Search

This work presents comparative study on the combustion of biomass pellets (BP) with Bituminous coal (BC), and Xiao longtan lignite (XL) using thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. The results show that the combustion process of BP:BC can be divided into the release and combustion of volatile compounds, oxidation of BP char and combustion of BC char. While there are two stages for the blend of XL and BP, which are the combustion of volatile compounds and the char burning of BP and XL. With increasing BP ratio, the maximum combustion rate and combustion index increase, while the burnout temperature decreases, indicating the combustion performance of coal can be improved. In addition, interactions between BP and XL are more significant than that of BP and BC. The maximum deviations are found to be 30% BP with BC and 10% BP with XL. Reaction mechanisms are analysed using Coats–Redfern method. The first order model is found to be suitable for the first stage of biomass burn (stage 1) and coal combustion of BC:BP blends. Diffusion controlled model D3 and D4 are the most effective for the second stage of biomass burn and XL combustion, respectively. The minimum activation energies of biomass blending is obtained with a BP ratio of 30% for BC and 10% for XL.

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. This paper considers the task of thorax disease diagnosis on chest X-ray (CXR) images. Most existing methods generally learn a network with global images as input. However, thorax diseases usually happen in (small) localized areas which are disease specific. Thus training CNNs using global images may be affected by the (excessive) irrelevant noisy areas. Besides, due to the poor alignment of some CXR images, the existence of irregular borders hinders the network performance. For addressing the above problems, we propose to integrate the global and local cues into a three-branch attention guided convolution neural network (AG-CNN) to identify thorax diseases. An attention guided mask inference based cropping strategy is proposed to avoid noise and improve alignment in the global branch. AG-CNN also integrates the global cues to compensate the lost discriminative cues by the local branch. Specifically, we first learn a global CNN branch using global images. Then, guided by the attention heatmap generated from the global branch, we infer a mask to crop a discriminative region from the global image. The local region is used for training a local CNN branch. Lastly, we concatenate the last pooling layers of both the global and local branches for fine-tuning the fusion branch. Experiments on the ChestX-ray14 dataset demonstrate that after integrating the local cues with the global information, the average AUC scores are improved by AG-CNN.

Reactive oxygen species are toxic byproducts of aerobic respiration produced during cell growth. They also are an important component of plant defenses to inhibit microbial pathogens. Tolerance to oxidative stress contributes to viability and pathogenicity of plant pathogens. However, the complex molecular network of oxidative stress responses hinders identification of the genes contributing to variation in this trait. Variation in genes affecting responses to oxidative stress is likely to affect the evolutionary potential of pathogen tolerance to host defences. Here, we employed a forward genetic approach to investigate the genetic architecture of oxidative stress tolerance in the fungal wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. By performing quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping in two crosses, we identified several genomic regions associated with tolerance to oxidative stress, including a QTL having a large effect on growth under oxidative stress. We found evidence for a significant trade-off between growth under non-stressful conditions and growth inhibition under oxidative stress. We identified a large QTL associated with this trade-off and with growth under non-stressful conditions, suggesting that differences in fungal growth could result in different sensitivities to oxidative stress. Our results suggest that genes related to fungal growth could also contribute to variation in oxidative stress tolerance among fungal strains.

Hongzhen Zhong,1,* Tianbiao Zhou,1,* Hongyan Li,2,* Zhiqing Zhong1,* 1Department of Nephrology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, China; 2Department of Nephrology, Huadu District People’s Hospital of Guangzhou, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Introduction: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) stabilizers on anemia in non-dialysis-dependent (NDD) and dialysis-dependent (DD) chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients.Methods: Published studies were extracted from PubMed, China Biological Medicine Database (CBM), Wanfang database, and Cochrane Library on March 10, 2018, and relevant studies were pooled and included in a meta-analysis. Data on hemoglobin (Hb), ferritin, and hepcidin levels, total iron-binding capacity (TIBC), and incidence of adverse events (AEs) were extracted and pooled using Review Manager Version 5.3.Results: Data from nine selected studies were extracted. Meta-analysis of the included studies showed that HIF stabilizers reduced ferritin and hepcidin levels and increased Hb level and TIBC in NDD-CKD patients. However, HIF stabilizers only increased TIBC, and did not affect ferritin, hepcidin, and Hb levels in DD-CKD patients. Furthermore, no notable differences in AEs and severe AEs between NDD-CKD and DD-CKD patients were detected.Conclusion: HIF stabilizers are effective for the treatment of anemia in NDD-CKD patients and safe for short-term use. Keywords: hypoxia-inducible factor stabilizer, anemia, chronic kidney disease, meta-analysis

