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Cancer metastasis is the primary cause of all cancer-related deaths due to the lack of effective targeted drugs that simultaneously block multiple signaling pathways that drive the dissemination and growth of cancer cells. The unique proline isomerase Pin1 activates numerous cancer pathways, but its role in cancer metastasis and the inhibitory efficacy of Pin1 inhibitors on cancer metastasis are unknown. Moreover, the applicability of Pin1 inhibitor―all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) is limited due to its several drawbacks. Herein, uniform ATRA-loaded polylactic acid-polyethylene glycol block copolymer nanoparticles (ATRA-NPs) with high encapsulation efficiency, good cellular uptake, excellent controlled release performance and pharmacokinetics are developed using supercritical carbon dioxide processing combined with an optimized design. ATRA-NPs exhibited excellent biosafety and significant inhibition on the growth and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma. Pin1 played a key role in cancer metastasis and was the main target of ATRA-NPs. ATRA-NPs exerted their potent anti-metastatic effect by inhibiting Pin1 and then simultaneously blocking multiple signaling pathways and cancer epithelial–mesenchymal progression. Since ATRA-NPs could effectively couple the inhibition of cancer cell dissemination with cancer growth, it provided a novel therapeutic strategy for efficiently inhibiting cancer metastasis.

The region-level SAR image classification algorithms which combine CNN (Convolutional Neural Networks) with super-pixel have been proposed to enhance the classification accuracy compared with the pixel-level algorithms. However, the spatial constraints between the super-pixel regions are not considered, which may limit the performance of these algorithms. To address this problem, an RCC-MRF (RCC, Region Category Confidence-degree) and CNN based region-level SAR image classification algorithm which explores the deep features extracted by CNN and the spatial constraints between super-pixel regions is proposed in this paper. The initial labels of super-pixel regions are obtained using a voting strategy based on the predicted labels CNN. The unary energy function of RCC-MRF is designed to find the category that a region most probably belongs to by using the RCC term which is constructed based on the probability distributions over all categories of pixels predicted by CNN. The binary energy function of RCC-MRF explores the spatial constraints between the adjacent super-pixel regions. In our proposed algorithm, the pixel-level misclassifications can be reduced by the smoothing within regions and the region-level misclassifications will be rectified by minimizing the energy function of RCC-MRF. Experiments have been done on simulated and real SAR images to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm notably outperforms the other CNN-based region-level SAR image classification algorithms.

The convolutional neural network (CNN)-based pixel-wise synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data classification does not take fully use the spatial neighborhood information due to the fact that the impact of neighborhood pixels is not taken into consideration. The flaw of CNN-based classification method may lead to misclassification under some conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive neighborhood-based convolutional neural network (AN-CNN) for the single polarimetric synthetic aperture radar data classification. In the convolution layer, the neighborhood pixels are adaptively weighted based on their bilateral distance (spatial and feature distance) to the central pixel. In this way, different pixels have different impact on the classification result of the central pixel. The spatial distance-based weighting can reduce the misclassifications in the homogenous regions which are caused by speckle noise and the feature distance-based weighting is beneficial for the classification in the boundary regions. As a result, the misclassification is obviously reduced by the proposed AN-CNN which has a new cost function. Experimental results on simulated and real SAR data show that our proposed AN-CNN can notably improve the classification accuracy in both boundary regions and homogeneous regions compared with conventional CNN in different scenes especially when limited training samples are explored.

We have proposed a novel Silicon solar cells with the tapered nanoholes arrays (TNHs) for the efficient light trapping. After the optimization of the structural parameters, we obtain an exciting value of ultimate conversion efficiency (UCE) about 28.6% for the TNHs structured solar cells with the thickness of active layer of only 1 μm. And the performance of the TNHs solar cells is better than those of the existing cone-shaped nanoholes arrays (CNNHs) and the pure nanoholes arrays (NHs). The Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs) can be formed automatically during the process of manufacturing the Ag backreflector (AgBR) for the TNHs solar cells. We have also systematically investigated the influence of the structural parameters of Ag NPs to the performance of the solar cell, and the corresponding optimal UCE can reach to 30.1% nearly, which can serve as a practical guideline for designing plasmonic silicon solar cell.

