Benzoic acid inhibits intrinsic ion migration for efficient and stable perovskite solar cells.

An efficient perovskite solar cell (PSC) has the following characteristics: (1) large perovskite grain size; (2) small ion migration; (3) low defect density states. Here, benzoic acid was employed as an additive to a perovskite solution to improve the thin film quality. Surprisingly, 1.0%-BA can implement all of these features. Therefore, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the champion PSC is 18.05%, which is superior to that of the control device (15.42%). In addition, BA-doped PSC kept 86% of its primary PCE after 30 days (RH: 35%), but the control device only retained 75% under the same conditions. The improvement of its stability is because of the inhibition of the cation migration of perovskite by the addition of BA and the passivation of perovskite defects. The results can acquire a better understanding of the potential applications of small organic molecules in improving the PCE and stability of PSC devices.

Versatile nicotinamide enabling dendrite-free and efficient deposition for aqueous Zn-I2 batteries.

This study introduces a versatile electrolyte additive, nicotinamide, for zinc anodes, aiming to facilitate uniform deposition and suppress water-induced side reactions. The molecular structure, consisting of a pyridine ring and an amide function group, endows NTA molecules with the ability to regulate electrolyte pH, enhance nucleation overpotential, and constrain 2D diffusion of Zn2+. As a result, the full battery configuration with this additive achieved an impressive lifespan of over 10 000 cycles.

The circRNA-0001361/miR-491/FGFR4 axis is associated with axillary response evaluated by ultrasound following NAC in subjects with breast cancer.

Background: miR-491-5p has been reported to regulate the expression of FGFR4 and promote gastric cancer metastasis. Hsa_circ_0001361 was demonstrated to play an oncogenic role in bladder cancer invasion and metastasis by sponging the expression of miR-491-5p. This work aimed to study the molecular mechanism of the effect of hsa_circ_0001361 on axillary response in the treatment of breast cancer. Methods: Ultrasound examinations was performed to evaluate the response of breast cancer patients receiving NAC treatment. Quantitative real-time PCR, IHC assay, luciferase assay and Western blot were performed to analyze the molecular interaction between miR-491, circRNA_0001631 and FGFR4. Results: Patients with low circRNA_0001631 expression had a better outcome after NAC treatment. The expression of miR-491 was remarkably higher in the tissue sample and serum collected from patients with lower circRNA_0001631 expression. On the contrary, the FGFR4 expression was notably suppressed in the tissue sample and serum collected from patients with lower circRNA_0001631 expression when compared with patients with high circRNA_0001631 expression. The luciferase activities of circRNA_0001631 and FGFR4 were effectively suppressed by miR-491 in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells. Moreover, inhibition of circRNA_0001631 expression using circRNA_0001361 shRNA effectively suppressed the expression of FGFR4 protein in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells. Up-regulation of circRNA_0001631 expression remarkably enhanced the expression of FGFR4 protein in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells. Conclusion: Our study suggested that the up-regulation of hsa_circRNA-0001361 could up-regulate the expression of FGFR4 via sponging the expression of miR-491-5p, resulting in the alleviated axillary response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer.

Rapid Identification and Monitoring of Multiple Bacterial Infections Using Printed Nanoarrays.

Fast and accurate detection of microbial cells in clinical samples is highly valuable but remains a challenge. Here, a simple, culture-free diagnostic system is developed for direct detection of pathogenic bacteria in water, urine, and serum samples using an optical colorimetric biosensor. It consists of printed nanoarrays chemically conjugated with specific antibodies that exhibits distinct color changes after capturing target pathogens. By utilizing the internal capillarity inside an evaporating droplet, target preconcentration is achieved within a few minutes to enable rapid identification and more efficient detection of bacterial pathogens. More importantly, the scattering signals of bacteria are significantly amplified by the nanoarrays due to strong near-field localization, which supports a visualizable analysis of the growth, reproduction, and cell activity of bacteria at the single-cell level. Finally, in addition to high selectivity, this nanoarray-based biosensor is also capable of accurate quantification and continuous monitoring of bacterial load on food over a broad linear range, with a detection limit of 10 CFU mL-1 . This work provides an accessible and user-friendly tool for point-of-care testing of pathogens in many clinical and environmental applications, and possibly enables a breakthrough in early prevention and treatment.

