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Study Design: Retrospective cohort study. Objective: Spinal metastasis from hepatocellular carcinoma is rapidly progressive and predisposes to spinal disability, cord compression and further neural injury, leading to poor prognosis. Currently, it is still challenging to look for a treatment strategy that can improve the quality of life of patients and even directly prolong the survival time. This study attempts to evaluate the clinical efficacy of separation operation combined with postoperative stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT/SRS) in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma patients developing spinal metastasis and epidural spinal cord compression. Methods: Patients with metastases spinal cord compression from hepatocellular carcinoma were studied retrospectively and divided into two groups, the SO group (who undergo separation operations combined with postoperative SRS, n = 32) and RT group (who received only SRS, n = 28). The visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain score, Frankel grade, Karnofsky performance score, and Quality of Life (SF-36) score were comparatively analyzed between the two groups. Results: Significantly higher VAS pain scores, Frankel grades, Karnofsky performance scores and Quality of Life (SF-36) scores were demonstrated in patients with combination treatment than in patients with SRS alone. Conclusion: Separation operations are effective surgical procedure for the treatment of spinal metastatic tumor from hepatocellular carcinoma with spinal cord compression. The combination with postoperative SRS can significantly improve the quality of life in this patient population via spinal canal decompression and spinal stability reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly reversible and stable cycling of zinc metal anodes remains a challenge due to the undesirable side reaction of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and dendrite formation. Herein, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) with large area and continuous growth was developed and used as the artificial solid–electrolyte interface (SEI) coating, which plays two roles to protect the electrode surface by (1) mitigating the side reactions and (2) inducing the epitaxial electrodeposition of hexagonal close-packed (hcp) Zn to form the compact Zn structure aligned in (002) orientation. From the density functional theory (DFT) calculations, hBN exhibits a remarkably small lattice mismatch (4.1%) with the Zn (002) surface. Additionally, insignificant Zn binding energy of hBN (−0.20 eV) reveals a weak interaction between hBN and Zn atoms; therefore fewer seeding points are provided for generating Zn dendrites. In addition, the low surface energy of the hBN interface enhances the electrolyte wettability to the electrode–electrolyte interface, promoting smooth Zn plating. Consistently, highly horizontally aligned Zn metal deposition without dendrites and H2 formation was visualized from an in situ optical cell. The symmetric cell shows stable cycling with a significantly smaller plating overpotential of 0.15 V over 300 cycles, while a full cell with an AlxVOH cathode exhibits highly stable cycling over 50 cycles with a 73.6% capacity retention rate and improved rate capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to study the coordination, price and sales effort decisions of a dual channel supply chain under live streaming commerce mode. In nowadays' e-commerce age, more and more people have interest in live streaming especially after the outbreak of COVID-19, but the research on live streaming supply chain is lacking. To fill this gap, a supply chain composed of a manufacturer and an internet celebrity is established, in which the demand is affected by the internet celebrity's sales effort and personal influence. Considering different power structures of the supply chain, price and sales effort decisions are studied in four models: Nash, manufacturer dominant (MD), internet celebrity dominant (KD) and cooperative game models. Subsequently, the feasible region of bargaining game is discussed in terms to share the extra profits and coordinate the supply chain. The manufacturer and the internet celebrity can be coordinated through bargaining problem in the cooperation model, and the extra profits sharing ratio is depend on each other's bargaining power. Numerical analysis is further provided to test the propositions and show the impacts of market share rate, internet celebrity's commission rate and personal influence on supply chain's performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]