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Abstract The mechanism of spinal cord injury (SCI) is highly complex, and an increasing number of studies have indicated the involvement of pyroptosis in the physiological and pathological processes of secondary SCI. However, there is limited bioinformatics research on pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) in SCI. This study aims to identify and validate differentially expressed PRGs in the GEO database, perform bioinformatics analysis, and construct regulatory networks to explore potential regulatory mechanisms and therapeutic targets for SCI. We obtained high-throughput sequencing datasets of SCI in rats and mice from the GEO database. Differential analysis was conducted using the “limma” package in R to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). These genes were then intersected with previously reported PRGs, resulting in a set of PRGs in SCI. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses, as well as correlation analysis, were performed on the PRGs in both rat and mouse models of SCI. Additionally, a protein–protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed using the STRING website to examine the relationships between proteins. Hub genes were identified using Cytoscape software, and the intersection of the top 5 hub genes in rats and mice were selected for subsequent experimentally validated. Furthermore, a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network was constructed to explore potential regulatory mechanisms. The gene expression profiles of GSE93249, GSE133093, GSE138637, GSE174549, GSE45376, GSE171441_3d and GSE171441_35d were selected in this study. We identified 10 and 12 PRGs in rats and mice datasets respectively. Six common DEGs were identified in the intersection of rats and mice PRGs. Enrichment analysis of these DEGs indicated that GO analysis was mainly focused on inflammation-related factors, while KEGG analysis showed that the most genes were enriched on the NOD-like receptor signaling pathway. We constructed a ceRNA regulatory network that consisted of five important PRGs, as well as 24 miRNAs and 34 lncRNAs. This network revealed potential regulatory mechanisms. Additionally, the three hub genes obtained from the intersection were validated in the rat model, showing high expression of PRGs in SCI. Pyroptosis is involved in secondary SCI and may play a significant role in its pathogenesis. The regulatory mechanisms associated with pyroptosis deserve further in-depth research.

Summary: Hydrides of alkaline-earth and rare-earth metals have garnered significant interest in high-temperature superconductor research due to their excellent electron-phonon coupling and high Tc upon pressurization. This study explores the electronic structures and electron-phonon coupling of metal hydrides XHn (n = 4,6), where X includes Ca, Mg, Sc, and Y. The involvement of d-orbital electrons alters the Fermi surface, leading to saddle-point nesting and a charge density wave (CDW) phase transition, which opens the superconducting gap. For instance, in YH6, the exchange coupling between Y-4d and H-1s holes in the phonon softening region results in Tc values up to 230 K. The study suggests that factors, such as the origin of the CDW order, hydrogen concentration, and d-orbital contributions are crucial to superconductivity. This work proposes a new rule for high Tc superconductors, emphasizing the importance of double gaps and electron-phonon interactions at exchange coupling sites, and predicts potential high-quality superconductors among rare-earth hydrides.

Abstract Background A scientific and comprehensive analysis of the current status and trends in the field of cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) research is worth investigating. This study aims to investigate and visualize the development, research frontiers, and future trends in CAFs both quantitatively and qualitatively based on a bibliometric approach. Methods A total of 5518 publications were downloaded from the Science Citation Index Expanded of Web of Science Core Collection from 1999 to 2021 and identified for bibliometric analysis. Visualized approaches, OriginPro (version 9.8.0.200) and R (version 4.2.0) software tools were used to perform bibliometric and knowledge-map analysis. Results The number of publications on CAFs increased each year, and the same tendency was observed in the RRI. Apart from China, the countries with the largest number of publications and the most cited frequency were mainly Western developed countries, especially the USA. Cancers was the journal with the largest number of articles published in CAFs, and Oncology was the most popular research orientation. The most productive author was Lisanti MP, and the University of Texas System was ranked first in the institutions. In addition, the topics of CAFs could be divided into five categories, including tumor classification, prognostic study, oncologic therapies, tumor metabolism and tumor microenvironment. Conclusions This is the first thoroughly scientific bibliometric analysis and visualized study of the global research field on CAFs over the past 20 years. The study may provide benefits for researchers to master CAFs' dynamic evolution and research trends.

