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Thyroid cancer is considered to be one of the most common endocrine tumors worldwide. Cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) plays a crucial role in the occurrence of several types of malignancies. And yet, the mechanism of action of CBS in the growth of thyroid carcinoma cells is still unrevealed. We found that CBS level in thyroid carcinoma tissue was higher than that in adjacent normal tissue. The overexpression of CBS enhanced the proliferation, migration, and invasion of thyroid cancer cells, while the downregulation of CBS exerted reverse effects. CBS overexpression reduced the levels of cleaved caspase-3 and cleaved poly ADP-ribose polymerase in thyroid cancer cells, whereas CBS knockdown showed reverse trends. CBS overexpression decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels but increased the levels of Wnt3a and phosphorylations of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), protein kinase B (PKB/AKT), mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), β-catenin, and glycogen synthase kinase-3 beta, while CBS knockdown exerted opposite effects. In addition, CBS overexpression promoted the growth of xenografted thyroid carcinoma, whereas CBS knockdown decreased the tumor growth by modulating angiogenesis, cell cycle, and apoptosis. Furthermore, aminooxyacetic acid (an inhibitor of CBS) dose-dependently inhibited thyroid carcinoma cell growth. CBS can regulate the proliferation, migration, and invasion of human thyroid cancer cells via ROS-mediated PI3K/AKT/mTOR and Wnt/β-catenin pathways. CBS can be a potential biomarker for diagnosing or prognosing thyroid carcinoma. Novel donors that inhibit the expression of CBS can be developed in the treatment of thyroid carcinoma.

Mpox (MPX), a zoonotic infection reported as early as 1970, is a double-stranded DNA virus, Mpox virus (MPXV), belonging to the genus Orthopoxvirus. MPX, a virus closely related to smallpox, was once considered a geographically restricted infection because it was predominantly endemic in West and Central Africa, except for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). However, in May 2022, a rare case of MPX was diagnosed in the UK. As of February 25, 2023, 86,127 confirmed cases and 97 deaths have been reported globally. It spreads through close contact with an infected person, infected animal, or an object which an infected person has touched. Although most people infected with MPXV may present with mild symptoms and will recover fully within a few weeks, people can have serious diseases and complications and may need to be hospitalized with it. Although smallpox vaccines and antiviral drugs are also effective against MPX, there is still no specific vaccine or drug for MPXV infection. Therefore, we need to take the right attitude and measures to stop the MPXV outbreak. In this review, we summarize the characteristics, mechanisms, immunology, and transmission of MPXV, as well as current vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments used for MPX, and provide clues for controlling MPX outbreaks and preventing such diseases.

Introduction: With the improvement of prenatal ultrasound, MR and other examination techniques, more and more hiatal hernia has been diagnosed in the neonatal period. At present, surgical indications and surgical opportunities of patients with hiatal hernia are still controversial. Through analyzing the clinical data for 11 neonates with esophageal hiatal hernia diagnosed prenatally and treated with laparoscopic hiatal hernia repair in Affiliated Children’s Hospital, this paper analyzed the laparoscopic surgical treatment and postoperative recovery of these 11 cases, explored the clinical efficacy of laparoscopic esophageal hernia repair for the esophageal hiatal hernia by ultrasonographic diagnosed prenatally, and provided clinical basis for the safety of laparoscopic surgery for prenatal diagnosed hiatal hernia in the neonatal period. Methods: This paper retrospectively analyzed the clinical data for 11 neonates (7 males and 4 females) with esophageal hiatal hernia diagnosed prenatally and treated with laparoscopic hiatal hernia repair in Affiliated Children’s Hospital of Capital Institute of Pediatrics from May 2015 to January 2022. The age at operation was 2-94 days old, with a median of 4 days old. The body weight was (2.82 ± 0.51) kg. Preoperative chest CT and upper gastrointestinal radiography were performed to confirm the diagnosis of esophageal hiatal hernia. All the 11 children underwent laparoscopic four-hole repair of esophageal hiatal hernia and fundoplication, including 9 cases of Nissen procedure and 2 cases of Thal procedure. Results: All the 11 operations were performed under laparoscopy without conversion to laparotomy. The operation time of 9 cases of Nissen procedure was (173.0 ± 43.8) mins, and that of Thal procedure was 184 mins and 206 mins, respectively. The time to postoperative diet was (2.54 ± 1.21) days. The hospital stay was (14.09 ± 4.13) days. The 11 neonates were followed up for 7-74 months, with a median of 28 months. No postoperative recurrence of esophageal hiatal hernia occurred. There was no significant difference in height and weight between children of the same age. No obvious vomiting or choking with milk was found. Conclusion: Prenatal diagnosis of hiatal hernia is of great significance for identifying the types of children as soon as possible after birth, determining treatment plan, and preventing recurrent vomiting, pneumonia, growth retardation and other complications. In order to avoid gastric torsion and incarceration, laparoscopic surgery in the neonatal period is safe and reliable for the treatment of prenatal diagnosed hiatal hernia.