Effects of dexmedetomidine (DEX) on perioperative stress response, inflammation and immune function in patients with different degrees of liver cirrhosis were investigated. A total of 94 patients with liver cirrhosis who were admitted to the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine from December 2016 to November 2017 were included, and randomly divided into control and observation group (n=47). Patients in control group were given remifentanil for anesthesia, while patients in observation group were treated with remifentanil and for DEX anesthesia. Venous blood was collected immediately before induction of anesthesia (T1), 10 min (T2) after the beginning of surgery, immediately after surgery (T3) and 2 h after surgery (T4). Hemodynamic parameters, stress response factors, adverse reactions and levels of inflammatory cytokines and T lymphocyte subsets were compared between the two groups. The mean arterial pressure in both groups was lower at T2-T4 than that at T1 (p0.05). Incidence of postoperative agitation in observation group was significantly lower than that in control group (p

In this paper, we have accurately computed the torque of the optical vortex tweezers to the ellipsoidal micro-particles with the method of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). The transferred orbital angular momentum (OAM) from the vortex beam to the micro-particles can be obtained based on the scattering phase function (SPF) of the micro-particles. We have verified that the calculated SPF of a spherical particle by FDTD agrees well with that by Mie theory, which indicates that the SPF of micro-particles with any shapes can be calculated by FDTD accurately. In addition, with the method of FDTD, we have obtained the SPFs of the different-shape ellipsoidal micro-particles with same volume, including prolate ellipsoids and oblate ellipsoids. Meanwhile, the transferred OAM between the light and the ellipsoidal micro-particles have been deduced analytically by the relative formulas. And the rotating angular velocities of the trapped ellipsoidal micro-particles have been investigated and discussed in detail based on the obtained corresponding SPFs.

A novel bio-molecular nanostructured sensor composed of Au spherical nanoshell and gain-assisted silica-core has been proposed and investigated theoretically, which shows a superior performance compared to the existing structured sensor. Using quasi-static approximation calculation, it is found that the scattering efficiency and the quality factor of SPR can be enhanced greatly by introducing proper amount of gain. The simulated results demonstrate that our designed Au spherical nanoshell and gain-assisted silica-core can obtain as high as 166.7 nm/RIU for the sensitivity of refractive index, and the sensors' figure of merit is enhanced 2000 times nearly compared to that of g =0, which indicates that the designed spherical core–shell sensors have the powerful ability to detect a subtle change in the concentration of its background medium.

We have designed a novel plasmonic lens for the circular polarization analyzer based on the combined coaxial Archimedes’ spiral structure which is composed of a Archimedes’ spiral slit (ASS) surrounded by coaxial Archimedes’ spiral gratings (ASG) on the both sides of the metal film. The designed structure is sensitive to polarization of the incident circularly polarized light, and it can realize the focusing effect under circular polarization illumination with specific handedness and defocusing effect under the other handed circular polarization illumination. This phenomenon of spin-dependent intensity distribution can be attributed to the presence of geometric phase effect of ASS. The simulated results show that the combination of the ASS and ASG has a higher efficiency and better performance than the traditional pure ASS.

We have proposed a carefully designed metasurface constructed by the elongated apertures in gold film. This metasurface structure can support only single anomalous re- fractions for both circular polarization (CP) and linear polari- zation (LP) incidence, which is also following the generalized Snell's law, whereas the normal refraction can be completely suppressed nearly. Furthermore, the circularly polarized light converted to cross-polarized light and the linearly polarized light decomposed into two CP states with opposite transmis- sion angle after passing through the metasurface with a high conversion efficiency of 87.5 %. The concept of single anom- alousrefractioncanbeexploitedforcreatinghigh-performance

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide and represent a great challenge for modern research and medicine. Despite advances in preventing and treating CVD over the decades, there remains an urgent need to develop sensitive and safe methods for early detection and personalized treatment. With refinements of molecular imaging technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET), noninvasive imaging of CVDs is experiencing impressive progress in both preclinical and clinical settings. In this review, we summarize advances in cardiovascular PET imaging, highlight the latest development of CVD imaging probes, and illustrate the potential for individualized therapy based on metabolic phenotype.

