Optical Information Transmission and Multimode Fluorescence Anticounterfeiting of Ca2-xMgxGe7O16:Mn2.

Multimode emission of Mn2+ for multimode fluorescence anticounterfeiting is achieved by cation site and interstitial occupancy in Ca2-xMgxGe7O16. The rings in Ca2-xMgxGe7O16 have a significant distortion for Mn2+ ions to enter the ring interstitials with a luminescence center at 665 nm, which is supported by XRD refinement results and first-principles calculations. The interstitial Mn2+ ion has good thermal stability with an activation energy of 0.36 eV. Surprisingly, these two luminescence centers, the cation site Mn and the interstitial Mn, have an obvious afterglow, and the disappearing afterglow will reappear by heating or irradiating with the 980 nm laser. The afterglow is significantly enhanced, as MnO2 is used as the manganese source, which is explained in detail by the thermal luminescence spectrum. Finally, Ca2-xMgxGe7O16:Mn2+ fully demonstrates its excellent prospects in fluorescent anticounterfeiting, information encryption, and optical information storage.

RNF126-mediated ubiquitination of FSP1 affects its subcellular localization and ferroptosis.

Medulloblastoma (MB) is a prevalent malignant brain tumor among children, which can be classified into four primary molecular subgroups. Group 3 MB (G3-MB) is known to be highly aggressive and associated with a poor prognosis, necessitating the development of novel and effective therapeutic interventions. Ferroptosis, a regulated form of cell death induced by lipid peroxidation, has been identified as a natural tumor suppression mechanism in various cancers. Nevertheless, the potential role of ferroptosis in the treatment of G3-MB remains unexplored. In this study, we demonstrate that RNF126 acts as an anti-ferroptotic gene by interacting with ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1, also known as AIFM2) and ubiquitinating FSP1 at the 4KR-2 sites. Additionally, the deletion of RNF126 reduces the subcellular localization of FSP1 in the plasma membrane, resulting in an increase in the CoQ/CoQH2 ratio in G3-MB. The RNF126-FSP1-CoQ10 pathway plays a pivotal role in suppressing phospholipid peroxidation and ferroptosis both in vivo and in vitro. Clinically, RNF126 exhibited elevated expression in G3-MB and its overexpression was significantly associated with reduced patient survival. Our findings indicate that RNF126 regulates G3-MB sensitivity to ferroptosis by ubiquitinating FSP1, which provides new evidence for the potential G3-MB therapy.

Effect of different anesthetic modalities with multimodal analgesia on postoperative pain level in colorectal tumor patients.

BACKGROUND: According to clinical data, a significant percentage of patients experience pain after surgery, highlighting the importance of alleviating postoperative pain. The current approach involves intravenous self-control analgesia, often utilizing opioid analgesics such as morphine, sufentanil, and fentanyl. Surgery for colorectal cancer typically involves general anesthesia. Therefore, optimizing anesthetic management and postoperative analgesic programs can effectively reduce perioperative stress and enhance postoperative recovery. The study aims to analyze the impact of different anesthesia modalities with multimodal analgesia on patients' postoperative pain. AIM: To explore the effects of different anesthesia methods coupled with multi-mode analgesia on postoperative pain in patients with colorectal cancer. METHODS: Following the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria, a total of 126 patients with colorectal cancer admitted to our hospital from January 2020 to December 2022 were included, of which 63 received general anesthesia coupled with multi-mode labor pain and were set as the control group, and 63 received general anesthesia associated with epidural anesthesia coupled with multi-mode labor pain and were set as the research group. After data collection, the effects of postoperative analgesia, sedation, and recovery were compared. RESULTS: Compared to the control group, the research group had shorter recovery times for orientation, extubation, eye-opening, and spontaneous respiration (P < 0.05). The research group also showed lower Visual analog scale scores at 24 h and 48 h, higher Ramany scores at 6 h and 12 h, and improved cognitive function at 24 h, 48 h, and 72 h (P < 0.05). Additionally, interleukin-6 and interleukin-10 levels were significantly reduced at various time points in the research group compared to the control group (P < 0.05). Levels of CD3+, CD4+, and CD4+/CD8+ were also lower in the research group at multiple time points (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: For patients with colorectal cancer, general anesthesia coupled with epidural anesthesia and multi-mode analgesia can achieve better postoperative analgesia and sedation effects, promote postoperative rehabilitation of patients, improve inflammatory stress and immune status, and have higher safety.