Green Pea galaxies are compact galaxies with high star formation rates. However, limited samples of Green Pea galaxies have HI 21 cm measurements. Whether the HI gas fraction f_{HI} = M_{HI}/M_{*} of Green Pea galaxies follows the existing scaling relations between the f_{HI} and NUV-r color or linear combinations of color and other physical quantities needs checking. Using archival data of HI 21cm observations, we investigate the scaling relation of the NUV-r color with the M_{HI}/M_{*} of 38 Green Pea galaxies, including 17 detections and 21 non-detections. The HI to stellar mass ratios (f_{HI}) of Green Pea galaxies deviate from the polynomial form, where a higher HI gas fraction is predicted given the current NUV-r color, even with the emission lines removed. The blue sources (NUV-r, 15 pages, 7 figures, to be published in RAA

The role of hydrogen sulphide (H

Background Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an epithelia-derived malignancy with a distinctive geographic distribution. Cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE) is involved in cancer development and progression. Nevertheless, the role of CSE in the growth of NPC is unknown. Results In this study, we found that CSE levels in human NPC cells were higher than those in normal nasopharyngeal cells. CSE overexpression enhanced the proliferative, migrative, and invasive abilities of NPC cells and CSE downregulation exerted reverse effects. Overexpression of CSE decreased the expressions of cytochrome C, cleaved caspase (cas)-3, cleaved cas-9, and cleaved poly-ADP-ribose polymerase, whereas CSE knockdown exhibited reverse effects. CSE overexpression decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and the expressions of phospho (p)-extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase 1/2, p-c-Jun N-terminal kinase, and p-p38, but promoted the expressions of p-phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), p-AKT, and p-mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), whereas CSE knockdown showed oppose effects. In addition, CSE overexpression promoted NPC xenograft tumor growth and CSE knockdown decreased tumor growth by modulating proliferation, angiogenesis, cell cycle, and apoptosis. Furthermore, DL-propargylglycine (an inhibitor of CSE) dose-dependently inhibited NPC cell growth via ROS-mediated mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathways without significant toxicity. Conclusions: In conclusion, CSE could regulate the growth of NPC cells through ROS-mediated MAPK and PI3K/AKT/mTOR cascades. CSE might be a novel tumor marker for the diagnosis and prognosis of NPC. Novel donors/drugs that inhibit the expression/activity of CSE can be developed in the treatment of NPC.

The paper aims at the higher reactive power management complexity caused by the access of distributed power, and the problem such as large data exchange capacity, low accuracy of reactive power distribution, a slow convergence rate, and so on, may appear when the controlled objects are large. This paper proposes a reactive power and voltage control management strategy based on virtual reactance cloud control. The coupling between active power and reactive power in the system is effectively eliminated through the virtual reactance. At the same time, huge amounts of data are treated to parallel processing by using the cloud computing model parallel distributed processing, realize the uncertainty transformation between qualitative concept and quantitative value. The power distribution matrix is formed according to graph theory, and the accurate allocation of reactive power is realized by applying the cloud control model. Finally, the validity and rationality of this method are verified by testing a practical node system through simulation.

