Search

It aimed to explore the adoption value of cuprous oxide nanoparticles (Cu2O NPs) in the clinical treatment of cervical cancer under the evaluation of real-time ultrasound elastography. In this experiment, the solution of Cu2O NPs was synthesized and used in 90 selected mouse models of cervical cancer. It was found that Cu2O NPs can significantly control the reproduction of various types of cervical cancer cells, effectively stopping the cycle of cervical cancer cell lines in the G1/G0 phase. In addition, the tumor weight of 0.25g in the Cu2O NPs group was notably lighter than that of 1.1g in the control group. The weight change of the mouse was 21g compared with 15g of the cis-dichlorodiamine platinum (CDDP) group, and it was proved that Cu2O NPs were less cytotoxic to the body and have few side effects. Moreover, real-time ultrasound elastography showed that there were 26 cases with a tumor elasticity score no less than 2 in the Cu2O NPs group, accounting for 87%, which was better than that of the CDDP group (17 cases, 57%), and the difference was substantial (P0.05). The shear wave velocity of Cu2O NPs (1.46±0.48 m/s) was also lower than that (1.73±0.62 m/s) of the CDDP group, which suggested that the tumor body hardness of mice in the Cu2O NPs group was lower, and the difference was considerable (P0.05). In short, Cu2O NPs had good functions such as inhibiting the proliferation and spread of tumor cells and blocking the cell cycle. Moreover, the toxic and side effects of the drug were slight, and it was an ideal new type of treatment for cervical cancer.

Currently, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has not been contained. It is a safe and effective way to detect infected persons in chest X-ray (CXR) images based on deep learning methods. To solve the above problem, the dual-path multi-scale fusion (DMFF) module and dense dilated depth-wise separable (D3S) module are used to extract shallow and deep features, respectively. Based on these two modules and multi-scale spatial attention (MSA) mechanism, a lightweight convolutional neural network model, MSA-DDCovidNet, is designed. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the MSA-DDCovidNet model on COVID-19 CXR images is as high as 97.962%, In addition, the proposed MSA-DDCovidNet has less computation complexity and fewer parameter numbers. Compared with other methods, MSA-DDCovidNet can help diagnose COVID-19 more quickly and accurately.

The design of a trajectory is significant to the efficiency and safety of a drilling process. In this paper, wellbore stability, indicated by the safe mud weight, is introduced as constraints to fo...

Adenomoma is a common disease occurring in the female uterus. The symptoms and pain of adenomoma seriously troubled the physical and mental health of contemporary women. However, because of the significant advantages of nondestructive and low price, ultrasound examination is used as the main imaging method for clinical diagnosis of gynecological diseases at the present stage and is often used in the initial screening and postoperative diagnosis and treatment of uterine diseases. Imaging provides a very rich information in the medical diagnosis of tumor and is a very important basis for the disease diagnosis and treatment at this stage. Ultrasound images are different from medical images such as X-ray and MRI. Because of the characteristics of imaging principles and noise interference, ultrasound images need to rely on rich clinical experience of doctors in the process of disease diseases, which increases the difficulty and work burden of doctors to some extent. Therefore, the project aims to study the deep learning segmentation method suitable for ultrasonic images. Combined with the Deeplab network in the convolutional neural network, comparing the results of the FCN network, and then finding that the Deeplab network has obvious advantages as an image segmentation model of uterine adenomyoma. In clinical practice, it can reduce the work burden of doctors and try in the direction of uterine adenomyomas ultrasound image segmentation, to fill the gap in this field.

TransCirc (https://www.biosino.org/transcirc/) is a specialized database that provide comprehensive evidences supporting the translation potential of circular RNAs (circRNAs). This database was generated by integrating various direct and indirect evidences to predict coding potential of each human circRNA and the putative translation products. Seven types of evidences for circRNA translation were included: (i) ribosome/polysome binding evidences supporting the occupancy of ribosomes onto circRNAs; (ii) experimentally mapped translation initiation sites on circRNAs; (iii) internal ribosome entry site on circRNAs; (iv) published N-6-methyladenosine modification data in circRNA that promote translation initiation; (v) lengths of the circRNA specific open reading frames; (vi) sequence composition scores from a machine learning prediction of all potential open reading frames; (vii) mass spectrometry data that directly support the circRNA encoded peptides across back-splice junctions. TransCirc provides a user-friendly searching/browsing interface and independent lines of evidences to predicte how likely a circRNA can be translated. In addition, several flexible tools have been developed to aid retrieval and analysis of the data. TransCirc can serve as an important resource for investigating the translation capacity of circRNAs and the potential circRNA-encoded peptides, and can be expanded to include new evidences or additional species in the future.

