Search

Shuai Liu,1 Pan Pan,2 Bing Han,3 Jingnan Wang,1 Meili Sun,1 Yuping Sun1 1Department of Oncology, Jinan Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University; Jinan Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, 250013, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Pathology, Jinan Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University; Jinan Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, 250013, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, 250012, Shandong, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yuping Sun Tel +86-13370582181Email 13370582181@163.comAbstract: Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the dominant mesenchymal tumors of the digestive tract. Extragastrointestinal stromal tumors (EGISTs) usually originate outside the gastrointestinal tract without connection to the gastric or intestinal wall. However, EGISTs arising from the vaginal wall are very rare. Here, we report a case of EGIST that occurred in the vagina of a 60-year-old woman. The tumor was present in the posterior vaginal wall. It was surgically excised, and histological examination revealed spindle cell morphology with up to 14 mitoses per 50 high power field (HPF) and necrosis with the tumor-negative margins. Immunohistochemical analyses showed strongly positive CD34, CD117, and DOG-1 expression, but negative SMA, S-100, CD10, desmin, and actin expression. The patient underwent surgery and is currently being followed up. A literature review of EGSTs and treatments is also discussed in this report.Keywords: extragastrointestinal stromal tumors, vagina, c-kit, mutation

Flue-cured tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) is a leafy, annual, solanaceous plant grown commercially for its leaves in China. Around 70% of tobacco production in China occurs in southwest China. In summer of 2019, leaf spot symptoms were observed on ten to twenty percent of tobacco plants in a 2 ha commercial field of Bijie (27.32° N, 105.29° E), Guizhou province, China. The leaf spots were white with dark-brown in edges, irregularly round and oval, and diseased tissue dropped out leaving the leaves ragged in appearance (Fig. 1A, 1B). One diseased leaf from each of five plants was sampled. From five leaves, a total of 15 small (5 mm × 5 mm) pieces of leaf tissue were cut from the edge of the lesions after surface sterilization and placed on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium. Five fungal colonies that were similar in appearance were isolated and one was purified, BEZ22, was selected arbitrarily for identification. Mycelia of the pathogen was initally white and dense, and then black carbonized mycelia appeared from the center of the colony 7 days' after incubation. Mycelia was white, sparse and radiated when incubated on OA (oatmeal agar) (Fig. 1E, 1F, 1G, 1H). Genomic DNA of the isolate was extracted. The internal transcribed spacers (ITS) with primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), actin (ACT) gene with primers ACT-512F/ACT-738R (Hsieh et al. 2005), beta-tubulin (TUB2) with primers T1/T22 (O'Donnell & Cigelnik 1997) and RNA polymerase II second largest subunit gene (RPB2) with primers fRPB2-5F/ fRPB2-7cR (Liu et al. 1999) were amplified and sequenced, respectively. The generated sequences were deposited in GenBank with accession numbers MT804353 (ITS), MT809582 (ACT), MT799790 (TUB2) and MT799789 (RPB2). Using BLASTN searches, the sequences of each gene above were aligned with the voucher specimum, Xylaria arbuscula 89041211. The number of nucleotides that were similar for ITS (GU300090) was 550/551 (99%); for ACT (GQ421286), 266/266 bp (100%); for TUB2 (GQ478226), 1501/1501 bp (100%); and for RPB2 (GQ844805), 1135/1135 bp (100%), respectively (Fig. 2). A phylogenetic tree was constructed based on these four sequences with a final alignment of 3456 characters (ITS 551, ACT 266, TUB2 1501 and RPB2 1138). Thus, based on morphological and phylogenetic analyses, the isolate BEZ22 was identified as Xylaria arbuscula. To verify pathogenicity, six tobacco plants at seedling stage (5-6 leaves) without visible disease were inoculated using mycelial plugs (5 mm in diameter). Leaves inoculated with PDA only plugs served as controls. After inoculation, all tobacco plants were maintained in a greenhouse with 85% relative humidity at 25 oC under a 12/12 h light/dark cycle. Five days after inoculation, typical early symptoms were observed on the inoculated leaves, and not on the control leaves. Koch's postulates were fulfilled by re-isolation of the pathogen from diseased leaves. Xylaria arbuscula has also been reported as a pathogen of Macadamia in Hawaii (Wenhsiung et al. 2009) and sugarcane in Indonesia (Maryono et al. 2020). However, to our best knowledge, this is the first report of X. arbuscula causing leaf spot on tobacco in China. This leaf spot has the potential to cause serious damage to tobacco in this region that could result in reduced production, consequently disease management of this pathogen should be considered.