Thyroid cancer is considered to be one of the most common endocrine tumors worldwide. Cystathionine

A superior sectioning sample preparation protocol is the basic guarantee for maintaining data reliability in MALDI-TOF-MSI analysis. Despite significant advances in sample preparation, visualization of lipids in hard and dry cereals remains difficult due to their inherent physicochemical properties. Thus, a cryosections preparation method was designed via poly-l-lysine soaking, conductive tape adhesion and embedding medium fixation, which preserved the spatial integrity of lipids in cereals without causing analyte delocalization and obvious background interference. Higher signal intensity and clearer imaging of lipids in rice, wheat and barley (Qingke) were obtained using the established sample preparation method. Moreover, the spatial distribution of lipids was visualized in rice with different storage years, which found that the phosphatidylinositols (PIs) and phosphatidylglycerols (PGs) could be used for evaluation of rice aging degree. Our study provided molecular level guidance for further discussion of rice aging mechanism, rice quality evaluation and safety monitoring.

To date, little attempt has been made to develop new treatments for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), although the community is aware of the shortage of treatments for H. pylori. In this study, we developed a 192-tandem-microwell-based high-throughput assay for ammonia that is a known virulence factor of H. pylori and a product of urease. We could identify few drugs, that is, panobinostat, dacinostat, ebselen, captan, and disulfiram, to potently inhibit the activity of ureases from bacterial or plant species. These inhibitors suppress the activity of urease via substrate-competitive or covalent-allosteric mechanism, but all except captan prevent the antibiotic-resistant H. pylori strain from killing human gastric cells, with a more pronounced effect than acetohydroxamic acid, a well-known urease inhibitor and clinically used drug for the treatment of bacterial infection. This study offers several bases for the development of new treatments for urease-containing pathogens and to study the mechanism responsible for the regulation of urease activity.

We revealed the potential biomarker and pathway of gelanxinning capsule on rat model with coronary heart disease, which aims to clarify holistic therapeutic effect and predict quality-markers of gelanxinning capsule. Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry based on metabolomics technique was used to find the biomarkers and related metabolic pathways of coronary heart disease model, which evaluates the intervention effect of gelanxinning capsule. Using serum pharmacochemistry of traditional Chinese medicine and Pearson correlation analysis, effective ingredients in serum is analyzed to characterize the activity of gelanxinning capsule on coronary heart disease under valid state. A total of 20 biomarkers from coronary heart disease were identified and 12 of them were regulated by gelanxinning capsule treatment, which is mainly involved in sphingolipid metabolism and glycerophospholipid metabolism. With the high sensitivity liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry technology, a total of 46 compounds from gelanxinning capsule were identified in vitro and 25 of them were absorbed in blood. The correlation analysis of serum biomarkers and absorbed components was used to find 11 compounds as quality-markers to be responsible for the efficacy of gelanxinning capsule. This strategy was successfully applied to screening of potential mechanism and quality-markers from herbal medicine.

BackgroundChronic cough is a common complaint which affects a large number of patients worldwide. Increased cough sensitivity is a very important cause of chronic persistent cough. However, there are limited clinical diagnosis and treatment for increased cough sensitivity. Transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 (TRPVl) is a member of the transient receptor potential (TRP) family of channels which is very closely associated with respiratory diseases. However, the mechanism through which TRPV1 that influences downstream events is still poorly understood.ResultsCapsaicin induced increase in cough sensitivity by upregulating the protein level of TRPV1, leading to the secretions of Substance P and neurokinin A which stimulated neurogenic inflammation. However, sinomenine, a component of traditional Chinese medicine, significantly attenuated the capsaicin-induced cough by inhibiting the expression of TRPV1 in guinea pigs. In addition, capsaicin increased the expression of SOX5 which mediated the transcriptional upregulation of TRPV1. However, pretreatment with sinomenine reduced the expression of SOX5.ConclusionThese results indicate that capsaicin induced increase in cough sensitivity by activating neurogenic inflammation, while sinomenine attenuated the increase in cough sensitivity by inhibiting the expressions of SOX5 and TRPV1 in guinea pigs. This finding may provide a novel target for the treatment of aggravated cough sensitivity.

