Search

Self-care is essential in patients with heart failure (HF).Our objective was to test psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Self-care of Heart Failure Index version 7.2 (SCHFI v7.2-C).The English version of SCHFI v7.2 was translated into Chinese using the modified Brislin translation model. Psychometric tests of the SCHFI v7.2-C were performed in 320 Chinese patients with HF. Content validity, confirmatory factor analysis, convergent validity, concurrent validity, discriminant validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability were examined to determine validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Validity and reliability were assessed for the self-care maintenance, symptom perception, and self-care management scales. SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 8.3 were used for data analysis.Mean (SD) age of the sample was 61.2 (14.20) years. Scale content validity index ranged from 0.93 to 0.97 across the 3 scales. Results of confirmatory factor analysis supported structural validity of the 3 scales. Self-care was significantly associated with quality of life, and those with more HF experience had significantly better self-care than those with less experience, supporting construct validity. The SCHFI v7.2-C was associated with the 12-item European Heart Failure Self-care Behavior Scale. Cronbach α coefficients for the self-care maintenance, symptom perception, and self-care management scales were 0.79, 0.89, and 0.77, respectively; their test-retest reliability was 0.76, 0.78, and 0.75, respectively.The SCHFI v7.2-C is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used in Chinese patients with HF.

A modular approach was applied for the synthesis of bienzyme-polymer nanoconjugates (nano-BECs) (50–70 nm) consisting of two enzymes (carbonyl reductase and glucose dehydrogenase) conjugated within a single universal polymer scaffold. The amount of the product ethyl (R)-2-hydroxy-4-phenylbutyrate (R-HPBE) with nano-BECs as the catalyst was 533 mM in a dibutyl phthalate-phosphate buffer (dibutyl phthalate-PB) biphasic system, while the amount of R-HPBE was 349 mM using carbonyl reductase-poly(acrylic acid) as the catalyst, indicating that the nano-BECs have an advantage for coenzyme regeneration. Compared with a single aqueous phase, the substrate treatment capacity was improved at the interface of the dibutyl phthalate-PB biphasic system. Under the optimal reaction conditions (35 °C, 40 h, dibutyl phthalate-PB 1: 1), nano-BECs can completely convert substrate into optically pure R-HPBE (enantiomeric excess (e.e.) >99.9%) in the organic-aqueous system.

Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles were prepared by chemical co-precipitation and modified with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) and CS2 to form Fe3O4-APTES-CS2 magnetic carriers. Magnetically immobi...

Fe3O4-Arg was selected as the optimal carrier due to its high activity recovery of immobilized cells in the preparation of Fe3O4-Arg-Cells. The optimal immobilization conditions for the preparation of Fe3O4-Arg-Cells were 30 °C, 4 h, pH 7, and 3 g dry yeast. The activity recovery of immobilized cells reached 76.8 %. For a batch reduction in a shaker in an alternating magnetic field, Fe3O4-Arg-Cells were used as a catalyst to gain ethyl (R)-4-chloro-3-hydroxybutyrate ((R)-CHBE). For further improvement in reduction productivity, a continuous reduction in the magnetic fluidized bed reactor system (MFBRS) was completed. Under their optimal transformation conditions, it took 24 h for Fe3O4-Arg-Cells to complete the conversion of ethyl 4-chloro-3-oxobutanoate (COBE) (0.8553 mol/L) in the shaker and only 8 h for the batch reduction in an alternating magnetic field. Continuous reduction in MFBRS provided new ideas for the efficient production of (R)-CHBE; 1.5882 mol/L (10 mL) of COBE can be completely converted in 6 h. The conversion and enantiomeric excess (e.e.) of (R)-CHBE were 100 % and above 99.9 % respectively, in the three reaction systems mentioned above.

