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Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing, as a novel technique provides broad benefits in thermoelectric materials synthesis, such as enhanced printing speed, reduced waste materials, and customized dimension design. The high energy density of laser could potentially balance the synthesis rate and thermoelectric figure-of-merit zT , but the correlations between laser energy and material performance are still vague. Herein, Bi 0.5 Sb 1.5 Te 3 bulks are directly synthesized by LPBF with a recorded synthesis rate of 254 g h−1. The maximum zT , without any post-processing, reaches 1.1 at 75 °C. Induced nanoscale pores by high laser energy printing, obtain a comparable diameter to phonon mean free path, leading to reduced lattice thermal conductivity and enhanced TE performance. We found that input laser energy critically affected thermoelectric performance and concluded the correlation between volumetric energy density E V and power factor PF , PF = 9.05 E V 2 – 30.01 E V + 48.84. It potentially predicts thermoelectric performance with inputted laser energy density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective: To examine the range of the area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) calculated using plasma 5-FU concentration at steady-state plasma concentration-time of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and correlation between 5-FU metabolites (5,6-dihydro-5-fluorouracil, 5-FUH2 and α-fluoro-β-Alanine, FBAL) plasma concentration and adverse reactions when patients with advanced colorectal cancer (CRC) received 5-FU-based chemotherapy.Methods: 74 patients with advanced CRC receiving 5-FU-based chemotherapy from Aug. 2017 to Nov. 2020 in Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital were involved in this study, the dosage of 5-FU being determined according to the patient's body surface area (BSA). Using an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrum (UPLC-MS/MS) to determine the 5-FU steady-state plasma concentration (CSS) and plasma concentration of 5-FUH2 and FBAL in CRC patients receiving 5-FU in continuous intravenous infusion for 18-30 h, the start time and end time of 5-FU infusion in patients were accurately recorded and the continuous infusion time (TCI) was calculated. The AUC value was calculated according to AUC = CSS × TCI. At the same time, the treatment effects and adverse drug reactions of patients were evaluated, to analyze the relationship between 5-FU AUC, 5-FUH2 and FBAL plasma concentration and clinical efficacy and adverse reactions in CRC patients, and explore the ideal AUC range of 5-FU in the treatment of colorectal cancer.Results: The AUC of 5-FU was not normally distributed and ranged from 3.13 to 41.12mgh/L, with an average value of 14.81 ± 8.62 mg·h /L, and the AUC values had obvious inter-individual differences up to 13 times. 5-FUH2 ranged from 131.98 to 987.93 ng/mL, with an average of 550.58 ± 260.60 ng/mL; FBAL ranged from 23.58 to 262.48 ng/mL, with an average of 89.79 ± 58.47 ng/mL. Correlation analysis results revealed a significant correlation between 5-FU AUC, 5-FUH2 and FABL plasma concentration and adverse reactions, 5-FU AUC and clinical efficacy.Conclusions: There are obvious individual differences in AUC values in CRC patients receiving different dosages of 5-FU based on BSA. The ideal AUC range of 5-FU is 18.23-29.17 mg·h/L. There was a significant correlation between 5-FUH2 and FABL plasma concentration and adverse reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Hybrid pooling is proposed for improving the generalization ability of convolutional neural networks. • The performance of the hybrid pooling is presented in image classification tasks. • The hybrid pooling combined with the dropout technique is competitive to other methods. • Layer-wise control of feature extraction can be realized by the hybrid pooling. Abstract Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have attracted considerable attention in many application fields for their great ability to deal with image recognition and object detection tasks. A pooling process is an important process in CNNs, which serves to decrease the dimensionality of processed data for reducing computational cost as well as for enhancing tolerance to translation and noise. Although standard pooling methods, such as the max pooling and the average pooling, are typically adopted in many studies, a newly devised pooling method could improve the generalization ability of CNNs. In this study, we propose a hybrid pooling method which stochastically chooses the max pooling or the average pooling in each pooling layer. A characteristic of the hybrid pooling is that the probability for choosing one of the two pooling methods can be controlled for each convolutional layer. In image classification tasks with benchmark datasets, we show that the hybrid pooling is effective for increasing the generalization ability of CNNs. Moreover, we demonstrate that the hybrid pooling combined with the dropout is competitive with other existing methods in classification performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the diverse profiles of adverse reactions caused by oxaliplatin between colon and rectal cancer, we investigated the toxicity of oxaliplatin