Yan-Xia Zhang, Ji-Ping Xue, Hui-Zhan Li, Jun-Wang Miao, Chun-Song Kang Department of Ultrasonography, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Taiyuan, 030032, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Chun-Song KangDepartment of Ultrasonography, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Taiyuan, 030032, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86-13834518776Email kcsdr_09sea@163.comObjective: To evaluate the clinical value of qualitative shear wave elastography (SWE) color in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules.Methods: From January 2017 to July 2018, 241 patients with 261 thyroid nodules, who underwent conventional ultrasonography and SWE examination before surgical resection, were enrolled. The nodules were also evaluated by histopathologic analyses. The SWE color characteristics that could differentiate malignant and benign thyroid nodules were selected and scored based on the malignancy rate. The diagnostic performances were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves analysis.Results: Among the 261 thyroid nodules, 58 were benign, and 203 were malignant. Malignancy was associated with orange or red as the color of maximum hardness inside a nodule, green as the primary color, with a “stiff rim,” inhomogeneous internal color, and inhomogeneous color between the nodules and its surrounding areas. The SWE color scores for benign thyroid nodules were mainly 0 and 1, while 4 and 5 were for malignant thyroid nodules. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of the SWE color score ≥ 3 for the diagnosis of malignant thyroid nodules was 0.828 (95% CI: 0.764, 0.891) with a sensitivity of 82.8%, a specificity of 82.8%, and an accuracy of 83.1%. Additionally, conventional ultrasound combined with SWE color scores had a higher diagnostic performance than conventional ultrasound (AUC 0.820 vs AUC 0.796, P = 0.04).Conclusion: The SWE color scores might be a convenient and effective method to assist in differentiating thyroid nodules.Keywords: thyroid nodules, ultrasound, shear wave elastography, color characteristic

Cable domes achieve structural stiffness and loading capacity through tension cables and compression struts. Friction from cable-strut joints contributes a major prestress loss during tensioning. This paper presents a novel hemispheric rolling cable-strut joint which provides smooth load transmission and high prestress efficiency. It comprises a hemispheric cover plate, a bottom plate, a roller, and top and bottom bearings. The bearings embedded in the roller reduce friction transmission from the tensioned cable; thus, prestress loss is minimized. A theoretical analysis of load transmission and prestress loss is conducted for the cable-strut joint, followed by an experimental study. The experiments test cable-strut joints with different types of bearings, using a fixed-roller joint as a reference, and are shown to validate the theoretical approach. A potential method to improve the prestress efficiency during tensioning is discussed. Prestress loss rates are compared for the test joints and an optimum bearing type is recommended in consideration of both friction coefficients and service time. The hemispheric rolling cable-strut joint accommodates complex cable and strut configurations with clear load path and minimal prestress loss. Our results show that it provides a high-performance solution that can be used to improve the structural stability and stiffness of next generation long-span spatial structures.

High-throughputl ipidomics technology was used to explore the potential therapeutic targets and mechanism of gelanxinning capsule on rat model with coronary heart disease, which attempt to provide a novel method to interpret the molecule mechanism of traditional medicine. The lipid markers of coronary heart disease were determined in full-scan analysis based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography-high-definition mass spectrometry. Then, the metabolic changes associated with gelanxinning capsule treatment via the modulation of lipid biomarkers and pathway in rats was characterized. After gelanxinning treatment, the metabolic profile tends to recover compared with the model group. A total of twenty-six potential biomarkers was identified to represent the disorders of lipid metabolism in coronary heart disease animal model, which nineteen of them were regulated by gelanxinning capsule administration, and fourmetabolic pathways includingglycerophospholipid metabolism, sphingolipid metabolism, glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchor biosynthesis and glycerolipid metabolism were involved. From the pathway analysis, it was found that glycerophospholipid metabolism and sphingolipid metabolism with significant differences have potential to be regarded as new targets for the treatment of coronary heart disease. Gelanxinning capsule protects against coronary heart diseasewith good therapeutic effect by regulating lipid biomarkers and pathway from lipidomics-guided biochemical analysis.

