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Abstract Objectives To evaluate the potential connections between marginal cord insertion during the first trimester and furcate cord insertion later in pregnancy. Methods This is a prospective study of screening data on the cord insertion site in 3178 singleton pregnancies. The cord insertion site was examined in two stages. The first stage was screening for the cord insertion site between 10–13 weeks of gestation, the purpose is to determine the category of umbilical cord insertion. The second stage, performed at 22–28 weeks of gestation, was to follow up on the relationship between the cord insertion site and the placenta and to identify any changes in the category of umbilical cord insertion. This was performed to diagnose or exclude furcate cord insertion by identifying whether the umbilical cord trunk separated or branched before it reached the placenta. Factors influencing progression to furcate cord insertion and perinatal complications were assessed. Results Fourteen cases (0.44%) with progression to furcate cord insertion, all of which showed marginal cord insertion on ultrasound in the first trimester (p

2D MXenes are highly attractive for fabricating high-precision gas sensors operated at room temperature (RT) due to their high surface-to-volume ratio. However, the limited selectivity and low sensitivity are still long-standing challenges for their further applications. Herein, the self-assembly of 0D–2D heterostructure for highly sensitive NO2 detection was achieved by integrating ZnO nanoparticles on Ti3C2Tx MXene-derived TiO2 nanosheets (designated as ZnO@M−TiO2). ZnO nanoparticles can not only act as spacers to prevent the restacking of M−TiO2 nanosheets and ensure effective transfer for gas molecules, but also enhance the sensitivity of the sensor the through trapping effect on electrons. Meanwhile, M−TiO2 nanosheets facilitate gas diffusion for rapid sensor response. Benefiting from the synergistic effect of individual components, the ZnO@M−TiO2 0D–2D heterostructure-based sensors revealed remarkable sensitivity and excellent selectivity to low concentration NO2 at RT. This work may facilitate the sensing application of MXene derivative and provide a new avenue for the development of high-performance gas sensors in safety assurance and environmental monitoring.

Titanium/steel multi-material, given full play to their superiorities, has tremendous value for parts exposed to complexity service environments, yet invariably, its common joining techniques are lack of design freedom. To this end, we employ electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) to successfully prepare this multi-material system for the first time, whose interfacial microstructure and property are systematically investigated. Applying Cu as an interlayer, instead of causing extensive cracking and delamination at the interface of Ti64/316L, can effectively suppress the formation of continuous Fe–Ti intermetallic compounds (IMCs), and thus improve the strength of Ti64/Cu/316L interfaces. For the Cu/316L interface, besides the characteristic spherical Cu-rich and Fe-rich solid solutions, a few Fe–Ti IMCs appear within the Fe-rich solid solutions owing to the long-range diffusion of minor Ti atoms. Correspondingly, the dendritic Cu-rich solid solutions can also be found at the Ti64/Cu interface, which is regarded as a critical interface due to the concomitant of complex Cu–Ti IMCs. These Cu–Ti IMCs have less negative effect on the Ti64/Cu interface property relative to Fe–Ti IMCs, and the local strain produced by the deformed α-Ti near the interface and Cu-rich solid solutions can effectively relieve the concentration of residual stress. Consequently, the Ti64/Cu interface exhibits maximum micro-hardness to 490 HV and superior shear strength to 196.5 ± 2.2 MPa, which was attributed to the reinforcement for the tip of keyhole molten pool, as well as the synergy between Cu-rich solid solution and interdendritic Cu–Ti IMCs.

Summary: PRMT1 plays a vital role in breast tumorigenesis; however, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Herein, we show that PRMT1 plays a critical role in RNA alternative splicing, with a preference for exon inclusion. PRMT1 methylome profiling identifies that PRMT1 methylates the splicing factor SRSF1, which is critical for SRSF1 phosphorylation, SRSF1 binding with RNA, and exon inclusion. In breast tumors, PRMT1 overexpression is associated with increased SRSF1 arginine methylation and aberrant exon inclusion, which are critical for breast cancer cell growth. In addition, we identify a selective PRMT1 inhibitor, iPRMT1, which potently inhibits PRMT1-mediated SRSF1 methylation, exon inclusion, and breast cancer cell growth. Combination treatment with iPRMT1 and inhibitors targeting SRSF1 phosphorylation exhibits an additive effect of suppressing breast cancer cell growth. In conclusion, our study dissects a mechanism underlying PRMT1-mediated RNA alternative splicing. Thus, PRMT1 has great potential as a therapeutic target in breast cancer treatment.

In order to accurately reflect the operation characteristics of office buildings, a convolutional neural network(CNN)-recurrent neural network(RNN)combined model for energy consumption prediction of office buildings is proposed by using the good feature extraction ability of CNN and the good time series learning ability of RNN. Besides, a two-dimensional matrix data input structure suitable for the deep learning model is designed. The case study results show that compared with the simple recurrent neural network and long short term memory network, both the prediction accuracy and computational efficiency of CNN-RNN combined model are significantly improved, and the generalization of the model is also good.

