Analysis of the Improvement Effect of Combined Application of Oral Rehabilitation Training and Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on Pediatric Swallowing Disorders.

Pediatric swallowing disorders are common yet often overlooked neuro-muscular system diseases that significantly impact the quality of life and development of affected children. This study aims to explore the effect of combined application of oral rehabilitation training and neuromuscular electrical stimulation on improving pediatric swallowing disorders. Children meeting the inclusion criteria for swallowing disorders were divided into control and experimental groups based on different intervention protocols. The experimental group received combined oral rehabilitation training and neuromuscular electrical stimulation, while the control group received only oral rehabilitation training. Results showed that the intervention was more effective in the experimental group, with shorter recovery time for normal swallowing function and improved nutritional status and quality of life. This study provides scientific evidence for clinical treatment of pediatric swallowing disorders. In conclusion, the combined application of oral rehabilitation training and neuromuscular electrical stimulation effectively improves pediatric swallowing disorders, with superior efficacy compared to single treatment methods. Further research is needed to elucidate the mechanism of action and optimize treatment protocols to enhance the therapeutic outcomes and prognosis of pediatric swallowing disorders.

Digital measurement of deciduous tooth dimensions in China: A cross-sectional survey.

OBJECTIVE: Crown dimensions data of deciduous teeth hold anthropological, forensic, and archaeological value. However, such information remains scarce for the Chinese population. This multi-center study aimed to collect a large sample of deciduous crown data from Chinese children using three-dimensional measurement methods and to analyze their dimensions. DESIGN: A total of 1592 children's deciduous dentition samples were included, and the sample size was distributed according to Northeast, North, East, Northwest, Southwest and South China. Digital dental models were reconstructed from plaster dental models. Independent sample t test, paired t test, principal component analysis (PCA), and factor analysis (FA) were used to analyze the tooth crown dimensions. RESULT: 18,318 deciduous teeth from 1592 children were included. Males exhibited slightly larger values than females. The range of sexual dimorphism percentages for each measurement was as follows: mesiodistal diameter (0.40-2.08), buccolingual diameter (0.13-2.24), and maxillogingival diameter (0.48-3.37). The FA results showed that the main trend of crown dimensions changes was the simultaneous increase or decrease in mesiodistal diameter, buccolingual diameter and maxillogingival diameter in three directions. CONCLUSION: This is the first large-scale survey of deciduous tooth crown dimensions in China, which supplements the data of deciduous tooth measurement and provides a reference for clinical application.

Dimethoxytolyl propylresorcinol induces apoptosis and mitophagy in human leukemia cells through the PI3K/AKT pathway.

Dimethoxytolyl propylresorcinol (UP302), a natural compound extracted from Dianella ensifolia, owing to its tyrosinase inhibitory and strong antioxidant properties, is used in whitening cosmetics. However, the role of UP302 has not been reported in cancer treatment. This study aimed to assess the in vitro antitumor activity of UP302 in different tumor cells. It inhibited the growth of certain cancer cell lines and especially in leukemia cells. Therefore, we investigated the antitumor effect of UP302 in leukemia by examining the cell cycle, apoptosis, reactive oxygen species levels (ROS) production, and changes in mitochondrial membrane potential. Our results demonstrated that UP302 inhibited the growth of leukemia cells both in vivo and in vitro and exerted a proapoptotic effect on MV411 and K562 cells, confirmed by flow cytometry and western blot analysis. Furthermore, UP302 promoted autophagy in MV411 and K562 cells. Transmission electron microscopy and western blot analysis showed that UP302 induced mitophagy in MV411 and K562 cells. In addition, the autophagy inhibitor chloroquine could enhance UP302-induced apoptosis, suggesting that UP302-mediated autophagy may be protective in MV411 and K562 cells. In conclusion, our study is the first to provide evidence for the anti-leukemia properties of UP302 and the potential clinical use of UP302 combined with autophagy inhibitors as a chemotherapeutic strategy for human leukemia.

Sinc flexure hinges.

