Identification of prognostic m6A modification patterns and score system in melanoma patients.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most common modification on RNAs and LncRNAs. It plays an important role in cancer stem cell differentiation, T cell differentiation, and immune homeostasis. In this study, we explored the potential roles of m6A modification of RNA in melanoma and investigated the immune cell infiltration in tumor microenvironment in diverse m6Aclusters and different m6Ascore groups. A consensus clustering algorithm determined m6A modification patterns based on 14 m6A regulators, and further explored the biological functions and the connection with TME. An m6A-related gene signature (m6Ascore) was constructed based on m6A-related genes using principal component analysis. Three m6A modification patterns were identified based on 14 m6A regulators, named as m6Aclusters A-C. The prognosis of m6Acluster A was more favorable than m6Aclusters B and C, and it was more closely associated with immune regulation. To quantify the m6A modification patterns of individual tumor, an m6Ascore was constructed, and patients were classified into high and low m6Ascore groups. The low m6Ascore group, which had a favorable prognosis, was more relevant to immunology. The expression of PD-L1 was higher and the immunophenoscore (IPS) revealed stronger response to immunotherapy in the low m6Ascore group. This study identified 3 m6A modification patterns with different immune characteristics and constructed an m6Ascore system to predict prognosis and immunogenicity of patients, which is conducive to clinical prognosis judgment and individual treatment.

Measurement of mass force field driving water refilling of cuttage.

Cuttage is a common plant cultivation method, and the key to its survival is the restoration of water refilling, which remains unclear up to now. We report 3D dynamic imaging of water refilling of cuttage without resorting to any contrast agent. Hydrodynamics of the refilled water flow over time reveals the existence of a unit mass force field with a gradient along the refilling direction, which means that cutting plants also have a gradient force field to drive the recovery of water refilling, as predicted by Cohesion-Tension theory in normal plants. We found that force fields of different functional regions are isolated and independently distributed, which is conducive to ensure the safety of water transmission. At the same time, we also found that there is a so-called "inchworm effect" in the mass force field, which contributes to the force transfer inside the cutting through local force accumulation. Results of this paper demonstrate that the developed method for the measurement of mass force field in-vivo is applicable to help decipher the mechanism of plant water refilling.

Achieving long-lived white circularly polarized luminescence from carbonized polymer dots via phosphorescence resonance energy transfer.

Achieving white-light emission, especially long-lived white circularly polarized luminescence, is challenging. Herein, chiral phosphorescent carbonized polymer dots (CPDs) have been prepared by using chiral polymer sodium alginate and chiral small molecule L-lysine as precursors. Benefiting from the efficient triplet-to-singlet phosphorescence resonance energy transfer (PRET), CPD-based long-lived warm white CPL has been achieved for the first time. This study provides a universal strategy for the convenient and efficient preparation of CPD-based long-lived white CPL materials.

Metformin Inhibits NLRP3 Inflammasome Expression and Regulates Inflammatory Microenvironment to Delay the Progression of Colorectal Cancer.

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer is a common malignant tumor, with about one million people diagnosed with it worldwide each year. Recent studies have found that metformin can inhibit the production of inflammatory factors and regulate the polarization of immune cells. However, whether metformin can regulate the inflammatory microenvironment and delay the progression of colorectal cancer by inhibiting the inflammatory response has not been deeply studied yet. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the molecular mechanism by which metformin inhibits the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome, regulates the inflammatory microenvironment, and delays the progression of colorectal cancer through in vitro cell experiments. METHODS: In this research, NLRP3 was knocked down in human colorectal cancer cells, and metformin was added to them. Cell proliferation ability was detected by CCK8, and cell migration and invasion abilities were assessed by Transwell assay. The apoptosis rate was determined by flow cytometry. In addition, the expression of NLRP3 inflammatory vesicles and inflammatory factors in each group of cells was studied by qRT-PCR and Western blotting. Finally, clinical colorectal cancer samples were analyzed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: The results of the study showed that NLRP3 expression was significantly increased in colorectal cancer cell lines and human colorectal cancer tissues. Knockdown of NLRP3 significantly inhibited tumor cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. In addition, the proliferation, migration and invasion of tumor cells were also significantly reduced by the addition of metformin intervention. Furthermore, qRT-PCR and WB results demonstrated that the expression of IL-1ß, IL-6, TNF- α, TGF-ß, and IL-10 was down-regulated in LS1034 tumor cells after NLRP3 knockdown. In addition, metformin intervention also resulted in different degrees of downregulation of NLRP3 and inflammatory factor expression (p <0.05). Notably, the reduction in inflammatory factors was more pronounced after the combination of NLRP3 knockdown and metformin intervention. CONCLUSION: Metformin can inhibit the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome, thereby suppressing the expression of inflammation-related factors, reducing the damage of the inflammatory microenvironment to normal cells, and delaying the progression of colorectal cancer.

