed to follow national guidelines for treatment. Analysis indicated that clinicians working in North China (adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 4.24; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.65–10.88), tertiary hospitals (aOR, 3.23; 95% CI, 1.63–6.41), and hospitals specialising in sexually transmitted infections (aOR, 2.49; 95% CI, 1.24–4.99) were more likely to follow national guidelines for neurosyphilis treatment. Conclusion: Lack of knowledge in disease management poses a great obstacle to prevent the serious consequences of neurosyphilis in Chinese patients. More effective measures are urgently needed to improve this suboptimal situation.

Xing-Liang Wang,1 Chao Peng,2 You-Wei Tu,2 Yun-Peng Liu,2 Wei Zhang,2 Yan Zhang,2 Guo-Jun Hua3 1Department of Orthopedics, Wuxi Second People’s Hospital, Wuxi, 214000, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Orthopedic Surgery, The No.904 Hospital of People’s Liberation Army, Wuxi 214000, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Wuxi No.2 Chinese Medicine Hospital, Wuxi, 214000, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Guo-Jun HuaDepartment of Orthopedic Surgery, Wuxi No.2 Chinese Medicine Hospital, Wuxi, 214000, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail hgj13061@163.comXing-Liang WangDepartment of Orthopedics, Wuxi Second People’s Hospital, Wuxi, 214000, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail 15006176567@163.comPurpose: Recurrent patellar dislocation (RPD) is the most common complication of patellar instability and the medial patellofemoral ligament (MPFL) reconstruction has become its reference treatment. Lateral patellar retinaculum (LPR) release used to be performed in association with MPFL reconstruction. The aim of this study was to investigate the added values of MPFL reconstruction plus LPR release for RPD.Methods: After Institutional Review Board approval, RPD patients from October 2014 to April 2019 were randomly assigned into two groups (isolated MPFL reconstruction [Group I] and MPFL reconstruction plus LPR release [Group II]) and prospectively assessed until 12 months after surgery. Knee joints with flexion of 20° were scanned by a 64-row CT scanner. Congruence angle (CA), patella tilt angle (PTA), lateral patellofemoral angle (LPFA), tibial tuberosity-trochlear groove distance and patellar tilt with the quadriceps relaxed and contracted were measured. Knee function was assessed by Lysholm knee score and International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) score. Patients were followed up for at least 12 months.Results: A total of 87 RPD patients (45 for Group I and 42 for Group II) were selected in this study. Preoperative clinical characteristics were not significantly different across groups. No serious complications were noted in either group. It was statistically insignificant between the two group patients in terms of postoperative patella associated measurements (P > 0.05 for all). The Lysholm score and IKDC score of Group I (84.5 ± 7.1 and 87.9 ± 7.2) were significantly less than that of Group II (89.7 ± 8.7 and 93.1 ± 7.7), which indicated the better knee function of Group II.Conclusion: LPR release plus MPFL reconstruction provides additional benefits compared with isolated MPFL reconstruction in knee function. A combination of surgical treatments for RPD should be recommended.Keywords: recurrent patella dislocation, medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction, lateral patellar retinaculum release, prospective, combination treatment

Differentiable architecture search (DARTS) enables effective neural architecture search (NAS) using gradient descent, but suffers from high memory and computational costs. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, namely Partially-Connected DARTS (PC-DARTS), to achieve efficient and stable neural architecture search by reducing the channel and spatial redundancies of the super-network. In the channel level, partial channel connection is presented to randomly sample a small subset of channels for operation selection to accelerate the search process and suppress the over-fitting of the super-network. Side operation is introduced for bypassing (non-sampled) channels to guarantee the performance of searched architectures under extremely low sampling rates. In the spatial level, input features are down-sampled to eliminate spatial redundancy and enhance the efficiency of the mixed computation for operation selection. Furthermore, edge normalization is developed to maintain the consistency of edge selection based on channel sampling with the architectural parameters for edges. Theoretical analysis shows that partial channel connection and parameterized side operation are equivalent to regularizing the super-network on the weights and architectural parameters during bilevel optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves higher search speed and training stability than DARTS. PC-DARTS obtains a top-1 error rate of 2.55 percent on CIFAR-10 with 0.07 GPU-days for architecture search, and a state-of-the-art top-1 error rate of 24.1 percent on ImageNet (under the mobile setting) within 2.8 GPU-days.

Purpose Obtaining tumour-free margins is critical for avoiding re-excision and reducing local recurrence following breast-conserving surgery; however, it remains challenging. Imaging-guided surgery provides precise detection of residual lesions and assists surgical resection. Herein, we described water-soluble melanin nanoparticles (MNPs) conjugated with cyclic Arg-Gly-Asp (cRGD) peptides for breast cancer photoacoustic imaging (PAI) and surgical navigation. Methods The cRGD-MNPs were synthesised and characterized for morphology, photoacoustic characteristics and stability. Tumour targeting and toxicity of cRGD-MNPs were determined by using either breast cancer cells, MDA-MB-231 tumour-bearing mice or the FVB/N-Tg (MMTV-PyVT) 634Mul/J mice model. PAI was used to locate the tumour and guide surgical resection in MDA-MB-231 tumour-bearing mice. Results The cRGD-MNPs exhibited excellent in vitro and in vivo tumour targeting with low toxicity. Intravenous administration of cRGD-MNPs to MDA-MB-231 tumour-bearing mice showed an approximately 2.1-fold enhancement in photoacoustic (PA) intensity at 2 h, and the ratio of the PA intensity at the tumour site to that in the surrounding normal tissue was 3.2 ± 0.1, which was higher than that using MNPs (1.7 ± 0.3). Similarly, the PA signal in the spontaneous breast cancer increased ~ 2.5-fold at 2 h post-injection of cRGD-MNPs in MMTV-PyVT transgenic mice. Preoperative PAI assessed tumour volume and offered three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction images for accurate surgical planning. Surgical resection following real-time PAI showed high consistency with histopathological analysis. Conclusion These results highlight that cRGD-MNP-mediated PAI provide a powerful tool for breast cancer imaging and precise tumour resection. cRGD-MNPs with fine PA properties have great potential for clinical translation.