Advanced Ann Arbor stage and age over 60 years as prognostic predictors in patients with primary cervical lymphoma: a retrospective cohort study and systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and recurrence-free survival (RFS) for primary cervical lymphoma (PCL), an extremely rare disease without treatment consensus. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study included 177 patients, including 169 cases identified from literature review. The Kaplan-Meier methods and Cox regression were used to determine the OS, DSS, RFS, and relevant risk factors. RESULTS: The 5-year OS and 5-year DSS rates were 85.8 and 87.2%, respectively, while the 5-year RFS rate was 85.5%. Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) was the predominant subtype that comprised 63.8% (113 cases) in this cohort. Multivariate analysis in the DLBCL subgroup revealed that age ≥ 60 years (Odds ratio [OR]: 26.324, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 5.090-136.144, P < 0.001) or stage IIIE-IVE (advanced stage) (OR: 4.219, 95%CI: 1.314-13.551, P = 0.016) were the risk factors for OS, while patients with age ≥ 60 years (OR:23.015, 95%CI: 3.857-137.324, P = 0.001), and stage IIIE-IVE (OR: 4.056, 95% CI: 1.137-14.469, P = 0.031) suffered a poor DSS. Chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy improved the OS (P = 0.008), DSS (P = 0.049), and RFS (P = 0.003). However, cancer-directed surgery did not improve the OS, DSS, and RFS. The risk factor was unavailable in other subtypes of PCL due to limited cases. CONCLUSION: The survival outcomes in patients with PCL at early stage were satisfactory, while the advanced disease stage and age ≥ 60 years were the two major factors predicting poor prognosis in DLBCL subtype.

Changes of healthy brain tissue after salvage radiotherapy of glioblastoma.

BACKGROUND: Salvage radiotherapy (SRT) with photons is a valid treatment option for patients suffering from recurrent glioblastoma (GBM). However, the tolerance of healthy brain to ionizing radiation (IR) is limited. The aim of this study was to determine to what extent brain structures in the radiographically tumor-free hemisphere change after repeated radiotherapy. METHODS: Five of 26 patients treated with SRT for local recurrence of GBM were found to have magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies available for complete volumetric analysis before and after primary chemo-radiation and after SRT. Manual segmentation and joint segmentation (JS) based on a convolutional neural network were used for the segmentation of the gray matter, the white matter and the ventricles in T1 MRIs. RESULTS: Qualitative results of manual segmentation and JS were comparable. After primary chemo-radiation and SRT, the volume of the contralateral ventricles increased steadily by 1.3-4.75% (SD ± 2.8 %, R 2 = 0.82; P = <.01) with a manual segmentation and by 1.4-7.4% (SD 2.1%, R 2 = 0.48; P = .025) with JS. The volume of the cortex decreased by 3.4-7.3% except in one patient, the cortex volume increased by 2.5% (SD ± 2.9%, R 2 = 0.18; P = .19) when measured manually. When measured with JS GM decreased by 1.0-7.4%, in one case it increased by 3.0% (SD = 3.2%, P = .22, R 2 = 0.18). The white matter remained stable when assessed with manual segmentation (P = .84, R 2 = 0.004) or JS (P = .44, R 2 = 0.07). CONCLUSION: SRT of relapsed GBM leads to continuous changes of the tumor-free contralateral brain by means of manual segmentation or JS. The cortex seems more susceptible to repeated RT compared to the white matter. Larger cohort studies and complementary functional analysis are encouraged.

Intramural Ectopic Pregnancy: Clinical Characteristics, Risk Factors for Uterine Rupture and Hysterectomy.

Background: Intramural ectopic pregnancy is defined as the gestational sac (GS) is entirely within the myometrium, separate from the endometrial cavity and fallopian tubes, which is unsustainable and potentially life-threatening. The data investigating the clinical characteristics, management strategy, and fertility outcomes after treatment of intramural ectopic pregnancies are very limited due to its extreme rarity. Methods: To investigate the clinical characteristics, treatment options, and fertility outcomes in patients with intramural ectopic pregnancy, a retrospective study included 56 patients was conducted. We also used logistic regression to identify potential risk factors for uterine rupture and hysterectomy in these patients. Results: The mean age of patients was 31.1 years, with an average gestational age (GA) of 10.0 weeks, and the majority of the patient cohort (83.9%) had uterine or endometrial surgical history. 55.4% of the intramural pregnancy was diagnosed by preoperative imaging examination and 67.7% was detected by ultrasound. There was no dominant predisposed zone of the GS. Common treatment strategies included laparotomy surgery (41.1%) and laparoscopic surgery (35.7%), followed by methotrexate (7.1%) and expectant management (5.4%). Uterine rupture occurred in 9 patients and 8 patients underwent a hysterectomy, but no maternal demise was found. Logistic regression showed that a GA >10 weeks predicted a significantly higher risk of uterine rupture (Odds ratio [OR] 8.000, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.456-43.966, P = 0.017) and hysterectomy (OR 12.333, 95% CI 2.125-71.565, P = 0.005), and GS located in the fundus also predicted higher probability of uterine rupture (OR 7.000,95% CI 1.271-38.543, P = 0.025). Among the ten patients who had a desire for fertility, 6 of them succeeded and 4 of them successfully delivered with a GA ≥ 34 weeks. Conclusion: GA > 10 weeks was the risk factor for both uterine rupture and hysterectomy, while patients with GS located in the uterine fundus had a significantly higher risk of uterine rupture. The fertility outcomes were moderate after treatment. The management strategies should be individualized according to disease conditions and the desire for fertility, and early diagnosis is essential for optimizing clinical outcomes.

