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BACKGROUND Recent evidence showed that combining endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and laparoscopic sentinel lymph node dissection may avoid unnecessary gastrectomy in treating early mucinous gastric cancer (EMGC) patients with risks of positive lymph node metastasis (pLNM). AIM To explore the predictive factors for pLNM in EMGC, and to optimize the clinical application of combing ESD and sentinel lymph node dissection in a proper subgroup of patients with EMGC. METHODS Thirty-one patients with EMGC who had undergone gastrectomy with lymph node dissection were consecutively enrolled from January 1988 to December 2016. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the association between the rates of pLNM and clinicopathological factors, providing odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval. And the association between the number of predictors and the pLNM rate was also investigated. RESULTS Depth of invasion (OR = 7.342, 1.127-33.256, P = 0.039), tumor diameter (OR = 9.158, 1.348-29.133, P = 0.044), and lymphatic vessel involvement (OR = 27.749, 1.821-33.143, P = 0.019) turned out to be significant and might be the independent risk factors for predicating pLNM in the multivariate analysis. For patients with 1, 2, and 3 risk factors, the pLNM rates were 9.1%, 33.3%, and 75.0%, respectively. pLNM was not detected in seven patients without any of these risk factors. CONCLUSION ESD might serve as a safe and sufficient treatment for intramucosal EMGC if tumor size ≤ 2 cm, and when lymphatic vessel involvement is absent by postoperative histological examination. Combining ESD and sentinel lymph node dissection could be recommended as a safe and effective treatment for EMGC patients with a potential risk of pLNM.

Ovarian cancer (OV) is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy. One major reason of the high mortality of the disease is due to platinum-based chemotherapy resistance. Increasing evidence reveal the important biological functions and clinical significance of zinc finger proteins (ZNFs) in OV. In the present study, the relationship between the zinc finger protein 76 (ZNF76) and clinical outcome and platinum resistance in patients with OV was explored. We further analyzed ZNF76 expression via multiple gene expression databases and identified its functional networks using cBioPortal. RT-qPCR and IHC assay shown that the ZNF76 mRNA and protein expression were significantly lower in OV tumor than that in normal ovary tissues. A strong relationship between ZNF76 expression and platinum resistance was determined in patients with OV. The low expression of ZNF76 was associated with worse survival in OV. Multivariable analysis showed that the low expression of ZNF76 was an independent factor predicting poor outcome in OV. The prognosis value of ZNF76 in pan-cancer was validated from multiple cohorts using the PrognoScan database and GEPIA 2. A gene-clinical nomogram was constructed by multivariate cox regression analysis, combined with clinical characterization and ZNF76 expression in TCGA. Functional network analysis suggested that ZNF76 was involved in several biology progressions which associated with OV. Ten hub genes (CDC5L, DHX16, SNRPC, LSM2, CUL7, PFDN6, VARS, HSD17B8, PPIL1, and RGL2) were identified as positively associated with the expression of ZNF76 in OV. In conclusion, ZNF76 may serve as a promising prognostic-related biomarker and predict the response to platinum in OV patients.

An overview on static and dynamic behavior of functional polymeric foams is presented. In particular, a PU (Poly Urethane) open cells foam was manufactured to obtain specimens with different nanostructured coatings. An experimental campaign was performed with 7 different kind of multilayer coatings. Quasi-static compression preconditioning and compression fatigue cycles were applied and 5 parameters were measured during cycling: Hysteresis loop area, Dissipated energy per cycle, Stiffness degradation, Secant modulus, Loss factor values. The results show the effect of the contribution of nanoink layers to the static and cyclic behavior of foams.