This paper proposes a new type of flexure hinge: the sinc flexure hinge. A theoretical compliance and precision factor model of the sinc flexure hinge is developed based on the transfer matrix method. The finite element simulation is carried out using ANSYS Workbench. The error between the modeling and simulation results obtained is less than 7.0%. The influence of structural parameters on the compliance, precision factor, and compliance-precision ratio is analyzed. The results show that the compliance and precision are contradictory and that the minimum thickness has the most significant influence on performance. Compared with the other seven types of flexure hinges, the sinc flexure hinge delivers a good overall performance. Finally, a sinc flexure hinge is machined and its compliance is measured. The error between the experimental and theoretical values is less than 7.6%. Both the simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the model.

Identification and Analysis of Protein Family Associated with RNA Interference Pathway in Juglandaceae.

BACKGROUND: One of the crucial processes for small RNA synthesis and plant disease resistance is RNA interference (RNAi). Dicer-like (DCL), RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RDR), double-stranded RNA binding (DRB), and Argonaute are important proteins implicated in RNAi (AGO). Numerous significant woody plants belong to the Juglandaceae; walnut is one of the four groups of woody plants on earth and one of the four groups of dried fruits. METHODS: In order to correlate walnuts and their homologues, this work integrated numerous web resources from structural analysis and transcriptome data collected from gene families in order to elucidate the evolution and functional differentiation of RNA-related proteins in the walnut (Juglans rega) genome. RESULTS: 5 DCL genes, 13 RDR genes, 15 DRB genes, and 15 AGO genes are found in the walnut genome and encode conserved protein domains and motifs with similar subcellular distribution.There are three classes and seven subclasses of walnut AGO proteins. RDRS are primarily split into four categories, whereas DRBs can be divided into six. DCLs are separated into four groups. The walnut RDR1 copy number of 9 is the exception, with 7 of those copies being dispersed in clusters on chromosome 16. Proteins are susceptible to various levels of purification selection, but in walnut, purification selection drives gene creation. These findings also indicated some resemblance in other plants belonging to the walnut family. Under various tissues and stresses, many RNA-related genes in walnut produced abundant, selective expression. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the genome of the Juglandaceae's DCL, RDR, DRB, and AGO gene families were discovered and analysed for the first time. The evolution, structure, and expression characteristics of these families were also preliminary studied, offering a foundation for the development and breeding of the walnut RNAi pathway.

Interaction between SlMAPK3 and SlASR4 regulates drought resistance in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.).

Tomato is a leading vegetable in modern agriculture, and with global warming, drought has become an important factor threatening tomato production. Mitogen-activated protein kinase 3 (MAPK3) plays an important role in plant disease and stress resistance. To clarify the downstream target proteins of SlMAPK3 and the mechanism of stress resistance in tomato, this study was conducted with the SlMAPK3-overexpressing lines OE-1 and OE-2 and the CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutant lines slmapk3-1 and slmapk3-2 under PEG 6000-simulated drought. The results of yeast two-hybrid (Y2H), pull-down, and coimmunoprecipitation (Co-IP) assays confirmed that SlASR4 (NP_001269248.1) interacted with SlMAPK3. Analyses of the SlASR4 protein structure and SlASR4 expression under PEG 6000 and BTH stress revealed that SlASR4 has a highly conserved protein structural domain involved in the drought stress response under PEG 6000 treatment. The function of the SlASR4 and SlMAPK3 downstream target protein, in drought resistance in tomato plants, was identified by virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). This study clarified that SlMAPK3 interacts with SlASR4 to positively regulate drought resistance in tomato plants.

Establishment and validation of a ferroptosis-related signature predicting prognosis and immunotherapy effect in colon cancer.

Background: Ferroptosis, a novel form of regulating cell death, is related to various cancers. However, the role of ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) on the occurrence and development of colon cancer (CC) needs to be further elucidated. Method: CC transcriptomic and clinical data were downloaded from TCGA and GEO databases. The FRGs were obtained from the FerrDb database. The consensus clustering was performed to identify the best clusters. Then, the entire cohort was randomly divided into the training and testing cohorts. Univariate Cox, LASSO regression and multivariate Cox analyses were used to construct a novel risk model in training cohort. The testing and the merged cohorts were performed to validate the model. Moreover, CIBERSORT algorithm analyze TIME between high- and low- risk groups. The immunotherapy effect was evaluated by analyzing the TIDE score and IPS between high- and low- risk groups. Lastly, RT-qPCR were performed to analyze the expression of the three prognostic genes, and the 2-years OS and DFS between the high- and low- risk groups of 43 clinical CC samples to further validate the value of the risk model. Results: SLC2A3, CDKN2A, and FABP4 were identified to construct a prognostic signature. Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that OS between the high- and low-risk groups were statistically significant (pmerged<0.001, ptraining<0.001, ptesting<0.001). TIDE score and IPS were higher in the high-risk group (pTIDE<0.005, pDysfunction<0.005, pExclusion<0.001, pmAb-CTLA-4 = 3e-08, pmAb-PD-1 = 4.1e-10). The clinical samples were divided into high- and low- risk groups according to the risk score. There was a statistical difference in DFS (p=0.0108). Conclusion: This study established a novel prognostic signature and provided more insight into the immunotherapy effect of CC.

