Dysarthria Speech Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks with Gated Recurrent Unit.

In recent years, due to the rise in the population and aging, the prevalence of neurological diseases is also increasing year by year. Among these patients with Parkinson's disease, stroke, cerebral palsy, and other neurological symptoms, dysarthria often appears. If these dysarthria patients are not quickly detected and treated, it is easy to cause difficulties in disease course management. When the symptoms worsen, they can also affect the patient's psychology and physiology. Most of the past studies on dysarthria detection used machine learning or deep learning models as classification models. This study proposes an integrated CNN-GRU model with convolutional neural networks and gated recurrent units to detect dysarthria. The experimental results show that the CNN-GRU model proposed in this study has the highest accuracy of 98.38%, which is superior to other research models.

Autophagy in tumorigenesis and cancer treatment.

Autophagy is a self-digestion process, wrapping cytoplasmic proteins or organelles to form vesicles for degradation in lysosomes. The process plays an important role in the maintenance of intracellular homostasis. Here we overview articles on autophagy and cancer/tumors in Pubmed and found 327 articles. Autophagy exists in many tumors and is involved in cell malignant transformation and tumor cell growth. In early phases of tumorigenesis, autophagy clears the abnormally folded proteins and dysfunctional organelles such as mitochondria. Autophagy can also inhibit cell stress responses and prevent genetic damage. When a tumor develops, autophagy helps tumor cells survive nutritional deficiencies and hypoxic conditions. Studies of autophagy in the occurrence and progression of tumors should provide new therapeutic strategies for tumors.

Clinical implications of p57 KIP2 expression in breast cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To study the relationship between expression of p57KIP2 and prognosis and other clinicopathological parameters in invasive breast cancers. METHODS: We assessed the expression of p57KIP2 in 89 cases of invasive breast cancer and 20 cases of normal breast tissue by immunohistochemical methods and analyzed the results with SPSS software (ver. 16.0). RESULT: The positive expression rates of p57KIP2 protein in the invasive breast cancers and surrounding normal tissue were 30.3% (27/89) and 65% (13/20), respectively. Cases with no p57KIP2 expression exhibited a significantly higher post-operative distant metastasis rate than those with p57KIP2 expression (37.9% vs. 14.8%; P = 0.01). DFS analysis showed that p57KIP2-/C-erbB-2µ tumors also exhibited a significantly higher post-operative distant metastasis rate than the other groups (66.7% vs. 29.2%; P = 0.007), as did p57KIP2-/p53µ tumors (64.3% vs. 22.7%; P = 0.001). Survival analysis revealed that p57KIP2 was associated with breast cancer-specific survival overall (P = 0.045, log-rank test). Subgroup analysis demonstrated that individuals with p57KIP2-/C-erbB-2µ tumors experienced significantly worse post-operative survival than those with p57KIP2- /C-erbB-2- or other tumors (P = 0.006, log-rank test). p57KIP2-/p53µ tumors were associated with significantly worse post-operative survival than p57KIP2-/p53- or other tumors (P = 0.001, log-rank test). Cox regression analysis showed that p57KIP2 was a non-independent prognostic factor for breast cancer (P = 0.303). CONCLUSIONS: p57KIP2 is expressed at low levels in invasive breast cancer and is associated with better overall survival rate and disease-free survival in breast cancer patients, but it was a non-independent prognostic factor for breast cancer. Thus, the connection between p57KIP2/p53 and p57KIP2/C-erbB-2 may provide biomarkers for breast cancer.

[Serial recombinant expression and anti-tumor activity in vitro of antibiotic peptide Alloferon-1].

OBJECTIVE: To generate a recombinant expression system of repeated serial antibiotic peptide Alloferon-1 DNA segment with trypsin digestion site and to determine its anti-tumor activity in vitro. METHODS: A 14 repeated serial DNA segment of Alloferon-1 with a lysine residual at the C-end that acts as the trypsin digestion site was constructed. pET42a vector and E.coli BL21DE3 were applied to generate the prokaryotic expression system of the repeated serial DNA segment of Alloferon-1. The yield of target recombinant product was measured by SDS-PAGE and Bio-Rad Gel image system. Ni-NTA affinity column, trypsin digestion and Sephadex G-50 column were used to purify 14 rAlloferon-1-K fusion protein and rAlloferon-1-K monomer. By using the co-cultivation of BALB/c mouse splenocyte with K562, KB or SGC tumor cells and CCK-8 detection method, the effects of rAlloferon-1-K, chemosynthetic Alloferon-1 (cAlloferon-1) and Alloferon-1-K (cAlloferon-1-K) on the growth and proliferation of tumor cells were detected. RESULTS: The prokaryotic expression system E.coli BL21DE3pET42a-14 Alloferon-1-K efficiently expressed 14 rAlloferon-1-K fusion protein under inducement of IPTG,and the yield of fusion protein was approximate 30% of the total bacterial proteins. 0.1≊10 ng/ml rAlloferon-1-K remarkably increased the effect of mouse splenocytes to inhibit the growth and proliferation of K562, KB and SGC cells (P<0.05), and there was no statistically significant difference of the anti-tumor ability of rAlloferon-1-K compared to that of cAlloferon-1 or cAlloferon-1-K (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: A prokaryotic expression system of repeated serial Alloferon-1 DNA segment has been successfully constructed with high yield of rAlloferon-1-K, which maintains anti-tumor activity in vitro.

[Avian influenza virus infection in people occupied in poultry fields in Guangzhou city].

OBJECTIVE: To conduct serological investigation on H5N1/H9N2/H7N7 infection among people occupied in poultry fields. METHODS: Serum samples were collected from people working in live poultry and none-poultry retailing food markets, poultry wholesaling, large-scale poultry breading factories and in small-scale farms, wide birds breeding, swine slaughtering houses and from normal population. Antibodies of H5, H9 and H7 with hemagglutination inhibition and neutralization tests were tested and analyzed. Logistic regression and chi(2) test were used. RESULTS: Among 2881 samples, 4 were positive to H5-Ab (0.14%), 146 were positive to H9-Ab (5.07%) and the prevalence of H9 among people from live poultry retailing (14.96%) was the highest. Prevalence rates of H9 were as follows: 8.90% in people working in the large-scale poultry breading factories, 6.69% in the live poultry wholesaling business, 3.75% in the wide birds breeding, 2.40% in the swine slaughtering, 2.21% in the non-poultry retailing, 1.77% in the rural poultry farmers and 2.30% in normal population. None was positive to H7-Ab among 1926 poultry workers. CONCLUSION: The H5 prevalence among people was much lower than expected, but the H9 prevalence was higher. None of the populations tested was found positive to H7-Ab. There was a higher risk of AIV infection in live poultry retailing, wholesaling and large-scale breading businesses, with the risk of live poultry retailing the highest. The longer the service length was, the higher the risk existed.