Yi Jin, Wendi Huang, Qinhong Qv, Shuling Liu Department of Ultrasound Imaging, the First People’s Hospital of Wenling, Wenling City, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yi Jin, Department of Ultrasound Imaging, the First People’s Hospital of Wenling, No. 333, Chuan’an South Road, Chengxi Street, Wenling, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of China, Post Code: 317500, Tel +86-13586226622, Email jinyi_ice@163.comBackground: Intravasation during transvaginal 4-dimensional hysterosalpingo-contrast sonography (TVS 4D-HyCoSy) may lead to false-negative results in tubal patency evaluation. Although the influencing factors associated with intravasation have been investigated, some factors are only identified during 4D-HyCoSy, thus currently no studies on preventing intravasation. However, several preprocedural features can be collected in advance, which may be valuable in predicting intravasation.Objective: The purpose of this study is to establish a nomogram incorporating the preprocedural features to predict the risk of intravasation before TVS 4D-HyCoSy.Methods: The data of 276 infertile women with patent fallopian tubes were analyzed retrospectively. They were assigned to the study group (n = 62) and the control group (n = 214) according to the development of intravasation. The preprocedural characteristics were collected to investigate the predictors independently associated with intravasation, which were then served as the construction of a nomogram. The performance of the nomogram was verified internally.Results: History of uterine curettage (OR = 2.341, P = 0.009), endometrial thickness (OR = 0.587, P < 0.001), and examination schedule (OR = 0.790, P = 0.024) were found to be the independent influencing factors associated with intravasation. The established nomogram incorporating these preprocedural features was useful for predicting the risk of intravasation prior to 4D-HyCoSy. It yielded net benefits when the predicted probability was less than 50%.Conclusion: The nomogram incorporating the preprocedural characteristics achieved a net benefit for clinical decision-making when the estimated risk was less than 50%. It is recommended to change the examination schedule for patients with an estimated risk greater than 50% and perform 4D-HyCoSy when the risk is less than 50%.Keywords: intravasation, TVS 4D-HyCoSy, nomogram, preprocedural characteristics, tubal patency

Background: There are no clinically effective antidotes for paraquat poisoning, which progresses rapidly with a poor prognosis and high mortality. The addition of Xuebijing (XBJ) and ulinastatin (UTI) combination to conventional therapy has been reported as a novel treatment approach.Objective: To compare the effectiveness of Xuebijing combined with ulinastatin and conventional treatment group in the treatment of paraquat poisoning.Methods: The CNKI, VIP, WanFang, PubMed, EMBASE, and MEDLINE databases were searched for publications on randomized controlled clinical trials that compared the XBJ+UTI combination as an additional treatment to conventional therapy versus conventional therapy alone.Results: Quality assessment of the selected publications was performed and data were extracted for analysis. The final analysis included five publications, reporting 588 patients with paraquat poisoning. The control and XBJ+UTI groups comprised 294 patients each; 138 and 100 patients in the control and conventional therapy plus XBJ+UTI groups died, respectively. The combined analysis showed that the mortality relative risk (RR) was 0.72 and I2 was 46.2%. Three publications reported of pulmonary fibrosis (PF) and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), in which 134 patients were included in each of the control and XBJ+UTI groups. MODS occurred in 117 and 88 patients in the control and conventional therapy plus XBJ+UTI groups, respectively. The combined analysis using the random-effects model showed that the RR was 0.75 and I2 was 0.0%. PF occurred in 99 and 68 patients in the control and conventional therapy plus XBJ+UTI groups, respectively. The combined analysis using the random-effects model showed that the RR was 0.69 and I2 was 0.0%.Conclusions: We preliminarily demonstrated that compared with those of conventional therapy alone, the addition of XBJ+UTI combination for the treatment of paraquat poisoning could reduce the mortality rate and incidence of MODS and PF.

Programmable RNA editing enables rewriting gene expression without changing genome sequences. Current tools for specific RNA editing dependent on the assembly of guide RNA into an RNA/protein complex, causing delivery barrier and low editing efficiency. We report a new gRNA-free system, RNA editing with individual RNA-binding enzyme (REWIRE), to perform precise base editing with a single engineered protein. This artificial enzyme contains a human-originated programmable PUF domain to specifically recognize RNAs and different deaminase domains to achieve efficient A-to-I or C-to-U editing, which achieved 60-80% editing rate in human cells, with a few non-specific editing sites in the targeted region and a low level off-target effect globally. The RNA-binding domain in REWIREs was further optimized to improve editing efficiency and minimize off-target effects. We applied the REWIREs to correct disease-associated mutations and achieve both types of base editing in mice. As a single-component system originated from human proteins, REWIRE presents a precise and efficient RNA editing platform with broad applicability.