Abstract Background The nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, is a saprophytic species that has been emerging as a standard model organism since the early 1960s. This species is useful in numerous fields, including developmental biology, neurobiology, and ageing. A high-quality comprehensive molecular interaction network is needed to facilitate molecular mechanism studies in C. elegans. Results We present the predicted functional interactome of Caenorhabditis elegans (FIC), which integrates functional association data from 10 public databases to infer functional gene interactions on diverse functional perspectives. In this work, FIC includes 108,550 putative functional associations with balanced sensitivity and specificity, which are expected to cover 21.42% of all C. elegans protein interactions, and 29.25% of these associations may represent protein interactions. Based on FIC, we developed a gene set linkage analysis (GSLA) web tool to interpret potential functional impacts from a set of differentially expressed genes observed in transcriptome analyses. Conclusion We present the predicted C. elegans interactome database FIC, which is a high-quality database of predicted functional interactions among genes. The functional interactions in FIC serve as a good reference interactome for GSLA to annotate differentially expressed genes for their potential functional impacts. In a case study, the FIC/GSLA system shows more comprehensive and concise annotations compared to other widely used gene set annotation tools, including PANTHER and DAVID. FIC and its associated GSLA are available at the website http://worm.biomedtzc.cn .

The house mouse or Mus musculus has become a premier mammalian model for genetic research due to its genetic and physiological similarities to humans. It brought mechanistic insights into numerous human diseases and has been routinely used to assess drug efficiency and toxicity, as well as to predict patient responses. To facilitate molecular mechanism studies in mouse, we present the Mouse Interactome Database (MID, Version 1), which includes 155,887 putative functional associations between mouse protein-coding genes inferred from functional association evidence integrated from 9 public databases. These putative functional associations are expected to cover 19.32% of all mouse protein interactions, and 26.02% of these function associations may represent protein interactions. On top of MID, we developed a gene set linkage analysis (GSLA) web tool to annotate potential functional impacts from observed differentially expressed genes. Two case studies show that the MID/GSLA system provided precise and informative annotations that other widely used gene set annotation tools, such as PANTHER and DAVID, did not. Both MID and GSLA are accessible through the website http://mouse.biomedtzc.cn.

Abstract To investigate roaming paths planning for diagnosis of congenital heart diseases (CHD) using a cardiovascular virtual endoscopy (VE) system. Forty children were enrolled. VE system was applied to support in establishing a diagnosis. Performance in diagnosing CHDs by CT, VE using automatically planned roaming paths (VE-auto, objects were treated as left heart system and right heart system), VE using manually planned paths (VE-manual), and VE using automatically planned path for left heart system and manually planned path for right heart system (VE-combined) were studied and compared. Comparable accuracy of 93%, 93%, 95% and 95% was found by CT, VE-auto, VE-manual and VE-combined. However, in diagnosing tetralogy of Fallot, significantly higher performance was found by VEs, compared with CT. For VE-auto, poor performance with an accuracy of 85% and sensitivity of 22% was revealed in diagnosing muscular ventricular septal defect, compared with VE-manual and VE-combined. Compared with VE-manual, VE-combined illustrated comparable diagnostic accuracy on all CHDs; however, significantly smaller diagnostic time was utilized (P

Background: Right minithoracotomy (RM) has been proven to be a safe and effective approach for mitral valve surgery, but the differences of artificial chordae technique between RM and median sternotomy (MS) were seldom reported. Here, we compared the outcomes of modified artificial chordae technique for mitral regurgitation (MR) through RM or MS approaches. Methods: One hundred and eighteen consecutive adult patients who received mitral valve repair with artificial chordae and annuloplasty for MR through RM (n = 58) or MS (n = 60) from January 2006 to January 2015 were analyzed. Results: All of the selected patients underwent mitral valve repair successfully without any complication during the surgery. There was no significant difference between RM group and MS group in cardiopulmonary bypass time, aortic cross-clamp time, and early postoperative complications. However, compared with the MS group, the RM group had shorter hospital stay and faster surgical recovery. At a mean follow-up of 44.8 ± 25.0 months, the freedom from more than moderate MR was 93.9% ± 3.5% in RM group and 94.8% ± 2.9% in MS group at 3 years postoperatively. Log-rank test showed that there was no significant difference in the freedom from recurrent significant MR between the two groups (χ2 = 0.247, P = 0.619). Multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of mild MR at discharge was the independent risk factor for the recurrent significant MR. Conclusion: Right minithoracotomy can achieve the similar therapeutic effects with MS for the patients who received modified artificial chordae technique for treating MR.