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Prunus salicina cultivar 'Zuili' (Rosaceae).

'Zuili' is a distinguished plum (Prunus salicina Lindley 1830) originating from Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province, China, and a nationally recognized geographical indication product. In this study, we reported the complete chloroplast genome of P. salicina cultivar 'Zuili'. The genome has a circular structure of 157,935 bp containing a large single-copy (LSC) region of 86,133 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 19,028 bp, and two inverted repeats (IRs) of 26,387 by each. It harbors 130 genes (111 unique genes), including 85 protein-coding genes (78 are unique), eight ribosomal RNA genes (four are unique), and 37 transfer genes (29 are unique). The phylogenetic analysis based on whole chloroplast genomes showed 'Zuili' was clustered with Prunus salicina cultivar 'Wuyuecui' (MW406461.1) and 'No. 2 Guofeng' (MW406472.1). This study provides valuable information that can contribute to the identification and further evolutionary analysis of Prunus salicina cultivar 'Zuili'.

The unique immune ecosystems in pediatric brain tumors: integrating single-cell and bulk RNA-sequencing.

Background: The significant progress of immune therapy in non-central nervous system tumors has sparked interest in employing the same strategy for adult brain tumors. However, the advancement of immunotherapy in pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors is not yet on par. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive comparative studies investigating the immune ecosystem in pediatric and adult CNS tumors at a high-resolution single-cell level. Methods: In this study, we comprehensively analyzed over 0.3 million cells from 171 samples, encompassing adult gliomas (IDH wild type and IDH mutation) as well as four major types of pediatric brain tumors (medulloblastoma (MB), ependymoma (EPN), H3K27M-mutation (DIPG), and pediatric IDH-mutation glioma (P-IDH-M)). Our approach involved integrating publicly available and newly generated single-cell datasets. We compared the immune landscapes in different brain tumors, as well as the detailed functional phenotypes of T-cell and myeloid subpopulations. Through single-cell analysis, we identified gene sets associated with major cell types in the tumor microenvironment (gene features from single-cell data, scFes) and compared them with existing gene sets such as GSEA and xCell. The CBTTC and external GEO cohort was used to analyze and validate the immune-stromal-tumor patterns in pediatric brain tumors which might potentially respond to the immunotherapy. Results: From the perspective of single-cell analysis, it was observed that major pediatric brain tumors (MB, EPN, P-IDH-M, DIPG) exhibited lower immune contents compared with adult gliomas. Additionally, these pediatric brain tumors displayed diverse immunophenotypes, particularly in regard to myeloid cells. Notably, the presence of HLA-enriched myeloid cells in MB was found to be independently associated with prognosis. Moreover, the scFes, when compared with commonly used gene features, demonstrated superior performance in independent single-cell datasets across various tumor types. Furthermore, our study revealed the existence of heterogeneous immune ecosystems at the bulk-RNA sequencing level among different brain tumor types. In addition, we identified several immune-stromal-tumor patterns that could potentially exhibit significant responses to conventional immune checkpoint inhibitors. Conclusion: The single-cell technique provides a rational path to deeply understand the unique immune ecosystem of pediatric brain tumors. In spite of the traditional attitudes of "cold" tumor towards pediatric brain tumor, the immune-stroma-tumor patterns identified in this study suggest the feasibility of immune checkpoint inhibitors and pave the way for the upcoming tide of immunotherapy in pediatric brain tumors.

Identification and complete genome sequence of a novel sadwavirus discovered in chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat.).