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has long been considered as a toxic gas, but as research progressed, the idea has been updated and it has now been shown to have potent protective effects at reasonable concentrations. H2S is an endogenous gas signaling molecule in mammals and is produced by specific enzymes in different cell types. An increasing number of studies indicate that H2S plays an important role in cardiovascular homeostasis, and in most cases, H2S has been reported to be downregulated in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Similarly, in preclinical studies, H2S has been shown to prevent CVDs and improve heart function after heart failure. Recently, many H2S donors have been synthesized and tested in cellular and animal models. Moreover, numerous molecular mechanisms have been proposed to demonstrate the effects of these donors. In this review, we will provide an update on the role of H2S in cardiovascular activities and its involvement in pathological states, with a special focus on the roles of exogenous H2S in cardiac protection.

To date, little attempt has been made to develop new treatments for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), although the community is aware of the shortage of treatments for H. pylori. In this study, we developed a 192-tandem-microwell-based high-throughput-assay for ammonia that is a known virulence factor of H. pylori and a product of urease. We could identify few drugs, i.e. panobinostat, dacinostat, ebselen, captan and disulfiram, to potently inhibit the activity of ureases from bacterial or plant species. These inhibitors suppress the activity of urease via substrate-competitive or covalent-allosteric mechanism, but all except captan prevent the antibiotic-resistant H. pylori strain from infecting human gastric cells, with a more pronounced effect than acetohydroxamic acid, a well-known urease inhibitor and clinically used drug for the treatment of bacterial infection. This study offers several bases for the development of new treatments for urease-containing pathogens and to study the mechanism responsible for the regulation of urease activity.

To investigate the effectiveness of shear-wave elastography (SWE) based on e-health in diagnosing liver fibrosis in patients infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and provide theoretical basis for early diagnosis and treatment of patients with chronic HBV infection, in this study, 73 patients with chronic HBV infection who underwent e-health SWE examination were divided into chronic hepatitis B group (51 cases) and hepatitis B cirrhosis group (22 cases), and another 20 healthy volunteers were introduced as control. The contents of second liver two half-and-half, hyaluronic acid (HA) of liver fibrosis, laminin (LN), pAUVollagen III N terminal peptide (PIII NP), collage type IV (CIV), and HBV-DNA were detected. SWE was used to measure the elastic modulus in the S2 and S3 segments of the left outer lobe of the liver, S4 segment of the left inner lobe of the liver, S5 and S8 segments of the right anterior lobe of the liver, and S6 and S7 segments of the right posterior lobe of the liver. Finally, the correlations between the four examination results of liver fibrosis and the elastic modulus values were compared, and the receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) for SWE technical diagnosis was drawn. The results showed that there was no significant difference in HBV-DNA content between the two groups ( P > 0.05 ); the contents of alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in the blood of chronic hepatitis B group were significantly higher than those in the liver cirrhosis group ( P < 0.05 ); HA, PIII NP, and CIV contents were significantly lower than the liver cirrhosis group ( P < 0.05 ); the success rates of SWE detection in S5 and S6 segments of the two groups were 100.00%, and the elastic modulus of the hepatitis B cirrhosis group was significantly higher than that of the chronic hepatitis B group ( P < 0.05 ); correlation results showed HA, PIII NP, and CIV of two groups of patients and elastic modulus value in S5 and S6 segments showed positive correlation ( P < 0.05 ); ROC curve analysis showed that AUC (area under the curve) was 0.866, the sensitivity was 89.59%, and the specificity was 76.49%, which indicated that the liver elastic modulus value measured by e-health SWE technology can quantitatively show liver fibrosis in patients with chronic HBV infection, and its application in the diagnosis of clinical liver fibrosis was real and feasible.

