Search

Metabolic reprogramming is a common feature of tumor cells and is associated with tumorigenesis and progression. In this study, a metabolic gene-associated prognostic model (MGPM) was constructed using multiple bioinformatics analysis methods in cervical carcinoma (CC) tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, which comprised fifteen differentially expressed metabolic genes (DEMGs). Patients were divided into a high-risk group with shorter overall survival (OS) and a low-risk group with better survival. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed that the MGPM precisely predicted the 1-, 3- and 5-year survival of CC patients. As expected, MGPM exhibited a favorable prognostic significance in the training and testing datasets of TCGA. And the clinicopathological parameters including stage, tumor (T) and metastasis (M) classifications had significant differences in low- and high-risk groups, which further demonstrated the MGPM had a favorite prognostic prediction ability. Additionally, patients with low-ESTMATEScore had a shorter OS and when those combined with high-risk scores presented a worse prognosis. Through “CIBERSORT” package and Wilcoxon rank-sum test, patients in the high-risk group with a poor prognosis showed lower levels of infiltration of T cell CD8 (P < 0.001), T cells memory activated (P = 0.010) and mast cells resting (P < 0.001), and higher levels of mast cells activated (P < 0.001), and we also found these patients had a worse response for immunosuppressive therapy. These findings demonstrate that MGPM accurately predicts survival outcomes in CC patients, which will be helpful for further optimizing immunotherapies for cancer by reprogramming its cell metabolism.

Background LIN28B plays an important role in early embryonic development, but its role in villous trophoblast implantation and differentiation remains unknown. This study aims to verify the role of LIN28B in trophoblastic villous tissue and cells from women with URSA (unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion) and artificial termination of pregnancy (negative control, NC). Methods The LIN28B gene and its protein expression level were detected with real-time quantitative PCR, Western immunoblotting analysis, and immunocytochemistry. The gene was also overexpressed in chorionic villous cell lines (HTR-8/SVneo and BeWo) to examine its effect on trophoblast function. Results The expression of LIN28B mRNA and protein of URSA villi was lower than that in the NC group. At the cellular level, overexpression of LIN28B enhanced cellular migration, and invasion, and inhibited apoptosis. LIN28B may inhibit apoptosis by promoting Akt phosphorylation and by inhibiting Bad phosphorylation and Bcl-2 expression. In addition, LIN28B inhibited cell fusion and reduced cellular syncytia. Conclusions LIN28B can inhibit cell invasion and migration in vitro and promote apoptosis and fusion. The low expression of LIN28B in URSA villous trophoblast cells may be one of the causes of abortion. The role of LIN28B in villous trophoblasts needs further study. Lay summary Propagation of offspring is of great significance to the continuation of the human race. However, continuous pregnancy is more difficult for some women, especially women who have multiple miscarriages. One important contributor is the cessation of development caused by genetic factors of the embryo, but there are still many unknown reasons. We investigated the LIN28B gene which is a possible pathogenic factor in the placenta. We collected 25 cases of abortion in the experimental group (unexplained recurrent abortion group) and 25 in the control group (artificial termination of pregnancy group): on average at 7–8 weeks of pregnancy. We tested the function of lin28b in these samples and verified its function in cell lines. LIN28B plays an important role in maintaining early pregnancy by promoting the invasion of villous cells, inhibiting apoptosis and fusion, and the reduction of LIN28B expression may lead to the occurrence of early miscarriage.