Aluminized explosives exhibit excellent performance because the oxidation of aluminum (Al) powders enhances the pressure and temperature of detonation products. However, the equation of state (EOS) of detonation products has not been understood well. In the present study, we conducted long-time tests (approximately 1 ms) of a metal rod driven by detonation products of RDX, RDX/LiF, and RDX/Al. In addition, we used laser velocimetry (PDV) to measure the freesurface velocity of the rod. Thermochemical code DLCHEQ was successfully applied to the hydrodynamic program SSS to perform the rod-driven test, and a novel method was established to study the EOS of detonation products from the perspective of composition. The reliability of DLCEHQ was validated by a small deviation (

Bispentazole (N10) is one of the recently-found full-nitrogen energetic materials, which have remarkable performance in the pursuit of higher energy and greener explosive. Therefore, the structural, electronic properties, pressure response, and decomposition mechanism of four types of N10, namely P21-N10, I-N10, V-N10, and P-N10, are investigated using first-principles calculations. Our results show that all the structures are thermodynamic stability, and P21-N10 and P-N10 are dynamical stability. All N10 structures belong to insulators with indirect band gaps. The results show that the N-N bond on the five-membered cyclic ring, which is on the opposite side of the N-N bond connected to the two five-membered cyclic rings, is relatively weak. From the decomposition pathway of the N10 molecule, it can be observed that the product N2 is gradually separated from two cyclic N5 rings in the molecule. The result demonstrated that the N-N bond in full-nitrogen materials can release energy by breaking of N-N bond to form the stable N2. The calculated three reaction energy barriers means that the decomposition temperature of N10 is lower than that of N8 and N6. Finally, the released energy as 168.0 kcal/mol indicates that the N10 molecule can release a lot of energy when it decomposes.

PurposeThis study aimed to summarize the characteristics of the 100 most-cited articles on adult spinal deformity (ASD) and to analyze past and current research hotspots and trends.MethodsLiterature searches (from inception to 28 April 2022) using Web of Science databases were conducted to identify ASD-related articles. The top 100 most-cited articles were collected for further analysis. Meanwhile, author keywords from articles published in the last 5 years were selected for further analysis.ResultsThe top 100 most-cited articles on ASD were selected from 3,354 papers. The publication year ranged from 1979 to 2017, and all papers were written in English. The citation count among them ranged from 100 to 1,145, and the mean citation number was 215.2. The foremost productive first author was Schwab F. University of Washington had the largest number of publications. The United States of America had the largest number of published articles (n = 84) in this field. Spine was the most popular journal. Complications were the most studied themes. The visualization analysis of author keywords from the literature in the recent 5 years showed that complications, sagittal plane parameters, and surgical techniques are still the research hotspots, and minimally invasive surgery will continue to develop rapidly.ConclusionBased on a comparative analysis of the results of bibliometric and visualization, complications and sagittal plane parameters are still the major topics of research at present and even later, and minimally invasive surgery has a growth trend in this field of ASD.

ObjectivesThe contributing factors for spondylitis after percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) or percutaneous kyphoplasty (PKP) remain unclear. Here, we sought to investigate the factors affecting spondylitis occurrence after PVP/PKP. We also compared the clinical characteristics between patients with tuberculous spondylitis (TS) and nontuberculous spondylitis (NTS) following vertebral augmentation.MethodsLiterature searches (from January 1, 1982 to October 16, 2020) using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar and Web of science databases were conducted to identify eligible studies according to predefined criteria. The local database was also retrospectively reviewed to include additional TS and NTS patients at our center.ResultsThirty studies from the literature and 11 patients from our local institute were identified, yielding a total of 23 TS patients and 50 NTS patients for analysis. Compared with NTS group, patients in the TS group were more likely to have a history of trauma before PVP/PKP treatment. Univariate analyses of risk factors revealed pulmonary tuberculosis and diabetes were significant factors for TS after PVP/PKP. Analyzing NTS, we found obesity, a history of preoperative trauma, urinary tract infection, diabetes and multiple surgical segments (≥2) were significantly associated with its occurrence following PVP/PKP treatment. Multivariate logistic analyses showed a history of pulmonary tuberculosis and diabetes were independent risk factors for TS after PVP/PKP, while diabetes and the number of surgically treated segments independently influenced NTS development.ConclusionsA history of pulmonary tuberculosis and diabetes were independent risk factors for TS. For NTS, diabetes and the number of surgically treated segments significantly influenced the occurrence of postoperative spinal infection. These data may be helpful for guiding risk stratification and preoperative prevention for patients, thereby reducing the incidence of vertebral osteomyelitis after PVP/PKP.