We investigate pneumatic non-prehensile manipulation (i.e., blowing) as a means of efficiently moving scattered objects into a target receptacle. Due to the chaotic nature of aerodynamic forces, a blowing controller must (i) continually adapt to unexpected changes from its actions, (ii) maintain fine-grained control, since the slightest misstep can result in large unintended consequences (e.g., scatter objects already in a pile), and (iii) infer long-range plans (e.g., move the robot to strategic blowing locations). We tackle these challenges in the context of deep reinforcement learning, introducing a multi-frequency version of the spatial action maps framework. This allows for efficient learning of vision-based policies that effectively combine high-level planning and low-level closed-loop control for dynamic mobile manipulation. Experiments show that our system learns efficient behaviors for the task, demonstrating in particular that blowing achieves better downstream performance than pushing, and that our policies improve performance over baselines. Moreover, we show that our system naturally encourages emergent specialization between the different subpolicies spanning low-level fine-grained control and high-level planning. On a real mobile robot equipped with a miniature air blower, we show that our simulation-trained policies transfer well to a real environment and can generalize to novel objects., Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022 and IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022. Project page: https://learning-dynamic-manipulation.cs.princeton.edu

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone cancer in children and adolescents, with lungs as the most common metastatic site. The five-year survival rate of osteosarcoma patients with pulmonary metastasis is less than 30%.Therefore, the utilization of mouse models mimicking the osteosarcoma development in humans is of great significance for understanding the fundamental mechanism of osteosarcoma carcinogenesis and pulmonary metastasis to develop novel therapeutics. Here, detailed procedures are reported to generate the primary osteosarcoma and pulmonary metastasis mouse models via intratibia injection of osteosarcoma cells. Combined with the bioluminescence or X-ray live imaging system, these living mouse models are utilized to monitor and quantify osteosarcoma growth and metastasis. To establish this model, a basement membrane matrix containing osteosarcoma cells was loaded in a micro-volume syringe and injected into one tibia of each athymic mouse after being anesthetized. The mice were sacrificed when the primary osteosarcoma reached the size limitation in the IACUC-approved protocol. The legs bearing osteosarcoma and the lungs with metastasis lesions were separated. These models are characterized by a short incubation period, rapid growth, severe lesions, and sensitivity in monitoring the development of primary and pulmonary metastatic lesions. Therefore, these are ideal models for exploring the functions and mechanisms of specific factors in osteosarcoma carcinogenesis and pulmonary metastasis, the tumor microenvironment, and evaluating the therapeutic efficacy in vivo.

Increasing studies have revealed significant associations between TOP2A with oncogenesis and prognosis of human cancers; however, pan-cancer analysis has not been reported. Here, we explored the potential carcinogenic function, the association with clinical outcomes of TOP2A in 33 different human cancers. The results showed that TOP2A was amplified in 32 investigated cancers; TOP2A expression was significantly associated with metastasis of six different cancers, and significantly associated with the survivals of patients in ten different cancers; TOP2A encoded protein was obviously upregulated in five available cancers; phosphorylated TOP2A protein at S1106 was significantly upregulated in all six available cancers. Moreover, TOP2A expression was found to be associated with the cancer-associated immune cell infiltration, including fibroblasts, Tregs and macrophages. In addition, Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway and Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analyses revealed a most significant association between TOP2A with Wnt signaling pathway, and DNA conformation change. This work provides a comprehensive knowledge of TOP2A in different cancers, including carcinogenic function, prognostic values for metastasis and clinical outcomes.

The ability to communicate intention enables decentralized multi-agent robots to collaborate while performing physical tasks. In this work, we present spatial intention maps, a new intention representation for multi-agent vision-based deep reinforcement learning that improves coordination between decentralized mobile manipulators. In this representation, each agent's intention is provided to other agents, and rendered into an overhead 2D map aligned with visual observations. This synergizes with the recently proposed spatial action maps framework, in which state and action representations are spatially aligned, providing inductive biases that encourage emergent cooperative behaviors requiring spatial coordination, such as passing objects to each other or avoiding collisions. Experiments across a variety of multi-agent environments, including heterogeneous robot teams with different abilities (lifting, pushing, or throwing), show that incorporating spatial intention maps improves performance for different mobile manipulation tasks while significantly enhancing cooperative behaviors., To appear at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021. Project page: https://spatial-intention-maps.cs.princeton.edu/