in patients with colon and rectal cancer. From January 2017 to December 2021, 200 cases of sporadic CRC patients with adverse reactions after oxaliplatin were collected from Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Harbin, China. All patients received a chemotherapy regimen containing oxaliplatin (100 colon cancer and 100 rectal cancer). We reviewed the adverse reactions induced by oxaliplatin in patients with colon and rectal cancer. We found there was no significant difference in gastrointestinal toxicity, hematotoxicity, neurotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, respiratory toxicity, and cardiotoxicity caused by oxaliplatin between patients with colon cancer and patients with rectal cancer, but patients with rectal cancer were more prone to allergic reactions than patients with colon cancer after oxaliplatin. In addition, we found neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratios (PLR) were higher in patients with colon cancer than in patients with rectal cancer. This may reflect differences in immune status and inflammatory responses between colon cancer and rectal cancer, which might be the reason for more allergic reactions caused by oxaliplatin in colon cancer patients compared to rectal cancer patients. Except for a higher incidence of allergic reactions in patients with rectal cancer, no significant difference in the incidence of adverse drug reactions associated with oxaliplatin was noted between patients with colon cancer and rectal cancer. Our results suggested more attention should be paid to the allergic reaction caused by oxaliplatin in patients with colon cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porous tantalum (Ta) implants have important clinical application prospects due to their appropriate elastic modulus, and their excellent bone growth and bone conduction ability. However, porous Ta microstructure designs generally mimic titanium (Ti) implants commonly used in the clinic, and there is a lack of research on the influence of the microstructure on the mechanical properties and penetration characteristics, which will greatly affect bone integration performance. This study explored the effects of different microstructure parameters, including the fillet radius of the middle plane and top planes, on the mechanics and permeability properties of porous Ta diamond cells through simulation, and put forward an optimization design with a 0.5 mm midplane fillet radius and 0.3 mm top-plane fillet radius in order to significantly decrease the stress concentration effect and improve permeability. On this basis, the porous Ta structures were prepared by Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) technology and evaluated before and after microstructural optimization. The elastic modulus and the yield strength were increased by 2.31% and 10.39%, respectively. At the same time, the permeability of the optimized structure was also increased by 8.25%. The optimized microstructure design of porous Ta has important medical application value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical simulation is an effective approach to analyze the selective laser melting (SLM) process and reduce the production development cost. Based on the finite difference method (FDM), the nonuniform grid algorithm (NUGA) is developed to simulate the thermal behavior in SLM process concerning the variable thermophysical parameters of materials with different status. The NUGA can effectively improve computing efficiency, and the calculation speed using NUGA is 6 – 10 times than that without using NUGA. Different heat transfer strategies are used on each side of the two critical scanning speeds, 68.95 mm/s and 6895 mm/s, respectively, and the results of temperature calculations are highly consistent. The correctness of the heat transfer strategy under different speeds is analyzed using the NUGA. The effects of processing parameters (laser power, scanning speed and building height) on the shape and volume of the molten pool are investigated. As the scanning speed ranged from 100 mm/s to 500 mm/s, the width and depth of the molten pool decrease, while the length increases. As the laser power ranged from 100 W to 500 W, the length, width and depth of molten pool all increase. The length of the molten pool increases 11.68% from 264.94 μ m of layer 1 to 295.88 μ m of layer 5. The molten pool volume decreases, then increases and decreases finally from the start to the end of single molten path. The molten pool volume increases with increasing laser power and building height, while decreases with increasing scanning speed in general. The NUGA is an effective method for temperature simulation of large-size parts, which expands the application range of temperature simulation in SLM process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nitrogen‐doped MnO nanoparticles/ porous carbon nanosheets (N−MnO/PCS) composite was synthesized by the room‐temperature redox reaction between KMnO4 and PCS followed by a facile carbothermal reduction, and a subsequent coating process of urea onto MnO/PCS and heat treatment. N−MnO nanoparticles with a grain size of about 30 nm are homogenously embedded on the surface of the N−PCS, corresponding to a high loading of 50.09 wt.