Ba2+-doping introduced piezoelectricity and efficient Ultrasound-Triggered bactericidal activity of brookite TiO2 nanorods.

Exploring highly efficient ultrasound-triggered catalysts is pivotal for various areas. Herein, we presented that Ba2+ doped brookite TiO2 nanorod (TiO2: Ba) with polarization-induced charge separation is a candidate. The replacement of Ba2+ for Ti4+ not only induced significant lattice distortion to induce polarization but also created oxygen vacancy defects for facilitating the charge separation, leading to high-efficiency reactive oxygen species (ROS) evolution in the piezo-catalytic processes. Furthermore, the piezocatalytic ability to degrade dye wastewater demonstrates a rate constant of 0.172 min-1 and achieves a 100 % antibacterial rate at a low dose for eliminating E. coli. This study advances that doping can induce piezoelectricity and reveals that lattice distortion-induced polarization and vacancy defects engineering can improve ROS production, which might impact applications such as water disinfection and sonodynamic therapy.

Stemness-related gene signature for predicting therapeutic response in patients with esophageal cancer.

Background: Extensive research has indicated that tumor stemness promotes tumor progression. However, the underlying role of stemness-related genes (SRGs) in esophageal cancer (ESCA) remains unclear. Methods: This study identified differentially expressed stemness-related (DESR) messenger RNAs (mRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs), and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in ESCA, and correlated them with the clinical features of patients with ESCA to develop a prognostic risk assessment model. Functional analysis, protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis, competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) networks, and tumor-infiltrating immune cell analyses were performed to corroborate the results obtained from the model. Results: Correlation analysis of the stemness enrichment scores revealed 1,106 DESR genes (DESRGs), 84 DESRmiRNAs, and 320 DESRlncRNAs were identified from The Cancer Genome Atlas Esophageal Carcinoma (TCGA-ESCA) dataset. Network clustering was performed and the top 20 connection points were identified, including CDC20 that connects to 136 adjacent nodes. A ceRNA network was constructed, including 17 DESRmiRNAs, 44 DESRlncRNAs, and 55 DESRGs. Conclusions: NCAPG [log2fold change (FC) =1.81; q value =2.68×10-11] was significantly upregulated in ESCA and positively correlated with resting natural killer (NK) cells, suggesting that human NK cells rest via the overexpression of NCAPG in ESCA. hsa-miR-1269a is significantly upregulated in ESCA patients with poor prognostic features. CD4+ resting memory T cells (P<0.01) were significantly negatively correlated with hsa-miR-1269a. The insights presented in this study will contribute to the development of innovative therapeutics for the treatment of patients with ESCA.

Sternal lifting increases the operating space in esophagectomy via mediastinoscopy: a prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Esophagectomy with combined single-port inflatable mediastinoscopy and laparoscopy reduces the risk of postoperative respiratory complications as it obviates the need to pass through the pleural space. However, it has strict indications owing to the narrow space for operation. Therefore, we adopted a sternal lifting method using a retractor that enables the expansion of the operating space, a technique which has not been previously reported. We describe our experience and report the results of an evaluation of this new approach. METHODS: Thirty-nine patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinomas underwent esophagectomy using combined single-port inflatable mediastinoscopy and laparoscopy from March 2019 to August 2021. Among them, 20 cases received sternal suspension [sternal suspension group (SS group)], and 19 cases did not receive sternal suspension [non-sternal suspension group (NSS group)]. The short-term efficacy of the two groups was observed. RESULTS: Patients in the SS group had a shorter intramediastinal operation time (82.50 vs. 110.00 minutes; P<0.001), more dissected chest lymph nodes (14 vs. 12; P=0.036), and a lower incidence of postoperative hoarseness (2 vs. 6; P=0.235) than did those in the NSS group. There were no significant differences between the SS group and NSS group in terms of intraoperative blood loss, postoperative hospital stay, post-surgical pathologic TNM classification (pTNM), post-surgical pathologic tumor classification (pT), post-surgical pathologic extent of lymph node involvement (pN), and total number of dissected lymph nodes. There were no statistical differences in the incidence of anastomotic fistula, respiratory complications, arrhythmia, or chylothorax between the two groups. There was no mortality during hospitalization in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Sternal lifting increases the working space in esophagectomy via mediastinoscopy. It can make video-assisted radical esophagectomy by a transmediastinal approach with total pneumomediastinum assistance (VARETT) easier to perform, and sternal suspension in VARETT is safe and effective.

