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Clinical reports of multiple primary malignant tumors (MPMTs) in the digestive system are increasing. In China, although the survival rate of patients with MPMTs is increasing, the quality of life is very low. Many patients have reached the advanced stage when the second primary tumor is found, resulting in no early intervention and treatment. This is due to the misunderstanding of MPMTs by clinicians, who treat such tumors as metastases. Therefore, before a patient has a second primary tumor, doctors should understand some common combinations of digestive system MPMTs to provide clinical guidance to the patient.To explore the high incidence combination of digestive system MPMTs under heterochronism and synchronization.A total of 1902 patients with MPMTs at Peking Union Medical College Hospital were analyzed retrospectively. They were divided into metachronous MPMT and synchronous MPMT groups, and then the high incidence combinations of the first primary cancer and the second primary cancer in metachronous cancer and synchronous cancer were sorted. Sex and age differences between metachronous and synchronous tumors were tested by the chi square test andAmong the 1902 patients with MPMTs confirmed by pathology, 1811 (95.2%) cases were secondary primary cancers, 89 (4.7%) cases were tertiary primary cancers, and 2 (0.1%) cases were quaternary primary cancers. Most (88.2%) of the secondary primary cancers were identified as metachronous multiple primary cancers six months after diagnosis of the first primary cancer. The top ten most common MPMTs in the first primary cancer group ranged from high to low as follows: Breast cancer, thyroid cancer, nonuterine cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer, uterine cancer, bladder cancer, rectal cancer, and gastric cancer. The highest incidence rate of the first primary cancer in male metachronous cancer was lung cancer (11.6%), the highest incidence rate of the second primary cancer was still lung cancer (24.9%), the highest incidence rate of the first primary cancer in female metachronous cancer was breast cancer (32.7%), and the highest incidence rate of the second primary cancer was lung cancer (20.8%). Among them, breast cancer, nonuterine cancer and uterine cancer were female-specific malignant tumor types, and thyroid cancer also accounted for 79.6% of female patients. The top five metachronous cancer combinations, independent of female-specific malignant tumor types and thyroid cancer, were colon cancer and lung cancer (26 cases), kidney cancer and lung cancer (25 cases), rectal cancer and lung cancer (20 cases), gastric cancer and lung cancer (17 cases), and bladder cancer and lung cancer (17 cases). The most common synchronous cancer combination was colon cancer and rectal cancer (15 cases).Screening for lung cancer should be performed six months after the detection of colon cancer while rectal cancer screening should be performed within six months.

For most organisms, molecular oxygen is indispensable for normal physiological metabolism; in humans, prolonged hypoxia in tissues can induce many diseases, exemplified by cardiovascular disease, chronic wounds, and tissue necrosis. Therefore, the oxygen in our environment is vital for life. As a main source of oxygen in the natural world that transforms light energy into chemical energy and oxygen, photosynthesis has been widely studied in scientific research and used in production of food, fuel, and medicine. In recent years, photosynthesis has become more closely involved in biomedicine and has been widely used in photodynamic therapy, tissue regeneration, transplantation, and in treatment of specific diseases. This review summarizes innovative applications of photosynthesis in biomedical research and highlights the theory and implications of clinical treatment for specific diseases.

Coalescence and breakup of drops are classic problems in fluid physics that often involve self-similarity and singularity formation. While the coalescence of suspended drops is axisymmetric, the coalescence of drops on a substrate is inherently three-dimensional. Yet, studies so far have only considered this problem in two dimensions. In this Letter, we use interferometry to reveal the three-dimensional shape of the interface as two drops coalescence on a substrate. We unify the known scaling laws in this problem within the thin-film approximation and find a three-dimensional self-similarity that enables us to describe the anisotropic shape of the dynamic interface with a universal curve.

The design and development of efficient adsorbents for CO2 capture is of paramount importance. Herein, we report a novel Pickering emulsion templating strategy to prepare a hierarchically structure...