Zhanwang Xiang,1–3,* Lifei Wang,4,* Huzheng Yan,5 Zhihui Zhong,5 Wangkai Liu,6 Zhiqiang Mo,5 Fei Gao,5 Fujun Zhang5 1Department of Radiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 2Department of Interventional Radiology, Ling-nan Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 3Interventional Radiology Institute, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; Guangzhou, China;4The Department of Radiology, The Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China; 5Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou, China; 6The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Purpose: This study aimed to compare the outcomes of 125I seed brachytherapy versus external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) for the palliation of painful bone metastases of lung cancer after one cycle of chemotherapy progression.Materials and methods: We analyzed retrospectively 158 patients with painful bone metastases secondary to lung cancer after one cycle of chemotherapy progression treated between June 2013 and May 2016. Seventy-six patients with 96 lesions received 125I brachytherapy (Group A), whereas 82 patients with 98 metastases received EBRT (Group B). Pain intensity on Brief Pain Inventory, percentage of patients with pain severity, and quality of life were recorded prior to treatment (T0), 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 weeks (T2, T4, T6, T8, T12, T16, T20, and T24) after treatment during a 24-hour period. Cost-effectiveness and number of treatment appointments were also compared between groups.Results: One hundred and fifty-eight patients had been treated. Visual analog scale for worst pain in Group A was significantly lower than in Group B at T2, T4, T6, T16, T20, and T24. Group A was superior to group B concerning quality of life scores (T2, T4, T20, and T24), cost-effectiveness, and number of treatment appointments. No significant differences were observed for complications.Conclusion: Compared with EBRT, 125I seed brachytherapy can be an alternative method for painful bone metastases from lung cancer after one cycle of chemotherapy progression. Keywords: pain, 125I seed, brachytherapy, EBRT, bone metastases, lung cancer, chemotherapy

Quansong Xia,1,* Wei Wang,2,* Juan Xu,3 Xue Chen,2 Zhaoming Zhong,2 Chuanzheng Sun2 1Department of Clinical Laboratory, 2Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, 3Department of Internal Medicine, The People’s Hospital of Guandu District, Kunming, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are the two important postoperative management approaches for anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC), and several studies have suggested that postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy can prolong the survival of patients with ATC. However, the results remain inconsistent. Objective: A meta-analysis was performed to address whether postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy could prolong the survival of patients with ATC. Methods: Relevant studies were included, and pooled hazard ratios (HRs) together with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Results: Ten relevant studies on factors that affect the prognosis for ATC were included in this meta-analysis, evaluating a total of 1,163 patients. The pooled HR for overall survival (OS) was calculated using a random-effects model. The pooled results demonstrated that for all patients with resectable ATC, the combination of surgery and radiotherapy significantly reduced the risk of death compared with surgery alone (HR =0.51, 95% CI: 0.36–0.73, Z=3.66, P=0.0002). To investigate the prognostic impacts of chemotherapy in patients with ATC, we also calculated the pooled HR of chemotherapy for OS using a random-effects model; however, the pooled results suggested that chemotherapy did not prolong the survival of ATC patients compared with controls (HR =0.63, 95% CI: 0.33–1.21, Z=1.39, P=0.17). Conclusion: This study provided evidence that currently, for patients with ATC, postoperative radiotherapy may prolong survival; in contrast, chemotherapy did not improve long-term survival. Keywords: anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, postoperative radiotherapy, chemotherapy, prognosis, meta-analysis

Zhuoyuan Zhong,1,* Limin Wang,2,* Xiaojun Wen,3 Yunyun Liu,4 Yafei Fan,5 Zhonglin Liu5 1Department of Neurology, The People’s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, China; 2Department of Neurology, Guangdong General Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangdong Neuroscience Institute, Guangzhou, China; 3Department of Neurology, Guangzhou First Municipal People’s Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou-Birmingham University Brain and Cognition Center, Guangzhou, China; 4Department of Neurology, the Sixth Affiliated Hospital Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; 5Department of Neurology, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) have been commonly prescribed for depression treatment. However, their effects on blood pressure are unclear.Materials and methods: Effects on blood pressure of depressive patients in two groups (SSRIs versus placebo and SSRIs versus SNRIs) were evaluated. A search was conducted for double-blind, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in PubMed, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science, PsycNET, CCRCT, and DARE (up to March 2017). The outcomes were systolic blood pressure (SBP) changes and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) changes from baseline to endpoint or to a certain period of treatment duration. Weighted mean differences (WMDs) and 95% CIs were calculated and pooled using random effects models. The χ2 test and I2 statistics were used to assess heterogeneity. Funnel plots, Begg’s test, and Egger’s test were used to estimate publication bias.Results: A total of 23 RCTs involving 13,285 participants were included. Patients on SSRIs showed no significant differences in blood pressure changes compared with placebo. In the group of SSRIs versus SNRIs, overall SBP changes and DBP changes revealed statistical significances (WMD 1.5 mmHg, 95% CI -2.15, -0.84, Z=4.46, P