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Background As a derivative of adipose tissues, stromal vascular fraction gel has been widely utilized in facial soft tissue filling, but it still does not achieve the expected effect in forehead filling. The reason may be related to the corrugator muscles movements. Objectives The authors aimed to evaluate the effect of botulinum toxin-A (BTX-A) on the retention rate of stromal vascular fraction gel by limiting the corrugator muscles movements and to provide a theoretical basis that short-term inhibition of movement in the affected area could improve the effects of the fat graft. Methods From January 2019 to June 2021, patients with stromal vascular fraction gel facial filling (including frontal and temporal parts) were selected. According to whether or not BTX-A treatment was received, patients were divided into injected and the noninjected groups. A questionnaire and the Global Aesthetic Improvement Scale (GAIS) were administered to evaluate 2-dimensional photos. The retention rate and curvature were calculated with 3-dimensional images utilizing Artec Studio 13 Professional and MATLAB software. Results The graft retention, forehead curvature, and GAIS scores were all higher in the injected group than the noninjected group (P < .01). On the questionnaire, the injected group also showed more satisfaction with the treatment effect and were more willing to recommend the treatment to their friends. Conclusions BTX-A injection can improve the retention rate of prefrontal stromal vascular fraction gel filling, with higher patient satisfaction and better postoperative effects. Level of Evidence: 5

Background The design lines for midfacial filling shift upward with a patient’s position changes from upright to supine during operation. This will cause the actual filled part to deviate from the target area. Objectives This authors aimed to evaluate the effect of positional changes on midfacial landmarks and find the optimal body position for midface filling. Methods The process involved the grading and evaluation stages. The midfacial laxity of each sample in the evaluation stage was graded into minimal, moderate, and severe by the system established in the grading stage. Measured through the 3-dimensional images in each grade, the vertical distances from landmarks C, D, and E (representing the region of the tear trough, infraorbital area, and nasolabial fat pad, respectively) to the horizontal line of the inner canthus and depth of nasolabial fold at an angle of 90° were separately compared with those from the other angles (60°, 45°, 30°, and 0°) of the operating table. Results In the minimal midfacial laxity group, all 3 landmarks significantly moved upward when the angle decreased to 30°. However, landmark E of the moderate and severe and landmark D of the severe midfacial laxity groups both significantly moved upward when the angle decreased to 45°. The depth of the nasolabial fold at a 45° angle was significantly less than that at a 90° angle in the moderate and severe groups. Conclusions In midface filling, a patient’s body position should be optimally selected according to the midfacial laxity and filling area.

Hyperactivation of RAS/MAPK signaling is commonly observed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Gain-of-function mutations of canonical RAS genes, however, are rarely detected and it remains unclear how the activity of this pathway is turned on during hepatocarcinogenesis. We performed a comprehensive analysis of RAS superfamily genetic alterations across ten subfamilies, 152 members in 377 HCC patients from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. RIT1 (Ras-like without CAAX 1) was the most frequently altered RAS member amplified in 13% of the HCC cohort. Both genomic amplification and CREB-mediated transcriptional activation contributed to the elevated RIT1 expression, and its overexpression correlated with RAS/MAPK activation and poor prognosis. Then, we found that RIT1-induced angiogenesis via the MEK/ERK/EIF4E/HIF1-α/VEGFA axis. MAP3K11 and MAP3K12, in addition to CRAF, could mediate this process by binding to RIT1. Moreover, RIT1 increased the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK and AKT to promote cell survival under reactive oxygen species stress. Based on this mechanistic understanding, we treated RIT1-overexpressing HCC with combined regimen sorafenib plus AKT inhibitor, and achieved enhanced antitumor effects in vivo. Our study reveals RAS "orphan" member RIT1 as the most common genetic alteration of RAS family in HCC and combination of sorafenib with AKT inhibitor might be a promising treatment strategy for RIT1-overexpressing HCC.

Desire for improved aesthetic contour of the lower third of the face has resulted in an increase in chin augmentation. Although many fillers, including hyaluronic acid (HA), autologous fat and stromal vascular fraction gel (SVF-gel), have been used to improve facial morphology, chin augmentation requires fillers that provide greater support. The elastic and viscous moduli of SVF-gel and Coleman fat were assessed in vitro by rheological testing, whereas their elasticity were evaluated in vivo by ultrasonic elastography. Results in vitro were compared with those of highly elastic HA (HE-HA) and highly viscous HA (HV-HA), whereas results in vivo were compared with HE-HA. Changes in chin volume, SVF-gel retention rate and absorptivity for at least 12 months were measured by 3D white light scanning. Questionnaires were administered to assess patient satisfaction. The elastic and viscous modulus of SVF-gel was, respectively, slightly lower than HE-HA and HV-HA but higher than the other two in vitro, with the elasticity of the three layers of SVF-gel lower than HE-HA but slightly higher than normal control in vivo. The average retention rate was 62.34±3.34% at 12 months. The absorptivity of 90% of the samples was