Background: As the leading primary bone cancer in adolescents and children, osteosarcoma patients with metastasis show a five-year-survival-rate of 20-30%, without improvement over the past 30 years. Wnt/β-catenin is important in promoting osteosarcoma development. DKK3 is a Wnt/β-catenin antagonist and predicted to have the specific binding site in 3'-UTR with miR-214-3p. Methods: miR-214-3p and DKK3 levels were investigated in human osteosarcoma tissues and cells by RT-qPCR; the prognostic importance of DKK3 level in osteosarcoma patients was determined with Log-rank test; direct binding between DKK3 with miR-214-3p was identified with targetscan; anti-osteosarcoma mechanism of cantharidin was investigated by miR-214-3p silence/over-expression with or without cantharidin treatment, and nuclear/cytoplasmic protein assay in osteosarcoma cells. Results: Down-regulated DKK3 indicated poor prognosis of osteosarcoma patients. Up-regulated miR-214-3p promoted proliferation and migration, while suppressed apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells by increasing β-catenin nuclear translocation and LEF1 translation via degradation of DKK3. Cantharidin suppressed viabilities, migration and invasion, while promoted cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in 143B and U-2 OS cells via down-regulating miR-214-3p to up-regulate DKK3, thus inhibited p-GSK-3β expression, β-catenin nuclear translocation and LEF1 translation. Meanwhile, cantharidin inhibited tumor growth in xenograft-bearing mice with 143B cell injection in tibia. Conclusion: miR-214-3p mediated Wnt/β-catenin/LEF1 signaling activation by targeting DKK3 to promote oncogenesis of osteosarcoma; cantharidin inhibited proliferation and metastasis of osteosarcoma cells via down-regulating miR-214-3p to up-regulate DKK3 and decrease β-catenin nuclear translocation, indicating that cantharidin may be a prospective candidate for osteosarcoma treatment by targeting miR-214-3p/DKK3/β-catenin signaling.

Ischemic stroke is a kind of disease with high mortality and high disability, which brings a huge burden to the public health system (Hu et al. (2017)), and it poses a serious threat to the quality of life of patients. Cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury is an important pathophysiological mechanism. This study aims to assess the mechanism of SNHG15 in the occurrence and development of cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury of nerve cells and to investigate its potential value for diagnosis and treatment. SNHG15 targeted miRNA molecules and target genes were predicted with bioinformatics tools such as StarBase and TargetScan. The process of ischemic reperfusion in cerebral apoplexy in normal cultured and oxygen-glucose-deprived and reoxygenated neurons was simulated with RT-PCR and western blot technique. The expressions of SNHG15 and miR-141 were detected with qPCR, and the expressions of SIRT1 and p65, TNF-α, ROS, iNOS, and IL-6 were detected with western blot. Meanwhile, SNHG15 siRNAs and miR-141 mimics were transfected for SH-SY5Y, with western blot testing. And the expressions of miR-141, SIRT1, and p65, TNF-α, ROS, iNOS, and IL-6 were tested. According to the prediction with bioinformatics tools of StarBase and TargetScan, miR-141 is the target of lncSNHG15. In the luciferase reporter plasmid double-luciferase assay, miR-141 and SIRT1 were defined as the target relationship. In the oxygen-glucose-deprived reoxygenation model group, SNHG15 expression increased, miR-141 expression decreased, SIRT1 expression increased, and the expressions of p65, TNF-α, ROS, iNOS, and IL-6 decreased. In the SNHG15-siRNA-transfected oxygen-glucose-deprived reoxygenation cell model group, miR-141 expression increased, SIRT1 expression decreased, and the expressions of p65, TNF-α, and IL-6 increased compared with the si-NC group. In the miR-141-mimic-transfected oxygen-glucose-deprived reoxygenation cell model, SNHG15 expression decreased, SIRT1 expression decreased, and the expressions of p65, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 increased. In conclusion, SNHG15 expression increased during the process of oxygen-glucose-deprived reoxygenation, and the oxidative stress process was reduced by miR-141/SIRT1.

