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Background: Immunotherapy is a treatment that can significantly improve the prognosis of patients with colon cancer, but the response to immunotherapy is different in patients with colon cancer because of the heterogeneity of colon carcinoma and the complex nature of the tumor microenvironment (TME). In the precision therapy mode, finding predictive biomarkers that can accurately identify immunotherapy-sensitive types of colon cancer is essential. Hypoxia plays an important role in tumor proliferation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis, energy metabolism, and chemotherapy and immunotherapy resistance. Thus, understanding the mechanism of hypoxia-related genes (HRGs) in colon cancer progression and constructing hypoxia-related signatures will help enrich our treatment strategies and improve patient prognosis.Methods: We obtained the gene expression data and corresponding clinical information of 1,025 colon carcinoma patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases, respectively. We identified two distinct hypoxia subtypes (subtype A and subtype B) according to unsupervised clustering analysis and assessed the clinical parameters, prognosis, and TME cell-infiltrating characteristics of patients in the two subtypes. We identified 1,132 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two hypoxia subtypes, and all patients were randomly divided into the training group (n = 513) and testing groups (n = 512). Following univariate Cox regression with DEGs, we construct the prognostic model (HRG-score) including six genes (S1PR3, ETV5, CD36, FOXC1, CXCL10, and MMP12) through the LASSO–multivariate cox method in the training group. We comprehensively evaluated the sensitivity and applicability of the HRG-score model from the training group and the testing group, respectively. We explored the correlation between HRG-score and clinical parameters, tumor microenvironment, cancer stem cells (CSCs), and MMR status. In order to evaluate the value of the risk model in clinical application, we further analyzed the sensitivity of chemotherapeutics and immunotherapy between the low-risk group and high-risk group and constructed a nomogram for improving the clinical application of the HRG-score.Result: Subtype A was significantly enriched in metabolism-related pathways, and subtype B was significantly enriched in immune activation and several tumor-associated pathways. The level of immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoint-related genes, stromal score, estimate score, and immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE) prediction score was significantly different in subtype A and subtype B. The level of immune checkpoint-related genes and TIDE score was significantly lower in subtype A than that in subtype B, indicating that subtype A might benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors. Finally, an HRG-score signature for predicting prognosis was constructed through the training group, and the predictive capability was validated through the testing group. The survival analysis and correlation analysis of clinical parameters revealed that the prognosis of patients in the high-risk group was significantly worse than that in the low-risk group. There were also significant differences in immune status, mismatch repair status (MMR), and cancer stem cell index (CSC), between the two risk groups. The correlation analysis of risk scores with IC50 and IPS showed that patients in the low-risk group had a higher benefit from chemotherapy and immunotherapy than those in the high-risk group, and the external validation IMvigor210 demonstrated that patients with low risk were more sensitive to immunotherapy.Conclusion: We identified two novel molecular subgroups based on HRGs and constructed an HRG-score model consisting of six genes, which can help us to better understand the mechanisms of hypoxia-related genes in the progression of colon cancer and identify patients susceptible to chemotherapy or immunotherapy, so as to achieve precision therapy for colon cancer.