TC4 titanium alloy is widely used in aerospace, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and other fields, which accounts for about 60% of the current titanium alloy products. Water Cavitation Peening (WCP) is a new material surface modification process and has great development potential. The improvement of the water cavitation peening is severely limited by the correlation and coupling between process parameters. Therefore, the influence law of each process parameter is the key problem that needs to be resolved. TC4 titanium alloy as research object is took and four main process parameters of WCP under four working conditions is construct (four factors and four levels orthogonal). The influence of process parameters on three evaluation indexes is studied, such as the surface residual stress, the surface roughness and the microhardness. Then, the fuzzy mathematics comprehensive evaluation is used to optimize. Results show that the peening time has the greatest influence on strengthening effect and the nozzle diameter has the least. The optimized combination is that the nozzle diameter is 1.4 mm, the incident pressure is 40 MPa, the dimensionless target distance is 72.5 and peening time is 27.5 min. The corresponding surface residual stress, the surface roughness and the microhardness can reach −612 MPa, 0.76 μm, and 405 HV respectively.

Background Patients with gastric cancer often suffer from generalized and progressive reduction of skeletal muscle mass and strength, which negatively affects the quality of life (QOL). In this study, we explored the impact of sarcopenia on QOL and overall survival (OS). Methods From December 2015 to June 2017, 135 patients underwent radical gastrectomy at the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University. Based on the diagnostic criteria of the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia (AWGS), data including handgrip strength, 6-m gait speed and muscle mass were collected and analyzed. EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-STO22 were used to evaluate the QOL before surgery, 1, 3 and 6 months after surgery. Results A total of 27 out of the 135 patients (20.00%) were diagnosed with sarcopenia. Compared with non-sarcopenia group, patients in sarcopenia group had a higher incidence of postoperative complications (14.80% vs. 40.70%, p = 0.003), and more hospitalization costs (p = 0.029). The scores of eating restriction (p = 0.026), anxiety (p = 0.045) and body image (p = 0.046) were significantly higher in sarcopenia group at postoperative 6 months. Besides, sarcopenia was an independent risk factor for global health status at 6 months after operation (OR: 2.881, 95% CI: 1.110–7.475, p = 0.030) and OS (HR: 3.140, 95% CI: 1.255–7.855, p = 0.014). Other factors, including tumor stage III and the postoperative complications, had negative influences on OS. Conclusion Sarcopenia is a predictive factor of poor QOL and prognosis in patients with gastric cancer.

Despite the great appeal of two-dimensional semiconductors for electronics and optoelectronics, to achieve the required charge carrier concentrations by means of chemical doping remains a challenge due to large defect ionization energies (IEs). Here, by decomposing the defect IEs into three parts based on ionization process, we propose a conceptual picture that the large defect IEs are caused by two effects of reduced dimensionality. While the quantum confinement effect makes the neutral single-electron point defect levels deep, the reduced screening effect leads to high energy cost for the electronic relaxation. The first-principles calculations for black phosphorus and MoS2 do demonstrate the general trend. Using BP monolayer either embedded into dielectric continuum or encapsulated between two hBN layers, we demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the screening to reduce the defect IEs. Our analysis is expected to help achieve effective carrier doping and open ways toward more extensive applications of 2D semiconductors.

The conversion of CO2 driven by solar energy into carbon-containing fuel has huge potential applications. However, most photocatalysts can only promote the two-electron reduction process to generate CO, and it is difficult to produce eight-electron CH4, which is more valuable and can store more solar energy. Herein, we prepared porous silver cyanamide nanocrystals with tunable morphologies via a facile synthesis strategy. Compared with ball/rectangular plate (RAP) and ball/leaf-like plate (SAP), the ball/porous leaf-like plate (LAP) can provide more internal reaction microenvironment, which is not only conducive to the transport of photoinduced charge carriers, but also can expand the active sites for photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Moreover, the suitable band gap of LAP sample can capture more visible light to provide more photoinduced electron-hole pairs to participate in the reduction reaction. Consequently, the LAP sample can convert CO2 to CH4 with remarkable activity and high selectivity (nearly 100%) without cocatalyst and photosensitizer under visible light irradiation. This work provides a promising way to design new photocatalysts for various applications in solar energy conversion.

A broadband and wide-beamwidth dual-polarized orthogonal dipole antenna for 4G/5G communication is presented in this letter. A pair of orthogonal deformed fan-shaped dipoles was used to obtain dual-polarization. The parasitic elements and metal cavity structure were used to increase the impedance bandwidth effectively. And the half-power beamwidths (HPBWs) of the antenna were effectively widened by using the metal cavity. Furthermore, a 1 × 4 antenna array was designed. The measured HPBWs of E -plane and H -plane radiation patterns were greater than 90° in the operating frequency band of 1.7–3.22 GHz (voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) < 2.0), and the gain was greater than 0 dBi in the range of ±60° pitch angle. The isolation of the two input ports was higher than 29 dB in the band of 1.7–3.22 GHz (61.8%).