MSFFAL: Few-Shot Object Detection via Multi-Scale Feature Fusion and Attentive Learning.

Few-shot object detection (FSOD) is proposed to solve the application problem of traditional detectors in scenarios lacking training samples. The meta-learning methods have attracted the researchers' attention for their excellent generalization performance. They usually select the same class of support features according to the query labels to weight the query features. However, the model cannot possess the ability of active identification only by using the same category support features, and feature selection causes difficulties in the testing process without labels. The single-scale feature of the model also leads to poor performance in small object detection. In addition, the hard samples in the support branch impact the backbone's representation of the support features, thus impacting the feature weighting process. To overcome these problems, we propose a multi-scale feature fusion and attentive learning (MSFFAL) framework for few-shot object detection. We first design the backbone with multi-scale feature fusion and channel attention mechanism to improve the model's detection accuracy on small objects and the representation of hard support samples. Based on this, we propose an attention loss to replace the feature weighting module. The loss allows the model to consistently represent the objects of the same category in the two branches and realizes the active recognition of the model. The model no longer depends on query labels to select features when testing, optimizing the model testing process. The experiments show that MSFFAL outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) by 0.7-7.8% on the Pascal VOC and exhibits 1.61 times the result of the baseline model in MS COCO's small objects detection.

Assessing causality between different risk factors and pulmonary embolism: A Mendelian randomization study.

Objectives: Mendelian randomization (MR) was used to estimate the causal relationship between body mass index (BMI), ever smoked, heart failure, alcohol intake frequency, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and pulmonary embolism (PE). This study aimed to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between BMI, the presence of smoking, heart failure, frequency of alcohol intake, IBD, and PE. Methods: Pooled data on PE from a published GWAS meta-analysis involving approximately 461,164 participants of European ancestry were selected. A publicly available pooled dataset of BMI (461,460), ever smokers (461,066), heart failure (977,323), IBD (75,000), and frequency of alcohol intake (462,346) was used from another independent GWAS. MR was performed using established analysis methods, including Wald ratios, inverse variance weighted (IVW), weighted median (WM), and MR-Egger. Also, the final expansion was validated with multivariate MR. Results: In the IVW model, genetically elevated BMI was causally associated with PE [OR = 1.002, 95% CI (1.001, 1004), P = 0.039]. Cochran's Q test was used to detect heterogeneity in the MR-Egger analysis (P = 0.576). Therefore, the effect of gene-level heterogeneity was not considered. In the MR analysis of other risk factors, we observed genes for ever smoking [IVW OR = 1.004, 95% CI (0.997, 1.012)], heart failure [IVW OR = 0.999, 95% CI (0.996, 1.001)], IBD [IVW OR = 1.000, 95% CI (0.999, 1.001)], and frequency of alcohol intake [IVW OR = 1.002, 95% CI (1.000, 1.004)] were not causally associated with PE. Analysis using multivariate MR expansion showed no causal effect of BMI on PE considering the effect of height as well as weight (P = 0.926). Conclusion: In European populations, a causal relationship exists between BMI and PE: increased BMI leads to PE. In contrast, ever smoking, heart failure, frequency of alcohol intake, and IBD are not directly associated with PE. There was no causal effect of BMI with PE in multivariate Mendelian randomized analysis.

WLiT: Windows and Linear Transformer for Video Action Recognition.

