Advances in lymphatic metastasis of non-small cell lung cancer.

Lung cancer is a deeply malignant tumor with high incidence and mortality. Despite the rapid development of diagnosis and treatment technology, abundant patients with lung cancer are still inevitably faced with recurrence and metastasis, contributing to death. Lymphatic metastasis is the first step of distant metastasis and an important prognostic indicator of non-small cell lung cancer. Tumor-induced lymphangiogenesis is involved in the construction of the tumor microenvironment, except promoting malignant proliferation and metastasis of tumor cells, it also plays a crucial role in individual response to treatment, especially immunotherapy. Thus, this article reviews the current research status of lymphatic metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer, in order to provide some insights for the basic research and clinical and translational application in this field.

Low expression of fatty acid oxidation related gene ACADM indicates poor prognosis of renal clear cell carcinoma and is related to tumor immune infiltration.

This research aims to identify the key fatty acid beta-oxidation (FAO) genes that are altered in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) and to analyze the role of these genes in KIRC. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and FAO datasets were used to identify these key genes. Wilcoxon rank sum test was used to assess the levels of acyl-CoA dehydrogenase medium chain (ACADM) between KIRC and non-cancer samples. The logistic regression and Wilcoxon rank sum test were used to explore the association between ACADM and clinical features. The diagnostic performance of ACADM for KIRC was assessed using a diagnostic receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The co-expressed genes of ACADM were identified in LinkedOmics database, and their function and pathway enrichment were analyzed. The correlation between ACADM expression level and immune infiltration was analyzed by Gene Set Variation Analysis (GSVA) method. Additionally, the proliferation, migration, and invasion abilities of KIRC cells were assessed after overexpressing ACADM. Following differential analysis and intersection, we identified six hub genes, including ACADM. We found that the expression level of ACADM was decreased in KIRC tissues and had a better diagnostic effect (AUC = 0.916). Survival analysis suggested that patients with decreased ACADM expression had a worse prognosis. According to correlation analysis, a variety of clinical features were associated with the expression level of ACADM. By analyzing the infiltration level of immune cells, we found that ACADM may be related to the enrichment of immune cells. Finally, ACADM overexpression inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion of KIRC cells. In conclusion, our findings suggest that reduced ACADM expression in KIRC patients is indicative of poor prognosis. These results imply that ACADM may be a diagnostic and prognostic marker for individuals with KIRC, offering a reference for clinicians in diagnosis and treatment.

Emerging landscape of circFNDC3B and its role in human malignancies.

In recent years, more attention has been paid to expanding the abundance of Circular RNAs (circRNAs), while the circRNAs that have been found to have significant functions have not been studied in different diseases. CircFNDC3B is one of the most researched circRNAs generated from fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 3B (FNDC3B) gene. Accumulating researches have reported the multiple functions of circFNDC3B in different cancer types and other non-neoplastic diseases, and predicted that circFNDC3B might be a potential biomarker. Notably, circFNDC3B can play roles in different diseases by binding to various microRNAs (miRNAs), binding to RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), or encoding functional peptides. This paper systematically summarizes the biogenesis and function of circRNAs, reviews and discusses the roles and molecular mechanisms of circFNDC3B and its target genes in different cancers and non-neoplastic diseases, which will do favor to broaden our comprehension of the function of circRNAs and facilitate subsequent research on circFNDC3B.

Truck model recognition for an automatic overload detection system based on the improved MMAL-Net.

Efficient and reliable transportation of goods through trucks is crucial for road logistics. However, the overloading of trucks poses serious challenges to road infrastructure and traffic safety. Detecting and preventing truck overloading is of utmost importance for maintaining road conditions and ensuring the safety of both road users and goods transported. This paper introduces a novel method for detecting truck overloading. The method utilizes the improved MMAL-Net for truck model recognition. Vehicle identification involves using frontal and side truck images, while APPM is applied for local segmentation of the side image to recognize individual parts. The proposed method analyzes the captured images to precisely identify the models of trucks passing through automatic weighing stations on the highway. The improved MMAL-Net achieved an accuracy of 95.03% on the competitive benchmark dataset, Stanford Cars, demonstrating its superiority over other established methods. Furthermore, our method also demonstrated outstanding performance on a small-scale dataset. In our experimental evaluation, our method achieved a recognition accuracy of 85% when the training set consisted of 20 sets of photos, and it reached 100% as the training set gradually increased to 50 sets of samples. Through the integration of this recognition system with weight data obtained from weighing stations and license plates information, the method enables real-time assessment of truck overloading. The implementation of the proposed method is of vital importance for multiple aspects related to road traffic safety.