lncRNA PVT1 identified as an independent biomarker for prognosis surveillance of solid tumors based on transcriptome data and meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: Long noncoding RNA PVT1 is dysregulated in some human tumors and has been found to increase the risk of tumor progression and poor prognosis. This study aimed to reanalyze the effect of PVT1 on tumorous prognosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The effect of PVT1 on metastasis and survival were analyzed by univariate logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards model for 32 types of cancer in the Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA), and the relationship between PVT1 level and expression of relative genes was assessed by Pearson correlation analysis. RevMan5.3 and STATA14.0 were used to estimate pooled effects of PVT1 on cancer prognosis with data from TCGA and published studies. RESULTS: In TCGA data, high PVT1 expression tended to increase the risk of TNM progression and decreased the overall survival (OS) time in most of cancers. The pooled effect of PVT1 on TNM (pooled-OR=1.46, 95% CI: 1.29-1.65) and OS (pooled HR=1.32, 95% CI: 1.22-1.43), calculated from 37 and 48 cohorts, identified that high PVT1 expression promoted the metastasis and poor prognosis of cancer. Furthermore, the pooled ORs of 2.77 (95% CI: 1.65-4.66), 4.32 (95% CI: 1.99-9.36), 1.35 (95% CI: 1.01-1.80), 1.62 (95% CI: 1.21-2.18) and 1.48 (95% CI: 1.02-2.15) provided evidence that PVT1 played a role in lymph node metastasis, depth of invasion, distant metastasis, differentiation and lymphatic invasion; while the expression of 24 identified target genes was significantly associated with PVT1 level, and high PVT1 expression dependently decreased the OS time under the influence of co-expression genes (OR=1.29, 95% CI: 1.25-1.32) in high-throughput RNA sequencing merging data. In addition, the expression of PVT1 could be upregulated by smoking, with the pooled OR being 1.09 (95% CI 1.01-1.16). CONCLUSION: PVT1 is a dependent biomarker for tumorous prognosis surveillance. However, the reference value of PVT1 needs further study.

Sphingomonas montana sp. nov., isolated from a soil sample from the Tanggula Mountain in the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau.

An orange pigmented, Gram-staining negative, aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium isolated from a soil from the Tanggula Mountain, China was studied using a polyphasic approach. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain W16RDT was found to be closely related to Sphingomonas prati DSM 103336T (99%), Sphingomonas fennica DSM 13665T (97.21%), followed by Sphingomonas laterariae DSM 25432T (96.44%), Sphingomonas haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206 T (96.36%) and Sphingomonas formosensis DSM 24164T (96.06%). The strain was found to be catalase and oxidase positive and was found to grow optimally at temperatures of 20-25 °C, pH 8 and tolerated NaCl concentration up to 1% (w/v). The major fatty acids identified were summed feature eight comprising C18:1 ω 7c and/or C18:1 ω 6c (39.2%), summed feature three comprising of C16:1 ω7c and/or C16:1 ω6c (36.7%) and C16:0 (7.0%). The polar lipids detected were phosphatidylcholine, sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidyldimethylethanolamine, phosphatidylmonomethylethanolamine, and three unidentified lipids. The strain possessed ubiquinone-10 (Q-10) as the predominant respiratory quinone. Along with other distinguishing characteristics, we also describe the draft genome of strain W16RDT. The final assembled draft genome sequence is 3,722,743 bp with 3390 coding and 48 RNA (45 tRNA and 3 rRNA) genes. The DNA G+C content of the genomic DNA was determined to be 67%. The DNA-DNA relatedness value between the strain W16RDT and its closest phylogenetic relatives S. prati DSM 103336T, S. fennica DSM 13665T, S. laterariae DSM 25432T, and S. haloaromaticamans CGMCC 1.10206T were 52.17, 47.60, 20.93 and 17.09% respectively. The strain W16RDT could be distinguished genotypically and phenotypically from the recognized species belonging to the genus Sphingomonas and thus represents a novel species, for which the name Sphingomonas montana sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is W16RDT (=CGMCC 1.15646T = DSM 103337T).