The role of cytoreductive surgery (CRS) plus hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) in gastric cancer with peritoneal metastasis (GCPM) is still controversial, mainly due to the limited survival benefit and uncertain patient selection. This study aims to construct a selecting strategy in GCPM for CRS + HIPEC.From a prospective established database, 125 patients were enrolled. All these patients were pathologically confirmed as GCPM and treated with CRS + HIPEC with or without preoperative or postoperative chemotherapy. The clinical documents and follow-up results were collected and analyzed with the primary endpoint of overall survival (OS) and the secondary endpoint of perioperative serious adverse events (SAEs).The median OS of 125 GCPM patients treated with CRS + HIPEC was 10.7 months, with 1-, 2-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates of 43.8%, 24.7%, 18.6%, and 15.7%, respectively. The multivariate analysis identified completeness of cytoreduction (CC), SAEs, HIPEC drugs, and adjuvant chemotherapy as independent prognostic factors on OS. The median OS was 30.0 (95%CI: 16.8-43.3) months in CC-0 group, significantly better than 7.3 (95%CI: 5.8-8.8) months in CC1-3 group (P 0.001). The median OS showed no significant difference among CC-1 (8.5, 95%CI: 6.7-10.2, months), CC-2 (5.6, 95%CI: 3.0-8.2, months) and CC-3 (6.5, 95%CI: 5.2-7.7, months) groups (P 0.05 for all pairwise comparations). The nomogram based on peritoneal metastasis timing, preoperative tumor marker (TM), and peritoneal cancer index (PCI), with AUC of 0.985, showed a good accuracy and consistency between actual observation and prediction of the probability of complete CRS. The cutoffs of PCI were 16 for synchronous GCPM with normal TM, 12 for synchronous GCPM with abnormal TM, 10 for metachronous GCPM with normal TM, and 5 for metachronous GCPM with abnormal TM, setting the probability to achieve complete CRS as 50%.Only complete CRS + HIPEC (CC-0) could improve survival for high selected GCPM patients with acceptable safety. An incomplete CRS (CC1-3) should be avoided for GCPM patients. Synchronous GCPM with PCI ≤16 and normal TM, synchronous GCPM with PCI ≤12 and abnormal TM, metachronous GCPM with PCI ≤10 and normal TM, or metachronous GCPM with PCI ≤5 and abnormal TM maybe potential indications for complete CRS + HIPEC treatment.

In this work, we aim to address the problem of human interaction recognition in videos by exploring the long-term inter-related dynamics among multiple persons. Recently, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) has become a popular choice to model individual dynamic for single-person action recognition due to its ability to capture the temporal motion information in a range. However, most existing LSTM-based methods focus only on capturing the dynamics of human interaction by simply combining all dynamics of individuals or modeling them as a whole. Such methods neglect the inter-related dynamics of how human interactions change over time. To this end, we propose a novel Hierarchical Long Short-Term Concurrent Memory (H-LSTCM) to model the long-term inter-related dynamics among a group of persons for recognizing human interactions. Specifically, we first feed each person's static features into a Single-Person LSTM to model the single-person dynamic. Subsequently, at one time step, the outputs of all Single-Person LSTM units are fed into a novel Concurrent LSTM (Co-LSTM) unit, which mainly consists of multiple sub-memory units, a new cell gate, and a new co-memory cell. In the Co-LSTM unit, each sub-memory unit stores individual motion information, while this Co-LSTM unit selectively integrates and stores inter-related motion information between multiple interacting persons from multiple sub-memory units via the cell gate and co-memory cell, respectively. Extensive experiments on several public datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed H-LSTCM by comparing against baseline and state-of-the-art methods.

The combination of features from the convolutional layer and the fully connected layer of a convolutional neural network (CNN) provides an effective way to improve the performance of crime scene in...

The development of atherosclerosis is accompanied by the functional deterioration of plaque cells, which leads to the escalation of endothelial inflammation, abnormal vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype switching and the accumulation of lipid-laden macrophages within vascular walls. Autophagy, a highly conserved homeostatic mechanism, is critical for the delivery of cytoplasmic substrates to lysosomes for degradation. Moderate levels of autophagy prevent atherosclerosis by safeguarding plaque cells against apoptosis, preventing inflammation, and limiting the lipid burden, whereas excessive autophagy exacerbates cell damage and inflammation and thereby accelerates the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. Increasing lines of evidence suggest that long noncoding RNAs can be either beneficial or detrimental to atherosclerosis development by regulating the autophagy level. This review summarizes the research progress related to 1) the significant role of autophagy in atherosclerosis and 2) the effects of the lncRNA-mediated modulation of autophagy on the plaque cell fate, inflammation levels, proliferative capacity, and cholesterol metabolism and subsequently on atherogenesis.

Purpose The effects of different combination of surgical techniques for recurrent patella dislocation (RPD) remain unclear. Thus, aim of this study was to investigate the surgical outcomes of different combination of surgical techniques for RPD. Methods The clinical data of 79 patients with RPD from August 2014 to October 2016 were analysed retrospectively. Knee joint was assessed according to measurements of the congruence angle (CA), patellar tilt angle (PTA) and lateral patellofemoral angle (LPFA). Knee function was evaluated by Kujala patellofemoral score, Lysholm knee score and Tegner score. Patients were followed up by out-patient examination and telephone till October 2018. Results Preoperative clinical characteristics were similar across groups. It was statistically insignificant among three groups in CA, PTA, LPFA and redislocation rate. In term of knee functions, the MPFL reconstruction and LPR release group had the highest score (Lysholm score: 91.82 ± 4.64, Kujala score: 94.22 ± 4.26, Tegner score: 5.80 ± 1.00, respectively) and the LPR release and MPR plication had the lowest score (Lysholm score: 78.10 ± 6.90, Kujala score: 80.91 ± 4.30, Tegner score: 4.98 ± 1.22, respectively). Conclusion Three combinations of surgical methods were similar in terms of postoperative joint congruence and redislocation rate, but MPFL reconstruction combined with LPR release is worthy to be promoted with the highest knee function scores.