Normative ascent with local gaussians for unsupervised lesion detection.

Unsupervised abnormality detection is an appealing approach to identify patterns that are not present in training data without specific annotations for such patterns. In the medical imaging field, methods taking this approach have been proposed to detect lesions. The appeal of this approach stems from the fact that it does not require lesion-specific supervision and can potentially generalize to any sort of abnormal patterns. The principle is to train a generative model on images from healthy individuals to estimate the distribution of images of the normal anatomy, i.e., a normative distribution, and detect lesions as out-of-distribution regions. Restoration-based techniques that modify a given image by taking gradient ascent steps with respect to a posterior distribution composed of a normative distribution and a likelihood term recently yielded state-of-the-art results. However, these methods do not explicitly model ascent directions with respect to the normative distribution, i.e. normative ascent direction, which is essential for successful restoration. In this work, we introduce a novel approach for unsupervised lesion detection by modeling normative ascent directions. We present different modelling options based on the defined ascent directions with local Gaussians. We further extend the proposed method to efficiently utilize 3D information, which has not been explored in most existing works. We experimentally show that the proposed method provides higher accuracy in detection and produces more realistic restored images. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated against baselines on publicly available BRATS and ATLAS stroke lesion datasets; the detection accuracy of the proposed method surpasses the current state-of-the-art results.

Circular RNA circ_0011385 promotes cervical cancer progression through competitively binding to miR-149-5p and up-regulating SOX4 expression.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), emerging as a new type of non-coding RNAs, play important roles in cancers. Instead, the functions and mechanisms of circ_0011385 in cervical cancer (CC) are still inconclusive. Microarray data GSE102686 was downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and were utilized to screen out circRNAs differently expressed in CC tissues. Circ_0011385, miR-149-5p, SRY-box transcription factor 4 (SOX4) mRNA expressions in CC tissues and cells were probed by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). CC cell lines with circ_0011385 knockdown were constructed, and he multiplication, migration, invasion, and apoptosis of CC cells were evaluated by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) method, transwell assay, and flow cytometry. In addition, the targeting relationships between miR-149-5p and circ_0011385 or SOX4 mRNA 3'UTR were probed by dual-luciferase reporter gene assay and RNA pull-down assay. The regulatory function of circ_0011385 and miR-149-5p on SOX4 expression was studied with western blot. Expressions of circ_0011385 and SOX4 mRNA were raised in CC tissues and cells, while miR-149-5p expression was decreased. Knocking down circ_0011385 restrained the multiplication, migration, and invasion of CC cells and induced the apoptosis. Circ_0011385 directly targeted miR-149-5p, and SOX4 was the target of miR-149-5p, which could be positively regulated by circ_0011385. Circ_0011385 elevates SOX4 expression by targeting miR-149-5p, thus participating in promoting the malignant biological behaviors of CC cells.

The Expression of VEGF and CD31 in Endometrial Lesions and Its Associations with Blood Flow Parameters of Transvaginal 3D Power Doppler Ultrasonography: A Preliminary Study.

AIM: To investigate the association of the blood flow parameters measured by transvaginal three-dimensional power Doppler ultrasound and the angiogenesis of endometrial cancer. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The expressions of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and CD31 in benign and malignant endometrial lesions, and in malignant lesions with different clinical and pathological features were analyzed. The correlations of the blood flow parameters (vascularization index [VI], blood flow index [FI], and vascularization-blood flow index [VFI]) of transvaginal 3D power Doppler ultrasound, and VEGF expressions, microvessel density (MVD) were also evaluated. RESULTS: The VEGF-positive rates and the MVD values in benign and malignant endometrial lesions were significantly different (both P<0.001). The differences of VEGF-positive rates (P < 0.001) and MVD values (P = 0.021) between type I and type II lesions of endometrial cancer were statistically significant. There was no significant difference in the VEGF-positive rate and MVD value between stage IA and IB (P=0.443, P=0.311). The difference of VEGF expression and MVD in stage IA, stage IB and stage II and above was statistically significant (P=0.003, P=0.017). The VEGF-positive rate and MVD value were not significantly different in IAG1 and IAG2 lesions of endometrioid adenocarcinoma (P=0.709, P=0.792). There was no significant correlation between VI, FI, VFI and VEGF expression and MVD in endometrial cancer. CONCLUSION: The VEGF-positive rates and MVD values were relatively high in malignant endometrial lesions, type II and stage II and above lesions of type I endometrial cancer, indicating that the angiogenesis of endometrial cancer tissues might play a crucial role in the tumor classification, and pelvic metastasis.