The emergence of Transformer has led to the rapid development of video understanding, but it also brings the problem of high computational complexity. Previously, there were methods to divide the feature maps into windows along the spatiotemporal dimensions and then calculate the attention. There are also methods to perform down-sampling during attention computation to reduce the spatiotemporal resolution of features. Although the complexity is effectively reduced, there is still room for further optimization. Thus, we present the Windows and Linear Transformer (WLiT) for efficient video action recognition, by combining Spatial-Windows attention with Linear attention. We first divide the feature maps into multiple windows along the spatial dimensions and calculate the attention separately inside the windows. Therefore, our model further reduces the computational complexity compared with previous methods. However, the perceptual field of Spatial-Windows attention is small, and global spatiotemporal information cannot be obtained. To address this problem, we then calculate Linear attention along the channel dimension so that the model can capture complete spatiotemporal information. Our method achieves better recognition accuracy with less computational complexity through this mechanism. We conduct extensive experiments on four public datasets, namely Something-Something V2 (SSV2), Kinetics400 (K400), UCF101, and HMDB51. On the SSV2 dataset, our method reduces the computational complexity by 28% and improves the recognition accuracy by 1.6% compared to the State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) method. On the K400 and two other datasets, our method achieves SOTA-level accuracy while reducing the complexity by about 49%.

Silencing of SlDRB1 gene reduces resistance to tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum).

Double-stranded RNA-binding proteins are small molecules in the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway that form the RNAi machinery together with the Dicer-like protein (DCL) as a cofactor. This machinery cuts double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to form multiple small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Our goal was to clarify the function of DRB in tomato resistant to TYLCV. In this experiment, the expression of the SlDRB1 and SlDRB4 genes was analyzed in tomato leaves by qPCR, and the function of SlDRB1 and SlDRB4 in resistance to TYLCV was investigated by virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). Then, peroxidase activity was determined. The results showed that the expression of SlDRB1 gradually increased after inoculation of 'dwarf tomato' plants with tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), but this gene was suppressed after 28 days. Resistance to TYLCV was significantly weakened after silencing of the SlDRB1 gene. However, there were no significant expression differences in SlDRB4 after TYLCV inoculation. Our study showed that silencing SlDRB1 attenuated the ability of tomato plants to resist virus infection; therefore, SlDRB1 may play a key role in the defense against TYLCV in tomato plants, whereas SlDRB4 is likely not involved in this defense response. Taken together, These results suggest that the DRB gene is involved in the mechanism of antiviral activity.

A novel lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP promotes colon adenocarcinoma progression by targeting miR-216a-3p/HMGB3.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was associated with altering the secondary structure of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA). Increasing reports showed that lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP played an important role in cancer development and invasion. This study is to elucidate the molecular function of lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP rs2147578 promoting tumor progression in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). In this study, we found that the lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP rs2147578 was upregulated in COAD cell lines. Furthermore, lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP rs2147578 promoted colon cancer migration, invasion, and proliferation. Interestingly, lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP rs2147578 positively regulated HMGB3 expression via miR-216a-3p in colon cancer cells. Functional enrichment analysis showed that targeting genes of miR-216a-3p were enriched in regulating the pluripotency of stem cells, MAPK signaling pathway, TNF signaling pathway, neurotrophin signaling pathway, relaxin signaling pathway, and FoxO signaling pathway. Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) database revealed that there was a significantly positive correlation between HMGB3 expression and the infiltration of CD8+ T cells, B cells, neutrophils, macrophages, and CD4+ T cells. Finally, HMGB3 overexpression was validated in external data. In conclusions, lnc-LAMC2-1:1 SNP rs2147578 was involved in promoting COAD progression by targeting miR-216a-3p/HMGB3, and this study will provide a novel molecular target for COAD.

Reduction of senescent fibro-adipogenic progenitors in progeria-aged muscle by senolytics rescues the function of muscle stem cells.