A compact wideband dual-polarized slot-coupled stacked patch antenna is presented in this communication. Two orthogonal U-shaped feed lines are used to excite a cross-slot to obtain dual-polarization. The cross-slot consists of two orthogonal slots whose long sides vary as exponential curves. The impedance bandwidth is increased effectively by using the two orthogonal slots with gradually changing width and stacked patches. The radiation layers and feeding layers of the antenna are embedded in a small cylindrical metal cavity. By using the metal cavity as the reflector, the transverse dimension of the antenna is effectively reduced. The measured results demonstrate that the impedance bandwidth of the antenna is 94% (2.47–6.85 GHz) for $\vert \text{S}_{11}\vert dB with a transmission coefficient of less than −21.2 dB between two input ports. A stable radiation pattern is obtained in the range of 2.5–6.5 GHz. The proposed dual-polarized antenna can be applied to wideband wireless communication systems with compact platforms.

Background MicroRNAs (miRs) have been suggested to be biomarkers to inform the diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD). We have previously shown that exosome-derived miR-139-5p had potential in differentiating between patients with MDD and healthy control (HC) subjects. Materials and methods To validate the potential of exosome-derived miR-139-5p as a biomarker for MDD, here we recruited 30 patients with MDD and 30 HC subjects, and used TaqMan probes to detect serum exosomal miR-139-5p levels. Results The data showed that patients with MDD had significantly increased exosomal miR-139-5p levels when compared with controls. Correlation analysis suggested that sex, age, and body mass index did not significantly affect blood exosomal miR-139-5p levels in the tested subjects. The ROC curve showed that serum-derived miR-139-5p had reasonable performance in discriminating patients with MDD and HC subjects, with a sensitivity of 0.867 and specificity of 0.767, and the AUC was 0.807. Discussion Taken together, these results demonstrated that patients with MDD were accompanied by significantly increased blood exosomal miR-139-5p levels, and exosomal miR-139-5p is a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of MDD.

Background Circular RNAs (circRNAs) play important roles in tumorigenesis, including lung cancer. However, the expression profile and clinical value of circRNAs in lung adenocarcinoma remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to establish the circRNAs expression profile of lung adenocarcinoma and determine its potential diagnostic and prognostic value. Materials and Methods The global expression profile of circRNAs in lung adenocarcinoma tissue was determined from five paired lung adenocarcinoma tissues and adjacent normal tissues. The expression levels of selected candidate circRNA were validated by qRT-PCR. Sequence analysis was used to confirm the specificity of amplified circRNA. The candidate circRNA level was further detected in plasma samples from lung adenocarcinoma patients and healthy controls. The relationships between their levels and clinicopathological factors were explored. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed to differentiate lung adenocarcinoma from healthy controls. Kaplan-Meier was performed to show survival curves and survival characteristics. The significance of different prognostic factors for overall survival (OS) was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards model. Results CircRNA microarray showed 394 circRNAs were differentially expressed, including 215 up-regulated and 179 down-regulated circRNAs. Hsa_circ_0001715 was the most up-regulated circRNA in lung adenocarcinoma tissues. Plasma hsa_circ_0001715 levels were significantly higher in lung adenocarcinoma patients versus healthy controls (P < 0.001). We further found that high plasma hsa_circ_0001715 was significantly correlated with TNM stage (P = 0.039) and distant metastasis (P = 0.030). Furthermore, ROC curve analysis showed that hsa_circ_0001715 had high diagnostic value, and the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.871. Lung adenocarcinoma patients with plasma hsa_circ_0001715 levels over 0.417 had significantly shorter OS than those with lower levels (P = 0.004). Univariate and multivariate survival analysis showed that plasma hsa_circ_0001715 level was an independent prognostic factor for the OS. Conclusion Our study revealed an aberrant circRNA expression profile in lung adenocarcinoma, and hsa_circ_0001715 is up-regulated and could act as a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for lung adenocarcinoma.

Gonorrhea is one of the main sexually transmitted diseases in China. It mainly affects the genitourinary tract, and its clinical manifestations vary from asymptomatic to complicated types. The diagnosis of gonorrhea should be based on the patient's epidemiological history, clinical manifestations, and laboratory examination results. Treatment should be prompt and standardized and should involve the recommended treatment regimens. Patients should be appropriately followed up after treatment. The antimicrobial resistance of gonococcal isolates has become a severe problem of clinical concern. In order to provide technical guidance of the diagnosis and treatment of gonorrhea for health care workers, the authors developed the guidelines based on the version of 2014, which will be of important in the standardizing medical care of gonorrhea, and further facilitating control and prevention of the disease.