Dry rot is a severe fungal disease during potato storage. Fusarium spp. is the pathogen causing severe rot of potato tubers, producing Fusarium toxins and contaminating food. The disease leads to a huge loss to China's potato industry. The present research optimized and screened the culture conditions of the major pathogens causing potato dry rot including Fusarium culmorum, Fusarium avenaceum, Fusarium sambucinum, Fusarium solani var. coeruleum, Fusarium trichothecioides, and Fusarium sporotrioides. The results showed that F. sambucinum and F. culmorum were sensitive to temperature and pH. F. sambucinum, F. trichothecioides, F. Solani var. coeruleum, and F. sporotrioides are favorable to the glucose-based culture while F. culmorum and F. avenaceum were to sucrose-based culture. Illumination stimulated the growth of F. sambucinum and F. sporotrioides but inhibited the growth of F. culmorum and F. avenaceum. It is concluded that the culture conditions are different with species of Fusarium and the understa...

A displacement-controlled parallel-plate squeeze film test apparatus was designed and built to study the cavitation of oil films. Simultaneous pressure measurement and high-speed photography were conducted in the experiment. The study was aimed at comparing the measured results with the prediction of a recently proposed cavitation model (Sun, et al. (1) ). Among the findings are: (a) When cavitation did not occur, the measured pressure traces agreed well with the theory of non-cavitated oil squeeze film. In particular, tensile stresses of significant magnitudes were measured in the oil film. (b) When cavitation occurred, the measured pressure traces agreed well with the prediction of the new cavitation model. In particular, tensile stresses were measured in the oil film just before the arrival of the expanding cavitation front. (c) The measured cavitation duration correlated well with the new cavitation model. But the measured growth of the cavitation region was faster, and its maximum size was larger, th...

The present knowledge on cavitation in oil film bearings is reviewed, and the inadequacy of the nowadays widely used method of designing dynamically loaded oil film bearings is pointed out. A new model of dynamic cavitation in submerged oil film bearings is proposed. The model preserves mass conservation in the cavitation region and allows the occurrence of tensile stresses in the oil film. The role of surface tension and contact angle is considered and incorporated in the model and their influences brought forth quantitatively. The model is applied to a parallel-plate oscillatory squeeze film bearing. Results derived from the model compare favorably with available measurements reported in the literature.

Background. There is no definitive conclusion so far on the predictive values of ERCC1 polymorphisms for clinical outcomes of platinum-based chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We updated this meta-analysis with an expectation to obtain some statistical advancement on this issue. Methods. Relevant studies were identified by searching MEDLINE, EMBASE databases from inception to April 2015. Primary outcomes included objective response rate (ORR), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). All analyses were performed using the Review Manager version 5.3 and the Stata version 12.0. Results. A total of 33 studies including 5373 patients were identified. ERCC1 C118T and C8092A could predict both ORR and OS for platinum-based chemotherapy in Asian NSCLC patients (CT + TT versus CC, ORR: OR = 0.80, 95% CI = 0.67–0.94; OS: HR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.01–1.53) (CA + AA versus CC, ORR: OR = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.60–0.96; OS: HR = 1.37, 95% CI = 1.06–1.75). Conclusions. Current evidence strongly indicated the prospect of ERCC1 C118T and C8092A as predictive biomarkers for platinum-based chemotherapy in Asian NSCLC patients. However, the results should be interpreted with caution and large prospective studies are still required to further investigate these findings.

In this paper, in order to investigate the time varying oil film pressure and distribution, a journal bearing was run under both static load and dynamic load with running frequency being identical to excitation frequency. The transient oil film pressure and the entire oil film distribution were collected simultaneously. The correspondence between the periodical pressure at a point on the journal and the transient oil film distribution were analyzed. Based on the mass conserving boundary theory, these results, including the cycle of the measured transient pressure, were compared with the theoretical prediction. The relevant conclusions were made to provide reliable experimental evidence for further study on the boundary condition of dynamically loaded journal bearings.