The complete genome sequence of a putative novel member of the genus Sadwavirus was determined by high-throughput sequencing of a chrysanthemum from an orchard of the Tongxiang Agricultural Science Institute in Tongxiang, Zhejiang province. The complete genome sequence was confirmed using RT-PCR and the rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) method. The predicted genome of the putative virus is composed of two RNA molecules, 7016 and 6772 nucleotides in length, excluding their poly-A tails. The new virus was tentatively named "chrysanthemum sadwavirus" (ChSV). The Pro-Pol region of RNA1 and the CP region of RNA2 of ChSV shared the highest amino acid sequence identity (53.01% and 36.40%, respectively) with the corresponding sequences of lettuce secovirus 1 (LSV-1). Phylogenetic analysis showed that ChSV clustered with members of the subgenus Stramovirus (genus Sadwavirus). Taken together, these results suggest that ChSV is a new member of the genus Sadwavirus.

Predictors for the clinical prognosis of sylvian arachnoid cysts in children.

Objectives: To investigate the potential factors affecting the clinical prognosis of intracranial sylvian arachnoid cysts(IAC) in children. Methods: All patients with IAC admitted to our department from January, 1, 2015 to December, 31, 2016, were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were grouped based on surgical treatment (surgery cohort vs non-surgery cohort). The clinical and image outcome of the patients were followed routinely. The clinical characteristics and the prognosis of the patients were compared in different cohorts. Binary logistic regression analysis was applied to analyze the potential factors which may post an influence on the prognosis of the patients. Results: Of 500 patients admitted to our department for IAC, 424 patients had good prognosis and 76 had poor prognosis, with no deaths occurred during the follow-ups. 68 patients had IAC related complications and 91 patients developed new symptoms during the follow-ups. There were significant differences (P < 0.05) between the 2 cohorts in below aspects: age, gender, Galassi subtype, whether the mother was a unipara, the maximum diameter of the cysts at the first visit and the last follow-up, headache, head circumference, temporal bulge, new symptoms, cysts rupture and hemorrhage, subdural effusion, and IAC disappearance. The mean changes in the maximum diameter of the IAC for the patients were marginally higher for the surgery cohort than for the non-surgery cohort (P < 0.01). Binary logistic regression analysis suggested that the number of symptom, no new symptoms during follow-up, surgical treatment, age, maximum diameter of cysts at first diagnosis were independent risk factors affecting the prognosis of patients (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Patients older than 22.5 months, with the maximum diameter of IAC greater than 5.75 cm, who have multiple symptoms, born prematurely, develope new symptoms during the follow-ups and obvious symptoms after trauma need to conduct necessary surgical treatment in time. Patients with complications such as cysts rupture with hemorrhage and subdural effusion will acquire good prognosis after timely surgical treatment. IAC complete disappearance warrants no such important attention for the good prognosis.

[Effect of Ropivacaine Combined with Dexmedetomidine for Serratus Anterior Plane Block Plus Patient-Controlled Intravenous Analgesia on Postoperative Recovery Quality of Patients Undergoing Thoracoscopic Radical Resection of Lung Cancer].