Axillary reverse mapping (ARM) is a technique to identify arm lymphatic drainage during axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). This study compared the feasibility of ARM using indocyanine green (ICG) or methylene blue (MB), and accessed the oncologic safety of the procedure. Overall, 158 patients qualified for ALND were enrolled. The characteristics of ARM‐identified nodes were recorded with ICG (n = 78) or MB (n = 80) visualization. Fine‐needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of the nodes were performed and validated by histologic analysis. The nodal identification rate in the ICG group significantly surpassed that of the MB group (87.2% vs 52.5%, P, Axillary reverse mapping (ARM) using indocyanine green is feasible with a higher identification rate of ARM nodes and fewer complications. Note that 10.9% of the patients had metastatic involvement of the ARM‐identified nodes. FNAC, together with the features of primary tumors and ARM nodes, could delineate the patient profiles who can use ARM safely.

Representation learning methods allow a system to automatically learn robust and discriminative features from raw data for given goals, which play an important role in various visual content understanding applications, such as visual object segmentation, detection, tracking, recognition, and search. The performance of visual content understanding tasks is heavily dependent on the choice of data representation (or features) on which they are applied. Conventional feature representation methods usually employ transformations of data that make it easier to extract useful information, such as scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT), local binary patterns (LBP), and histogram of oriented gradients (HOG). In recent years, deep learning techniques have been widely applied to learn data-driven representations with supervised annotations and achieved great success in different visual content understanding tasks. Representative methods include the ResNet method for image classification, the DeepFace method for face recognition, and the feature pyramid networks (FPNs) method for object detection. Despite recent progresses on deep representation learning with a great amount of annotated data, how to effectively learn visual representation with limited data annotations still requires many efforts. This special section focuses on data-effective representation learning methods for visual content understanding.

Resistance to chemotherapy continues to be a critical issue in the clinical therapy of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is thought to contribute to chemoresistance in several cancer types, including breast cancer. Identification of the key signaling pathway that regulates the EMT program and contributes to chemoresistance in TNBC will provide a novel strategy to overcome chemoresistance in this subtype of cancer. Herein, we demonstrate that Notch1 positively associates with melanoma cell adhesion molecule (MCAM), a unique EMT activator, in TNBC tissue samples both at mRNA and protein levels. High expression of Notch1 and MCAM both predicts a poor survival in basal-like/TNBC patients, particularly in those treated with chemotherapy. The expression of Notch1 and MCAM in MDA-MB-231 cells gradually increases in a time-dependent manner when exposing to low dose cisplatin. Moreover, the expressions of Notch1 and MCAM in cisplatin-resistant MDA-MB-231 cells are significantly higher than wild-type counterparts. Notch1 promotes EMT and chemoresistance, as well as invasion and proliferation of TNBC cells via direct activating MCAM promoter. Inhibition of Notch1 significantly downregulates MCAM expression, resulting in the reversion of EMT and chemoresistance to cisplatin in TNBC cells. Our study reveals the regulatory mechanism of the Notch1 pathway and MCAM in TNBC and suggesting that targeting the Notch1/MCAM axis, in conjunction with conventional chemotherapies, might be a potential avenue to enhance the therapeutic efficacy for patients with TNBC.

In visual object tracking, by reasonably fusing multiple experts, ensemble framework typically achieves superior performance compared to the individual experts. However, the necessity of parallelly running all the experts in most existing ensemble frameworks heavily limits their efficiency. In this paper, we propose POST, a POlicy-based Switch Tracker for robust and efficient visual tracking. The proposed POST tracker consists of multiple weak but complementary experts (trackers) and adaptively assigns one suitable expert for tracking in each frame. By formulating this expert switch in consecutive frames as a decision-making problem, we learn an agent via reinforcement learning to directly decide which expert to handle the current frame without running others. In this way, the proposed POST tracker maintains the performance merit of multiple diverse models while favorably ensuring the tracking efficiency. Extensive ablation studies and experimental comparisons against state-of-the-art trackers on 5 prevalent benchmarks verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is important for advanced laryngeal and hypopharyngeal carcinoma (LHC).Aims/objectives: To determine the efficacy and toxicity of the combination of docetaxel, ...

Glioblastoma is the most common primary tumor of the central nervous system that develops chemotherapy resistance. Previous studies showed that Allicin could inhibit multiple cancer cells including glioblastoma, but the function of Allicin in glioblastoma is still unclear. Our work aimed to investigate the underlying molecular mechanism. The results showed that miR-486-3p levels were greatly increased in glioblastoma during Allicin treatment. Overexpression of miR-486-3p increased chemosensitivity to temozolomide (TMZ) in vitro and in vivo. O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) was identified as a direct target of miR-486-3p, and miR-486-3p overexpression prevented the protein translation of MGMT. Moreover, overexpression of MGMT restored miR-486-3p-induced chemosensitivity to TMZ. Taken together, our studies revealed that Allicin could upregulate miR-486-3p and enhance TMZ sensitivity in glioblastoma. The results suggested that in the future, Allicin can be used as an adjuvant therapy with TMZ to improve the prognosis of patients, and miR-486-3p may be a potential target for glioblastoma treatment to improve the curative effects. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s12017-020-08592-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

At present, natural orifice specimen extraction surgery (NOSES) has attracted more and more attention worldwide, because of its great advantages including minimal cutaneous trauma and post-operative pain, fast post-operative recovery, short hospital stay, and positive psychological impact. However, NOSES for the treatment of gastric cancer (GC) is still in its infancy, and there is great potential to improve its theoretical system and clinical practice. Especially, several key points including oncological outcomes, bacteriological concerns, indication selection, and standardized surgical procedures are raised with this innovative technique. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve an international consensus to regulate the implementation of GC-NOSES, which is of great significance for healthy and orderly development of NOSES worldwide.