BACKGROUND: Fibro-adipogenic progenitors (FAPs) in the muscles have been found to interact closely with muscle progenitor/stem cells (MPCs) and facilitate muscle regeneration at normal conditions. However, it is not clear how FAPs may interact with MPCs in aged muscles. Senolytics have been demonstrated to selectively eliminate senescent cells and generate therapeutic benefits on ageing and multiple age-related disease models. METHODS: By studying the muscles and primary cells of age matched WT mice and Zmpste24-/- (Z24-/- ) mice, an accelerated ageing model for Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), we examined the interaction between FAPs and MPCs in progeria-aged muscle, and the potential effect of senolytic drug fisetin in removing senescent FAPs and improving the function of MPCs. RESULTS: We observed that, compared with muscles of WT mice, muscles of Z24-/- mice contained a significantly increased number of FAPs (2.4-fold; n > =6, P < 0.05) and decreased number of MPCs (2.8-fold; n > =6, P < 0.05). FAPs isolated from Z24-/- muscle contained about 44% SA-ß-gal+ senescent cells, in contrast to about 3.5% senescent cells in FAPs isolated from WT muscle (n > =6, P < 0.001). The co-culture of Z24-/- FAPs with WT MPCs resulted in impaired proliferation and myogenesis potential of WT MPCs, with the number of BrdU positive proliferative cells being reduced for 3.3 times (n > =6, P < 0.001) and the number of myosin heavy chain (MHC)-positive myotubes being reduced for 4.5 times (n > =6, P < 0.001). The treatment of the in vitro co-culture system of Z24-/- FAPs and WT MPCs with the senolytic drug fisetin led to increased apoptosis of Z24-/- FAPs (14.5-fold; n > =6, P < 0.001) and rescued the impaired function of MPCs by increasing the number of MHC-positive myotubes for 3.1 times (n > =6, P < 0.001). Treatment of Z24-/- mice with fisetin in vivo was effective in reducing the number of senescent FAPs (2.2-fold, n > =6, P < 0.05) and restoring the number of muscle stem cells (2.6-fold, n > =6, P < 0.05), leading to improved muscle pathology in Z24-/- mice. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that the application of senolytics in the progeria-aged muscles can be an efficient strategy to remove senescent cells, including senescent FAPs, which results in improved function of muscle progenitor/stem cells. The senescent FAPs can be a potential novel target for therapeutic treatment of progeria ageing related muscle diseases.

Effect of MED-TLIF Combined with Percutaneous Pedicle Screw Fixation on Function and Spinal Pelvic Parameters in Patients with Lumbar Spondylolisthesis.

Background: Lumbar spondylolisthesis is a common clinical spinal lesion. The upper vertebral body of the patient is displaced relative to the lower vertebral body, causing spinal instability and nerve compression. The clinical manifestations are low back and leg pain, abnormal lower limb sensation, and intermittent rupture. In severe cases, cauda equina syndrome and paraplegia may occur. Minimally invasive spinal surgery has developed rapidly in recent years and become the preferred treatment for lumbar spondylolisthesis. Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical effect of minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS-TLIF) combined with percutaneous pedicle screw fixation in the treatment of lumbar spondylolisthesis under microscope. Methods: The clinical and surgical data of 106 patients with lumbar spondylolisthesis treated in our hospital were selected and divided into research group (56 cases) according to surgical methods (MIS-TLIF combined with percutaneous pedicle screw fixation). The other 50 patients were treated with traditional open percutaneous intervertebral foramen fusion (control group). The surgical trauma-related indicators, visual analog pain scale (VAS) scores before and after surgery, modified Japanese Orthopedic Association low back pain score (JOA), bone graft fusion effect, spinal pelvic parameters, and surgical complications of the two groups were statistically analyzed in detail. Results: The incision length, intraoperative blood loss, operation time, and hospitalization time in the research group were lower than those in the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the VAS score and JOA score between the two groups before operation (P > 0.05). The VAS score and JOA score of the research group were lower than those of the control group on the first day after operation (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the VAS score and JOA score between the two groups at 1 month and 3 months after operation (P > 0.05). Six months, 12 months, and 18 months after operation, the bone graft fusion rates in the research group were 42.86%, 73.21%, and 94.64%, respectively, and those in the control group were 40.00%, 68.00%, and 92.00%, respectively, with no significant difference (P > 0.05). There was no significant difference in PI, PT, SS, LL, TK, LSJA, and SVA between the two groups before and 6 months after operation (P > 0.05). At 6 months after operation, the PT and TK values of the two groups were higher than those before operation (P < 0.05), and the SS, LL, LSJA, and SVA values of the two groups were lower than those before operation (P < 0.05). The complication rate of the research group was 3.57%, which was lower than 18.00% of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: MIS-TLIF combined with percutaneous pedicle screw fixation in the treatment of lumbar spondylolisthesis has the same effect as traditional open surgery and has the same correction effect for spinal pelvic parameters, but it has the advantages of less trauma and fewer complications.

