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To overcome the shuttle effect and improve the energy density of Li–S batteries, developing free‐standing sulfur carriers with high capture and catalytic effect towards polysulfides is an effective strategy. Herein, a MXene/reduced graphene oxide/C3N4 aerogel (MG/C3N4) with three‐dimensional architecture prepared through low‐temperature hydrothermal approach followed by thermal treatment is used as sulfur carrier for free‐standing cathode of Li‐S batteries. In the MG/C3N4, MXene and rGO construct a highly conductive framework, and the MXene nanosheets offer chemical capture and catalytic activity towards lithium polysulfides, in favor of good cycling stability. The introduction of g‐C3N4 further enhances the reactivity of C‐Ti‐N at the hetero‐interface by engineering the electronic state of Ti atoms, leading to the optimized metal d‐band for expediting the multistep conversion of sulfur electrochemistry. Therefore, the free‐standing sulfur cathode with MG/C3N4 carrier achieves excellent performance with a capacity of 1315.6 mAh g−1 at 0.2 C and a capacity retention of 97.5% after 100 cycles as well as superior rate capability with 1167.4 mAh g−1 at 2 C. Even at a high sulfur loading of 4.92 mg cm−2, the cathode remains 940.3 mAh g−1 (4.62 mAh cm−2) after 200 cycles, indicating its promising potential for achieving high‐performance Li‐S batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing 2D/3D strategies still have limitations in human liver and tumor segmentation efficiency. Therefore, this paper proposes a 2.5D network combing cascaded context module (CCM) and Ladder Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (L-ASPP), named CCLNet, for automatic liver and tumor segmentation from CT. First, we utilize the 2.5D mode to improve the training efficiency; Second, we employ the ResNet-34 as the encoder to enhance the segmentation accuracy. Third, the L-ASPP module is used to enlarge the receptive field. Finally, the CCM captures more local and global feature information. We experimented on the LiTS17 and 3DIRCADb datasets. Experimental results prove that the method skillfully balances accuracy and cost, thus having good prospects in liver and liver segmentation in clinical assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improvement in volumetric performance is growing requirements for rechargeable batteries of lightweight and compact size. Flake graphite (FG) with thin lamellar structure realizes a satisfactory K‐ion storage performance, but its low packing density leads to poor volumetric capacity. Herein, this work fabricates an FG anode with improved packing density by hydrothermal treatment of the FG with graphene oxide and subsequent capillary evaporation‐induced drying process. A three‐dimensional flake graphite/reduced graphene oxide (FG/rGO) hydrogel is formed after hydrothermal treatment, which can be compressed during drying process via the capillary force generated by water evaporation, resulting in a compact structure with enhanced packing density. Compared to the pristine FG electrode (106.0 mAh cm−3), the FG/rGO‐82 anode realizes an ultrahigh volumetric capacity of 218.9 mAh cm−3 and good rate performance with a retained capacity of 152.3 mAh cm−3 at 2 C. Moreover, the FG/rGO‐82 exhibits excellent cycle stability with a capacity retention of 90.1% after 300 cycles. Even under a high mass loading of 7.4 mg cm−2, it still remains a volumetric capacity of 145.4 mAh cm−3 after 300 cycles at 1 C. The results prove that the capillary evaporation induced drying of hydrogel is an effective way to prepare electrode material with high volumetric capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appropriate regularization parameter specification is the linchpin for solving ill-posed inverse problems when regularization method is applied. This paper presents a novel technique to determine cut off singular values in the truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) methods. Simple formulae are presented to calculate the index number of the singular value, beyond which all the smaller singular values and the corresponding vectors are truncated. The determination method of optimal truncation threshold is firstly theoretically inferred. Two-dimensional inverse problems processing Radon transform are then exemplified. Formulae to solve the problem with insufficient image resolution and projection angle number are derived by the currently proposed method. The results show that accuracy of the current method is similar to that of TSVD but with much superior efficiency. On the other hand, insufficiency in input data affects the output accuracy of the inverse solution, a least square method can be engaged to establish formulae calculating the truncation threshold. For an insufficient set of input data, the percentage difference between inversely reconstructed signal and TSVD reconstructed signal is about 3%. The current formulae offer reliable and more efficient approach to calculate the truncation threshold when TSVD is applied to