Vascular dementia (VaD) is a complex disorder caused by reduced blood flow in the brain. However, there is no effective pharmacological treatment option available until now. Here, we reported that low-dose levamlodipine besylate could reverse the cognitive impairment in VaD mice model of right unilateral common carotid arteries occlusion (rUCCAO). Oral administration of levamlodipine besylate (0.1 mg/kg) could reduce the latency to find the hidden platform in the MWM test as compared to the vehicle group. Furthermore, vehicle-treated mice revealed reduced phospho-CaMKII (Thr286) levels in the hippocampus, which can be partially restored by levamlodipine besylate (0.1 mg/kg and 0.5 mg/kg) treatment. No significant outcome on microglia and astrocytes were observed following levamlodipine besylate treatment. This data reveal novel findings of the therapeutic potential of low-dose levamlodipine besylate that could considerably enhance the cognitive function in VaD mice.

Objective The aim of this study was to study the relationship between adverse pregnant outcomes(APO) with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in pregnant women. Method From 2017 to 2019, we studied HBsAg (+) pregnant women and HBsAg (-) who gave birth at our hospital in Guangzhou City, China. We compared of the outcomes of pregnant women with HBsAg(+) or HBsAg(-). Further, among HBsAg(+) pregnant women, We compared of the outcomes of pregnant women with HBeAg(+) group or HBeAg(-) group, HBV DNA above 2×10e5IU/mL group or HBV DNA below 2×10e5IU/mL) group, respectively. Finally, multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the independent association between HBV infection and the risk of developing APO. Result First, Our research Indicates that the rates of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), premature rupture of membrane (PROM), Fetal distress (FD), Oligohydramnios, Premature delivery (PD), Low birth weight (LBW), Meconium contamination (MC), Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia(NH) in HBsAg(+) group were higher than those in HBsAg(-) group (P5 IU/mL were higher than those in HBV DNA below 2×10e5 IU/mL group (P

Microglia, the innate immune cells of the central nervous system, play a pivotal role in the modulation of neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation has been implicated in many diseases of the CNS, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. It is well documented that microglial activation, initiated by a variety of stressors, can trigger a potentially destructive neuroinflammatory response via the release of pro-inflammatory molecules, and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. However, the potential anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects that microglia are also thought to exhibit have been under-investigated. The application of ionising radiation at different doses and dose schedules may reveal novel methods for the control of microglial response to stressors, potentially highlighting avenues for treatment of neuroinflammation associated CNS disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. There remains a need to characterise the response of microglia to radiation, particularly low dose ionising radiation.

Aiming at the epitaxial structure of the high-power 885nm laser diodes, the factors limiting the further increase of the output power and the power conversion efficiency were investigated. According to the analysis, the epitaxial structure of the laser diodes was optimized, and the influence of the waveguide layer thickness on the carrier absorption loss and the series resistance was theoretically simulated. The results showed that the asymmetric waveguide structure with the thickness ratio of the N-side and the P-side of 6:4 can reduce the carrier absorption loss to the greatest extent. Based on the simulation results, the 885nm laser bars with the optimized epitaxial structure were fabricated and tested under the ambient temperature of 25℃ in a quasi-continuous wave mode of 250μs and 200Hz. The slope efficiency reaches 1.26W/A, while the series resistance is only 1.2mΩ. The power of 277.6W is achieved at 250A injection current and the maximum power conversion efficiency exceeds 64%.

Based on the daily meteorological monitoring data of Xiaozhan rice in Tianjin planting area from 2010 to 2020 and the observation data of nutritional quality of Xiaozhan rice in Tianjin from 2014 to 2020, comprehensive characterization parameter M of nutritional quality of Xiaozhan rice in Tianjin and the evaluation model of meteorological conditions' influence on the nutritional quality of rice was established by principal component analysis, ordered sample optimal clustering method and stepwise regression method. The climatic evaluation grades of nutritional quality of Xiaozhan rice in Tianjin were divided into four grades. The comprehensive characterization parameter (M) of nutritional quality of Xiaozhan rice can be determined using five quality factors (protein, amylose, gel consistency, amino acid and chalkiness) into three weighted sums, and the coefficients are is the proportion of the eigenvalues corresponding to the three principal components to the total variance of the original variables. The thresholds of M corresponding to the four grades of ‘general’, ‘good’, ‘excellent’, ‘extra‐superior’, in the climatic evaluation of nutritional quality of Xiaozhan rice in Tianjin were M

Background Postoperative delirium (POD) is a sign of deterioration in the homeostasis and physical status of the patient. However, there have been no reports regarding the relationship between the decrease of regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rSctO2) reading during surgery and the POD in hip replacement in the elder. This study aims to investigate this correlation and the incidence of POD.Methods We performed a retrospective study of 4834 patients who underwent hip arthroplasties between 2015 and 2019 at our hospital. Data were collected as part of routine patient care. The patients’ cognitive performance was evaluated by using the Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR 4th edition) criteria. Patients found to be delirious after surgery served as the delirium group, other patients who did not develop delirium after surgery regarded as the no-delirium group. The various factors including the decline of rSctO2 reading intraoperatively were assessed using Multivariable logistic regression models. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) are reported.Results POD was found in 27 patients (n=351); the incidence of POD was 7.7%; all of them were in their 70’s or 80’s. Lab data and rSctO2 reading before surgery were no significantly difference between the delirium group and the no-delirium group. Patients who displayed the decline of rSctO2 reading intraoperatively were at higher risk for POD (compared with no-delirium patients: OR2.169 CI 1.663-2.829 p=0.000) and gender (compared with no-delirium patients: OR 0.163 CI 0.029-0.909 p=0.039) was at a higher risk. Twenty-four patients recovered from POD gradually. One patient had persistent and severe cognitive dysfunction after surgery, two patients died of complications either acute pulmonary embolism 4 days after surgery or acute stroke 21 days after surgery respectively.Conclusions The incidence of POD was 7.7%. This study shows that the decline of rSctO2 reading during hip replacement surgery in the elder is associated with increased probability for the POD.