Adaptive Pedestrian Stride Estimation for Localization: From Multi-Gait Perspective.

Accurate and reliable stride length estimation modules play a significant role in Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) systems, but the accuracy of stride length calculation suffers from individual differences. This paper presents a stride length prediction strategy for PDR systems that can be adapted across individuals and broad walking velocity fields. It consists of a multi-gait division algorithm, which can divide a full stride into push-off, swing, heel-strike, and stance based on multi-axis IMU data. Additionally, based on the acquired gait phases, the correlation between multiple features of distinct gait phases and the stride length is analyzed, and multi regression models are merged to output the stride length value. In experimental tests, the gait segmentation algorithm provided gait phases division with the F-score of 0.811, 0.748, 0.805, and 0.819 for stance, push-off, swing, heel-strike, respectively, and IoU of 0.482, 0.69, 0.509 for push-off, swing, heel-strike, respectively. The root means square error (RMSE) of our proposed stride length estimation was 151.933, and the relative error for total distance in varying walking speed tests was less than 2%. The experimental results validated that our proposed gait phase segmentation algorithm can accurately recognize gait phases for individuals with wide walking speed ranges. With no need for parameter modification, the stride length method based on the fusion of multiple predictions from different gait phases can provide better accuracy than the estimations based on the full stride.

The Diverse Gait Dataset: Gait Segmentation Using Inertial Sensors for Pedestrian Localization with Different Genders, Heights and Walking Speeds.

Stride length estimation is one of the most crucial aspects of Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR). Due to the measurement noise of inertial sensors, individual variances of pedestrians, and the uncertainty in pedestrians walking, there is a substantial error in the assessment of stride length, which causes the accumulated deviation of Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR). With the help of multi-gait analysis, which decomposes strides in time and space with greater detail and accuracy, a novel and revolutionary stride estimating model or scheme could improve the performance of PDR on different users. This paper presents a diverse stride gait dataset by using inertial sensors that collect foot movement data from people of different genders, heights, and walking speeds. The dataset contains 4690 walking strides data and 19,083 gait labels. Based on the dataset, we propose a threshold-independent stride segmentation algorithm called SDATW and achieve an F-measure of 0.835. We also provide the detailed results of recognizing four gaits under different walking speeds, demonstrating the utility of our dataset for helping train stride segmentation algorithms and gait detection algorithms.

Trim14 promotes osteoclastogenesis and noncanonical NF-κB activation by targeting p100/p52 in chronic periodontitis.

BACKGROUND: Periodontitis disease infection initiates host immune response, and alveolar bone damage is a hallmark of periodontitis. Bone damage occurs due to changes in osteoclast activity in response to local inflammation. Nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling is essential for inflammatory responses and plays a pivotal role in osteoclast formation and activation. Tripartite motif 14 (Trim14) is a crucial regulator of the noncanonical NF-κB signaling. Here, we investigated the role of Trim14 in chronic periodontitis. METHODS: The development of immune cells and osteoclast formation was evaluated with flow cytometry, qRT-PCR, and histochemical staining. Proinflammatory cytokines were checked by ELISA and qRT-PCR. Protein expression was determined by immunoblotting. Also, the cemento-enamel junction-alveolar bone crest distance was evaluated in the mouse model. RESULTS: Development of innate and adaptive cells was not impaired from the deletion of Trim14. However, the genetic loss of Trim14 remarkably suppressed RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis, without affecting TLR-induced proinflammatory cytokines except for Il-23a expression. The Trim14 deletion also suppressed the activation of noncanonical NF-κB signaling by targeting p100/p52. Importantly, the deletion of NIK diminished the effects of Trim14 on the inflammatory responses in vivo on chronic periodontitis responses. CONCLUSION: TRIM14 may be a positive regulator to promote osteoclastogenesis and proinflammatory cytokine secretion.

A novel ferroptosis-related lncRNA signature for prognosis prediction in gastric cancer.