Kun Zhang,1 Ruoxi Tian,2 Guanglin Wang,3 Jianfeng Zhang,3 Hongqin Ma,3 Xuhua Hu,3 Jinchuan Xi,3 Guiying Wang1,3 1General Surgical Department, The Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, People’s Republic of China; 2Basic Medical College, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China; 3General Surgical Department, The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Guiying Wang Email zhkhe123@126.comIntroduction: A disintegrin and metallopeptidase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTSs), whose expression is dysregulated in various cancers, is implicated in cancer development. Herein, we aimed to investigate the functional role of ADAMTS8 in breast cancer (BC) and explore the underlying mechanisms.Methods: The protein expression of ADAMTS8 in BC cell lines and tumor tissues from BC patients was quantified by Western blot. ADAMTS8 overexpression was induced by transfection with pEZ-M90-ADAMTS8 plasmid using lipofectamine 2000. To generate ADAMTS8 stable knockdown cells, MDA-MB-231 cells were transfected with psi-H1-ADAMTS8siRNA plasmids. Cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, wound-healing assay, transwell assay and flow cytometry assay were employed to analyze the effects of ADAMTS8 on the proliferation, migration, invasion and apoptosis of BC cells. Chemosensitivity also was assessed using CCK-8 assay. The expressions of β-catenin, MMP-7 and c-Myc were measured by Western blot.Results: Our results showed that ADAMTS8 expression was significantly lower in BC tissues than that in adjacent non-tumor tissues. Overexpression of ADAMTS8 in MDA-MB-453 cells could inhibit the cell proliferation, migration and invasion and promote apoptosis. ADAMTS8 knockdown displayed the reverse effect in MDA-MB-231 cells. Consistently, in vivo data showed that ADAMTS8 overexpression led to a reduction in tumor growth. In addition, chemosensitivity testing in MDA-MB-453 cells transfected with pEZ-M90-ADAMTS8 plasmid indicated that cisplatin inhibited cell growth dramatically. Furthermore, attenuated β-catenin, MMP-7 and c-Myc level was detected after ADAMTS8 overexpression.Conclusion: These results indicate that increased ADAMTS8 expression could modify the progression of BC by inhibiting cell proliferation and invasion while promoting the apoptosis of BC cells. Thus, ADAMTS8 represents a potential therapeutic target for BC therapy.Keywords: ADAMTS8, breast cancer, BC, proliferation, invasion, apoptosis

A series of Zr and Ce pillared clay loaded with manganese oxide were prepared by wet-impregnation for the low temperature selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO. Various preparation methods for the MnO x /Zr–Ce–PILCs catalysts were studied with respect to the effects on NO x conversions. The MnO x (12%)/Zr–Ce–PILC(30) catalyst prepared by the simultaneous Zr–Ce pillaring with a Zr:Ce molar ratio of 5:5 was demonstrated to be optimal in NH 3 –SCR reaction at low temperature, reaching 96% of NO x conversion at 200 °C. Various techniques were used to characterize these catalysts. N 2 physisorption results suggested that the simultaneous Zr–Ce pillaring enlarged the specific surface area and pore volume. The XRD and XPS results illustrated that MnO 2 , Mn 2 O 3 and Mn 3 O 4 all existed on the surfaces of the catalysts. The results of H 2 –TPR NH 3 –TPD for the catalysts demonstrated that the MnO x (12%)/Zr–Ce–PILC(30) catalyst had high redox characteristic and surface acidity. The shift of Mn and O elements to lower binding energies indicated more active for these elements in MnOx(12%)/Zr–Ce–PILC(30). This demonstrated that Zr–Ce–PILC was a kind of potential support, which contributed to the high SCR activity of MnOx(12%)/Zr–Ce–PILC(30).

This paper analyses the atmospheric dust in Linyi City about the content and the form distribution of heavy metals. The main research focuses on the eight kinds of heavy metal elements, including As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Mn, Pb, Zn. The research results show that the formation distribution of heavy metal element is differ, the morphology of Mn and Cu detection rate of 100%, with five kinds of form exist; Cu, Zn, Mn, Pb, Cd in the exchangeable ions and carbonate combined states accounted for 20% of the proportion of high proportion. Cr, Cd, heavy metal forms with exchangeable ions state, carbonate state, iron, manganese oxide combination state, which accounts for 80% to 95% of the total, unstable state 20% has some impact on the environment and the human body.

An embedded traffic information collecting system in /spl mu/Clinux environment was developed. The system was mainly comprised of four parts - a camera used to capture the raw traffic video, a piece of DSP 6203B for traffic data processing, a compression module for the purpose of reducing the amount of data before transmitting them through network, and finally, a network module which was used for data transmission.

A novel preprocessing and localization method has been proposed for container auto recognition system. The method combines both linear filters and nonlinear filters to reduce noises on an image. Selection method of the adaptive parameters of the filters is discussed thoroughly. Tests have been made based on the method. Character lines can be properly located with a ratio of above 98%.

The license plate recognition (LPR) system is one kind of Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and is of considerable interest because of its potential applications to such areas as highway electronic toll collection, red-light violation enforcement, secure-access control at parking lots and so on. The paper introduces the system framework and work flow of our LPR system which works based on the web technique. Some problems of the technical emphases and realization are also addressed. Capabilities under practical conditions show the effectiveness of the system.