Objective Sepsis is a major challenge in intensive care unit (ICU) worldwide and the septic survivors are left with long-term cognitive deficits. This work aims to explore the effects of electroacupuncture (EA) on long-term cognitive function and its underlying mechanism in sepsis-survivor mice. Methods Sepsis was induced by cecal ligation and puncture in C57BL/6 male mice. Seven days post-surgery, sepsis-survivor mice were treated with EA or nonacupoint EA for 17 days twice daily. Then, cognitive function was evaluated by Morris water maze task. The hippocampus tissue were collected from the mice at 30 days post-surgery. The level of nitric oxide and the expression of endothelial nitric oxide (eNOS), phospho-eNOS (p-eNOS), and amyloid β–peptide (Aβ) were measured. Results Compared with the sham-operated control, sepsis-survivors had significant cognitive deficits evidenced by the increased time of escape latency and reduced crossing number in Morris water maze task, as well as lower NO and p-eNOS level and higher Aβ level. EA treatment at GV20 and ST36 acupoints but not at a nonacupoint improved the cognitive function, increased the NO and p-eNOS level, and decreased Aβ generation; while eNOS inhibitor (L-NAME) undermined the efficacy of EA treatment. Conclusion In conclusion, repeated EA treatment could ameliorate the long-term cognitive impairment via manipulating the expression of p-eNOS and related Aβ in sepsis-survivor mice.

Human leukocyte antigen-E (HLA-E) has been putatively associated with the pathogenesis of multiple myeloma (MM). Our study first showed that HLA-E was differentially expressed on MM and normal plasma cells (39.27 ± 27.01 and 11.28 ± 0.79, respectively). Based on the median value of HLA-E expression, we further stratified MM patients into high and low-expression groups, and then found high expression of HLA-E was correlated with advanced ISS stage (p = 0.025) and high-risk cytogenetics risk stratification (p = 0.000) by the Pearson Chi-square test, suggesting that HLA-E could be considered as a biomarker for high-risk MM. Furthermore, peptide 3 (P3) from our previous study was confirmed to possess a high affinity to HLA-E positive MM cells. Taken together, HLA-E could be considered as a new marker and candidate treatment target for MM, while peptide P3 may act as a potential treatment choice for targeting MM cells.

PurposeThe basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor (bHLH) transcription factor Twist1 plays a key role in embryonic development and tumorigenesis. p53 is a frequently mutated tumor suppressor in cancer. Both proteins play a key and significant role in breast cancer tumorigenesis. However, the regulatory mechanism and clinical significance of their co-expression in this disease remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to analyze the expression patterns of p53 and Twist1 and determine their association with patient prognosis in breast cancer. We also investigated whether their co-expression could be a potential marker for predicting patient prognosis in this disease.MethodsTwist1 and mutant p53 expression in 408 breast cancer patient samples were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. Kaplan-Meier Plotter was used to analyze the correlation between co-expression of Twist1 and wild-type or mutant p53 and prognosis for recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). Univariate analysis, multivariate analysis, and nomograms were used to explore the independent prognostic factors in disease-free survival (DFS) and OS in this cohort.ResultsOf the 408 patients enrolled, 237 (58%) had high mutant p53 expression. Two-hundred twenty patients (53.9%) stained positive for Twist1, and 188 cases were Twist1-negative. Furthermore, patients that co-expressed Twist1 and mutant p53 (T+P+) had significantly advanced-stage breast cancer [stage III, 61/89 T+P+ (68.5%) vs. 28/89 T-P- (31.5%); stage II, 63/104 T+P+ (60.6%)vs. 41/104 T-P- (39.4%)]. Co-expression was negatively related to early clinical stage (i.e., stages 0 and I; P = 0.039). T+P+ breast cancer patients also had worse DFS (95% CI = 1.217–7.499, P = 0.017) and OS (95% CI = 1.009–9.272, P = 0.048). Elevated Twist1 and mutant p53 expression predicted shorter RFS in basal-like patients. Univariate and multivariate analysis identified three variables (i.e., lymph node involvement, larger tumor, and T+P+) as independent prognostic factors for DFS. Lymph node involvement and T+P+ were also independent factors for OS in this cohort. The total risk scores and nomograms were reliable for predicting DFS and OS in breast cancer patients.ConclusionsOur results revealed that co-expression of mutant p53 and Twist1 was associated with advanced clinical stage, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtype, distant metastasis, and shorter DFS and OS in breast cancer patients. Furthermore, lymph nodes status and co-expression of Twist1 and mutant p53 were classified as independent factors for DFS and OS in this cohort. Co-evaluation of mutant p53 and Twist1 might be an appropriate tool for predicting breast cancer patient outcome.