A Cross-Product Free (CPF) Jacobi-Davidson (JD) type method is proposed to compute a partial generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) of a large regular matrix pair $(A,B)$. It implicitly solves the mathematically equivalent generalized eigenvalue problem of $(A^TA,B^TB)$ but does not explicitly form the cross-product matrices and thus avoids the possible accuracy loss of the computed generalized singular values and generalized singular vectors. The method is an inner-outer iteration method, where the expansion of the right searching subspace forms the inner iterations that approximately solve the correction equations involved and the outer iterations extract approximate GSVD components with respect to the subspaces. Some convergence results are established for the inner and outer iterations, based on some of which practical stopping criteria are designed for the inner iterations. A thick-restart CPF-JDGSVD algorithm with deflation is developed to compute several GSVD components. Numerical experiments illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm., Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures

Two harmonic extraction based Jacobi--Davidson (JD) type algorithms are proposed to compute a partial generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) of a large regular matrix pair. They are called cross product-free (CPF) and inverse-free (IF) harmonic JDGSVD algorithms, abbreviated as CPF-HJDGSVD and IF-HJDGSVD, respectively. Compared with the standard extraction based JDGSVD algorithm, the harmonic extraction based algorithms converge more regularly and suit better for computing GSVD components corresponding to interior generalized singular values. Thick-restart CPF-HJDGSVD and IF-HJDGSVD algorithms with some deflation and purgation techniques are developed to compute more than one GSVD components. Numerical experiments confirm the superiority of CPF-HJDGSVD and IF-HJDGSVD to the standard extraction based JDGSVD algorithm., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures

Three extracts of mulberry leaves exhibit different hepatoprotective effects, which are strongly related to their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.

As one of the most essential components of fuel cells, the commercialized Nafion-based proton exchange membranes(PEMs) suffer from several drawbacks like high cost and methanol permeability. The aim of this work is to fabricate a high performance PEM with combined low cost and methanol permeability together with high proton conductivity. Three-dimensional hierarchical molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanoflower is synthesized via a facile one-pot hydrothermal method, and then was embedd into sulfonated poly ether ether ketone (SPEEK) matrix to prepare composite PEM. The three-dimensional hierarchical architectures of MoS2 nanoflower can not only avoid the aggregation of MoS2 nanosheets but also provide abundant surface area and active sites, which are of benefit to fully take advantage of the intrinsic water absorption and methanol diffusion resistance ability of MoS2 nanosheets. The formed hydrogen bond network with water passway contributes to the improvement in proton conduction of composite membrane. As a consequence, composite membrane with 1 wt% MoS2 nanoflower loading content achieves optimized proton conductivity (0.123 S cm−1, 80 °C) and methanol permeability (21.5 × 10–7 cm2 s−1, 70 °C), which is 59.7% higher and 79.1% lower than that of SPEEK control membrane. Owing to increased proton conductivity and decreased methanol permeability, the maximum power density of the SPEEK/MoS2-1 composite membrane is 82.7 mW cm−2 at 70 °C, which is nearly 64.7% higher than that of pure SPEEK membrane (only 50.2 mW cm−2). Furthermore, the durability test confirms that the SPEEK/MoS2 composite membrane still possesses satisfactory stability even after continuous operation at 70 °C for 100 h.

Background: LIN28B plays an important role in early embryonic development, but its role in villous trophoblast implantation and differentiation remains unknown. To verify the role of LIN28B in trophoblastic villous tissue and cells from women with URSA(unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion)and artificial termination of pregnancy (negative control, NC). Methods:The Lin28b gene and its protein expression level were detected with real-time quantitative PCR, Western immunoblotting analysis, and immunocytochemistry. The gene was also overexpressed in chorionic villous cell lines (HTR-8/SVneo and BeWo) to examine its effect on trophoblast function.Results: The expression of LIN28B mRNA and protein of URSA villi was lower than that in the NC group. At the cellular level, overexpression of LIN28B enhanced cellular migration, and invasion, and inhibited apoptosis. LIN28B may inhibit apoptosis by promoting Akt phosphorylation and by inhibiting Bad phosphorylation and Bcl-2 expression. In addition, LIN28B inhibited cell fusion and reduced cellular syncytia. Conclusions: LIN28B can inhibit cell proliferation, invasion and migration in vitro, and promote apoptosis and fusion. The low expression of LIN28B in URSA villous trophoblast cells may be one of the causes of abortion. The role of LIN28B in villous trophoblasts needs further study.