solve inverse problems with known system characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To overcome the shuttle effect and improve the energy density of Li-S batteries, developing free-standing sulfur carriers with high capture and catalytic effect towards polysulfides is an effective strategy. Herein, a MXene/reduced graphene oxide/C 3 N 4 aerogel (MG/C 3 N 4 ) with three-dimensional architecture prepared through low-temperature hydrothermal approach followed by thermal treatment is used as sulfur carrier for free-standing cathode of Li-S batteries. In the MG/C 3 N 4 , MXene and rGO construct a highly conductive framework, and the MXene nanosheets offer chemical capture and catalytic activity towards lithium polysulfides, in favor of good cycling stability. The introduction of g-C 3 N 4 further enhances the reactivity of C-Ti-N at the hetero-interface by engineering the electronic state of Ti atoms, leading to the optimized metal d-band for expediting the multistep conversion of sulfur electrochemistry. Therefore, the free-standing sulfur cathode with MG/C 3 N 4 carrier achieves excellent performance with a capacity of 1315.6 mAh g -1 at 0.2 C and a capacity retention of 97.5% after 100 cycles as well as superior rate capability with 1167.4 mAh g -1 at 2 C. Even at a high sulfur loading of 4.92 mg cm -2 , the cathode remains 940.3 mAh g -1 (4.62 mAh cm -2 ) after 200 cycles, indicating its promising potential for achieving high-performance Li-S batteries., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Objective: To evaluate the correlation between expression of p53, Livin, Excision repair cross-complementation group 1 (ERCC1), BRCA1 and Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP 1) in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) tissues with platinum-based chemotherapy and prognosis in patients who received either comprehensive surgical staging or cytoreductive surgery., Methods: The protein expressions level of five potential regulators involved in chemo-resistance, including p53, Livin, ERCC1, BRCA1 and PARP1 in EOC tissues from 66 patients were evaluated using immunohistochemistry method. We also measured preoperative CA125 level measured by an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) in all patients. Cox proportional hazard regression model was established to identify whether these proteins are associated with overall survival., Results: Chemo-resistance and poor overall survival were shown to be significantly related with positive expressions of p53, Livin, ERCC1, BRCA1 and PARP1. The evaluation of risk factors on the chemo-resistance showed that ERCC1 and BRCA1 are strong risk factors (OR: 21.12 and 21.61, all P < 0.01), while the positive expression of ERCC1, BRCA1 and PARP1 was significantly highly associated with the overall survival (HR: 3.9, 3.7 and 2.6, all P < 0.05, respectively). CA125 levels were significantly higher in patients with positive expression of P53, BRCA1, ERCC1 or Livin compared with those with negative expression (471:146, 667:260, 494:261 and 4589:89 U/ml, respectively, all P < 0.05)., Conclusions: The elevated expression levels of ERCC1 and BRCA1 were identified as significant risk factors for chemo-resistance in EOC. Reduced expression levels of ERCC1, BRCA1 and PARP1 were significantly associated with better overall survival. The CA125 levels were significantly higher in patients with EOC specimens that were positive of p53, BRCA1, ERCC1 and Livin., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To examine the association of coexistence of adenomyosis and endometrial carcinoma on tumor characteristics and survival outcome of patients., Methods: Clinical and pathological data were retrospectively reviewed from 1584 patients who underwent surgical treatment of endometrial carcinoma. Statistical analyses were performed to evaluate associations of the presence or absence of adenomyosis with demographics, clinical parameters, histopathological factors, and survival outcomes., Results: Adenomyosis was found in 150/1584 patients, and was significantly associated with premenopausal status (46% vs. 35.15%, P = 0.008), younger age (60.67% vs. 41.92% < 55 years old, P < 0.001), lower positive p53 expression (53.36% vs. 63.32%, P = 0.034), earlier disease stage (I-II) (92.67% vs. 85.56%, P = 0.016), lower grade of the tumors (1-2) (91.33% vs. 84.52%, P = 0.025), lower likelihood of outer-half myometrial invasion (10% vs. 22.25%, P < 0.001), and absence of pelvic lymph node metastasis (97.04% vs. 92.09%, P = 0.037). The presence of adenomyosis was also associated with better survival outcomes, with a higher 5-year survival rate (92.1% vs. 84.1%, P = 0.045). In multivariate analysis, age, BMI, stage/grade of tumors, and myometrial invasion were independent prognostic factors associated with survival outcomes., Conclusion: The presence of adenomyosis was associated with less aggressive behavior of endometrial cancer and is a protective factor associated with better outcomes of patients., Competing Interests: None., (IJCEP Copyright © 2018.)