BackgroundCurrently, the clinicopathological and prognostic characteristics of dedifferentiated chordoma (DC) and poorly differentiated chordoma (PDC) remain poorly understood. In this study, we sought to characterize clinicopathological parameters in a large PDC/DC cohort and determine their correlations with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients. We also attempted to compare clinical features between PDC/DC and conventional chordoma (CC).MethodsLiterature searches (from inception to June 01, 2020) using Medline, Embase, Google Scholar and Wanfang databases were conducted to identify eligible studies according to predefined criteria. The local database at our center was also retrospectively reviewed to include CC patients for comparative analysis.ResultsFifty-eight studies from the literature and 90 CC patients from our local institute were identified; in total, 54 PDC patients and 96 DC patients were analyzed. Overall, PDC or DC had distinct characteristics from CC, while PDC and DC shared similar clinical features. Adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy were associated with both PFS and OS in PDC patients in the univariate and/or multivariate analyses. In the DC cohort, tumor resection type, adjuvant chemotherapy and tumor dedifferentiation components significantly affected PFS, whereas none of them were predictive of outcome in the multivariate analysis. By analyzing OS, we found that surgery, resection type and the time to dedifferentiation predicted the survival of DC patients; however, only surgery remained significant after adjusting for other covariables.ConclusionsThese data may offer useful information to better understand the clinical characteristics of PDC/DC and may be helpful in improving the outcome prediction of patients.

Class imbalance is a common issue in medical diagnosis. Although standard radial basis function neural network (RBF-NN) has achieved remarkably high performance on balanced data, its ability to classify imbalanced data is still limited. So far as we know, cost-sensitive learning is an advanced imbalanced data processing method. However, few studies have focused on the combination of RBF-NN and cost sensitivity. From our knowledge, only one paper has proposed a cost-sensitive RBF-NN for software defect prediction. However, the authors implemented a fixed RBF-NN structure. In this paper, a novel cost-sensitive RBF-NN that optimizes structure and parameters simultaneously is proposed to handle medical imbalanced data. Genetic algorithm (GA) and improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) are used to optimize the structure and parameters of cost-sensitive RBF-NN respectively, and the optimization of cost-sensitive RBF-NN based on dynamic structure is realized. A cost-sensitive function determined adaptively by the sample distribution as the objective function of RBF-NN, so that it can adapt to datasets with different sample distributions. Experimental results show that the proposed cost-sensitive RBF-NN outperforms other state-of-the-art representative algorithms for five imbalanced medical diagnostic datasets in term of accuracy and area under curve (AUC). It can improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis and reduce the error rate of medical decisions.

Dihydroxyl ammonium 5,5′-bistetrazole-1,1′-diolate (TKX-50) is a newly explosive material attracting researchers, but the sensitive orientation is out of research in theory. First-principles calculated phonons and electrons are attempted to find the sensitive orientation of TKX-50 and of its derivatives. To discuss the sensitive degree of electrons, the bandgap and effective mass are calculated from electron density states. The phonons are calculated from dynamic matrix to discuss the sensitively vibrational orientation of bonds, revealing the optically sensitive directions in [1 0 0] and [0 1 0]. Also, the mechanical properties are listed from elastic constants to show the resistances to deformation corresponding to the sensitivity under impact.

A cellulose homogeneous system was prepared by dissolving cellulose fibre in an 8.0 wt% LiCl/DMAc solution. AKD was reacted with the cellulose under the homogeneous system and a heterogeneous system, respectively. The reaction products were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and Wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WXRD). The results indicated that hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules were disrupted under homogeneous conditions. The activity and accessibility to the reagent of hydroxyl groups were enhanced so that the β-keto ester bonds between AKD and cellulose were generated. However, the activity and accessibility of hydroxyl protons of the anhydroglucose units were not highly reactive under heterogeneous conditions. Moreover, cellulose itself was heterogeneous in nature, as different parts of its constituent fibrils displayed very hard accessibilities to the reagent. The β-keto ester bonds were not detected in the reaction products. Thus, the reaction between AKD and cellulose was difficult to achieve under heterogeneous conditions. In the sizing process, the reaction of cellulose should not simply be regarded as being that of a trihydric alcohol that is similar in its chemistry to sugars having three hydroxyl groups. Thus, the controversy about the sizing mechanism of AKD still remains unresolved.

The synthesis of spiroglycol by one-pot reaction was studied using pentaerythritol, isobutyraldehyde and formaldehyde as starting materials. Under the optimum reacting conditions, the yield and purity of product were 93.6 % and 99.0 %, respectively. Compared to the synthesis methods reported in literatures, not only was the yield of product improved, but also two operating units were omitted. The product was characterized by 1H NMR and IR.