% in the resulting composite. Benefiting from the enhanced reaction kinetics as well as electrical conductivity and continuous transport pathways of Li+/electron resulting from the N‐doping and hybridization of the cross‐linked porous carbon substrate, the as‐synthesized N−MnO/PCS‐1 electrode delivers a large reversible specific capacity (1497.2 mA h g−1 at 100 mA g−1 after 160 cycles), outstanding rate capacities (710.6 mA h g−1 at 1 A g−1 and 640.1 mA h g−1 at 2 A g−1) and long‐term cycling stability with specific capacity (976 mA h g−1 at 0.5 A g−1 after cycling 300 cycles). The simple and green synthesis and electronic properties of this composite mean that it has great potential as a high‐capacity anode material for practical application in large‐scale energy storage devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The impact of pharmacogenetics on predicting survival in gastroenteric cancer remains unclear.Methods: We tested 322 consecutive patients treated with capecitabine-based chemotherapy for CDA and MTHFR polymorphisms.Results: Patients who carried the CDA 79 A>C (rs2072671) CC genotype showed significantly shorter progression-free survival (PFS) comparing with A-allele (P = 0.008). A significant better PFS was found in the patients with 451 A>G (rs532545) G-allele (P = 0.002) and 92 C>T (rs602950) T-allele (P = 0.002). In addition, a shorter PFS was also observed in patients with MTHFR 1298 A>C (rs1801131) CC genotype than the patients with AC or AA genotype after capecitabine-based chemotherapy (P = 0.002). Furthermore, the colon, female, or elder (> 65 years old) patients with MTHFR 1298 A>C CC genotype had poorer PFS than A-allele. Moreover, CDA 451 A>G was independent predictors of chemotherapy-induced toxicity in colon patients. Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that the CDA 79 A>C CC, 451 A>G AA, 92 C>T CC, and MTHFR 1298 A>C CC were predictive of shorter PFS in gastroenteric cancer patients.Conclusions: The results reminded us those gastroenteric cancer patients with CDA 79 A>C CC, 451 A>G AA, 92 C>T CC, or MTHFR 1298 A>C CC genotype are not likely to benefit from the therapy of capecitabine-based chemotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To discuss the influence of thin-walled blade's curvature change and accumulating layer number on the temperature field distribution in laser direct metal deposition and obtain a uniform thickness of a thin-walled blade, the temperature field distribution was calculated by numerical simulation. The thin-walled blade's curvature change and accumulating layer number can be studied, respectively. The effect of accumulating layer number on temperature field distribution was studied by thin wall; the effect of curvature change on temperature distribution was investigated by thin-walled rings with different curvatures. The numerical results show that the molten pool temperature of the thin wall increases with the layer number, and the molten pool temperature of thin-walled ring increases with the its curvature. The rules of laser power changing with the layer number and curvature in the processing of the thin-walled blade can be obtained by simulation when keeping molten pool temperature stable. According to the numerical results, the thin-walled blades were fabricated by experiments. The experimental results show that the laser power should be changed with the layer number and curvature if a uniform thickness of the blade can be obtained, which is in agreement with the numerical simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the cathode ternary activated materials with high content of nickel have been widely used in lithium-ion batteries, the recycling of the spent cathode materials has been paid worthy attention. In this work, the sulfate solution with Li, Ni, Co and Mn elements was formed by dissolving the spent LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 cathode materials in 20% sulfuric acid and 30% H 2 O 2 , assisted with reflux at 90 °C for 1 h. Based on the above solution, the precursor (Ni 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 (OH) 2), along with the lithium and sodium sulfates mixture solutions were prepared by co-precipitation at 55 °C. Then Li 2 CO 3 powders and sodium sulfate solution were obtained through evaporating filtered solution separated from the preparation of the precursor and added an amount of Na 2 CO 3 , with the removal of 30% water and separation at about 70 °C. The purity of recovered Li 2 CO 3 is about 99.5%. The residual concentrations of Ni, Co and Mn in the filtered solution separated from the preparation of precursor are only 0.041, 0.025, 0.038 ppm left, respectively. The prepared cathode material LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 from the precursor exhibits good cycle performance and shows a stable discharge capacity of 140 mAh g−1 at a current rate of 100 mA g−1 between 2.8 and 4.2 V. Image 1 • The facile strategy of entire recovery is proposed from spent LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 cathode material. • The products of new LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 , Li 2 CO 3 and Na 2 SO 4 were obtained. • No ammonia is introduced throughout the recovery process. • The filtered solution contains ultra-trace residual concentration of Ni, Co and Mn elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]