Abstract Embedding thread lift rhytidectomy, also known as “thread lifting” in China, with the natures of simple operation, less trauma and quick recovery, is progressively used in clinical practice as a new technology of face lifting. Herewith, a brief introduction of the previous advances of thread lifting techniques and materials in the facial beauty industry, combined with the discussion on various types of sutures, common complications, and the site of actions were provided. The main limitations of present thread lifting material include: (1) the use of non-absorbable sutures is liable to cause allergies and a series of complications; (2) the absorbable sutures are easily degradation, and people need to reshape in a relatively short period. Therefore, the high biocompatible spider silk was proposed as a novel material of thread lifting suture and related devices, the advantages and preliminary achievements on spider silk were also addressed. Graphic Abstract

Reasonable design and scalable preparation of low-cost, effective and durable electro-catalysts as substitutes to expensive Pt-derived catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is highly desired toward the progress of future sustainable energy storage devices. In this work, we scalably prepare a highly active ORR electrocatalyst which consists of both Fe3N nanoparticles and Fe-N-C active sites in N-doped carbon frameworks (named as Fe3N/Fe-N-C) and derives from walnut shells as precursors followed by iron ion incorporation and a pyrolysis process in NH3 atmosphere. The X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic (XPS) measurements strongly evidence the coexistence of Fe3N nanoparticles and iron-nitrogen-carbon active sites. Benefiting from the synergistic mechanism between Fe3N nanoparticles and Fe-N-C sites in N-doped carbon frameworks, the resultant catalyst presents desirable ORR performance with impressive Eonset, E1/2, higher long-term stability, and satisfactory resistance to methanol interference, overtopping commercial Pt/C catalyst. The present research not only proposes a cost-effective and available ORR electro-catalyst to substitute Pt-based catalysts, but also provides a reliable and versatile technology to realize large-scale preparation for practical applications.

Background. Licorice is one of the most ubiquitous herbs in traditional Chinese medicine, with notable anti-inflammatory and antiulcerative effects as well as potent digestive disease therapeutic impacts; yet, its active components and mechanisms remain unclear. There is a lot of evidence that Glycyrrhiza polysaccharide (GPS) has antioxidants, improving intestinal flora, anti-inflammatory effects, etc. Hypothesis/Purpose. Here, we investigated the effects of GPS on dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced acute ulcerative colitis (UC) mice and its possible mechanisms. Methods. GPS (100, 200, and 400 mg/kg) or the positive control drug sulfasalazine (SASP) (200 mg/kg) were orally administered to mice for 8 days. Body weight was recorded daily. Symptoms associated with UC, such as disease activity index (DAI), colon length, spleen weight, and mucosal damage were detected. The possible mechanism of GPS ameliorating enteritis symptoms was explored by detecting intestinal permeability and serum levels of inflammatory factors, and changes in intestinal permeability were expressed by serum concentration of FITC-dextran and D-lactic acid. Results. The results demonstrated that GPS administration alleviated UC symptoms in colitis mice, including weight loss, DAI index, shorting colon length, and mucosal damage. Mechanistic evaluation revealed that GPS treatment reduced intestinal permeability and serum levels of inflammatory factors: IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-α, while increasing serum levels of the anti-inflammatory factor IL-10, suggesting that GPS’s mechanism in UC is related to reducing intestinal permeability and inhibiting the inflammatory response, with intestinal permeability implicated as the initiating mechanism. Conclusion. This study highlights GPS as a promising therapeutic agent, with high therapeutic efficacy and a good safety profile, for enteritis and beyond.

By using a mixed-ligand approach, two new coordination polymers with the chemical formula of {[Co2.5(nbta)(trz)2(H2O)]·3H2O}n (1, H3nbta = 5-nitros,2,3-benzenetricarboxylic acid and Htrz = 1H-1,2,4...

Data for p53 mutation in prostate cancer in The Cancer Genome Atlas database revealed that >85% of p53 mutations occurred in the p53 DNA binding domain. These mutations not only severely damage the function of the p53 protein, but also reduce the disease‑free survival of patients. Peroxisome proliferator‑activated receptor γ coactivator‑1α (PGC‑1α) is involved in the regulation of mitochondrial function and is highly expressed in prostate cancer PC3 and DU145 cells with p53 deletion or mutation. However, whether p53 negatively regulates PGC‑1α in prostate cancer cells remains to be elucidated. In the present study, p53 overexpression was induced in prostate cancer PC3 cells. Subsequently, the expression levels of PGC‑1α and alterations to mitochondrial function were assessed. Moreover, PGC‑1α was activated in prostate cancer PC3 cells using ZLN005 to investigate alterations to mitochondrial function and cell apoptosis. The present study revealed that p53 decreased the expression and nuclear localization of the PGC‑1α protein and induced mitochondrial dysfunction. Activation of PGC‑1α partially reversed p53‑mediated mitochondrial dysfunction. Inhibition of the p53/PGC‑1α pathway on mitochondrial biogenesis and fission‑/fusion‑associated gene and protein expression were associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. p53/PGC‑1α‑mediated mitochondrial dysfunction promoted apoptosis of PC3 prostate cancer cells. The results indicated that PGC‑1α is an essential target of p53‑induced apoptosis in prostate cancer cells and indicated that targeting PGC‑1α may provide a new therapeutic strategy for prostate cancer.