Dynamic Succession of Groundwater Functional Microbial Communities in Response to Emulsified Vegetable Oil Amendment during Sustained In Situ U(VI) Reduction.

A pilot-scale field experiment demonstrated that a one-time amendment of emulsified vegetable oil (EVO) reduced groundwater U(VI) concentrations for 1 year in a fast-flowing aquifer. However, little is known about how EVO amendment stimulates the functional gene composition, structure, and dynamics of groundwater microbial communities toward prolonged U(VI) reduction. In this study, we hypothesized that EVO amendment would shift the functional gene composition and structure of groundwater microbial communities and stimulate key functional genes/groups involved in EVO biodegradation and reduction of electron acceptors in the aquifer. To test these hypotheses, groundwater microbial communities after EVO amendment were analyzed using a comprehensive functional gene microarray. Our results showed that EVO amendment stimulated sequential shifts in the functional composition and structure of groundwater microbial communities. Particularly, the relative abundance of key functional genes/groups involved in EVO biodegradation and the reduction of NO3 (-), Mn(IV), Fe(III), U(VI), and SO4 (2-) significantly increased, especially during the active U(VI) reduction period. The relative abundance for some of these key functional genes/groups remained elevated over 9 months. Montel tests suggested that the dynamics in the abundance, composition, and structure of these key functional genes/groups were significantly correlated with groundwater concentrations of acetate, NO3 (-), Mn(II), Fe(II), U(VI), and SO4 (2-). Our results suggest that EVO amendment stimulated dynamic succession of key functional microbial communities. This study improves our understanding of the composition, structure, and function changes needed for groundwater microbial communities to sustain a long-term U(VI) reduction.

In situ bioremediation of uranium with emulsified vegetable oil as the electron donor.

A field test with a one-time emulsified vegetable oil (EVO) injection was conducted to assess the capacity of EVO to sustain uranium bioreduction in a high-permeability gravel layer with groundwater concentrations of (mM) U, 0.0055; Ca, 2.98; NO3(-), 0.11; HCO3(-), 5.07; and SO4(2-), 1.23. Comparison of bromide and EVO migration and distribution indicated that a majority of the injected EVO was retained in the subsurface from the injection wells to 50 m downgradient. Nitrate, uranium, and sulfate were sequentially removed from the groundwater within 1-2 weeks, accompanied by an increase in acetate, Mn, Fe, and methane concentrations. Due to the slow release and degradation of EVO with time, reducing conditions were sustained for approximately one year, and daily U discharge to a creek, located approximately 50 m from the injection wells, decreased by 80% within 100 days. Total U discharge was reduced by 50% over the one-year period. Reduction of U(VI) to U(IV) was confirmed by synchrotron analysis of recovered aquifer solids. Oxidants (e.g., dissolved oxygen, nitrate) flowing in from upgradient appeared to reoxidize and remobilize uranium after the EVO was exhausted as evidenced by a transient increase of U concentration above ambient values. Occasional (e.g., annual) EVO injection into a permeable Ca and bicarbonate-containing aquifer can sustain uranium bioreduction/immobilization and decrease U migration/discharge.

[Association of body mass index with diabetes in the elderly in Foshan].

OBJECTIVE: To study the correlation between body mass index (BMI) and diabetes in the elderly residents in Foshan. METHODS: A total of 3 382 people above 60 years old participated in this questionnaire-based survey, with their blood pressure, height, body weight, and blood glucose measured and oral glucose tolerance test performed. RESULTS: The prevalence rates of diabetes in the elderly subjects with obesity, overweight, normal weight, and underweight were 31.58%, 22.84%, 15.65% and 9.40%, respectively. The prevalence rate of impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) in relation to obesity, overweight, normal weight, and underweight were 67.94%, 56.14%, 46.58% and 38.35%, respectively. A higher mean BMI was accompanied by a greater prevalence of diabetes. The average BMI was 23.9+/-3.3 kg/m(2) in diabetic subjects, 23.4+/-3.4 kg/m(2) in subjects with IGT, and 22.6+/-3.2 kg/m(2) in normal elderly subjects. CONCLUSION: There is a close correlation between BMI and diabetes.