Typical end-to-end formulations for learning robotic navigation involve predicting a small set of steering command actions (e.g., step forward, turn left, turn right, etc.) from images of the current state (e.g., a bird's-eye view of a SLAM reconstruction). Instead, we show that it can be advantageous to learn with dense action representations defined in the same domain as the state. In this work, we present "spatial action maps," in which the set of possible actions is represented by a pixel map (aligned with the input image of the current state), where each pixel represents a local navigational endpoint at the corresponding scene location. Using ConvNets to infer spatial action maps from state images, action predictions are thereby spatially anchored on local visual features in the scene, enabling significantly faster learning of complex behaviors for mobile manipulation tasks with reinforcement learning. In our experiments, we task a robot with pushing objects to a goal location, and find that policies learned with spatial action maps achieve much better performance than traditional alternatives., Comment: To appear at Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2020. Project page: https://spatial-action-maps.cs.princeton.edu

Although higher serum level of cystatin C (CysC) was observed in patients with cerebral microbleeds, its associated role in the disease has not been elucidated. In this work, a rat model of cerebral microbleeds was created with the aim of investigating effects of CysC on cognitive function in rats with cerebral microbleeds and the underlying mechanism. Serum samples of patients with cerebral microbleeds and healthy people of the same age were collected. Levels of cystatin C expression in these samples were measured using CysC kits. Moreover, 48 spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) bred under specific pathogen-free (SPF) conditions were randomly divided into 4 groups: sham surgery control group (sham), model group (CMB), model + empty vector control group (CMB + vehicle), and model + cystatin C overexpression group (CMB + CysC). Expression levels of CysC in hippocampus of rats in each group were measured by western blot analysis. The Y-maze was used to evaluate cognitive function of rats. Hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) in rats was assessed by the electrophysiological assay. Alterations in levels of p-ERK1/2 and p-synapsin Ia/b proteins associated with cognitive function were identified by western blot analysis. The serum levels of CysC in patients with cerebral microbleeds were significantly upregulated (P

Tubeimoside-1 (TBMS1), a triterpenoid saponin isolated from the tuber of Bolbostemma paniculatum (Maxim) Franquet, serves an universal suppressive role in multiple cancer types, including lung cancer. However, the mechanism involved in non‑small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells by which TBMS1 elicits its antitumor effects is not yet comple-tely understood. The present study indicated that 10 µmol/l TBMS1 significantly enhanced apoptosis and notably blocked the migration and invasion of NCI‑H1299 cells. These effects were reversed following transfection with miR‑126‑5p inhi-bitor into TBMS1‑treated NCI‑H1299 cells. Vascular endo-thelial growth factor-A (VEGF‑A) is a target gene for miR‑126‑5p. Notably, results suggested that the downregulated VEGF‑A and VEGFR‑2 in TBMS1‑treated NCI‑H1299 cells were upregulated after inhibiting miR‑126‑5p, and overexpression of VEGF‑A or VEGFR‑2 could significantly reduce apoptosis and promote the migration and invasion of TBMS1‑treated NCI‑H1299 cells. Furthermore, TBMS1 combined with TBHQ (an ERK activator) dramatically suppressed TBMS1‑induced apoptosis and stimulated TBMS1‑reduced migration and invasion in NCI‑H1299 cells, suggesting that TBMS1 inhibits the ERK signaling pathway and represses the growth and metastasis of NCI‑H1299 cells. Further study demonstrated that either inhibiting miR‑126‑5p or overexpressing VEGF‑A and VEGFR‑2 in TBMS1‑treated NCI‑H1299 cells elevated the mRNA expression levels and phosphorylation levels of MEK1, as well as ERK. To conclude, TBMS1 increases miR‑126‑5p expression, whereas overexpressing miR‑126‑5p inactivates VEGF‑A/VEGFR‑2/ERK signaling pathway, which ultimately actuates the pro‑apoptotic and anti‑metastatic effects in NCI‑H1299 cells. Therefore, the present findings provide a theoretical foundation for TBMS1 as a potential candidate in NSCLC treatment.