Objective: To study the postoperative analgesic effect of ropivacaine combined with dexmedetomidine for serratus anterior plane block (SAPB) under ultrasound visualization plus patient-controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) in patients undergoing thoracoscopic radical resection of lung cancer. Methods: A total of 129 patients undergoing elective thoracoscopic surgery were enrolled. The patients were randomly assigned to three groups ( n=43 in each group), a normal saline group (control group), a ropivacaine mesylate group (Group R) and a ropivacaine mesylate combined with dexmetomidine hydrochloride group (Group RD). After operation, ultrasound-guided SAPB was performed and patients in the three groups received the injection of 0 mL of 0.9% normal saline, 25 mL of 0.5% ropivacaine, and 25 mL of 0.5% ropivacaine+1 µg/kg dextrometomidine hydrochloride mixture, respectively. In addition, PCIA was used for all the patients. The button on the PCIA pump was pressed when the postoperative pain visual analogue score (VAS)≥4 on coughing, and rescue analgesic of sufentanil was given intravenously at 2.5 µg/bolus. The primary outcome was the VAS scores at rest and on coughing at 10 min (T 1), 6 h (T 2), 12 h (T 3), 24 h (T 4), and 48 h (T 5) after extubation. The secondary outcomes included hemodynamics, the quality of sleep for the first 3 nights after operation, number of times the button on the PCIA pump was pressed, intraoperative and postoperative opioid dosage, time of first postoperative rescue analgesic, duraion of intubation, length of stay at the hospital, adverse reactions, etc. Results: Compared with those of the control group, the VAS scores of the Group R and Group RD were significantly lower at 10 min, 6 h, and 12 h after extubation ( P<0.05). In comparison with Group R, the number of patients requiring rescue analgesia, the time of first postoperative rescue analgesic, the number of times the button on the PCIA pump was pressed, and the total dose of rescue sufentanil were all significantly lower ( P<0.05) in the Group RD. Patients in the Group RD had better sleep quality in the second and third nights after operation and lower incidence of nausea and vomiting ( P<0.05). Conclusion: 0.5% ropivacaine and 1 µg/kg dexmedetomidine SAPB combined with PCIA can significantly reduce postoperative pain and improve postoperative recovery quality in patients undergoing thoracoscopic radical resection of lung cancer.

Clinical value of classification in the treatment of children with suprasellar arachnoid cysts.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical characteristics and prognostic effects of different subtypes of suprasellar arachnoid cysts (SAC) in children. METHODS: Fifty patients with primary SAC who had undergone endoscopic treatment in our department between January 2010 and December 2020 were studied retrospectively. All patients underwent endoscopic treatment after diagnosis, including ventriculocystostomy (VC) in 23 cases and ventriculocystocisternostomy (VCC) in 27 cases. All patients were followed up regularly after the operation, including head computed tomography (CT)/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and Evans index (EI) and frontal and occipital horn ratio (FOHR) index were measured to assess changes in cyst volume and hydrocephalus. The prognosis was evaluated comprehensively on the data of the improvement of clinical symptoms, child growth and development correlation score, and reduction of cyst volume 12 months after surgery. According to the new classification of SAC, 50 cases of children were classified into three groups in which we compared the clinical characteristics of different subtypes of the three groups. Logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors of prognosis. RESULTS: Completed success was achieved in 50 cases, including 31 cases with cyst volume reduction of more than 50% and 19 cases with cyst volume reduction of less than 50%. The median follow-up time was 55.3 months (22 ~ 113 months). According to the new classification criteria of SAC, there were 21 cases of SAC-1, 16 cases of SAC-2, and 13 cases of SAC-3. There were no statistically significant differences among the three groups in gender, birth weight, prenatal diagnosis, hydrocephalus, endocrine abnormalities, relief of postoperative symptoms, cyst wall texture, and surgical methods (P > 0.05). There was a statistically significant difference among the three groups in the change of the cyst volume and the maximum cyst diameter (P < 0.05), in which SAC-1 had the largest volume reduction, SAC-2 was more likely to cause endocrine symptoms and SAC-3 was inclined to lie in between. Multivariate logistic analysis showed that SAC classification and cyst wall texture were independent risk factors for the prognosis. CONCLUSION: The clinical characteristics of different SAC subtypes are different, and SAC classification is one of the independent risk factors affecting prognosis.

Corrigendum: Systematic analysis of MCM3 in pediatric medulloblastoma via multi-omics analysis.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.815260.].

The tentative application of en bloc concept in the pediatric brain tumor: Experience from a large pediatric center in china.