In this paper, a laser thermal lens measuring device which is based on equal inclination interference fringes produced by Michelson interferometer is realized. In this experiment, the thermal effect of low power laser can be observed as the ink sample after dilution has good endothermic properties. The experimental results show that the number of bright and dark rings is 6 in the absence of medium. With the increase of the concentration of the ink sample, the number of dark rings is also changing, and the spacing is relatively larger. Therefore, the thermal lens effect of laser can be observed by adjusting device. The focal length of the thermal lens is also calculated. The device has high application value in the study of laser thermal lens effect and medium absorption.

Centrifugal compressor often suffers various defects such as impeller cracking, resulting in forced outage of the total plant. Damage diagnostics and condition monitoring of such a turbomachinery system has become an increasingly important and powerful tool to prevent potential failure in components and reduce unplanned forced outage and further maintenance costs, while improving reliability, availability and maintainability of a turbomachinery system. This paper presents a probabilistic signal processing methodology for damage diagnostics using multiple time history data collected from different locations of a turbomachine, considering data uncertainty and multivariate correlation. The proposed methodology is based on the integration of three advanced state-of-the-art data mining techniques: discrete wavelet packet transform, Bayesian hypothesis testing, and probabilistic principal component analysis. The multiresolution wavelet analysis approach is employed to decompose a time series signal into different levels of wavelet coefficients. These coefficients represent multiple time-frequency resolutions of a signal. Bayesian hypothesis testing is then applied to each level of wavelet coefficient to remove possible imperfections. The ratio of posterior odds Bayesian approach provides a direct means to assess whether there is imperfection in the decomposed coefficients, thus avoiding over-denoising. Power spectral density estimated by the Welch method is utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of Bayesian wavelet cleansing method. Furthermore, the probabilistic principal component analysis approach is developed to reduce dimensionality of multiple time series and to address multivariate correlation and data uncertainty for damage diagnostics. The proposed methodology and generalized framework is demonstrated with a set of sensor data collected from a real-world centrifugal compressor with impeller cracks, through both time series and contour analyses of vibration signal and principal components.

Background: LIN28B plays an important role in early embryonic development, but its role in villous trophoblast implantation and differentiation remains unknown. To verify the role of LIN28B in trophoblastic villous tissue and cells from women with URSA(unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion)and artificial termination of pregnancy (negative control, NC). Methods:The Lin28b gene and its protein expression level were detected with real-time quantitative PCR, Western immunoblotting analysis, and immunocytochemistry. The gene was also overexpressed in chorionic villous cell lines (HTR-8/SVneo and BeWo) to examine its effect on trophoblast function.Results: The expression of LIN28B mRNA and protein of URSA villi was lower than that in the NC group. At the cellular level, overexpression of LIN28B enhanced cellular migration, and invasion, and inhibited apoptosis. LIN28B may inhibit apoptosis by promoting Akt phosphorylation and by inhibiting Bad phosphorylation and Bcl-2 expression. In addition, LIN28B inhibited cell fusion and reduced cellular syncytia. Conclusions: LIN28B can inhibit cell proliferation, invasion and migration in vitro, and promote apoptosis and fusion. The low expression of LIN28B in URSA villous trophoblast cells may be one of the causes of abortion. The role of LIN28B in villous trophoblasts needs further study.

For the computation of the generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) of a large matrix pair $(A,B)$ of full column rank, the GSVD is commonly formulated as two mathematically equivalent generalized eigenvalue problems, so that a generalized eigensolver can be applied to one of them and the desired GSVD components are then recovered from the computed generalized eigenpairs. Our concern in this paper is, in finite precision arithmetic, which generalized eigenvalue formulation is numerically preferable to compute the desired GSVD components more accurately. We make a detailed perturbation analysis on the two formulations and show how to make a suitable choice between them. Numerical experiments illustrate the results obtained., 25 pages, 5 figures