Unsupervised lesion detection via image restoration with a normative prior.

Unsupervised lesion detection is a challenging problem that requires accurately estimating normative distributions of healthy anatomy and detecting lesions as outliers without training examples. Recently, this problem has received increased attention from the research community following the advances in unsupervised learning with deep learning. Such advances allow the estimation of high-dimensional distributions, such as normative distributions, with higher accuracy than previous methods. The main approach of the recently proposed methods is to learn a latent-variable model parameterized with networks to approximate the normative distribution using example images showing healthy anatomy, perform prior-projection, i.e. reconstruct the image with lesions using the latent-variable model, and determine lesions based on the differences between the reconstructed and original images. While being promising, the prior-projection step often leads to a large number of false positives. In this work, we approach unsupervised lesion detection as an image restoration problem and propose a probabilistic model that uses a network-based prior as the normative distribution and detect lesions pixel-wise using MAP estimation. The probabilistic model punishes large deviations between restored and original images, reducing false positives in pixel-wise detections. Experiments with gliomas and stroke lesions in brain MRI using publicly available datasets show that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised methods by a substantial margin, +0.13 (AUC), for both glioma and stroke detection. Extensive model analysis confirms the effectiveness of MAP-based image restoration.

Research Progress on Anti-Inflammatory Effects and Mechanisms of Alkaloids from Chinese Medical Herbs.

As the spectrum of diseases keeps changing and life pace keeps going faster, the probability and frequency of diseases caused by human inflammatory reactions also keep increasing. How to develop effective anti-inflammatory drugs has become the hotspot of researches. It has been found that alkaloids from Chinese medical herbs have anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antitumor, anticonvulsant, diuretic, and antiarrhythmic effects, among which the anti-inflammatory effect is very prominent and commonly used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and other rheumatic immune diseases, but its mechanism of action has not been well explained. Based on this, this paper will classify alkaloids according to structural types and review the plant sources, applicable diseases, and anti-inflammatory mechanisms of 16 kinds of alkaloids commonly used in clinical treatment, such as berberine, tetrandrine, and stephanine, with the aim of providing a reference for drug researches and clinical applications.

Application of transvaginal three-dimensional power Doppler ultrasound in benign and malignant endometrial diseases.

To investigate the value of transvaginal three-dimensional (3D) power Doppler ultrasound in the diagnosis of benign and malignant endometrial diseases.A total of 144 patients with endometrial thickness ≥4 mm were enrolled. Endometrial thickness was measured by transvaginal 3D B-mode ultrasound, while blood signals were detected by 3D power Doppler ultrasound. Endometrial volume (EV), vascularization index (VI), blood flow index (FI), and vascularization flow index (VFI) were calculated. All histopathological diagnoses of endometrium were obtained.There were 86 benign and 58 malignant cases. There were statistically significant differences between two groups in endometrial thickness [1.50 (1.30, 1.80) vs 2.30 (1.80, 3.20), P < .001], EV [10.62 (7.14, 17.36) vs 28.94 (9.59, 67.96), P < .001], VI [6.07 (3.61, 10.33) vs 12.01 (7.50, 19.87), P = .001], FI [27.42 (24.45, 31.33) vs 32.98 (30.22, 35.40), P < .001], and VFI [1.58 (0.92, 3.32) vs 4.28 (2.24, 6.41), P < 0.001]. Sensitivity and specificity of endometrial thickness were relatively high [endometrial thickness (86.2%, 76.1%), EV (48.3%, 97.7%), VI (72.4%, 69.8%), FI (72.4%, 74.4%), and VFI (72.4%, 74.4%)]. There was no significant difference in any parameters of the endometrium between different stages (Ia, Ib, II, and above) or phases (G1, G2, and G3) of Ia phase of endometrial cancer (all P > .05).Transvaginal 3D power Doppler ultrasound is valuable in the differentiating benign and malignant endometrial lesions.