A variety of tumors are insensitive to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. We propose that ICB therapy alone is insufficient to fully reactivate antitumor T cells, while effective mobilization of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) to assist adaptive immune cell activation can lead to potent antitumor effects with broad responsiveness. The Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) agonist SZU-101 we developed can induce the innate immune response against tumors and increase the immunogenicity of tumors. Interestingly, SZU-101-induced upregulation of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in tumor tissues can further enhance the response rate of the PD-L1 antibody. In addition, PD-L1 nanobodies have better solid tumor penetration ability, and because of this ability, they can be used to precisely deliver SZU-101 to tumor tissues. Therefore, a PD-L1 and TLR7 dual-targeting nanobody-drug conjugate (NDC), a novel drug molecule, was developed. We found that TLR7 agonists and PD-L1 nanobodies act synergistically and that NDC treatment reshapes the tumor immune microenvironment, activates both innate and adaptive immune cells, and exerts antitumor effects in both “hot” and “cold” tumors primarily through CD8+ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells. Our data show that a PD-L1 and TLR7 dual-targeting NDC can exhibit potent antitumor efficacy by orchestrating innate and adaptive immune responses and shows good prospects for clinical development.One Sentence SummaryBased on results showing that TLR7 agonists and PD-L1 nanobodies exert synergistic antitumor effects, a PD-L1 and TLR7 dual-targeting nanobody-drug conjugate that we developed shows good prospects for clinical development because it can orchestrate innate and adaptive immune responses, reshape the tumor immune microenvironment, and exert potent antitumor effects against both “hot” and “cold” tumors.

A mitochondria-targeted dual-functional aggregation-induced emission luminogen, TPP-TPEDCH, was rationally designed and developed for intracellular mitochondrial imaging and photodynamic therapy. TPP-TPEDCH clearly showed the movements of mitochondria at various time points. Moreover, both in vitro and in vivo results demonstrated its excellent ROS generation ability and strong antitumor activity.

There are increasing safety concerns accompanying the widespread use of nanoparticulate titanium dioxide (nano-TiO

The spread of COVID-19 is accelerating. At present, there is no specific antiviral drugs for COVID-19 outbreak. This is a multicenter retrospective cohort study of patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection pneumonia from 3 hospitals in Hubei and Guangdong province, 141 adults (aged ≥18 years) without ventilation were included. Combined group patients were given Arbidol and IFN-α2b, monotherapy group patients inhaled IFN-α2b for 10-14 days. Of 141 COVID-19 patients, baseline clinical and laboratory characteristics were similar between combined group and monotherapy group, that 30% of the patients leucocytes counts were below the normal range and 36.4% of the patients experienced lymphocytopenia. The duration of viral RNA of respiratory tract in the monotherapy group was not longer than that in the combined therapy group. There was no significant differences between two groups. The absorption of pneumonia in the combined group was faster than that in the monotherapy group. We inferred that Arbidol/IFN - 2 b therapy can be used as an effective method to improve the COVID-19 pneumonia of mild patients, although it helpless with accelerating the virus clearance. These results should be verified in a larger prospective randomized environment.

The Growth-Regulating Factor (GRF) family encodes a type of plant-specific transcription factor (TF). GRF members play vital roles in plant development and stress response. Although GRF family genes have been investigated in a variety of plants, they remain largely unstudied in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The present study was conducted to comprehensively identify and characterize the T. aestivum GRF (TaGRF) gene family members. We identified 30 TaGRF genes, which were divided into four groups based on phylogenetic relationship. TaGRF members within the same subgroup shared similar motif composition and gene structure. Synteny analysis suggested that duplication was the dominant reason for family member expansion. Expression pattern profiling showed that most TaGRF genes were highly expressed in growing tissues, including shoot tip meristems, stigmas and ovaries, suggesting their key roles in wheat growth and development. Further qRT-PCR analysis revealed that all 14 tested TaGRFs were significantly differentially expressed in responding to drought or salt stresses, implying their additional involvement in stress tolerance of wheat. Our research lays a foundation for functional determination of TaGRFs, and will help to promote further scrutiny of their regulatory network in wheat development and stress response.