Background: Children are more susceptible to the higher rate of massive blood transfusion because of the less allowable blood loss and lower intraoperative tolerance to blood loss during the resection of brain tumors. The surgical concept of en bloc resection, which is widely used in other tumors, may contribute to the improvement of brain tumor resection. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive research on its application in pediatric brain tumors. Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the outcomes of the en bloc concept and the factors associated with the application of the en bloc concept in pediatric brain tumors. Methods: According to the surgical concept involved, the patients were divided into three subgroups: complete en bloc concept, partial en bloc concept, and piecemeal concept. The matching comparison (complete and partial en bloc concept groups vs. piecemeal concept group) was conducted to investigate the effect of the en bloc concept on the outcomes. Then, the patient data from January 2018, when the en bloc concept was routinely integrated into the brain tumor surgery in our medical center, were reviewed and analyzed to find out the predictors associated with the application of en bloc concept. Results: In the en bloc group, the perioperative parameters, such as hospital stay (p = 0.001), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) stay (p = 0.003), total blood loss (p = 0.015), transfusion rate (p = 0.005), and complication rate (p = 0.039), were all significantly improved. The multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that tumor volume, bottom vessel, and imaging features, such as encasing nerve or pass-by vessel, finger-like attachment, ratio of "limited line", and ratio of "clear line", were independent predictors for the application of the en bloc concept in our medical center. Conclusion: This study supports the application of complete and partial en bloc concept in the pediatric brain tumor surgery based on the preoperative evaluation of imaging features, and compared with the piecemeal concept, the en bloc concept can improve the short outcomes without significant increases in the neurological complications. Large-series and additional supportive pieces of evidence are still warranted.

Microfluidic-based exosome isolation and highly sensitive aptamer exosome membrane protein detection for lung cancer diagnosis.

Non-invasive methods of detecting cancer by circulating exosomes are challenged by inefficient purification and identification. This study hereby proposed an automated centrifugal microfluidic disc system combined with functionalized membranes (Exo-CMDS) to isolate and enrich exosomes, which will then be processed by a novel aptamer fluorescence system (Exo-AFS) in order to detect the exosome surface proteins in an effective manner. Exo-CMDS features in highly qualified yields with optimal exosomal concentration of 5.1 × 109 particles/mL from trace amount of blood samples (<300 µL) in only 8 min, which truly accomplishes the exosome isolation and purification in one-step methods. Meanwhile, the limit of detection (LOD) of PD-L1 in Exo-AFS reaches as low as 1.58 × 105 particles/mL. In the trial of clinical samples, the diagnostic accuracy of lung cancer achieves 91% (95% CI: 79%-96%) in contrast to the exosome ELISA (area under the curve: 0.9378 versus 0.8733; 30 patients). Exo-CMDS and Exo-AFS display the precedence in the aspects of inexpensiveness, celerity, purity, sensitivity and specificity when compared with the traditional techniques. Such assays potentially grant a practicable way of detecting inchoate cancers and guiding immunotherapy in clinic.

Robust and accurate pulmonary nodule detection with self-supervised feature learning on domain adaptation.

Medical imaging data annotation is expensive and time-consuming. Supervised deep learning approaches may encounter overfitting if trained with limited medical data, and further affect the robustness of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) on CT scans collected by various scanner vendors. Additionally, the high false-positive rate in automatic lung nodule detection methods prevents their applications in daily clinical routine diagnosis. To tackle these issues, we first introduce a novel self-learning schema to train a pre-trained model by learning rich feature representatives from large-scale unlabeled data without extra annotation, which guarantees a consistent detection performance over novel datasets. Then, a 3D feature pyramid network (3DFPN) is proposed for high-sensitivity nodule detection by extracting multi-scale features, where the weights of the backbone network are initialized by the pre-trained model and then fine-tuned in a supervised manner. Further, a High Sensitivity and Specificity (HS2) network is proposed to reduce false positives by tracking the appearance changes among continuous CT slices on Location History Images (LHI) for the detected nodule candidates. The proposed method's performance and robustness are evaluated on several publicly available datasets, including LUNA16, SPIE-AAPM, LungTIME, and HMS. Our proposed detector achieves the state-of-the-art result of 90.6% sensitivity at 1/8 false positive per scan on the LUNA16 dataset. The proposed framework's generalizability has been evaluated on three additional datasets (i.e., SPIE-AAPM, LungTIME, and HMS) captured by different types of CT scanners.

An Integrated Analysis of Tumor Purity of Common Central Nervous System Tumors in Children Based on Machine Learning Methods.