A rational integration of multiple reactive centers into a combined unit to facilitate their cooperative effects is a smart approach for accelerating the catalytic activity. Here, to achieve this goal, linear imidazolium-based ionic polymers were confined into the nanopores of mesoporous silica nanospheres anchored with homogeneously distributed zinc salts. Owing to the flexible character and the reinforced cooperative effects of the ionic liquid (nucleophile) and zinc species (Lewis acid) in the confined mesoporous structure, the resultant composite exhibited dramatically improved catalytic performance in the cycloaddition of CO2 with epoxides to form cyclic carbonates. This was in contrast to that observed for the individual catalytic components. Moreover, such a solid catalyst could be easily recovered and reused four times without a significant loss of activity.

The purpose of this article is to study the effectiveness of pedagogical and psychological conditions that form a sense of rhythm in students (n=200) involved in conducting. The study was conducted in 2017-2019 among 1-2 year students from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (China). In the control part of the experiment, 42% of students were in the group with a low level of rhythm perception. The number of students with a low level of intonation of musical rhythm was reduced by 2.0 times, a combined response as a key element of the conductor gestures of conducting was increased by 2.81 times.

Wound management, especially for chronic wounds, has emerged as a major healthcare challenge, which brings great pain and other negative impacts to patients, and accounts for significant portions of health care budgets. The common practice of covering wounds with dressings, owing to the lack of information about wound healing underneath, cannot provide insights into the status of the wound. Changing the dressings to inspect wounds not only disturbs normal healing process of wounds, but also causes pain to affected individuals. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on parameters in the wound microenvironment such as temperature, pH, moisture level, and etc., by continuously monitoring, to indicate the wound status and healing stages. Moreover, intelligent on-demand treatment systems also can be integrated into the smart dressing, called new-type skin bioelectronic systems to be applicated in wound repair. Besides monitoring, these kinds of skin bioelectronic systems can offer effective treatments automatedly when the wound deteriorates. It makes timely treatment possible and avoids delayed treatment and uncovering the dressing to give medicine. In this review, wound healing-related indexes in the wound microenvironment are discussed, applications of various smart dressings with functions of monitoring or/and treatment are summarized.

In the past decade, object detection has achieved significant progress in natural images but not in aerial images, due to the massive variations in the scale and orientation of objects caused by the bird's-eye view of aerial images. More importantly, the lack of large-scale benchmarks has become a major obstacle to the development of object detection in aerial images (ODAI). In this paper,we present a large-scale Dataset of Object deTection in Aerial images (DOTA) and comprehensive baselines for ODAI. The proposed DOTA dataset contains 1,793,658 object instances of 18 categories of oriented-bounding-box annotations collected from 11,268 aerial images. Based on this large-scale and well-annotated dataset, we build baselines covering 10 state-of-the-art algorithms with over 70 configurations, where the speed and accuracy performances of each model have been evaluated. Furthermore, we provide a code library for ODAI and build a website for evaluating different algorithms. Previous challenges run on DOTA have attracted more than 1300 teams worldwide. We believe that the expanded large-scale DOTA dataset, the extensive baselines, the code library and the challenges can facilitate the designs of robust algorithms and reproducible research on the problem of object detection in aerial images., Comment: Accepted to IEEE TPAMI