We present a novel attention mechanism: Causal Attention (CATT), to remove the ever-elusive confounding effect in existing attention-based vision-language models. This effect causes harmful bias that misleads the attention module to focus on the spurious correlations in training data, damaging the model generalization. As the confounder is unobserved in general, we use the front-door adjustment to realize the causal intervention, which does not require any knowledge on the confounder. Specifically, CATT is implemented as a combination of 1) In-Sample Attention (IS-ATT) and 2) Cross-Sample Attention (CS-ATT), where the latter forcibly brings other samples into every IS-ATT, mimicking the causal intervention. CATT abides by the Q-K-V convention and hence can replace any attention module such as top-down attention and self-attention in Transformers. CATT improves various popular attention-based vision-language models by considerable margins. In particular, we show that CATT has great potential in large-scale pre-training, e.g., it can promote the lighter LXMERT~\cite{tan2019lxmert}, which uses fewer data and less computational power, comparable to the heavier UNITER~\cite{chen2020uniter}. Code is published in \url{https://github.com/yangxuntu/catt}.

OBJECTIVE Increased permeability and changes in gut microbiota contributed to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Zonulin is a key modulator that regulates intestinal barrier function. Peripheral platelet alterations have been involved in AD pathology. C-type lectin-like receptor 2 (CLEC-2) is a receptor on the platelet surface for activation. The purpose of this study was to determine zonulin and CLEC-2 levels in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD, and investigate the relationship between zonulin and CLEC-2. METHODS In this study, CLEC-2 and zonulin levels were measured using ELISA assay in 110 AD patients, 110 MCI patients, and 110 non-demented control subjects. RESULTS Increased CLEC-2 and zonulin levels were observed in MCI and AD patients. Furthermore, AD patients had higher CLEC-2 and zonulin levels compared with MCI patients. In addition, CLEC-2 levels were positively correlated with zonulin levels, after adjusting confounding factors (r = .592, P

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the optimal cutoffs of the three parameters of Ki67 during NAC for predictingpatient prognosis and investigate whether the optimal cutoffs of the Ki67 values were associated with relapse-free survival (RFS) orbreast cancer-specific survival (BCSS). Methods: A total of 92 patients with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC), who had residual disease after NAC wereretrospectively investigated. The optimal cutoff values of the Ki67 parameters were assessed by the online algorithm Cutoff Finder.Kaplan-Meier analysis, the log-rank test and Cox regression analysis were carried out to analyze survival. Results: The optimal cutoff values for the postsurgical Ki67 level and the decrease in the Ki67 level during NAC were defined as25% and 12.5%, respectively. According to the univariate survival analysis, a higher Ki67 level in residual disease was associatedwith poor RFS (P = 0.004) and BCSS (P = 0.014). In addition, a Ki67 expression decrease > 12.5% during NAC was related tofavorable RFS (P = 0.007), but was not related to BCSS (P = 0.452). Cox regression analysis showed that the Ki67 expressiondecrease (> 12.5% vs. ≤ 12.5%) and histological grade (grade 3 vs. grade 1-2) were the independent factors associated with RFS (P =0.020 and P = 0.023, respectively), with HR values of 0.353 (95% CI: 0.147-0.850) and 3.422 (95% CI: 1.188-9.858), respectively. Conclusions: The Ki67 decrease was one of the independent factors associated with RFS in LABC patients with residual diseaseafter receiving NAC. Cite this article as: Chen C, Zhang Y, Huang Z, Wu J, Huang W, Zhang G.Decrease in the Ki67 index during neoadjuvant chemotherapy predictsfavorable relapse-free survival in patients with locally advanced breast cancer.Cancer Biol Med. 2019; 16: 575-86. doi: 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2018.0423

BackgroundAngiogenesis is an indispensable step in the growth and invasiveness of breast cancers involving a series of exquisite molecular steps. Pro-angiogenic factors, including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), have been recognized as pivotal therapeutic targets in the treatment of breast cancer. More recently, a highly conserved transcription factor Twist has been reported to be involved in tumor angiogenesis and metastasis.MethodsThe expression of VEGF-C and Twist was immunohistochemically determined in tissue samples of primary tumors from 408 patients undergoing curative surgical resection for breast cancer. The correlations of VEGF-C and Twist expressions with clinicopathologic parameters as well as survival outcomes were evaluated.ResultsOf the 408 patients evaluated, approximately 70% had high expression of VEGF-C which was significantly associated with advanced tumor stages (P=0.019). Similarly, VEGF-C expression was associated with the proliferation index Ki67, N3 lymph node metastasis, and D2-40-positive lymphatic vessel invasion (LVI) in a univariate analysis. Furthermore, patients with high expressions of VEGF-C and Twist (V+T+) had significantly increased lymph node metastasis, higher clinical stage, and worse disease-free survival, DFS (P=0.001) and overall survival, OS (P=0.011).ConclusionsOur results suggested that co-expression of VEGF-C and Twist was associated with larger tumor size, higher numbers of lymph node involvement, D2-40-positive LVI, higher risk of distant metastasis, and worse DFS or OS in breast cancer patients.

Wheat cultivars that produce good-quality bread and noodles are important for the food industry and starch physicochemical properties greatly influence the reprocessing quality. In this study, six types of cultivars differing in bread and noodle quality were compared for starch characteristics and for future quality improvement. All six types exhibited significantly different starch physicochemical properties including starch components, amylopectin chain length distribution, granule size and distribution, pasting, swelling, and gelatinization. Most parameters investigated were significantly correlated with bread- and noodle-making performance, confirming significant effects of starch properties on wheat end-use quality. The ratio of amylopectin/amylose contents, proportion of amylopectin short chains (2 ≤ DP ≤ 10), amount of C-type starch granules, pasting peak viscosity and gelatinization conclusion temperature (Tc) were effective indicators for improvement of wheat processing quality, and cultivars with those parameters in ranges of 2.1–2.6, 47.8–51.0%, 36.2–46.7%, 2890–3450 cP, and 68.5–69.6 °C, respectively, would yield superior bread- and/or noodle-making quality.