To explore the molecular basis for a pedigree affected with coagulation factor V (FV) deficiency.Clinical data of the patient and his family members was analyzed. Targeted capture and next-generation sequencing (NGS) and Sanger sequencing were carried out to detect potential variant of the FV gene.The patient presented with jaundice and prolonged prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastic time (APTT). V factor activity measured only 0.1% of the normal level, though the patient had no sign of bleeding. A paternal heterozygous variant c.653TC (p.F218S) and a maternal heterozygous variant c.3642_3643del (p.P1215Rfs*175) were identified in the FV gene of the patient. His elder brother was a heterozygous carrier of the c.653TC (p.F218S) variant. c.653TC(p.F218S) was a known pathogenic variant, while the c.3642_3643del (p.P1215Rfs*175) variant was unreported previously.Mutations of the FV gene probably underlie the hereditary coagulation factor V deficiency in this patient. NGS combined with Sanger sequencing has detected potential variant with efficiency and provided a reliable basis for clinical and prenatal diagnosis for this family.

A novel BiOCl/Bi5O7I (BOC-BOI) heterojunction was prepared by growing ultrathin 2D BiOCl nanosheets in situ on the surface of 3D Bi5O7I microspheres. The 2D/3D heterostructure of BOC-BOI composites inhibited the agglomeration of BiOCl nanosheets, and benefited the multiple reflection and refraction of light, which greatly enhanced the absorption and utilization of light. The 50-BOC-BOI composite showed 97.7% degradation efficiency of rhodamine B (RhB) after 70 min Xe light irradiation. And its apparent degradation rate constant (k) was 0.0377 min-1, being 4.9 and 15.1 times than that of pristine BiOCl (0.0077 min-1) and Bi5O7I (0.0025 min-1), respectively. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of BOC-BOI composites was attributed to stronger light capture ability, more abundant active sites and higher charge carrier separation efficiency, confirmed by UV-Vis DRS, SEM, TEM, BET, Zeta potential and electrochemical characterizations. The free radical capture experiments showed that the main active species in this system were holes (h+) and superoxide free radicals (·O2-). Combining the results of UV-Vis DRS and Mott-Schottky test, a reasonable type II heterojunction mechanism was proposed.

An unique BiVO4/Bi2VO5 heterostructure was fabricated via one-step hydrothermal method. Bi2VO5 was grown in BiVO4 in situ by adding N,N-dimethylformamide during hydrothermal synthesis. The formation of BiVO4/Bi2VO5 heterostructure was confirmed with XRD, XPS, HRTEM, and Raman spectra. DMF addition in the hydrothermal solvent is significant for the formation of Bi2VO5 nanocrystals. Photocatalytic performance displayed that BiVO4/Bi2VO5 exhibited superior photocatalytic activity compared to pure BiVO4 under visible-light irradiation. The active species trapping experiment showed that photogenerated electrons played a critical role in the degradation of methylene blue (MB) in BiVO4/Bi2VO5 photocatalysis system.The boosted photocatalytic activity is mainly attributed to the effective separation of photo-generated electron-hole pairs at heterojunction BiVO4/Bi2VO5 interface. Further, the wide absorption band also favors its exceptional photocatalytic activity.

This paper is concerned with the optimization problem of drilling trajectory design, which plays a vital role in ensuring the safety and enhancing the efficiency of an industrial drilling process. Due to complex geological environment and limited capacity of equipment, the problem to be addressed features multi-objective and multi-constraint, and consists of two challenges: (1) how to formulate a proper optimization scheme and efficiently solve it for a group of solutions; and (2) how to pick out a desired result from the obtained Pareto solutions according to certain requirements. In this paper, to meet drilling practice, three objective functions are introduced regarding trajectory length, well-profile energy, and target error, respectively. Constraints are the range of decision parameters, non-negative constraints and bound of the target area. As a result, a comprehensive optimization model for the design of drilling trajectory is established. A novel optimization algorithm is devised to deal with the contradictory objectives and multiple nonlinear constraints, which combines an adaptive penalty function with multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition. A fuzzy-entropy-based evaluation approach is further employed to determine a satisfactory solution from the group of obtained ones. A case study illustrates that (1) our optimization solution is indeed beneficial to the optimization of drilling trajectory; and (2) the optimization algorithm and the decision method therein outperform some existing ones, which shows both practical and theoretical significance.