Enzymatic microarchitectures with spatially controlled reactivity, engineered molecular sieving ability, favorable interior environment, and industrial productivity show great potential in synthetic protocellular systems and practical biotechnology, but their construction remains a significant challenge. Here, we proposed a Pickering emulsion interface-directed synthesis method to fabricate such a microreactor, in which a robust and defect-free MOF layer was grown around silica emulsifier stabilized droplet surfaces. The compartmentalized interior droplets can provide a biomimetic microenvironment to host free enzymes, while the outer MOF layer secludes active species from the surroundings and endows the microreactor with size-selective permeability. Impressively, the thus-designed enzymatic microreactor exhibited excellent size selectivity and long-term stability, as demonstrated by a 1000 h continuous-flow reaction, while affording completely equal enantioselectivities to the free enzyme counterpart. Moreover, the catalytic efficiency of such enzymatic microreactors was conveniently regulated through engineering of the type or thickness of the outer MOF layer or interior environments for the enzymes, highlighting their superior customized specialties. This study provides new opportunities in designing MOF-based artificial cellular microreactors for practical applications.

Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is associated with various health benefits. In this review, we searched current work about the effects of EGCG and its wound dressings on skin for wound healing. Hydrogels, nanoparticles, micro/nanofiber networks and microneedles are the major types of EGCG-containing wound dressings. The beneficial effects of EGCG and its wound dressings at different stages of skin wound healing (hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation and tissue remodeling) were summarized based on the underlying mechanisms of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, angiogenesis and antifibrotic properties. This review expatiates on the rationale of using EGCG to promote skin wound healing and prevent scar formation, which provides a future clinical application direction of EGCG.

Controlling localization of multiple metal nanoparticles on a single support is at the cutting edge of designing cascade catalysts, but is still a scientific and technological challenge because of the lack of nanostructured materials that can not only host metal nanoparticles in different sub-compartments but also enable efficient molecular transport between different metals. Herein we report a multicompartmentalized mesoporous organosilica with spatially separated sub-compartments that are connected by short nanochannels. Such a unique structure allows co-localization of Ru and Pd nanoparticles in a nanoscale proximal fashion. The so designed cascade catalyst exhibits an order of magnitude activity enhancement in the sequential hydrogenation of nitroarenes to cyclohexylamines compared with its mono/bi-metallic counterparts. Crucially, an interesting phenomenon of neighboring metal-assisted hydrogenation via hydrogen spillover is observed, contributing to the significant enhancement in catalytic efficiency. The multicompartmentalized architectures along with the revealed mechanism of accelerated hydrogenation provide vast opportunity for designing efficient cascade catalysts., Controlling localization of multiple metal nanoparticles on a single support is at the cutting edge of designing innovatory cascade catalysts. Here, the authors report a multicompartmentalized mesoporous organosilica to spatially position different metal nanoparticles in intimate proximity for efficient sequential hydrogenation reactions.

This article presents a context-aware tracing strategy (CATS) for crisp edge detection with deep edge detectors, based on an observation that the localization ambiguity of deep edge detectors is mainly caused by the mixing phenomenon of convolutional neural networks: Feature mixing in edge classification and side mixing during fusing side predictions. The CATS consists of two modules: A novel tracing loss that performs feature unmixing by tracing boundaries for better side edge learning, and a context-aware fusion block that tackles the side mixing by aggregating the complementary merits of learned side edges. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed CATS can be integrated into modern deep edge detectors to improve localization accuracy. With the vanilla VGG16 backbone, in terms of BSDS500 dataset, our CATS improves the F-measure (ODS) of the RCF and BDCN deep edge detectors by 12 and 6 percent, respectively when evaluating without using the morphological non-maximal suppression scheme for edge detection.

We report experiments observing the gravitational axisymmetric spreading of a viscous liquid with a fixed volume on inclined geometries that cause converging flows, for example, on a funnel and a bowl. The spreading of the liquid on these geometries is different from that on typical geometries such as an inclined plate: the thickness of the spreading front first decreases in time and then increases. These geometries also induce different new thresholds of fingering instabilities.

Time-resolved buildup of a Fano resonance in a macroscopic gaseous medium is theoretically studied by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. An intense near-infrared field is employed as an adjustable gate to confine the temporal dynamics, enabling one to resolve the line-shape formation in real time. Beyond the region where the single-atom approximation holds, we observe the emergence of spectral spikes with narrow linewidths for certain time delays and propagation distances, which represents that the medium can be delicately structured to be an efficient resonant absorber. Spectral substructures appear on the shoulder of the absorption lines after additional pulse propagation. The links between these features imprinted in spectral profiles and the formation of temporal characteristics in the excitation field are identified. The collective response of the medium versus time delay and propagation distance, in this laser-gated case, provides clues to the time-domain information on autoionization state and the microscopic dynamics occurring at each layer of the medium.