Chiral Aggregation-Induced Emission Carbon Dot-Based Multicolor and Near-Infrared Circularly Polarized Delayed Fluorescence via a Light-Harvesting System.

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials are the research frontier of chiral luminescence. As a kind of luminescent carbon material, carbon dots (CDs) are expected to become excellent candidates for the construction of CPL materials. However, the construction of CD-based circularly polarized afterglow emission, especially multicolor and near-infrared emission, remains a great challenge due to aggregation-caused quenching and the instability of triplet excitons. In this work, we synthesized chiral CDs with aggregation-induced emission using dithiosalicylic acid and l/d-arginine as precursors through a one-step solvothermal method. Notably, the CDs exhibit green delayed fluorescence (DF) in poly(vinyl alcohol) films. Furthermore, multicolor and near-infrared circularly polarized delayed fluorescence is successfully realized via engineering a chiral light-harvesting system in which the CDs with green DF emission act as energy donors and fluorescent dyes with emission colors ranging from yellow to the near infrared serve as energy acceptors.

Chiral Phosphorescent Carbonized Polymer Dots Relayed Light-Harvesting System for Color-Tunable Circularly Polarized Room Temperature Phosphorescence.

Carbonized polymer dots (CPDs) with a circularly polarized fluorescence property have received increasing attention in recent years. However, it is still a great challenge to construct circularly polarized room-temperature phosphorescence (CPRTP) CPDs. Herein, a simple approach to the synthesis of intrinsically CPRTP CPDs for the first time by utilizing sodium alginate and l-/d-arginine as precursors under relatively mild reaction conditions is presented. Notably, the CPDs exhibit both chirality and green RTP in solid states. Furthermore, color-tunable CPRTP is successfully achieved by engineering chiral light-harvesting systems based on circularly polarized phosphorescence resonance energy transfer (C-PRET) where the CPDs with green RTP function as an initiator of chirality and light absorbance, and commercially available fluorescent dyes with different emission colors ranging from yellow to red serve as the terminal acceptors. Through one-step or sequential C-PRET, the light-harvesting systems can simultaneously furnish energy transfer and chirality transmission/amplification. Given the multicolor long afterglow, lifetime-tunable, and CPRTP properties, their potential applications in multiple information encryption are demonstrated.

Dynamic X-ray speckle-tracking imaging with high-accuracy phase retrieval based on deep learning.

Speckle-tracking X-ray imaging is an attractive candidate for dynamic X-ray imaging owing to its flexible setup and simultaneous yields of phase, transmission and scattering images. However, traditional speckle-tracking imaging methods suffer from phase distortion at locations with abrupt changes in density, which is always the case for real samples, limiting the applications of the speckle-tracking X-ray imaging method. In this paper, we report a deep-learning based method which can achieve dynamic X-ray speckle-tracking imaging with high-accuracy phase retrieval. The calibration results of a phantom show that the profile of the retrieved phase is highly consistent with the theoretical one. Experiments of polyurethane foaming demonstrated that the proposed method revealed the evolution of the complicated microstructure of the bubbles accurately. The proposed method is a promising solution for dynamic X-ray imaging with high-accuracy phase retrieval, and has extensive applications in metrology and quantitative analysis of dynamics in material science, physics, chemistry and biomedicine.

Mg assists in modulating the dimensionalities of the anionic frameworks of borates.

Three Mg-containing borates were obtained by high-temperature spontaneous crystallization. In the (A2O)- or (A2O-MO)-MgO-B2O3 system (A is alkali metal and M is alkaline-earth metal) reported in the ICSD, Li4Mg3SrB12O24 is the first compound that contains one-dimensional infinite anionic chains, and the two examples of the isostructural A2Mg3B16O28 (A = Rb, Cs) exhibit a two-dimensional infinite bilayer structure for the first time, which contributes to the enrichment of the structural chemistry of Mg-containing borates. Besides, the results of comparison and analysis in this system clearly show that Mg not only affects the anionic frameworks of borates to produce low-dimensional structures but, together with the ratio of Ncation/NB, is responsible for the dimensionalities of the anionic frameworks in borates. The optical properties of the three compounds also show that they all have short cutoff edges, and Cs2Mg3B16O28, in particular, could reach the deep-ultraviolet region (<200 nm).

The Chinese thermal comfort dataset.