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignant cancer with a poor prognosis. Ferroptosis has been shown to play crucial roles in GC development. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) is also associated with tumor progression in GC. This study aimed to screen the prognostic ferroptosis-related lncRNAs and to construct a prognostic risk model for GC. METHODS: Ferroptosis-related lncRNAs from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) GC expression data was downloaded. First, single factor Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was used to select seven prognostic ferroptosis-related lncRNAs from TCGA database. And then, the selected lncRNAs were further included in the multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis to establish the prognostic model. A nomogram was constructed to predict individual survival probability. Finally, we performed quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to verify the risk model. RESULTS: We constructed a prognostic ferroptosis-related lncRNA signature in this study. Kaplan-Meier curve analysis revealed a significantly better prognosis for the low-risk group than for the high-risk group (P = 2.036e-05). Multivariate Cox proportional risk regression analysis demonstrated that risk score was an independent prognostic factor [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.798, 95% confidence interval (CI) =1.410-2.291, P < 0.001]. A nomogram, receiver operating characteristic curve, and principal component analysis were used to predict individual prognosis. Finally, the expression levels of AP003392.1, AC245041.2, AP001271.1, and BOLA3-AS1 in GC cell lines and normal cell lines were tested by qRT-PCR. CONCLUSIONS: This risk model was shown to be a novel method for predicting prognosis for GC patients.

Analysis of Basic Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Manganese Slag before and after Solidification and Its Feasibility as Highway Slope.

Manganese slag is a kind of industrial waste produced by electrolytic production of manganese metal. The traditional method of stacking manganese slag not only causes waste of resources, but also produces environmental pollution. Finding harmless, effective, and economical disposal technology of manganese slag has gradually become a research hotspot and difficulty in the field of electrolytic manganese industry and environmental protection. To verify the feasibility of using manganese slag as roadbed material, the basic physical and chemical properties of manganese slag were analyzed based on X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectrum, SEM scanning electron microscope, and particle analysis, the basic engineering characteristics of raw materials of manganese slag and solidified manganese slag mixed with quicklime were analyzed through a compaction test and a CBR test. Finally, based on the Monte Carlo method, the stability of a highway slope in the Guizhou Province of China is simulated by the finite element method, considering the spatial variability of manganese slag material strength parameters. The results show that the solidified manganese slag material can be used as highway subgrade material. This study has important reference significance for manganese slag highway construction projects.

Prognostic Value of a Novel Signature With Nine Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Genes in Hepatic Cancer by Mining GEO and TCGA Databases.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis C virus-induced genes (HCVIGs) play a critical role in regulating tumor development in hepatic cancer. The role of HCVIGs in hepatic cancer remains unknown. This study aimed to construct a prognostic signature and assess the value of the risk model for predicting the prognosis of hepatic cancer. METHODS: Differentially expressed HCVIGs were identified in hepatic cancer data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases using the library ("limma") package of R software. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed using the Cytoscape software. Functional enrichment analysis was performed using the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were applied to screen for prognostic HCVIGs. The signature of HCVIGs was constructed. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) compared the low-risk and high-risk groups. Finally, the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) database was used to validate this prognostic signature. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed to validate the expression of nine HCVIGs in the hepatic cancer cell lines. RESULTS: A total of 143 differentially expressed HCVIGs were identified in TCGA hepatic cancer dataset. Functional enrichment analysis showed that DNA replication was associated with the development of hepatic cancer. The risk score signature was constructed based on the expression of ZIC2, SLC7A11, PSRC1, TMEM106C, TRAIP, DTYMK, FAM72D, TRIP13, and CENPM. In this study, the risk score was an independent prognostic factor in the multivariate Cox regression analysis [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.433, 95% CI = 1.280-1.605, P < 0.001]. The overall survival curve revealed that the high-risk group had a poor prognosis. The Kaplan-Meier Plotter online database showed that the survival time of hepatic cancer patients with overexpression of HCVIGs in this signature was significantly shorter. The prognostic signature-associated GO and KEGG pathways were significantly enriched in the risk group. This prognostic signature was validated using external data from the ICGC databases. The expression of nine prognostic genes was validated in HepG2 and LO-2. CONCLUSION: This study evaluates a potential prognostic signature and provides a way to explore the mechanism of HCVIGs in hepatic cancer.