Equivalence ratio is one of the important operating parameters for biomass gasification. The oxygen carrier possesses high producer gas production in a wide range of equivalence ratio (oxygen carrier/biomass ratio), which is exceedingly desirable for biomass chemical looping gasification (CLG). In this study, the effect of different equivalence ratios on the CO selectivity (the evolved gas composition) of Fe2O3, Fe2O3/CaO and CaFe2O4 oxygen carriers in biomass char CLG was investigated in a fixed bed reactor. The results showed that the CO selectivity of CaFe2O4 had little changes and decreased from 70.39% to 59.79% and 73.40% to 63.98% with increasing equivalence ratio from 0.5 to 3.0 at 900 °C and 1000 °C, respectively. In sharp contrast, the CO selectivity of Fe2O3 changed markedly, which declined respectively from 65.86% to 31.13% (900 °C) and 69.68% to 47.27% (1000 °C). Fe2O3/CaO illustrated the similar tendency as Fe2O3 at 900 °C but as CaFe2O4 at 1000 ℃. The three oxygen carries exhibited a high CO production at lower equivalence ratio, and CaFe2O4 displayed the best performance of CO selectivity in the given equivalence ratio range. X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrums showed that the oxygen carriers were transformed to different iron phases with difference equivalent ratios. The Fe (III) in the three oxygen carries was reduced completely to Fe (0) at the equivalence ratios of 0.5 and 1.0, while FeO and Ca2Fe2O5 were the dominant species in the spent oxygen carriers as equivalence ratio was further increased. The trends of CO selectivity obtained by thermodynamic analysis for three oxygen carries were consistent with the experimental results.

Automatic extraction of buildings in remote sensing images is an important but challenging task and finds many applications in different fields such as urban planning, navigation and so on. This paper addresses the problem of buildings extraction in very high-spatial-resolution (VHSR) remote sensing (RS) images, whose spatial resolution is often up to half meters and provides rich information about buildings. Based on the observation that buildings in VHSR-RS images are always more distinguishable in geometry than in texture or spectral domain, this paper proposes a geometric building index (GBI) for accurate building extraction, by computing the geometric saliency from VHSR-RS images. More precisely, given an image, the geometric saliency is derived from a mid-level geometric representations based on meaningful junctions that can locally describe geometrical structures of images. The resulting GBI is finally measured by integrating the derived geometric saliency of buildings. Experiments on three public and commonly used datasets demonstrate that the proposed GBI achieves the state-of-the-art performance and shows impressive generalization capability. Additionally, GBI preserves both the exact position and accurate shape of single buildings compared to existing methods.

Wide-area control (WAC) has been shown to be an effective tool for damping low-frequency oscillations in power systems. In the current state of art, WAC is challenged by two main factors - namely, scalability of design and complexity of implementation. In this paper we present a control design called control inversion that bypasses both of these challenges using the idea of clustering. The basic philosophy behind this method is to project the original power system model into a lower-dimensional state-space through clustering and aggregation of generator states, and then designing an LQR controller for the lower-dimensional model. This controller is finally projected back to the original coordinates for wide-area implementation. The main problem is, therefore, posed as finding the projection which best matches the closed-loop performance of the WAC controller with that of a reference LQR controller for damping low-frequency oscillations. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed design using the NPCC 48-machine power system model., Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems

Carbon nanotube assemblies with controlled morphology and tailored architecture offer great potentials for myriad applications, but strategies for their production have remained a significant challenge. Here, we proposed a novel and simple microconfined-annealing strategy, in which a Pickering microdroplet patterned method and unique pyrolysis-stimulated-transformation processes were coupled unprecedentedly, for the fabrication of spherical nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube assemblies (NCNTA). Based on this strategy, the as-prepared superstructures not only retained the micrometer-size and well-defined morphology of the initial Pickering droplets, but also derived a hierarchical pomegranate-like structure where numerous interconnected NCNT particles were encapsulated by a carbon crust. More importantly, the interior architectures were shown to be manipulated through controlling synthesized parameters. Owing to the unique structure and composition of these assemblies, the yielded superstructures exhibited excellent performance and good recyclability in heterogeneous catalysis applications. This synthetic strategy provides new routes to access other micro- or macroscopic materials with novel structures and paves the way to expand their potential applications.