Protein interactions are crucial for maintaining homeostasis. Heat shock factor 1 (HSF1), a transcription factor that interacts with various proteins, is highly expressed in squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the cervix. The aim of the present study was to investigate the protein interaction profile of HSF1 in cervical SCC. Proteins interacting with HSF1 in SCC tissue and non-cancerous control (Ctrl) tissue were obtained by immunoprecipitation, separated by SDS-PAGE, identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry and analyzed using bioinformatics methods. A total of 220 and 241 proteins were identified by mass spectrometry in the tissues of Ctrl and SCC samples, respectively, among which 172 were detected exclusively in SCC (Pro-S), 151 exclusively in Ctrl (Pro-C) and 69 in both groups (Pro-B). The protein interaction profiles were different in each group; the STRING database identified three proteins that interacted with HSF1 directly, including insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor and small nuclear RNA-activating protein complex subunit 4 in Pro-C and small ubiquitin-related modifier 1 in Pro-S. Functional enrichment analysis of Gene Ontology revealed that the top terms were alternative splicing in Pro-S and polymorphism in Pro-C. In Pro-S, more categories were related to protein modification, such as phosphorylation, ubiquitination and acetylation. Therefore, HSF1 may influence the occurrence and development of cervical SCC by interacting with specific proteins.

Thermal lens technology has attracted much attention because of its high sensitivity, low detection limit and being suitable for the analyses of minute samples. Thermal lens technology has been widely used in many fields, such as chemistry, physics, environmental monitoring, electronics, material science and life science. In this paper, the laser thermal lens measurement is studied based on Newton’s ring interferometry, especially for the case of low-power laser. The application of this method in the measurement of small samples is also discussed. It is helpful to study the micro deformation of thin film and lens under low power laser at room temperature. The results are very important for the future research on the micro deformation of optical elements.

Due to the rapid increase in consumption, the environmental degradation and resource consumption, people’s health level is reduced, which makes it more and more important to reduce the demand for the target. Through the analysis of the current situation of China’s tobacco industry management in the background of the reverse marketing, the Chinese tobacco industry sales performance index system is constructed. Based on the existing research results, the weighted TOPSIS method is introduced. According to the relevant data of China’s tobacco industry in 2013, the impact of the reverse marketing on the sales performance of China’s tobacco industry is studied.

We make a convergence analysis of the harmonic and refined harmonic extraction versions of Jacobi-Davidson SVD (JDSVD) type methods for computing one or more interior singular triplets of a large matrix $A$. At each outer iteration of these methods, a correction equation, i.e., inner linear system, is solved approximately by using iterative methods, which leads to two inexact JDSVD type methods, as opposed to the exact methods where correction equations are solved exactly. Accuracy of inner iterations critically affects the convergence and overall efficiency of the inexact JDSVD methods. A central problem is how accurately the correction equations should be solved so as to ensure that both of the inexact JDSVD methods can mimic their exact counterparts well, that is, they use almost the same outer iterations to achieve the convergence. In this paper, similar to the available results on the JD type methods for large matrix eigenvalue problems, we prove that each inexact JDSVD method behaves like its exact counterpart if all the correction equations are solved with $low\ or\ modest$ accuracy during outer iterations. Based on the theory, we propose practical stopping criteria for inner iterations. Numerical experiments confirm our theory and the effectiveness of the inexact algorithms., Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures

This study aims to investigate the impacts of CO2 pneumoperitoneum on the growth of ovarian cancer in nude mice and the expression of tumor metastasis suppressor gene (NM23-H1) and matrix metalloproteinase -2 (MMP-2) in SKOV-3 ovarian cancer cell line cancer tissue. Forty five nude mice were used to establish ovarian cancer xenograft models by intraperitoneal injection of human ovarian cancer cell line SKOV-3. Murine xenograft models were divided into four groups: control group (only anesthetized for 0.5 h), laparotomy group (laparotomy for 0.5 h), CO2 pneumoperitoneum of 0.5 h, and CO2 pneumoperitoneum of 1 h group. Mice were killed after 12 weeks to observe intraperitoneal tumor growth and detected mRNA expression of NM23-H1 and MMP-2 in tumor tissues by RT-PCR. Our data show that xenograft tumors grew faster in the CO2 pneumoperitoneum groups than that in control and laparotomy groups and even faster in the CO2 pneumoperitoneum of 1 h group. The mRNA expression of NM23-H1 in CO2 pneumoperitoneum groups was significantly lower than that in control group and laparotomy group (P