Background: Tumor purity is defined as the proportion of cancer cells in the tumor tissue, and its effects on molecular genetics, the immune microenvironment, and the prognosis of children's central nervous system (CNS) tumors are under-researched. Methods: We applied random forest machine learning, the InfiniumPurify algorithm, and the ESTIMATE algorithm to estimate the tumor purity of every child's CNS tumor sample in several published pediatric CNS tumor sample datasets from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), aiming to perform an integrated analysis on the tumor purity of children's CNS tumors. Results: Only the purity of CNS tumors in children based on the random forest (RF) machine learning method was normally distributed. In addition, the children's CNS tumor purity was associated with primary clinical pathological and molecular indicators. Enrichment analysis of biological pathways related to the purity of medulloblastoma (MB) revealed some classical signaling pathways associated with MB biology and development-related pathways. According to the correlation analysis between MB purity and the immune microenvironment, three immune-related genes, namely, CD8A, CXCR2, and TNFRSF14, were negatively related to MB purity. In contrast, no significant correlation was detected between immunotherapy-associated markers, such as PD-1, PD-L1, and CTLA4; most infiltrating immune cells; and MB purity. In the tumor purity-related survival analysis of MB, ependymoma (EPN), and children's high-grade glioma, we discovered a minor effect of tumor purity on the survival of the aforementioned pediatric patients with CNS tumors. Conclusion: Our purity pediatric pan-CNS tumor analysis provides a deeper understanding and helps with the clinical management of pediatric CNS tumors.

[Preliminary analysis on the composition of fish and cephalopod in diet of Dosidicus gigas in the high sea of Eastern Pacific Ocean]. / ä¸œå¤ªå¹³æ´‹å ¬æµ·èŒŽæŸ”é±¼é¥µæ–™ä¸­é±¼ç±»å’Œå¤´è¶³ç±»ç»„æˆåˆæ­¥åˆ†æž.

Dosidicus gigas is widely distributed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and plays an important role in the marine ecosystem. In this study, we identified and analyzed 4131 otoliths and 75 beaks from the stomach content residuals of 62 D. gigas samples, which were collected by Chinese squid jigging vessels in the high sea of Eastern Pacific Ocean from June to December 2019. The results showed that the preys of D. gigas included 10 fish species and 4 cephalopod species. Judging from the frequency of appearance and percentage of amount, Vinciguerria lucetia, Diogenichthys laternatus, and Triphoturus mexicanus were the dominant myctophidae prey of D. gigas. Among those preys, V. lucetia was the most important one, as it was found in all D. gigas with different mantle lengths. D. gigas, Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis, and Onychoteuthis banksii were the dominant cephalopod prey. With the growth of mantle length of D. gigas, the number of prey species, the percentage of cephalopod and myctophidae preys, and the size of preys increased, and thus the trophic level of preys increased as the trophic pattern of preys changed. Our results could provide basic information for evaluating the contribution of different preys in the preying transformation of D. gigas.

CircPIK3C2A Facilitates the Progression of Glioblastoma via Targeting miR-877-5p/FOXM1 Axis.

Glioblastoma is a rare yet lethal type of tumor that poses a crucible for the medical profession, owing to its rapid proliferation and invasion resulting in poor prognosis. Circular RNAs (circRNAs), a subclass of regulatory RNAs, are implicated in the regulation of cancerous progression. This study aims to investigate the roles and underlying mechanism of circPIK3C2A in regulating proliferation and invasion of glioblastoma. qRT-PCR assays showed that the expression level of circPIK3C2A was aberrantly higher in glioblastoma cell lines, in comparison with that in normal glia cells. The ectopic expression of circPIK3C2A promoted the proliferation, invasion and clonal formation of glioblastoma cells, while circPIK3C2A loss-of-function exerted exactly the opposite biological effects on the cells. The construction of subcutaneous xenograft tumor model in nude mice indicated that circPIK3C2A loss-of-function effectively diminished tumor load in vivo and prolonged the survival time of tumor-bearing animals. Luciferase reporter assay confirmed the interaction among circPIK3C2A/miR-877-5p and FOXM1. CircPIK3C2A function as competitive endogenous RNA via sponging miR-877-5p through certain binding sites, thereby modulating the expression of FOXM1. Our results collectively indicate that circPIK3C2A functions as ceRNA by mediating miR-877-5p/FOXM1 axis, providing a novel perspective of applying CircPIK3C2A in the clinical intervention of glioblastoma in the future.