Phased array ultrasonic testing, an effective ultrasonic testing (UT) technology, has been widely used in steel inspection because of its high accuracy, sensitivity, and efficiency. However, as its application in as-cast magnesium alloys has just begun, more research is needed. Considering the important role of the gain compensation in quantifying defects in magnesium alloys by ultrasonic phased array technology, the effects of microstructure, the position, size, and overlap of defects, and boundary distance (distance from the defect position to the side surface of the test casting) on gain compensation of as-cast AZ80 and AZ31 magnesium alloys were studied. Results show the gain compensation increases with the increase of grain size. There is a strict linear positive correlation between gain compensation and defect depth, but such relationship no longer exists due to the defects overlap, orientation and boundary distance. In addition, there is a strict linear negative correlation between the gain compensation and defect size.

Metabolic reprogramming is a central hallmark of cancer. Therefore, targeting metabolism may provide an effective strategy for identifying promising drug targets for cancer treatment. In prostate cancer, cells undergo metabolic transformation from zinc‐accumulating, citrate‐producing cells to citrate‐oxidizing malignant cells with lower zinc levels and higher mitochondrial aconitase (ACO2) activity. ACO2 is a Krebs cycle enzyme that converts citrate to isocitrate and is sensitive to reactive oxygen species (ROS)‐mediated damage. In this study, we found that the expression of ACO2 is positively correlated with the malignancy of prostate cancer. Both zinc and p53 can lead to an increase in ROS. ACO2 can be a target for remodeling metabolism by sensing changes in the ROS levels of prostate cancer. Our results indicate that targeting ACO2 through zinc and p53 can change prostate cancer metabolism, and thus provides a potential new therapeutic strategy for prostate cancer.

Background Paclitaxel (PTX) is a first-line chemotherapeutic drug for the treatment of prostate cancer. However, most patients develop resistance and metastasis, and thus new therapeutic approaches are urgently required. Recent studies have identified widespread anti-tumor effects of zinc (Zn) in various tumor cell lines, especially prostate cancer cells. In this study, we examined the effects of Zn as an adjuvant to PTX in prostate cancer cells. Methods PC3 and DU145 cells were treated with different concentrations of Zn and/or PTX. MTT assay was used to detect cell viability. Real-time cell analysis (RTCA) and microscopy were used to observe morphological changes in cells. Western blotting was used to detect the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related proteins. qPCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) was used to examine changes in TWIST1 mRNA levels. Cell invasion and migration were detected by scratch and transwell assays. shRNA against TWIST1 was used to knockdown TWIST1. Colony formation assay was used to detect cell proliferation, while Annexin V and propidium iodide (PI) staining was used to detect cell apoptosis. Results Zn and PTX increased proliferation inhibition in a dose- and time-dependent manner in prostate cancer cells, while Zn increased prostate cancer cell chemosensitivity to PTX. Combined Zn and PTX inhibited prostate cancer cell invasion and migration by downregulating the expression of TWIST1. Furthermore, knockdown of TWIST1 increased the sensitivity of prostate cancer cells to PTX. In addition, Zn and PTX reduced cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in prostate cancer cells. Conclusions Our results demonstrated that Zn and PTX combined therapy inhibits EMT by reducing the expression of TWIST1, which reduces the invasion and migration of prostate cancer cells. SiTWIST1 increased the sensitivity of prostate cancer cells to PTX. In addition, with prolonged treatment, Zn and PTX inhibited proliferation and led to prostate cancer cell apoptosis. Therefore, Zn may be a potential adjuvant of PTX in treating prostate cancer and combined treatment may offer a promising therapeutic strategy for prostate cancer.

Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici is a soil borne pathogenic fungus associated with wheat roots. The accurate quantification of gene expression during the process of infection might be helpful to understand the pathogenic molecular mechanism. However, this method requires suitable reference genes for transcript normalization. In this study, nine candidate reference genes were chosen, and the specificity of the primers were investigated by melting curves of PCR products. The expression stability of these nine candidates was determined with three programs-geNorm, Norm Finder, and Best Keeper. TUBβ was identified as the most stable reference gene. Furthermore, the exopolygalacturonase gene (ExoPG) was selected to verify the reliability of TUBβ expression. The expression profile of ExoPG assessed using TUBβ agreed with the results of digital gene expression analysis by RNA-Seq. This study is the first systematic exploration of the optimal reference genes in the infection process of Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici.