In this study, fast and continuous fabrication of microscale structures by roll-to-roll UV imprinting or micromolding is demonstrated on a 121 mm wide web. This process is enabled by a UV curable thiol-ene-acrylate resin system, following the work of Stadlober and coworkers. A series of formulations were prepared with fast curing speeds at ambient conditions, low viscosities, and tunable mechanical properties. The rate and extent of curing as a function of the formulation composition were investigated with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Consistent with the past work, we show that the thiol-ene-acrylate formulations reached high double bond conversions (> 80%) with the maximum conversion increasing with the relative thiol content and decreasing with the viscous urethane acrylate oligomer content. The double bond conversion of the patterned coatings (in contact with the mold) is shown to be ~ 80% for a range of UV lamp powers and web speeds up to 2.7 cm/s. Areas of the coating not covered by the mold required higher UV lamp power and/or lower web speeds to cure to a tack-free state. Microscale channels and arrays of recessed wells with various dimensions and pattern densities were continuously fabricated. Our findings show the successful use of a tetrafunctional thiol in the thiol-ene-acrylate resin system. We also discuss guidelines for the selection of processing conditions for the manufacturing of structured plastic substrates using roll-to-roll imprinting processes, opening up potential new applications.

Pose measurement of coal mine excavation equipment is an important part of roadway excavation. However, in the underground mining roadway of coal mine, there are some influencing factors such as low illumination, high dust and interference from multiple equipment, which lead to the difficulty in the position and pose measurement of roadheader with low measurement accuracy and poor stability. A combination positioning method based on machine vision and optical fiber inertial navigation is proposed to realize the position and pose measurement of roadheader and improve the accuracy and stability of the position and pose measurement. The visual measurement model of arm roadheader is established, and the optical fiber inertial navigation technology and the spatial coordinate transformation method are used. Finally, the Kalman filter fusion algorithm is used to fuse the two kinds of data to get the accurate roadheader pose data, and the inertia is compensated and corrected. Underground coal mine experiments are designed to verify the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the positioning error of the roadheader body using this method is within 40 mm, which meets the positioning accuracy requirements of roadway construction. This method compensates for the shortcomings of low accuracy and poor reliability of single vision measurement, single inertial navigation measurement and single odometer measurement.

In order to solve the problem of pose measurement of roadheader body in low illumination and high dust environment in coal mine, a pose measurement technology of roadheader body based on visual and strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) is proposed. By extracting the point and line features and using the monocular vision positioning principle based on the gate three lines, the spatial pose of the roadheader body measured by vision is obtained according to the spatial matrix transformation. At the same time, the spatial pose of the roadheader body measured by SINS is calculated by gyroscope and accelerometer. Then the least square method is used to align the two-sensor data, and the registration data is fused based on the extended Kalman filter fusion algorithm to obtain the final fusion roadheader pose data. The experimental results show that the measurement error of the roadheader body position in the x axis direction of the roadway coordinate system is less than ± 20 mm, the error of the y axis direction is less than ±35 mm, the error of the z axis direction is less than ± 10 mm, the yaw angle error is between-0.4° to 0.7°, the roll angle error is between -0.2° and 0.6°, and the pitch angle error is between -0.02° and 0.5°. This method can be used to measure the pose of the roadheader stably and accurately in the complex environment of high dust, miscellaneous light and low illumination.

Hyperactivation of RAS/MAPK signaling is commonly observed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Gain-of-function mutations of canonical RAS genes, however, are rarely detected and it remains unclear how the activity of this pathway is turned on during hepatocarcinogenesis. We performed a comprehensive analysis of RAS superfamily genetic alterations across ten subfamilies, 152 members in 377 HCC patients from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. RIT1 (Ras-like without CAAX 1) was the most frequently altered RAS member amplified in 13% of the HCC cohort. Both genomic amplification and CREB-mediated transcriptional activation contributed to the elevated RIT1 expression, and its overexpression correlated with RAS/MAPK activation and poor prognosis. Then, we found that RIT1-induced angiogenesis via the MEK/ERK/EIF4E/HIF1-α/VEGFA axis. MAP3K11 and MAP3K12, in addition to CRAF, could mediate this process by binding to RIT1. Moreover, RIT1 increased the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK and AKT to promote cell survival under reactive oxygen species stress. Based on this mechanistic understanding, we treated RIT1-overexpressing HCC with combined regimen sorafenib plus AKT inhibitor, and achieved enhanced antitumor effects in vivo. Our study reveals RAS "orphan" member RIT1 as the most common genetic alteration of RAS family in HCC and combination of sorafenib with AKT inhibitor might be a promising treatment strategy for RIT1-overexpressing HCC.

