FOXP3+ regulatory T cells and the immune escape in solid tumours.

FOXP3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells play critical roles in establishing the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment, which is achieved and dynamically maintained with the contribution of various stromal and immune cell subsets. However, the dynamics of non-lymphoid FOXP3+ Treg cells and the mutual regulation of Treg cells and other cell types in solid tumour microenvironment remains largely unclear. In this review, we summarize the latest findings on the dynamic connections and reciprocal regulations of non-lymphoid Treg cell subsets in accordance with well-established and new emerging hallmarks of cancer, especially on the immune escape of tumour cells in solid tumours. Our comprehension of the interplay between FOXP3+ Treg cells and key hallmarks of cancer may provide new insights into the development of next-generation engineered T cell-based immune treatments for solid tumours.

Comparative efficacy of face-to-face and internet-based cognitive behavior therapy for generalized anxiety disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trial.

Objective: The study aimed to ascertain the comparative efficacy of these two forms on reducing anxiety scores of scales in patients with a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) by examining the available evidence for face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT). Moreover, this study attempted to determine whether ICBT can obtain similar benefits as CBT for GAD patients during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to the quarantine policy and the requirement of social distance. Methods: This meta-analysis was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) according to the guidelines in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses statement (registration number CRD42021241938). Therefore, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining CBT or ICBT was conducted in this study to treat GAD patients diagnosed with DMS-IV. The researchers searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for relevant studies published from 2000 to July 5, 2022. Evidence from RCTs was synthesized by Review Manager 5.4 as mean difference (MD) for change in scores of scales through a random-effects meta-analysis. Results: A total of 26 trials representing 1,687 participants were pooled. The results demonstrated that ICBT and CBT were very close in the effect size of treating GAD (MD = -2.35 vs. MD = -2.79). Moreover, they still exhibited a similar response (MD = -3.45 vs. MD = -2.91) after studies with active control were removed. Conclusion: Regarding the treatment of GAD, ICBT can achieve a similar therapeutic effect as CBT and could be CBT's candidate substitute, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic era, since the internet plays a crucial role in handling social space constraints. Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=241938, identifier CRD42021241938.

Spiropyran-Appended Cucurbit[6]uril Enabling Direct Generation of 2D Materials inside Living Cells.

The unique structural advantage and physicochemical properties render some 2D materials emerging platforms for intracellular bioimaging, biosensing, or disease theranostics. Despite recent advances in this field, one major challenge lies in bypassing the endocytic uptake barrier to allow internalization of very large 2D materials that have longer retention time in cells, and hence greater potency as intracellular functional platforms than small, endocytosable counterparts. Here, an engineered cucurbit[6]uril carrying at its periphery multiple spiropyran pendants that readily translocates into cytosol, and then polymerizes laterally and non-covalently in a controlled manner, enabling direct generation of 2D materials inside living cells, is reported. The resultant 2D materials are single-monomer-thick and can in situ grow up to 0.8-1.2 µm in lateral size, experimentally proved too large to be endocytosed from outside the cells even after surface engineered with biorecognition entities. A Förster resonance energy transfer assay is further devised for real-time visualization of the polymerization dynamics in vivo, clearly demonstrating the rationale in this study. With the otherwise non-endocytosable large 2D materials gaining access to cytosol, potent intracellular signaling or theranostic platform that surpasses the intrinsic performance limit of conventional small counterparts are in sight.

Ultra-fast formation control of high-order discrete-time multi-agent systems based on multi-step predictive mechanism.

This paper deals with the ultra-fast formation control problem of high-order discrete-time multi-agent systems. Using the local neighbor-error knowledge, a novel ultra-fast protocol with multi-step predictive information and self-feedback term is proposed. The asymptotic convergence factor is improved by a power of q+1 compared to the routine protocol. To some extent, the ultra-fast algorithm overcomes the influence of communication topology to the convergence speed. Furthermore, some sufficient conditions are given herein. The ones decouple the design of the synchronizing gains from the detailed graph properties, and explicitly reveal how the agent dynamic and the communication graph jointly affect the ultra-fast formationability. Finally, some simulations are worked out to illustrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.

A unique quantitative method of acid value of edible oils and studying the impact of heating on edible oils by UV-Vis spectrometry.

UV-Vis spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics was used effectively to study the impact of heating on edible oils (corn oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, peanut oil, soybean oil and sesame oil) and determine their acid value. Analysis of their first derivative spectra showed that the peak at 370 nm was a common indicator of the heated oils. Partial least squares regression (PLS) and principle component regression (PCR) were applied to building individual quantitative models of acid value for each kind of oil, respectively. The PLS models had a better performance than PCR models, with determination coefficients (R(2)) of 0.9904-0.9977 and root mean square errors (RMSE) of 0.0230-0.0794 for the prediction sets of each kind of oil, respectively. An integrate quantitative model built by support vector regression for all the six kinds of oils was also developed and gave a satisfactory prediction with a R(2) of 0.9932 and a RMSE of 0.0656.

Lexical tone recognition with an artificial neural network.

OBJECTIVES: Tone production is particularly important for communicating in tone languages such as Mandarin Chinese. In the present study, an artificial neural network was used to recognize tones produced by adult native speakers. The purposes of the study were (1) to test the sensitivity of the neural network to speaker variation typically in adult speaker groups, (2) to evaluate two normalization procedures to overcome the effects of speaker variation, and (3) to compare tone recognition performance of the neural network with that of the human listeners. DESIGN: A feedforward multilayer neural network was used. Twenty-nine adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers were recruited to record tone samples. The F0 contours of the vowel part of the 1044 monosyllabic words recorded were extracted using an autocorrelation method. Samples from the F0 contours were used as inputs to the neural network. The efficacy of the neural network was first tested by varying the number of inputs and the number of neurons in the hidden layer from 1 to 16. The sensitivity of the neural network to speaker variation was tested by (1) using the raw F0 data from speech tokens of a number of randomly drawn speakers that varied from 1 to 29, (2) using the raw F0 data from speech tokens of either male-only or female-only speakers, and (3) using two sets of normalized F0 data (i.e., tone 1-based normalization and first-order derivative) from speech tokens from a number of randomly drawn speakers that varied from 1 to 29. The recognition performance of the neural network under several experimental conditions was compared with the corresponding recognition performance of 10 normal-hearing, native Mandarin Chinese speaking adult listeners. RESULTS: Three inputs and four hidden neurons were found to be sufficient for the neural network to perform at about 85% correct using speech samples without normalization. The performance of the neural network was affected by variation across speakers particularly between genders. Using the tone 1-based normalization procedure, the performance of the neural network improved significantly. The recognition accuracy of the neural network as a whole or for each tone was comparable with that of the human listeners. CONCLUSIONS: The neural network can be used to evaluate the tone production of Mandarin Chinese speaking adults with human listener-like recognition accuracy. The tone 1-based normalization procedure improves the performance of the neural network to human listener-like accuracy. The success of our neural network in recognizing tones from multiple speakers supports its utility for evaluating tone production. Further testing of the neural network with hearing-impaired speakers might reveal its potential use for clinical evaluation of tone production.