Diverse cyanobacteria play an important role in improving local environments in desert ecosystems by forming biocrusts. Seasonal changes can directly or indirectly affect the structure of microbial communities through changes in temperature and precipitation; however, the impact of seasonal changes on the cyanobacterial communities in biocrusts is poorly understood. We characterized the cyanobacterial diversity of biocrusts and their sublayers in the southeastern Tengger Desert along a seasonal gradient using Illumina MiSeq sequencing and bioinformatics analyses and explored the combined effects of seasonal dynamics, biocrust types, and chemical properties on cyanobacterial communities. The results showed that the cyanobacterial diversity of both types of biocrust and of the moss biocrust sublayer was significantly higher in summer than in the other three seasons. The cyanobacterial diversity in the cyanobacterial biocrust sublayer did not change significantly with the seasons. Seasonal dynamics influenced the composition, dominant group and core group of the cyanobacterial communities in both biocrust types and in their sublayers. The biocrusts types (R2 = 0.437, P = 0.001) was the variable that affected cyanobacterial community diversity the most, followed by total nitrogen (R2 = 0.128, P = 0.001), seasonal dynamics (R2 = 0.120, P = 0.001), total organic carbon (R2 = 0.076, P = 0.002), nitrate (R2 = 0.048, P = 0.003) and ammonium (R2 = 0.019, P = 0.156). The potential for photosynthesis, carbon fixation, and nitrogen-sulfur cycle participation in the biocrusts and in the cyanobacterial biocrust sublayer was lowest in the summer. There were no significant changes in the moss biocrust sublayer throughout the year. Generally, seasonal dynamics are an important environmental factor affecting the cyanobacterial community and should be considered seriously in future experiments. These results suggested that seasonal dynamics should be taken into consideration in future experiments that involve biological soil sample collection.

This work describes the effects of tailoring the morphology of the re-agglomeration network and interfacial bonding by embedding poly(methyl methacrylate) decorated single wall nanotubes (SWNTs) into an epoxy resin. We report the time history of the re-agglomerations in the resin, and the rheological properties of the uncured suspensions to assess the effectiveness of the carbon nanotubes crosslinking on the curing process. A dispersion index was used to quantitatively evaluate the level of re-agglomeration. Both the pristine SWNTs and the polymer decorated SWNTs showed the effectiveness of re-agglomeration in improving rheological storage and loss modulus up to 770% and 50% respectively comparing with samples containing uniformly dispersed filler structure, suggested a novel filler arrangement for optimum composites damping performance. Dynamic mechanical analyser tests of the cured composites show that the re-agglomeration provides an increase of the energy dissipation capability when an appropriate interfacial bonding is in place. These results suggest that the morphology of re-agglomerates offers an effective interesting nano-reinforcement architecture for composites targeted at energy absorption and vibration damping.

This work presents a novel complex microarchitectured foam material via multilayer nanoinks that provide a substantial improvement of the mechanical, energy absorption and dielectric performance in pristine open cell foams. A multilayer carbon nano-ink containing – COOH functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes are produced and used to dip-coat pristine polyurethane open cell foam structures with the assistance of a silane coupling agent.Another layer of water-based polyurethane dispersion is coated on top of the MWCNT layer coated foam to transform the single foam ribs in multilayer structures. The nano-ink dipping and drying process developed in this work creates a porous MWCNT layer with a fairly high MWNT content that covers the foam ribs. These carbon nanotube multi-layer coated foams show a significant energy absorption performance, with loss modulus and loss factors 165%and 100% higher than those from high-dissipation nano-foams fabricated by conventional foaming techniques and auxetic phase transformation respectively. These nano-ink multilayer coated foams with only one layer also exhibit an increase in electrical conductivity by a factor of two compared to other existing nano-ink coated open cell foams with a substantial higher number of layers (20).

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are widely distributed in arid and semi-arid environments worldwide. The microbiome metabolic pathways of biocrusts contribute to important biogeochemical processes that improve the physicochemical properties of the surface soil. However, the differences in microbial processes among different types of biocrusts have been poorly studied by metagenomic analyses. In this study, we compared two types of biocrusts (bacterial-dominated biocrusts and moss-dominated biocrusts) using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Our results showed that Actinobacteria was the most abundant phylum in the microbiomes of bacterial and moss biocrusts, even though the two biocrusts differed in the composition of the following other abundant phyla Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Planctomycetes and Bacteroidetes. The profile of the C- and N- related metabolic pathways of the metagenome differed between the bacterial and moss biocrusts. The results showed that the genes encoding carbon monoxide dehydrogenase were more abundant than the gene encoding the ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) involved in the Calvin cycle, which is actually the main metabolic pathway for carbon fixation in both biocrusts. Low diversity in N2 fixation pathways appears to be a distinguishing feature of biocrust microbiomes, while nitrogen reduction dominated the metabolic networks of the two biocrusts. The microbiome of bacterial biocrusts rich in assimilatory nitrate reduction genes, while the microbiome of moss biocrusts was rich in dissimilatory nitrate reduction genes. Amongst the (bio-)chemical parameters it is total organic carbon(TOC) that differentiates between the bacterial and moss biocrusts. Our study suggests that the biocrust types have significant effects on the TOC content and taxonomic, gene and metabolic diversity.

