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Environmental pollution is an important issue in sustainable human development. People give great importance to environmental protection, especially with regards to increasingly scarce water resources. Water pollution is becoming more and more serious due to the existence of organic micropollutants. As a platform with good stability, porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs) have been widely studied. Because of their high surface area and thermal stability, they are considered to be a good sewage treatment agent. However, the aromatic nature of PAFs makes their skeletons mostly hydrophobic. This characteristic of PAFs seriously affects their diffusion rate in water as an adsorbent, resulting in a low adsorption rate. In this work, we synthesized a series of hydroxyl functionalized porous aromatic frameworks (PAF-80, PAF-81, and PAF-82) via the Sonogashira-Hagihara cross-coupling reaction, which created polar motifs on the hydrophobic surfaces, and carried out adsorption tests on typical organic micropollutants in water such as bisphenol A (BPA), 2-naphthol (2-NO) and p -chloroxylenol (PCMX). Among the three PAFs, PAF-82 exhibited the highest BET surface area, polar active sites, and a high degree of conjugation, which led to the best adsorption performance compared to that of PAF-80 and PAF-81. The Langmuir adsorption capacity of PAF-82 for BPA, 2-NO, and PCMX is 689 mg g -1 , 431 mg g -1 , and 480 mg g -1 , respectively, which surpasses most previously reported adsorbents. In addition, after 5 cycles of regeneration, it still maintained a high removal rate for pollutants. The obtained results reveal that micropollutant adsorption in water is not controlled by a single factor, but is the result of a synergy of multiple factors, including specific surface area, polar functional groups, pore size distribution, and skeleton conjugation. Our study has revealed the great potential of hydroxyl PAFs for efficient adsorption of organic micropollutants in water., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Background: Computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) image analysis enables plaque characterization and non-invasive fractional flow reserve (FFR) calculation. We analyzed various parameters derived from CTCA images and evaluated their associations with ischemia., Methods: 49 (61 lesions) patients underwent CTCA and invasive FFR. Lesions with diameter stenosis (DS) ≥ 50% were considered obstructive. CTCA image processing incorporating analytical and numerical methods were used to quantify anatomical parameters of lesion length (LL) and minimum lumen area (MLA); plaque characteristic parameters of plaque volume, low attenuation plaque (LAP) volume, dense calcium volume (DCV), normalized plaque volume (NP Vol), plaque burden, eccentricity index and napkin-ring (NR) sign; and hemodynamic parameters of resistance index, stenosis flow reserve (SFR) and FFR B . Ischemia was defined as FFR ≤ 0.8., Results: Plaque burden and plaque volume were inversely related to FFR. Multivariable logistic regression analysis identified the best anatomical, plaque and hemodynamic predictors, respectively, as DS (≥50% vs <50%; OR: 8.0; 95% CI: 1.6-39.4), normalized plaque volume (NP Vol) (≥4.3 vs <4.3; OR: 3.9; 95% CI: 1.1-14.0) and NR Sign (0 vs 1; OR: 13.6; 95% CI: 1.3-146.1), and FFR B (≤0.8 vs >0.8; OR: 44.4; 95% CI: 8.8-224.8). AUC increased from 0.70 with DS as the sole predictor to 0.81 after adding NP Vol and NR Sign; further addition of FFR B increased AUC to 0.93., Conclusion: Normalized plaque volume, napkin-ring derived from plaque analysis, and FFR B from numerical simulations on CTCA images substantially improved discrimination of ischemic lesions, compared to assessment by DS alone., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in tumor development and progression. The purposes of the study was to investigate the role of miR-155 in cervical cancer., Methods: Quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to examine miR-155 expression in cervical cancer tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The association with overall survival of patients was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) was used to suppress miR-155 expression in cervical cancer cells. In vitro assays were performed to further explore the biological functions of miR-155 in cervical cancer., Results: We found that miR-155 expression was markedly up-regulated in cervical cancer tissues and correlated with FIGO stage, lymph nodes metastasis, vascular invasion and HPV. Patients with high miR-155 expression level had poorer overall survival than those with low miR-155 expression. Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis suggested that increased miR-155 was an independent prognostic indicator for cervical cancer (P=0.007; HR=2.320; 95%CI: 1.259-4.276). Moreover, knockdown of miR-155 was demonstrated to inhibit cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro., Conclusion: Our study presents that miR-155 is a novel molecule involved in cervical cancer progression, which provide a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target., (Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.)

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the relationship of hypoxia-inducible factor-2 (HIF-2α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) with radiographic severity in primary osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. Expression of these two factors in cartilage samples from OA knee joints was examined at mRNA and protein levels., Materials and Methods: Knee joints were examined using plain radiographs, and OA severity was assessed using the Kellgren and Lawrence (KL) grading system. Specimens were collected from 29 patients (31 knees) who underwent total knee replacement because of severe medial OA of the knee (KL grades 3 and 4), 16 patients who underwent knee arthroscopy (KL grade 2), and 5 patients with traumatic knees (KL grade 0). HIF-2α and VEGF expression was quantified by real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting., Results: Cartilage degeneration correlated with the radiographic severity grade. OA severity, determined using the Mankin scale, correlated positively with the KL grade (r=0.8790, p<0.01), and HIF-2α and VEGF levels with the radiographic severity of knee OA (r=0.7001, p<0.05; r=0.6647, p<0.05)., Conclusion: In OA cartilage, HIF-2α and VEGF mRNA and protein levels were significantly and positively correlated. The expression of both factors correlated positively with the KL grade. HIF-2α and VEGF, therefore, may serve as biochemical markers as well as potential therapeutic targets in knee OA.