Meta-analysis of the efficacy and adverse drug reactions of adrenergic alpha-antagonists in treating children with ureteral calculi.

This meta-analysis investigated the efficacy and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) of three different adrenergic alpha-antagonists during the treatment of pediatric ureteral stones. Studies were retrieved from MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Controlled Trial Registry until January 2022. We identified 7 articles, including six RCTs and one cohort study. 610 children received either adrenergic alpha-antagonists or placebo. The results confirmed that the three different adrenergic alpha-antagonists could significantly increase the ureteral calculi expulsive rate and shorten the ureteral calculi expulsive time, regardless of the size of the stone "<5 mm" or "5-10 mm". Subgroup analysis suggested that all three adrenergic alpha-antagonists increased the ureteral calculi expulsive rate. Tamsulosin and silodosin also have the effect of shortening ureteral calculi expulsive time, while doxazosin has an insignificant effect on ureteral calculi expulsive time. Besides, tamsulosin and silodosin obviously reduced the number of pain episodes caused by ureteral calculi in children. We analyzed the treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) caused by the treatment of three different adrenergic alpha-antagonists to explore their ADRs. The probability of ADRs was increased after treatment with adrenergic alpha-antagonists. Further subgroup analysis revealed the application of tamsulosin was positively correlated with ADRs in children with ureteral calculi, while the application of doxazosin and silodosin had no statistically significant effect on the probability of TEAEs. In a conclusion, this article systematically analyzed the efficacy and ADRs of three different adrenergic alpha-antagonists, and provided reference and guidance for the application of adrenergic alpha-antagonists to treat children ureteral calculi.

Green solvents-based molecular weight controllable fractionation process for industrial alkali lignin at room temperature.

The molecular weight is one of the most important factors influencing the utilization of industrial lignin obtained from chemical pulping process. In this paper, a facile operative green solvent system was successfully developed for molecular weight-controllable fractionation of industrial alkali lignin (IAL) at room temperature. The results showed that through adjusting the ratio of water, ethanol and γ-Valerolactone (GVL), the industrial lignin was fractionated into six levels with molecular weight stepwise controllable from low to high. The fractionation is a physical process according to FTIR and 2D-HSQC NMR analysis, and the chemical structure of lignin has not changed. Additionally, the polydispersity of fractionated lignin with higher molecular weight tends to be narrower. The content of hydroxyl and carboxyl group is higher for the fractionated lignin with lower molecular weight, which would be beneficial for the chemical reactivity in the down-stream application.

Novel lignin-containing high-performance adhesive for extreme environment.

The gradual depletion of petroleum is a main challenge restricting the development for the fine chemicals, such as epoxy resin adhesive. In this study, a novel lignin-containing high-performance epoxy resin adhesive is synthesized using lignin as precursor material. Lignin is a unique biomacromolecule with three dimensional network structure, large molecular weight, and aromatic structure. The lignin is simply hydrolyzed and modified by epichlorohydrin to obtain lignin-based epoxy prepolymer. The hydrolysis process effectively reduces the molecular weight and improves the chemical reactivity of lignin, thus increasing the number of modified functional groups and the dispersibility of lignin concurrently. With the introduction of the lignin-based epoxy prepolymers, the shear strength of the adhesive increases obviously and reaches 10.42 MPa, which displays 228% of the shear strength of commercial epoxy resin adhesives. Furthermore, the lignin-containing epoxy resin adhesive still displays excellent mechanical properties in extreme environments, including extreme temperature and high humidity environment.

Wafer-scale graphene integrated circuit.

A wafer-scale graphene circuit was demonstrated in which all circuit components, including graphene field-effect transistor and inductors, were monolithically integrated on a single silicon carbide wafer. The integrated circuit operates as a broadband radio-frequency mixer at frequencies up to 10 gigahertz. These graphene circuits exhibit outstanding thermal stability with little reduction in performance (less than 1 decibel) between 300 and 400 kelvin. These results open up possibilities of achieving practical graphene technology with more complex functionality and performance.