Spectrum denoising is an important procedure for large-scale spectroscopical surveys. This work proposes a novel stellar spectrum denoising method based on deep Bayesian modeling. The construction of our model includes a prior distribution for each stellar subclass, a spectrum generator and a flow-based noise model. Our method takes into account the noise correlation structure, and it is not susceptible to strong sky emission lines and cosmic rays. Moreover, it is able to naturally handle spectra with missing flux values without ad-hoc imputation. The proposed method is evaluated on real stellar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with a comprehensive list of common stellar subclasses and compared to the standard denoising auto-encoder. Our denoising method demonstrates superior performance to the standard denoising auto-encoder, in respect of denoising quality and missing flux imputation. It may be potentially helpful in improving the accuracy of the classification and physical parameter measurement of stars when applying our method during data preprocessing., Comment: 20 pages, 15 Figures, accepted by Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Transient features of graphene oxide (GO), graphene oxide nanoribbon (GOR) and graphene quantum dot (GQD) have been investigated by femtosecond transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy. It is found that for pristine GO and HNO3-/NaOH-treated GO, a hybrid sp2/sp3 state at about 430 nm (∼2.88 eV) always appears. However, this hybrid state becomes less apparent in GOR, and completely disappears in GQD. It indicates that there are absolutely different electronic structures in GO, GOR and GQD. Furthermore, compared with pristine GO and GQD, GOR presents a faster decay for carrier dynamics. This could be attributed to the relatively weak interaction between the sp2 domains and sp3 matrix in GOR, which facilitates the carrier recombination.

We conducted an omics-analysis of the venom of Naja kaouthia from China. Proteomics analysis revealed six protein families [three-finger toxins (3-FTx), phospholipase A2 (PLA2), nerve growth factor, snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMP), cysteine-rich secretory protein and ohanin], and venom-gland transcriptomics analysis revealed 28 protein families from 79 unigenes. 3-FTx (56.5% in proteome/82.0% in transcriptome) and PLA2 (26.9%/13.6%) were identified as the most abundant families in venom proteome and venom-gland transcriptome. Furthermore, N. kaouthia venom expressed strong lethality (i.p. LD50: 0.79 μg/g) and myotoxicity (CK: 5939 U/l) in mice, and showed notable activity in PLA2 but weak activity in SVMP, l -amino acid oxidase or 5′ nucleotidase. Antivenomic assessment revealed that several venom components (nearly 17.5% of total venom) from N. kaouthia could not be thoroughly immunocaptured by commercial Naja atra antivenom. ELISA analysis revealed that there was no difference in the cross-reaction between N. kaouthia and N. atra venoms against the N. atra antivenom. The use of commercial N. atra antivenom in treatment of snakebites caused by N. kaouthia is reasonable, but design of novel antivenom with the attention on enhancing the immune response of non-immunocaptured components should be encouraged. Biological significance The venomics, antivenomics and venom-gland transcriptome of the monocoled cobra (Naja kaouthia) from China have been elucidated. Quantitative and qualitative differences are evident when venom proteomic and venom-gland transcriptomic profiles are compared. Two protein families (3-FTx and PLA2) are found to be the predominated components in N. kaouthia venom, and considered as the major players in functional role of venom. Other protein families with relatively low abundance appear to be minor in the functional significance. Antivenomics and ELISA evaluation reveal that the N. kaouthia venom can be effectively immunorecognized by commercial N. atra antivenom, but still a small number of venom components could not be thoroughly immunocaptured. The findings indicate that exploring the precise composition of snake venom should be executed by an integrated omics-approach, and elucidating the venom composition is helpful in understanding composition-function relationships and will facilitate the clinical application of antivenoms.