Advanced esophageal cancer with bone metastases: Prognostic biomarkers and palliative treatment.

Esophageal cancer (EC) is a common and devastating tumor of the upper digestive tract. Unfortunately, by the time any symptoms have manifested, the disease has often progressed to an advanced stage and is accompanied by macro- and micrometastases, including in the bones. The treatment of esophageal cancer with bone metastases remains clinically challenging, given the poor prognosis associated with this condition. Effective prognostic biomarkers can help medical staff choose the appropriate operation and treatment plan, that is for most beneficial for making patients. Current treatments for esophageal cancer with bone metastases include pain-relieving drugs, surgical therapy, radiotherapy (RT), chemotherapy (CT, including molecular-targeted drug therapy), endocrine therapy (ET), bisphosphonates (BPs) and interventional therapy. Of these robust measures, radiotherapy has emerged as a particularly promising therapy for bone metastases from esophageal cancer. Substantial progress has been made in radiation therapy techniques since the discovery of X-rays by Roentgen in 1895. In its palliative capacity, the key goals of radiotherapy are to relieve the patients' bone pain and debilitate effects, including relieving spinal cord compression, correcting the spinal deformity and restoring spinal stability. However, it is worth mentioning that RT for esophageal cancer has various side effects. Currently, the available studies focused exclusively on radiotherapy for ECBM are too small to draw any definitive conclusions, and each of these studies has significant limitations. In this review, in addition to the epidemiology described at the beginning, we will explore the current prognostic biomarkers and radiotherapy for esophageal cancer, with a particular focus on those with bone metastases.

Planar GaN/Cu2O Microcrystal Composite Junction Photoanode for Efficient Solar Water Splitting.

Cu2O microcrystals are electrodeposited on an epitaxial GaN layer on a Si(111) substrate to improve the solar water splitting efficiency of a GaN photoanode. The performance of the GaN/Cu2O composite junction photoanode is investigated as a function of the Cu2O deposition amount for Cu2O microcrystal formation. For optimum Cu2O deposition amount, the photocurrent density is significantly enhanced compared to that of the bare GaN photoanode. The improved water splitting performance is attributed to the built-in electric field and band offsets of the n-GaN/p-Cu2O heterostructure, promoting the separation of photogenerated electrons and holes and the transport of the hole to the surface.

Red InGaN nanowire LED with bulk active region directly grown on p-Si (111).

A red nanowire LED with an InGaN bulk active region, directly grown on a p-Si (111) substrate, is demonstrated. The LED exhibits relatively good wavelength stability upon increasing injection current and narrowing of the linewidth without quantum confined Stark effect. Efficiency droop sets in at relatively high injection current. The output power and external quantum efficiency are 0.55 mW and 1.4% at 20 mA (20 A/cm2) with peak wavelength of 640 nm, reaching 2.3% at 70 mA with peak wavelength of 625 nm. The operation on the p-Si substrate results in large carrier injection currents due to a naturally formed tunnel junction at the n-GaN/p-Si interface and is ideal for device integration.

DLUT: Decoupled Learning-Based Unsupervised Tracker.

Unsupervised learning has shown immense potential in object tracking, where accurate classification and regression are crucial for unsupervised trackers. However, the classification and regression branches of most unsupervised trackers calculate object similarities by sharing cross-correlation modules. This leads to high coupling between different branches, thus hindering the network performance. To address the above issue, we propose a Decoupled Learning-based Unsupervised Tracker (DLUT). Specifically, we separate the training pipelines of different branches to unlock their inherent learning potential so that different branches can fully explore the focused feature regions of interest. Furthermore, we design independent adaptive decoupling-correlation modules according to the characteristics of each branch to obtain more discriminative and easily locatable feature response maps. Finally, to suppress the noise interference brought by unsupervised pseudo-label training and highlight the foreground object, we propose a novel suppression-ranking-based unsupervised training strategy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our DLUT outperforms state-of-the-art unsupervised trackers.

Cellular functions and molecular mechanisms of ubiquitination in osteosarcoma.

Although some advances have been made in the treatment of osteosarcoma in recent years, surgical resection remains the mainstream treatment. Initial and early diagnosis of osteosarcoma could be very difficult to achieve due to the insufficient sensitivity for the means of examination. The distal metastasis of osteosarcoma also predicts the poor prognosis of osteosarcoma. In order to solve this series of problems, people begin to discover a new method of diagnosing and treating osteosarcoma. Ubiquitination, as an emerging posttranslational modification, has been shown to be closely related to osteosarcoma in studies over the past decades. In general, this review describes the cellular functions and molecular mechanisms of ubiquitination during the development of osteosarcoma.

Noise logic with an InGaN/SiNx/Si uniband diode photodetector.

Noise logic is introduced by the wavelength dependent photocurrent noise of an InGaN/SiNx/Si uniband diode photodetector. A wavelength versus photocurrent noise discrimination map is constructed from the larger photocurrent noise for red light than that for green light. A minimum measurement time of four seconds is deduced from the standard deviation of the photocurrent noise for a safe wavelength distinction. A logic NOT gate is realized as representative with on or off red or green light as binary 1 or 0 inputs and the photocurrent noise above or below a defined threshold as binary 1 or 0 outputs.

One-Compartment InGaN Nanowire Fuel Cell in the Light and Dark Operating Modes.

A one-compartment H2O2 photofuel cell (PFC) with a photoanode based on InGaN nanowires (NWs) is introduced for the first time. The electrocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic properties of the InGaN NWs are studied in detail by cyclic voltammetry, current versus time measurements, photovoltage measurements, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. In parallel, IrO x (OH) y as the co-catalyst on the InGaN NWs is evaluated to boost the catalytic activity in the dark and light. For the PFC, Ag is the best as the cathode among Ag, Pt, and glassy carbon. The PFC operates in the dark as a conventional fuel cell (FC) and under illumination with 25% increased electrical power generation at room temperature. Such dual operation is unique, combining FC and PFC technologies for the most flexible use.

Negative differential resistance effect in resistive switching devices based on h-LuFeO3/CoFe2O4 heterojunctions.

The negative differential resistance (NDR) effect enables multilevel storage and gradual resistance modulation in resistive switching (RS) devices to be achieved. However, the poor reproducibility of NDR is the obstacle that restricts their application because the appearance of the NDR effect in RS devices is usually accidental or unstable at room temperature. In this report, we demonstrate a polarization and interfacial defect modulated NDR effect in h-LuFeO3/CoFe2O4 heterojunction-based RS devices; especially, the NDR is reproducible after hundreds of cycles at room temperature. This research provides an effective way for realizing the reproducible NDR effect in ferroelectric RS devices, and it may promote the development and application of RS devices with the NDR effect.