We propose an ultra-thin metasurface of the metal rectangular split-ring resonators (MRSRR) array which can modulate and analyze the wavefront of circularly polarized light efficiently. An incident circularly polarized light could be converted into the corresponding cross-polarized light which would be bent to ± 23° at a wavelength of 808 nm for the normal incidence. And a linearly polarized light would be decomposed into two lights of left and right-handed circular polarizations in the directions of ∓23° respectively. These phenomena have also been observed at 1200 nm with different geometric parameters. And these results depend on controlling the optical-axis profile of the resonators in a subwavelength scale by precisely modulating two degrees of freedom in our nanostructures.

A new type of optical polarization converter based on the L-shaped gold nanoantenna array supercell has been presented, which is suitable for both circular and X/Y linear polarization conversion simultaneously. Both the amplitude and phase of transmitted cross-polarization light can be modulated precisely by changing the lengths and widths of the L-shaped nanoantenna units. For circular or X/Y linear polarization incident lights, the corresponding cross-polarized lights can be obtained in the transmitted lights, and the corresponding bending angles of the cross-polarized lights can be modulated by the structures and the incident angles according to the generalized Snell's law. The multi-spectral characteristics have also been investigated, in which the operating bandwidth of the designed optical polarization converter is 450 nm (in the range of 750 ~ 1200 nm).

The ultra-thin optical vortex phase plate (VPP) has been designed and investigated based on the metasurface of the metal rectangular split-ring resonators (MRSRRs) array. The circularly polarized incident light can convert into corresponding cross-polarization transmission light, and the phase and the amplitude of cross-polarization transmission light can be simultaneously governed by modulating two arms of the MRSRR. The MRSRR has been arranged in a special order for forming an ultra-thin optical VPP that can covert a plane wave into a vortex beam with a variety of the topological charges, and the transformation between spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) has been discussed in detail. The multi-spectral characteristics of the VPP have also been investigated, and the operating bandwidth of the designed VPP is 190 nm (in the range of 710–900 nm), which enable a potential implication for integrated optics and vortex optics.

The optical properties of the various types of tapered silicon nanowires (SiNWs) have been investigated by the phase retrieving method of utilizing the experimental reflection spectra with the aid of the Kramers–Kronig (KK) relation. The effective refractive index (n) and the extinction coefficient (K) of each tapered SiNWs and combined silicon nanowires and microwires (CNMW) array samples can be obtained from concrete simulation by the KK relation. At the same time, we can also obtain the real part (ε′) and imaginary part (ε″) of the effective complex dielectric constant from the relation between the refractive index and the complex dielectric constant of samples. And the simulated results show that the relative material parameters (effective complex refractive index, effective complex dielectric function) can be modulated from a concrete material processing.

A thin-film solar cell with dual photonic crystals has been proposed, which shows an advanced light-trapping effect and superior performance in ultimate conversion efficiency (UCE). The shapes of nanocones have been optimized and discussed in detail by self-definition. The optimized shape of nanocone arrays (NCs) is a parabolic shape with a nearly linearly graded refractive index (GRI) profile from the air to Si, and the corresponding UCE is 30.3% for the NCs with a period of 300 nm and a thickness of only 2 μm. The top NCs and bottom NCs of the thin film have been simulated respectively to investigate their optimized shapes, and their separate contributions to the light harvest have also been discussed fully. The height of the top NCs and bottom NCs will also influence the performances of the thin-film solar cell greatly, and the result indicates that the unconformal NCs have better light-trapping ability with an optimal UCE of 32.3% than the conformal NCs with an optimal UCE of 30.3%.