Chromia/alumina (Cr2O3/γ-Al2O3) catalysts with addition of chelating agents (citric acid or oxalic acid) were prepared by the incipient impregnation method. The resulting catalysts with different citric acid (CA) or oxalic acid (OA) contents were applied to the dehydrogenation of isobutane to isobutene. The influence of chelating agents on the catalysts was investigated by means of BET, SEM, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD, and TG-DTG. The results showed that the Cr2O3/γ-Al2O3 catalysts with addition of CA or OA exerted slightly increase on specific surface area. The addition of the chelating agents as expected, determined a general decrease in the surface acidity. The catalysts with CA or OA have a better anti-coking ability by inhibiting the side reaction of cracking and carbon formation. The addition of CA or OA for preparing these catalysts resulted in a beneficial effect on the reducibility of the Cr species to diminish the reduction temperature. The appropriate content of chelating agents could improve dispersion of metal species in the γ-Al2O3 support. The catalytic activity showed an important enhancement when the metal species was impregnated in the presence of CA or OA.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that microRNA-137 (miR-137) plays a vital role in the induction of oxidative stress of neurons in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Herein, the study aimed to investigate the effects of serum exosomal miR-137 on oxidative stress injury of neurons in PD. Microarray analysis was adopted to screen the PD-related differential expressed genes and predict the interaction between OXR1 and miR-137 in PD. It was found that OXR1 was down-regulated while miR-137 was up-regulated in PD. Additionally, miR-137 targeted OXR1 and negatively regulated its expression. Mouse and neuron models of PD were established to mimic the pathological changes, especially oxidative stress injury induced by PD. The significance of miR-137 and OXR1 in oxidative stress injury was investigated in neuron model of PD using gain- and loss-of-function approaches. The obtained data exhibited that inhibition of miR-137 or up-regulation of OXR1 ameliorated PD-induced oxidative stress injury, reduced pole-climbing time, but increased score for traction test as well as promoted viability and decreased apoptosis of neurons in PD model, accompanied with decreased MDA content and ROS levels, and increased SOD levels. Furthermore, PD mice were injected with serum-derived exosomes or neurons in PD models were exposed to exosomes derived from serum of PD mice. Loss-of-function experiments using miR-137 antagomir exhibited that inhibition of exosomal miR-137 ameliorated PD-induced oxidative stress injury in vitro, reduced pole-climbing time but increased score for traction test in vivo. Collectively, down-regulation of exosomal miR-137 alleviates oxidative stress injury in PD by up-regulating OXR1.