The Growth-Regulating Factor (GRF) family encodes a type of plant-specific transcription factor (TF). GRF members play vital roles in plant development and stress response. Although GRF family genes have been investigated in a variety of plants, they remain largely unstudied in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The present study was conducted to comprehensively identify and characterize the T. aestivum GRF (TaGRF) gene family members. We identified 30 TaGRF genes, which were divided into four groups based on phylogenetic relationship. TaGRF members within the same subgroup shared similar motif composition and gene structure. Synteny analysis suggested that duplication was the dominant reason for family member expansion. Expression pattern profiling showed that most TaGRF genes were highly expressed in growing tissues, including shoot tip meristems, stigmas and ovaries, suggesting their key roles in wheat growth and development. Further qRT-PCR analysis revealed that all 14 tested TaGRFs were significantly differentially expressed in responding to drought or salt stresses, implying their additional involvement in stress tolerance of wheat. Our research lays a foundation for functional determination of TaGRFs, and will help to promote further scrutiny of their regulatory network in wheat development and stress response.

Correction for ‘A mitochondria-targeted dual-functional aggregation-induced emission luminogen for intracellular mitochondrial imaging and photodynamic therapy’ by Yujie Zhang et al., Biomater. Sci., 2021, 9, 1232–1236, DOI: 10.1039/D0BM02099K.

In this paper, Carbon atomic chains-terminated C20 (C20-4C5) and boron-nitrogen atomic chains-terminated C20 (C20-4B3N2) are designed theoretically. Ti-decorated C20-4C5 and C20-4B3N2 is used to study the hydrogen storage capacity by first-principles density functional theory (DFT). The calculated results indicate that the hydrogen gravimetric density of 5.7 wt% and 5.6 wt% for Ti-decorated C20-4C5 and C20-4B3N2, respectively. It is demonstrated that both Ti-decorated C20-4C5 and C20-4B3N2 are good candidates for hydrogen storage.

Drilling trajectory optimization is an important part before drilling process. Since decreasing the cost and increasing the safety of drilling process are contrary to each other, drilling trajectory optimization problems should be modeled as multiobjective optimization problems. For this purpose, proposing appropriate optimization index which meet the requirement of drilling process is necessary. Many researches applied drill-string torque as the safety index. However, the actual drilling trajectory may deviate from the design trajectory. Ignoring this fact may cause the torque prediction too optimistic. In this research, the drill-string torque is combined with tortuosity of drilling trajectory to reduce the optimism of the prediction of drill-string torque. A 3D drilling trajectory optimization problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, and the objective functions are drilling trajectory length and the modified drill-string torque. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II is applied to solve the multi-objective optimization problem, and optimal pareto set are obtained.

Facing the demand of the efficiency and safety of drilling process, it is necessary to find the optimal drilling trajectory in the complex geological environment. To solve this multi-objective optimization problem, non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is applied. And Linear sum weighted method is applied at the same time for comparison. Firstly, the numerical model of a sidestracking horizontal well trajectory is established by nature curve method. Constraints subjected to engineering conditions and objective functions are discussed. Then, as decision parameters, the build rate and the turn rate are optimized. Finally, optimal solutions distributed on the Pareto front uniformly are obtained.

Wheat stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici Erikss (Pst), is one of the most damaging diseases in common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) globally. Breeding for genetic resistance is the most effective, economical and ecologically sustainable method to control the disease. The wheat line H922-9-12, developed from a cross between Psathyrostachys huashanica Keng and T. aestivum, was highly resistant to nine Pst races in tests at the seedling stage. To characterise and map the stripe rust resistance gene(s) in H922-9-12, segregating populations were developed by crossing H922-9-12 with the susceptible cultivar Mingxian 169. When tested with Pst race CYR34, the stripe rust resistance in H922-9-12 was shown to be controlled by a single dominant gene, provisionally designated YrH922. A linkage map was constructed with five simple sequence repeat, six expressed sequence tag (EST) and two sequence-related amplified polymorphism markers. YrH922 was located on chromosome 3BL and was 2.7 and 3.4 cM proximal to EST-STS (sequence-tagged site) markers BE517923 and BE471045, respectively. The flanking marker BE517923 in marker-assisted selection for the gene can be used to improve stripe rust resistance on breeding programs.

A new method to measure the radiative heat transfer in fluidized beds was presented. Experiments were carried out on a 0.8 th−1 fluidized bed combustion boiler. The residual slag of fired coal was operated in a fluidized bed at room temperature. As the radiative heat transfer at room temperature is insignificant, its contribution at high temperatures might be obtained by the comparison of experimental results at high and low temperatures. On experimental study, a radiative contribution was given as a function of bed temperature and particle size. The results were compared with those in other references.