Heating and cooling in buildings accounts for over 20% of total energy consumption in China. Therefore, it is essential to understand the thermal requirements of building occupants when establishing building energy codes that would save energy while maintaining occupants' thermal comfort. This paper introduces the Chinese thermal comfort dataset, established by seven participating institutions under the leadership of Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology. The dataset comprises 41,977 sets of data collected from 49 cities across five climate zones in China over the past two decades. The raw data underwent careful quality control procedure, including systematic organization, to ensure its reliability. Each dataset contains environmental parameters, occupants' subjective responses, building information, and personal information. The dataset has been instrumental in the development of indoor thermal environment evaluation standards and energy codes in China. It can also have broader applications, such as contributing to the international thermal comfort dataset, modeling thermal comfort and adaptive behaviors, investigating regional differences in indoor thermal conditions, and examining occupants' thermal comfort responses.

A Redox-Active Covalent Organic Framework with Highly Accessible Aniline-Fused Quinonoid Units Affords Efficient Proton Charge Storage.

Owing to their intrinsic safety and sustainability, aqueous proton batteries have emerged as promising energy devices. Nevertheless, the corrosion or dissolution of electrode materials in acidic electrolytes must be addressed before practical applications. In this study, a cathode material based on a redox-active 2D covalent organic framework (TPAD-COF) with aniline-fused quinonoid units featuring inherently regular open porous channels and excellent stability is developed. The TPAD-COF cathode delivers a high capacity of 126 mAh g-1 at 0.2 A g-1 , paired with long-term cycling stability with capacity retention of 84% after 5000 cycles at 2 A g-1 . Comprehensive ex situ spectroscopy studies correlated with density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that both the -NH- and C=O groups of the aniline-fused quinonoid units exhibit prominent redox activity of six electrons during the charge/discharge processes. Furthermore, the assembled punch battery consisting of a TPAD-COF//anthraquinone (AQ) all-organic system delivers a discharge capacity of 115 mAh g-1 at 0.5 A g-1 after 130 cycles, implying the potential application of the TPAD-COF cathode in aqueous proton batteries. This study provides a new perspective on the design of electrode materials for aqueous proton batteries with long-term cycling performance and high capacity.

SAELGMDA: Identifying human microbe-disease associations based on sparse autoencoder and LightGBM.

Introduction: Identification of complex associations between diseases and microbes is important to understand the pathogenesis of diseases and design therapeutic strategies. Biomedical experiment-based Microbe-Disease Association (MDA) detection methods are expensive, time-consuming, and laborious. Methods: Here, we developed a computational method called SAELGMDA for potential MDA prediction. First, microbe similarity and disease similarity are computed by integrating their functional similarity and Gaussian interaction profile kernel similarity. Second, one microbe-disease pair is presented as a feature vector by combining the microbe and disease similarity matrices. Next, the obtained feature vectors are mapped to a low-dimensional space based on a Sparse AutoEncoder. Finally, unknown microbe-disease pairs are classified based on Light Gradient boosting machine. Results: The proposed SAELGMDA method was compared with four state-of-the-art MDA methods (MNNMDA, GATMDA, NTSHMDA, and LRLSHMDA) under five-fold cross validations on diseases, microbes, and microbe-disease pairs on the HMDAD and Disbiome databases. The results show that SAELGMDA computed the best accuracy, Matthews correlation coefficient, AUC, and AUPR under the majority of conditions, outperforming the other four MDA prediction models. In particular, SAELGMDA obtained the best AUCs of 0.8358 and 0.9301 under cross validation on diseases, 0.9838 and 0.9293 under cross validation on microbes, and 0.9857 and 0.9358 under cross validation on microbe-disease pairs on the HMDAD and Disbiome databases. Colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and lung cancer are diseases that severely threat human health. We used the proposed SAELGMDA method to find possible microbes for the three diseases. The results demonstrate that there are potential associations between Clostridium coccoides and colorectal cancer and one between Sphingomonadaceae and inflammatory bowel disease. In addition, Veillonella may associate with autism. The inferred MDAs need further validation. Conclusion: We anticipate that the proposed SAELGMDA method contributes to the identification of new MDAs.

Room Temperature Phosphorescence Carbon Dots: Preparations, Regulations, and Applications.

Room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials have drawn considerable attention by virtue of their outstanding features. Compared with organometallic complexes and pure organic compounds, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a new type of RTP materials, which show great advantages, such as moderate reaction condition, low toxicity, low cost, and tunable optical properties. In this review, the important progress made in RTP CDs is summarized, with an emphasis on the latest developments. The synthetic strategies of RTP CDs will be comprehensively summarized, followed by detailed introduction of their performance regulation and potential applications in anti-counterfeiting, information encryption, sensing, light-emitting diodes, and biomedicine. Finally, the remaining major challenges for RTP CDs are discussed and new opportunities in the future are proposed.

Aquaporins and Neuropathic Pain.