Biomechanical changes of degenerated adjacent segment and intact lumbar spine after lumbosacral topping-off surgery: a three-dimensional finite element analysis.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have revealed positive effect of Topping-off technique on upper adjacent segment after fusion surgery, while for the cases with fusion surgery on L5-S1 segment, owning maximal range of motion, and preexisting degenerated upper adjacent disc, it is necessary to clarify the superiority of Topping-ff technique and the effect exerted on the lumbar spine. METHODS: A young healthy male volunteer was selected for thin-slice CT scanning. Then the image information was imported into the computer to establish the whole lumbar spine model as the health model. The medium degeneration model of intervertebral disc was established by changing the material properties of L4-S1 disc on the basis of the health model, and the fusion model and Topping-off model were respectively established on the basis of the degenerated model. The variation trend of ROM of L2-L5 and the stress changes of L4-L5 intervertebral disc, nucleus pulposus and facet joints were calculated respectively. RESULTS: The L4-L5 ROM of fusion model increased significantly but the ROM of L2-L3 and L3-L4 segments did not change significantly. Compared with the degenerated model, L4-L5 activity of the Topping-off model decreased, and ROM of the L2-L3 and L3-L4 increased to some extent in the flexion and extension positions. The stress on the disc, nucleus pulposus and facet joint of the fusion model L4-L5 increased in four positions of flexion, extension, rotation and bending compared with the degenerated model, while the fiber stress on the Topping-off model decreased significantly in all four positions. CONCLUSION: Topping-off technology can decrease the stress and ROM of the adjacent upper degenerated segment, and increase the ROM of other upper segments, thereby protecting the degenerated upper adjacent segments and compensating the lumbar spine mobility.

A novel positioner for accurately sitting the acetabular component: a retrospective comparative study.

INTRODUCTION: In this study, we described a positioner which allows a combination of preoperative plan and intraoperative insertion of the cup to improve the reconstruction of the rotation center of the hip. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted on 32 consecutive patients (group A) using this positioner and 40 consecutive patients (group B) using conventional method; radiological parameters and clinical measurements before operation and at last follow-up were collected and evaluated. RESULTS: Group A had a reconstructed center of rotation (COR) that was 0.19 mm closer to the anatomic COR in height (P < 0.005), compared with group B with 3.45 mm vertical dislocation. There were no statistically significant differences in the horizontal displacement between the two groups. The accuracy of cup inclination was 42.14 ± 3.57 in the group A and 38.73 ± 7.65 in the group B (P = 0.015). The accuracy of cup anteversion was 14.82 ± 1.44 in the group A and 13.08 ± 5.95 in the group B (P = 0.082). All cups in the group A were radiologically stable, while one cup in the group B was radiologically unstable and was successfully treated with second-stage revision. Both of the groups obtained a higher mean postoperative Harris Hip Score. CONCLUSIONS: Utilizing this positioner helps to restore the COR position more precisely and provides satisfactory radiological and clinical outcomes in the short term, and more studies are required before its widespread adoption for complicated cases.

Focal Visual-Text Attention for Memex Question Answering.

Recent insights on language and vision with neural networks have been successfully applied to simple single-image visual question answering. However, to tackle real-life question answering problems on multimedia collections such as personal photo albums, we have to look at whole collections with sequences of photos. This paper proposes a new multimodal MemexQA task: given a sequence of photos from a user, the goal is to automatically answer questions that help users recover their memory about an event captured in these photos. In addition to a text answer, a few grounding photos are also given to justify the answer. The grounding photos are necessary as they help users quickly verifying the answer. Towards solving the task, we 1) present the MemexQA dataset, the first publicly available multimodal question answering dataset consisting of real personal photo albums; 2) propose an end-to-end trainable network that makes use of a hierarchical process to dynamically determine what media and what time to focus on in the sequential data to answer the question. Experimental results on the MemexQA dataset demonstrate that our model outperforms strong baselines and yields the most relevant grounding photos on this challenging task.