Low concentrations of dihydrotestosterone induce female-to-male sex reversal in the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus.

Previous studies have demonstrated that some amphibian species can be sex-reversed by high concentrations of androgens. Little attention has focused on the effects of androgenic endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on amphibians. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of lower concentrations of the androgenic EDC 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) on gonadal differentiation and development in Pelophylax nigromaculatus, a true frog distributed widely in East Asia. Tadpoles at Gosner stage 24/25 were exposed to nominal concentrations of 40 ng/L, 400 ng/L, and 4000 ng/L DHT to complete metamorphosis. In all DHT treatment groups, males and ambiguous sexes were identified based on gonadal morphology, whereas no females were found; thus, all treatment groups exhibited male-skewed ratios compared with the control group. Gonadal histological examination revealed that ambiguous sexes displayed overall testicular structure with certain ovarian characteristics, demonstrating that DHT-induced sex-ambiguous gonads were incomplete ovary-to-testis reversals (IOTTRs). The expression levels of some ovary-biased genes in the IOTTRs were significantly higher than in the control testes but lower than in the control ovaries. These results show that low concentrations of DHT induced complete or incomplete female-to-male sex reversal in P. nigromaculatus, and incomplete sex reversal retained certain ovarian characteristics not only at gonadal morphological and histological levels but also at the molecular level. They present study highlights potential risks of DHT and other androgenic EDCs for P. nigromaculatus.

Changes of polybrominated diphenyl ether concentrations in ducks with background exposure level and time.

To reveal what degree bioaccumulation of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) depends on exposure time and other factors, we conducted a semi-field experiment for a year (June 2008-June 2009) in a village in an e-waste recycling site in Taizhou, China. Approximately one hundred of juvenile ducks (Anas domestica Linnaeus) were entrusted to a villager. The ducks lived and forged in a PBDE-polluted pond from the late March to the end of November. Fish and mudsnails that were heavily polluted by PBDEs were main food. In cold days (from December to the middle March), the ducks lived in the villager' house, and mainly fed on paddy, which contained lower concentrations of PBDEs than fish and mudsnails. The female ducks were sampled for PBDE analysis every three months. We found that the ∑PBDE concentrations in duck liver, muscle, lung and brain fluctuated greatly with the changes of exposure levels that were determined by the environment and diets, but the ∑PBDE concentrations in fat tissue increased successively with time. Congener analysis demonstrated that the successive increase in the ∑PBDE concentrations with time in fat tissue was due to the successive increase in BDE-209, -183 and -153 concentrations, with large fluctuations of low brominated congeners. The results show that PBDE concentrations in liver, muscle, lung and brain tissues heavily depends on exposure levels rather than exposure time. In fat tissue, by contrast, PBDE concentrations (mainly high brominated congeners) slightly depends on exposure levels but heavily depend on time relative to other tissues, implying that high brominated congeners seem to have longer half-lives than low brominated congeners in fat tissue.

Low concentrations of 17ß-trenbolone induce female-to-male reversal and mortality in the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus.

Trenbolone, as a growth promoter in animal agriculture, has become an environmental androgen in surface water. Here, we aimed to reveal the effects of 17ß-trenbolone on survival, growth, and gonadal differentiation in the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus, which is widespread in East Asia and undergoing population decline. P. nigromaculatus tadpoles were exposed to 17ß-trenbolone (0.1, 1, 10 µg/L) from Gosner stage 24/25 to complete metamorphosis. We found that 17ß-trenbolone resulted in significantly high mortality in a concentration-dependent manner, with a decrease in body weight in the high concentration group compared with the solvent control. Based on gross gonadal morphology, no females were observed, instead of about 15% ambiguous sexes and 85% males, in all 17ß-trenbolone treatment groups. Like normal testes, the gonads with sex-ambiguous morphology exhibited testicular histology, showing that the sex-ambiguous gonads were incomplete ovary-to-testis reversals (IOTTRs) with certain ovarian morphological features. In the IOTTRs, the transcriptional levels of ovary-biased genes decreased drastically relative to normal ovaries, and even declined to the levels in normal testes. These observations confirmed that all test concentrations of 17ß-trenbolone resulted in 100% sex reversal, although some sex-reversed testes retained some ovarian characteristics at the morphological level. To our knowledge, this is the first report strongly demonstrating that trenbolone can cause female-to-male reversal in amphibians. Given that the lowest concentration tested is environmentally relevant, our study highlights the risks of trenbolone and other environmental androgens for P. nigromaculatus and other amphibians, in particular the species with high sensitivity of gonadal differentiation to androgenic chemicals.