Many cell death regulators physically or functionally interact with metabolic enzymes. These interactions provide insights into mechanisms of anticancer treatments from the perspective of tumor cell metabolism and apoptosis. Recent studies have shown that zinc and p53 not only induce tumor cell apoptosis, but also regulate tumor cell metabolism. However, the underlying mechanism is complex and remains unclear, making further research imperative to provide clues for future cancer treatments. In this study, we found that hexokinase 2 (HK2), which has dual metabolic and apoptotic functions, is downstream of zinc and p53 in both prostate cancer patient tissue and prostate cancer cell lines. Notably, the mitochondrial location of HK2 is crucial for its function. We demonstrate that zinc and p53 disrupt mitochondrial binding of HK2 in prostate cancer cells by phosphorylating VDAC1, which is mediated by protein kinase B (Akt) inhibition and glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β) activation. In addition, we found that zinc combined with p53 significantly inhibited tumor growth in a prostate cancer cell xenograft model. Therefore, interference of the mitochondrial localization of HK2 by zinc and p53 may provide a new treatment approach for cancer.

It is of urgency to develop novel and high-efficient visible-light photocatalysts to eliminate antibiotics and organic pollutants rapidly in sewage. Therefore, the silver molybdate/aluminum atoms-doped zinc oxide (Ag2MoO4/AZO) nanocomposite was prepared by in situ deposition, and then the Ag dots were decorated on this nanocomposite surface via photo-reduced reaction forming a multiple complementary Ag@Ag2MoO4/AZO hybrid nanocomposite. The photogenerated electrons of AZO transferred to Ag2MoO4 surface, which solved the optical instability of Ag2MoO4 material increasing the recyclability. The photocatalytic efficiency of Ag@Ag2MoO4/AZO nanocomposite still remained 90.0% after eight runs. Meanwhile, the Ag dots decorated on the Ag@Ag2MoO4/AZO nanocomposite surface decreased the band gap and broadened the visible-light absorption range, promoting the efficient separation of photogenerated carriers. Because of the synergistic complementary effect of Ag dots and AZO solid solution, the Ag@Ag2MoO4/AZO hybrid nanocomposite showed excellent photocatalytic activity on organic pollutants compared to AZO and Ag2MoO4 material (282.3% and 422.7% improvement, respectively). In addition, the gatifloxacin was completely degraded to CO2 and H2O within 40 min, indicating that the Ag@Ag2MoO4/AZO hybrid nanocomposite also has excellent application in the treatment of antibiotics.

The presence of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) influences the efficiency of water and wastewater treatment because of the composite contaminants formed due to the interaction between TiO2 NPs and Natural Organic Matter (NOM). In this study, the coagulation of TiO2 NPs and NOM composite contaminants (TiO2 NPs-NOM) was explored by comparing their fluorescence characteristics, flocs properties, and membrane fouling abilities in different aquatic media (i.e., humic acid synthetic water: WATERHA, surface water: WATERXQ; and municipal wastewater: WATERMW). Results showed that the TiO2 NPs-NOM removal efficiency depended on the characteristics of NOM in various aquatic media. TiO2 NPs improved the removal efficiency for fluorescent substances from WATERHA and WATERXQ when the solution pH was 5. However, this removal efficiency declined as the pH was increased to 9. In comparison, the removal efficiency for fluorescent substances from WATERMW increased as the TiO2 NPs concentration was increased to 5 mg/L, and then decreased gradually as the TiO2 concentration was increased to 20 mg/L. This is due to the competing adsorption and precipitation reactions between aromatic proteins and NPs. The different TiO2 NPs-NOM in the tested water showed different flocs structures. The fractal dimensions of the flocs in WATERHA decreased with increasing TiO2 NPs concentration until it exceeded 10 mg/L, while the fractal dimensions of WATERMW flocs increased with increasing TiO2 NPs concentration. This was due to the formation of more loose flocs in the presence of aromatic proteins and soluble microbial byproducts. Total membrane resistance showed little change with increasing TiO2 NPs concentration in the coagulation-ultrafiltration membrane process. The percentages of strongly attached external fouling resistance (Ref-s) and internal fouling resistance (Rif) increased with increasing TiO2 NPs concentration.