The toxicity and efficacy evaluation of different fractions of Kansui fry-baked with vinegar on Walker-256 tumor-bearing malignant ascites effusion rats and normal rats.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Kansui, the root of Euphorbia kansui S.L.Liou ex S.B.Ho (E.kansui), is a classical traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with certain toxicity. According to the theory of TCM, kansui fry-baked wtith vinegar (VEK) possesses low toxicity and mild diuretic and purgative efficacy. In clinical practice, it is commonly used for the treatmtablent of ascites and oliguria. The present study aimed to evaluate the toxicity and efficacy of different fractions of VEK and reveal the underlying material basis by employing an animal model of malignant ascites effusion (MAE) in rats. MATERIALS AND METHODSTA: The MAE rats as the model were constructed in SPF male wistar rats by intraperitoneal injection of Walker-256 tumor cells. The MAE rats were used and randomly divided into the control group (normal rats), control groups with different fractions (VEKA, VEKB, VEKC and VEKD), model group (MAE rats), positive control group (model group with furosemide), model groups with different fractions (VEKA, VEKB, VEKC and VEKD). Histopathological observation was used to confirm Walker-256 tumor-bearing organ injuries in rats. For the efficacy evaluation, the ascites and urine volumes, the urinary electrolyte concentrations (Na+, K+ and Cl-) and pH, the ascites levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-2, IL-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ and VEGF), PRA, the serum levels of Ang II, ALD and ADH, as well as AQP8 protein expression in the gastrointestinal tract were detected. Furthermore, different levels of indicators were measured in the toxicity evaluation of different fractions both on normal and model rats, including serum liver enzymes (AST and ALT), serum oxidative damage parameters (GSH, MDA, LDH and SOD), expressions of inflammatory parameters (NF-κB, ICAM-1 and E-cadherin) and apoptosis signals (caspase-3, -8, -9, Bcl-2 and Bax) in the liver and gastrointestinal tract. RESULTS: Walker-256 tumor-bearing malignant ascites effusion rats showed obvious hepatic and gastrointestinal injuries by histopathological observation. In the efficacy evaluation, model rats treated with VEKB and VEKC showed significant urine increase (VEKB, P < 0.01; VEKC, P < 0.01) and ascites reduction (VEKB, P < 0.01; VEKC, P < 0.01). These two fractions also balanced the concentrations of Na+, K+ and Cl- in urine (VEKB, all P < 0.05; VEKC, all P < 0.05), remarkably decreased urinary pH (VEKB, P < 0.01; VEKC, P < 0.01), and reduced the ascites levels of IL-2, IL-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ and VEGF (VEKB, all P < 0.01; VEKC, all P < 0.01) in the model rats. Moreover, levels of PRA, the serum Ang II, ALD and ADH of model rats were decreased after treated by VEKB and VEKC (VEKB, all P < 0.05; VEKC, all P < 0.05). Meanwhile, the expression of gastrointestinal AQP8 of the model rats was also enhanced after treated by VEKB and VEKC (VEKB, P < 0.01; VEKC, P < 0.01). In the toxicity evaluation, although VEKB and VEKC caused toxic indexes moved to the worse aspects in normal rats, nearly all of these indicators notably improved in the model rats. Additionally, VEKA showed no effect on the indicators, either in the efficacy evaluation or in the toxicity evaluation. And VEKD could significantly improve some indicators (urine volume, concentration of K+ in urine, serum MDA, AI and caspase-9) in MAE rats. CONCLUSIONS: VEKB and VEKC were demonstrated a significant efficacy in treating malignant ascites effusion, which could reduce hepatic and gastrointestinal damage on the model rats but cause the same damage to the normal. These data embody the traditional Chinese medicine application principle: You Gu Wu Yun. And these results will provide reference for the safer and better clinical utilization of kansui.