Photocured polymers have recently gained tremendous interest for a wide range of applications, such as industrial prototyping/additive manufacturing, electronics, medical/dental devices, and tissue engineering. However, current development of photoinitiated thermosetting formulations is mostly centered on commercial monomers/oligomers that are petroleum-derived and not environmentally friendly. This work aims to develop natural phenolic-based (meth)acrylates to expand the use of sustainable and mechanically robust 3D printable formulations. Utilizing thiol–ene chemistry, bifunctional 3,6-dioxa-1,8-octanedithiol eugenol acrylate (E) was synthesized through a highly efficient, scalable method. Real-time infrared spectra and photorheology studies revealed that E exhibits rapid photocuring kinetics and that the viscosity, glass transition temperature (Tg) and thermal properties of this material can be tuned by adding a sustainable reactive diluent, guaiacyl methacrylate (G). The effect of adding a crosslinker to binary GE monomers was further investigated by incorporating vanillyl alcohol dimethacrylate (V) or trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (T). At 20 mol%, V showed a moderate improvement in curing rate and a lower degree of cross-linking than T due to the bifunctionality of V. However, the aromaticity of V provided more resistance to chain deformation and breakage within the network, demonstrating storage moduli and tensile strengths up to 3.4 GPa and 62 MPa, respectively. The distinct impact of the crosslinkers on the tensile behaviors of glassy terpolymers was correlated to the cohesive energy density. Ternary formulations GEV 60–20–20 by mol% with 2 wt% TPO photoinitiator were successfully printed using a commercial desktop stereolithographic 3D printer with 405 nm violet laser source. This work demonstrates a versatile, sustainable, and scalable synthetic strategy to design a class of natural phenolic acrylates for sustainable photocured formulations with potential translation to high performance 3D printing.

Advanced neural research demands new electrode materials with high performance. Herein, we have developed a facile approach to synthesize amphiphilic reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and demonstrated its performance in electrically stimulating neural cells with high charge injection capacity. Synthesis of the amphiphilic rGO features covalent functionalization and simultaneous thermal reduction in a one-step manner. The covalent functionalization of methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG) chains on the rGO surface not only provides a high dispersibility in various solvents, enabling convenient post-treatment processes, but also allows for an enhancement in double-layer charging capacitance. Calcium imaging of PC12 neural cells on the amphiphilic mPEG–rGO films has revealed a predominant increase in the percentage of cells with higher action potentials, derived from double-layer capacitance enhancement in charge injection. These results suggest that the new amphiphilic mPEG–rGO material is capable of providing a much safer and efficacious solution for neural prostheses applications.

Software-defined Internet-of-Things networking (SDIoT) greatly simplifies the network monitoring in large-scale IoT networks by per-flow sampling, wherein the controller keeps track of all the active flows in the network and samples the IoT devices on each flow path to collect real-time flow statistics. There is a tradeoff between the controller's sampling preference and the balancing of loads among devices. On the one hand, the controller may prefer to sample some of the IoT devices on the flow path because they yield more accurate flow statistics. On the other hand, it is desirable to sample the devices uniformly so that their energy consumptions and lifespan are balanced. This paper formulates the flow sampling problem in large-scale SDIoT networks by means of a Markov decision process and devises policies that strike a good balance between these two goals. Three classes of policies are investigated: the optimal policy, the state-independent policies, and the index policies (including the Whittle index and a second-order index policies). The second-order index policy is the most desired policy among all: 1) in terms of performance, it is on an equal footing with the Whittle index policy, and outperforms the state-independent policies by much; 2) in terms of complexity, it is much simpler than the optimal policy, and is comparable to state-independent policies and the Whittle index policy; 3) in terms of realizability, it requires no prior information on the network dynamics, hence is much easier to implement in practice., Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures

Omnidirectional coding (OC) is established to improve the spectral efficiency of pilot-assisted multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. But OC also improves the signal peak to average power ratio (PAPR) at the same time. This paper targets on the ergodic rate performance in OC based MIMO-OFDM systems when nonlinear power amplifier (PA) is considered. Using an inter-modulation product (IMP) analysis, the close-form expressions of ergodic rate in OC based nonlinear MIMO-OFDM system are presented. The ergodic rate performance with/without OC in linear and nonlinear systems is investigated as well. The PA behavioural model is extracted based on measurement of a LDMOS PA.