Re-agglomeration is a natural phenomenon occurring in certain processing methods used in the fabrication of nanocomposites. The work describes the tailoring of the interfacial bonding and morphology in the re-agglomeration of cup stacked carbon nanotubes (CSNTs) modified RTM6 epoxy nanocomposite for potential damping applications. Mechanical and electrical properties were analysed to inform the dispersion and interfacial conditions within the nanocomposites. Samples with resin infused re-agglomerates revealed certain advantages in both mechanical and damping performance. This finding disrupted the traditional compromise between a favourable mechanical property and the energy dissipation of a homogeneously dispersed nanocomposite, allows both properties to be improved under certain interfacial bonding condition. It is proposed that a controlled agglomeration may afford a superior properties combination without sacrificing one another.

The paper describes the manufacturing, testing and modelling of a class of open cell polyurethane foams doped with multi-walled carbon nanotubes and nano polyurethane dispersions and subjected to quasi-static cycling compressive loading at large deformations. The doped nano-ink foams areproduced using a multiple steps dip coating technique that makes possible the development of nanobased porous materials by post-processing existing off-the-shelf open cell foams. Tests are carried out up to 18.5% of compressive strain to identify loading/unloading moduli and energy absorbedafter 5 cycles of stabilization. Hyperelastic Ogden models also considering the Mullins effect for cyclic loading are used to identify the constitutive parameters for these foams. The results show that the use of the multi-walled carbon nanotube layers provide an effective increase of the stiffness andenergy absorbed compared to pristine and nano polyurethane dispersions-treated foams. The volume average energy absorbed after the stabilization cycles is increased by 200% compared to thepristine foam when the multi-walled carbon nanotube layers are used. The parameters of the constitutive models extracted from the tests show that these nano-ink foams can be modelled following state-of-the-art hyperelastic representations

Flexible pressure sensors are crucial components for the next generation wearable devices to monitor human physiological conditions. In this paper, we present a novel resistive pressure sensor based on hybrid composites made from carbon nanotube (CNT) for the conductive coating layer and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomers as the substrate. The high sensitivity of these sensors is attributed to the change of contact resistance caused by the variation of the contact areas between the wavy film and the electrodes. Porous electrodes were designed to increase the roughness of the interfaces, thus further enhancing the pressure sensitivity. The developed device was verified through a series of tests, and the sensor exhibited a high sensitivity of 2.05 kPa-1 under a low pressure of 35.6 Pa.

In this paper spatial dynamics of the Beddington-DeAngelis predator-prey model is investigated. We analyze the linear stability and obtain the condition of Turing instability of this model. Moreover, we deduce the amplitude equations and determine the stability of different patterns. In Turing space, we found that this model has coexistence of ${H}_{0}$ hexagon patterns and stripe patterns, ${H}_{\ensuremath{\pi}}$ hexagon patterns, and ${H}_{0}$ hexagon patterns. To better describe the real ecosystem, we consider the ecosystem as an open system and take the environmental noise into account. It is found that noise can decrease the number of the patterns and make the patterns more regular. What is more, noise can induce two kinds of typical pattern transitions. One is from the ${H}_{\ensuremath{\pi}}$ hexagon patterns to the regular stripe patterns, and the other is from the coexistence of ${H}_{0}$ hexagon patterns and stripe patterns to the regular stripe patterns. The obtained results enrich the finding in the Beddington-DeAngelis predator-prey model well.