// Guofeng Li 1, * , Xingyuan Sun 2, * , Dalong Zhao 3 , Lan He 4 , Lihong Zheng 5 , Jing Xue 6 , Bin Wang 7 , Hongming Pan 8 1 Department of Human Anatomy, School of Basic Medicine, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 2 Department of Neurology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 3 Clinical Laboratory, Qiqihar Jianhua Hospital, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 4 Department of Advanced Mathematics, School of Basic Medicine, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 5 Department of Biogenetics, School of Basic Medicine, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 6 Department of Immunology, School of Medical Technolog, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 7 Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medicine, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China 8 Department of Biochemistry, School of Basic Medicine, Qiqihar Medical University, Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hongming Pan, email: hongmingpan0452@yeah.net or Bin Wang, email: wangbinqqhr@163.com Keywords: essential hypertension, blood pressure, apelin/APJ system, polymorphism, association Received: October 07, 2016 Accepted: November 07, 2016 Published: November 15, 2016 ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to interrogate the gender-specific association of 5 well-defined polymorphisms in apelin/APJ system with both blood pressure changes and hypertension risk in a northeastern Chinese population. This is a population-based case-control study, including 650 hypertensive patients and 645 normotensive controls. Data were analyzed by STATA and Haplo.Stats. The genotype distributions of 5 study polymorphisms were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in both genders. The rs7119375 and rs10501367 were completely linked. The genotypes ( P = 0.001) and alleles ( P < 0.001) of rs7119375 differed significantly between patients and controls in women. Carriers of rs7119375-AA genotype had significant higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) than carriers of rs7119375-GG genotype in both patients and controls of female gender ( P < 0.01). Moreover, carriers of rs7119375-A allele were 1.80 times more likely to develop hypertension relative to carriers of rs7119375-GG genotype after adjusting for age, body mass index and glucose (odds ratio: 1.80; 95% confidence interval: 1.03–3.16; P = 0.040). Further allele combination analysis supported the leading contribution of rs7119375 to hypertension risk. Our findings demonstrated that the mutation of promoter polymorphism rs7119375 in APJ gene was significantly associated with elevated SBP and increased hypertension risk in Chinese women.

Hypoxia-induced apoptosis-related mechanisms involved in the brain damage following cerebral ischemia injury. A subset of the small noncoding microRNA (miRNAs) is regulated by tissue oxygen levels, and miR-24 was found to be activated by hypoxic conditions. However, the roles of miR-24 and its target gene in neuron are not well understood. Here, we validated miRNA-24 is down-regulated in patients with cerebral infarction. Hypoxia suppressed the expression of miR-24, but increased the expression of neurocan in both mRNA and protein levels in SH-SY5Y cells. MiR-24 mimics reduced the expression of neurocan, suppressed cell apoptosis, induced cell cycle progression and cell proliferation in SH-SY5Y cells under hypoxia. By luciferase reporter assay, neurocan is validated a direct target gene of miR-24. Furthermore, knockdown of neurocan suppressed cell apoptosis, induced cell cycle progression and cell proliferation in SH-SY5Y cells under hypoxia. Taken together, miR-24 overexpression or silencing of neurocan shows an antihypoxic effect in SH-SY5Y cells. Therefore, miR-24 and neurocan play critical roles in neuron cell apoptosis and are potential therapeutic targets for ischemic brain disease.

Tubeimoside-1 (TBMS1) possesses broad anticancer activities, including the cytostatic and anti-angiogenesis effects in lung cancer. However, the effect of TBMS1 on the metastasis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells and the potential underlying mechanism remain unclear. In the present study, a cell counting kit-8 assay revealed that TBMS1 suppressed the proliferation of NCI-H1299 cells significantly, particularly following 48 h of treatment. Further studies showed that TBMS1 notably enhanced the apoptosis, and inhibited the migration and invasion of NCI-H1299 cells upon treatment for 48 h. A total of 14 NSCLC tissues and 14 normal adjacent tissues were collected, reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed decreased expression of microRNA (miR)-126-5p in NSCLC tissues compared with adjacent NSCLC tissues, which was reversed following TBMS1 administration in NCI-H1299 cells. The overexpression of miR-126-5p induced by TBMS1 was demonstrated to target and downregulate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A. Simultaneously, the expression of VEGF-R2 was reduced notably, along with a significant declined in the phosphorylation levels of dual specificity mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 1 and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)1/2. Overall, the aforementioned results indicated that TBMS1 inhibited the proliferation and metastasis, and promoted the apoptosis of NCI-H1299 cells, which may be mediated by overexpressing miR-126-5p, which inactivates the VEGF-A/VEGFR2/ERK signaling pathway. Therefore, TBMS1 may be a promising drug for prevention and treatment of NSCLC.