The amniotic fluid has a heterogeneous population of cells. Some human amniotic fluid-derived stem (hAFS) cells have been shown to harbor the potential to differentiate into neural cells. However, the neural differentiation efficiency of hAFS cells remains low. In this study, we isolated CD117-positive hAFS cells from amniotic fluid and then examined the pluripotency of these cells through the formation of embryoid bodies (EBs). Additionally, we induced the neural differentiation of these cells using neuroectodermal medium. This study revealed that the GSK3-beta inhibitor SB216763 was able to stimulate the proliferation of CD117-positive hAFS cells without influencing their undifferentiated state. Moreover, SB216763 can efficiently promote the neural differentiation of CD117-positive hAFS cells towards neural progenitor cells in the presence of DMEM/F12 and N2 supplement. These findings provide an easy and low-cost method to maintain the proliferation of hAFS cells, as well as induce an efficacious generation of neural progenitor cells from hAFS cells. Such induction of the neural commitment of hAFS cells may provide an option for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases by hAFS cells-based therapies.

This paper aimed to improve the volute’s efficiency at both design point and off-design conditions by a robust shape optimization of the volute cross section. The objective function was to maximize the minimal value among volute static pressure coefficient at 90 percent, 100 percent and 110 percent of design flow rate respectively. The design parameters included the cross-section shape of volute and the radial position of volute cross-section. The optimization problem was solved by constrained optimization using response surfaces (CORS) method. During the process of optimization, three dimensional flow fields were analyzed using Navier-Stokes equations with SST model. The comparative results showed that the optimal volute had higher efficiency, higher static pressure recovery coefficient and lower total pressure loss coefficient and achieved an increase of 7 percent of efficiency at both design point and off-design conditions. The characteristic curves of the optimal volute changed more smoothly than those of the original one. The compressor’s overall efficiency also had an increase of 0.4 percent for the optimal volute.Copyright © 2015 by ASME

In an actively controlled system, time delay exists inevitably. Neglecting time delay may cause degradation of control performance or even induce instability to the dynamic system. In this paper, instantaneous optimal control method for vibration control of linear sampled-data systems with time delay in control is investigated. By a peculiar integral transformation, the first order state equation with time delay is transformed into the standard first order state equation, which contains no time delay. Then the optimal controller is designed based on the numerical algorithm of the regular fourth order Runge–Kutta method. Since the obtained controller contains integral term, which is not practical for control implementation, the numerical algorithm for this integral term is investigated too. Since the controller is deduced directly from the time-delay differential equation, the control method presented is prone to guarantee system stability. Thus the presented control method can be applicable to the case of large time delay. The performance of the control method is demonstrated by numerical simulation. Simulation results indicate that this control method is feasible and is an attractive strategy for dealing with the time delay in vibration control systems and is effective in suppressing maximum structural responses. Instability in structural responses may occur if the systems with time delay are controlled using the controller designed in the case of no time delay.

Economic responsibility audit, as an innovation of the modern audit system in china, is an economic supervision system of Chinese characteristic. This system is founded to supervise and evaluate the performance on the economic responsibility of party-government leaders and enterprise directing staff, so evaluating impartially is the key of this system and some kind of unfairness existing in the evaluation method can impose important influences on the executing of economic responsibility audit. In this paper, the author raises that the influences of objective foundation can be eliminated by the management efficiency and its binary relative evaluating method, therefore, the result can reflect the actual benefit achieved by the subjective efforts and capability of leaders. Aim of making study on this subject is to enrich and expand the theoretical research on economic responsibility audit and provide some theoretical support and technical guidance to its development.