We study 3D shape modeling from a single image and make contributions to it in three aspects. First, we present Pix3D, a large-scale benchmark of diverse image-shape pairs with pixel-level 2D-3D alignment. Pix3D has wide applications in shape-related tasks including reconstruction, retrieval, viewpoint estimation, etc. Building such a large-scale dataset, however, is highly challenging; existing datasets either contain only synthetic data, or lack precise alignment between 2D images and 3D shapes, or only have a small number of images. Second, we calibrate the evaluation criteria for 3D shape reconstruction through behavioral studies, and use them to objectively and systematically benchmark cutting-edge reconstruction algorithms on Pix3D. Third, we design a novel model that simultaneously performs 3D reconstruction and pose estimation; our multi-task learning approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on both tasks., Comment: CVPR 2018. The first two authors contributed equally to this work. Project page: http://pix3d.csail.mit.edu

Hierarchical SSZ-13 microspheres, with abundant mesoporous channels, have been successfully synthesized by addition of calcined SSZ-13 crystals in the starting gel in the absence of any organic templates. This strategy not only remarkably reduces the production cost and environmental pollution, but also significantly decreases the crystallization time as well as evidently reducing the zeolite crystal sizes in many cases. The synthesized sample was characterized by XRD, BET, ICP, SEM, TEM, TG, and NH3 -TPD, which indicates that the organic template free synthesized SSZ-13 exhibits high crystallinity, textural properties, and acidity. Moreover, the synthesized hierarchical SSZ-13 catalyst shows outstanding performance in the methanol-to-olefin (MTO) reaction, with slightly higher ethylene plus propylene selectivity and prolonged catalyst lifetime as compared to the templated SSZ-13 catalyst.

Purpose: To investigate the prognostic value of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and to predict the treatment response in a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).Methodology: A single-center prospective study involving 93 patients with NSCLC was conducted. Blood samples were analyzed for CTC count before and after chemotherapy. Clinical relevance of CTCs with patient`s characteristics and treatment response were determined.Results: Higher levels of CTCs were associated with severe stage of NSCLC (p = 0.003), tumor histology (p = 0.014) and metastases (p = 0.013). Significant difference in CTC count was observed in favorable (CTCs < 5) and unfavorable (CTCs ≥ 5) groups. Progression-free survival (PFS) was 5.8 months (range: 5.32 to 6.43) and 2.2 months (range: 1.85 to 3.01) in the favorable and unfavorable groups, respectively (HR: 3.88, 95% CI, p < 0.001). Similarly, overall survival (OS) was 7.3 months (95% CI, 6.51 to 7.92) and 3.9 months (95% CI, 1.99 to 5.13), respectively (HR: 4.8, 95% CI, p < 0.001). Multivariate regression analysis revealed CTCs as strong predictors of OS and PFS. Significant reduction (p < 0.001) in CTC count was also observed after one cycle of chemotherapy.Conclusion: Patients with low CTC count live longer and remain progression-free for a longer period of time than those with high CTC count. High CTCs can be detected in severe forms of lung cancer and can be used as a valid prognostic marker. However, this assertion requires validation in larger prospective clinical cohorts.Keywords: Circulating tumor cells, Non-small cell lung cancer, Circulating tumor cell, Prognosis

S-licarbazepine was synthesized by asymmetric reduction of oxcarbazepine with CGMCC No. 2266. The optimum batch reduction conditions were found to consist of a reaction time of 36 h, temperature of 30 °C, and initial pH value of 7.0. The optimum concentration of the glucose co-substrate was found to be 0.3 mol L −1 . The addition of glucose contributed to in situ regeneration of NADPH in cells and improved conversion. Conversion increased with the addition of more biomass and with a decrease in the initial concentration of substrate. Within the membrane reactor, a continuous reduction process was used to improve production efficiency and reduce the inhibition of high-concentration substrate upon reduction. The optimum flux was found to be 20 ml h −1 . S-licarbazepine yield was 3.7678 mmol L −1 d −1 in continuous reduction over four days. The enantiometric excess of S-licarbazepine was 100% for both batch and continuous reduction processes.