Neuropathic pain is a chronic secondary pain condition resulting from lesions or diseases of the peripheral or central nervous system (CNS). Neuropathic pain is closely related to edema, inflammation, increased neuronal excitability, and central sensitization caused by glutamate accumulation. Aquaporins (AQPs), mainly responsible for the transport and clearance of water and solute, play important roles in developing CNS diseases, especially neuropathic pain. This review focuses on the interaction of AQPs with neuropathic pain, and the potential of AQPs, especially aquaporins 4, as therapeutic targets.

The investigation of reduced field-of-view diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma: comparison with conventional DWI.

BACKGROUND: Field-of-view optimized and constrained undistorted single-shot imaging (FOCUS) is a new sequence that shows enhanced anatomical details, improving the diffusion-weighted (DW) images. PURPOSE: To investigate the value of FOCUS diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the evaluation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and compare it with the single-shot echo planner imaging (SS-EPI) DWI approach. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 87 patients with NPC underwent magnetic resonance imaging, including FOCUS and SS-EPI DWI sequences. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal-intensity ratio (SIR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of the nasopharyngeal lesions were measured and compared. According to the clinical stages of patients, T and N were divided into early and advanced stage groups, respectively. The mean ADC values of the two techniques were computed, and the area under the curve (AUC) was estimated to calculate the diagnostic efficiency. RESULTS: Subjective and objective image qualitative values of FOCUS were significantly higher than those of SS-EPI. The ADC values for FOCUS of early T and N stages were significantly lower than those of the advanced stages. CONCLUSION: FOCUS provides significantly better image quality in NPC compared to SS-EPI, with lower ADC values for early-stage disease than late-stage disease.

Rational Design of the First Ammonium Magnesium Borate with Deep-Ultraviolet Cutoff Edge and Moderate Birefringence and Further Investigation into the Nature of Ammonium in the Borate System.

Through the rational design of the experimental method, the first combination of ammonium and magnesium in the borate system was successfully achieved. In this paper, a case of ammonium magnesium borate, (NH4)2{Mg(H2O)2[B6O7(OH)6]2}·2H2O, was successfully synthesized by a mild hydrothermal method at a relatively low temperature. A brief review was performed to show the participation of NH4+ in the recent development of optical materials. By discussing the optimum synthesis method of ammonium-containing borates and the main factors affecting the dimensionality of B-O anionic groups in their structures, the design strategy for synthesizing ammonium-containing borate and adjusting its structure has been put forward. Relevant experimental measurement results and the first-principles calculation results show that the title compound has a deep-UV cutoff edge (<200 nm) and moderate birefringence (Δncal. = 0.064 @546 nm), which indicates its potential application in the deep-UV region.

Restoration of aquaporin-4 polarization in the spinal glymphatic system by metformin in rats with painful diabetic neuropathy.

Painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN) is a common complication in patients with diabetes, and its underlying mechanism remains unclear. Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) plays a crucial role in removing metabolic waste in the glymphatic system. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between the spinal glymphatic system and the effect of metformin on PDN. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly allocated into the control group ( n = 10), the PDN group ( n = 10), and the metformin group ( n = 10). A high-fat and high-glucose diet combined with low-dose streptozotocin was used to induce PDN rats. We detected the clearance rate of the contrast agent in the spinal cord of each rat by MRI to reflect the function of the glymphatic system. Immunofluorescence was used to detect the localization of perivascular AQP4 in astrocyte endfeet. Furthermore, we measured the expression of AQP4 in the spinal cord by Western blot. Compared with the rats in the control group, PDN rats exhibited enhanced mechanical allodynia, decreased clearance rate of the contrast agent in the spinal glymphatic system, reversed AQP4 polarization, and increased expression of AQP4. After being treated with metformin, the rats showed opposite changes in the above characteristics. The analgesic effect of metformin on PDN may be related to its ability to restore spinal AQP4 polarization, thus promoting the function of the spinal glymphatic system.

Pelvic Injury Discriminative Model Based on Data Mining Algorithm.

OBJECTIVES: To reduce the dimension of characteristic information extracted from pelvic CT images by using principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) methods. To establish a support vector machine (SVM) classification and identification model to identify if there is pelvic injury by the reduced dimension data and evaluate the feasibility of its application. METHODS: Eighty percent of 146 normal and injured pelvic CT images were randomly selected as training set for model fitting, and the remaining 20% was used as testing set to verify the accuracy of the test, respectively. Through CT image input, preprocessing, feature extraction, feature information dimension reduction, feature selection, parameter selection, model establishment and model comparison, a discriminative model of pelvic injury was established. RESULTS: The PLS dimension reduction method was better than the PCA method and the SVM model was better than the naive Bayesian classifier (NBC) model. The accuracy of the modeling set, leave-one-out cross validation and testing set of the SVM classification model based on 12 PLS factors was 100%, 100% and 93.33%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In the evaluation of pelvic injury, the pelvic injury data mining model based on CT images reaches high accuracy, which lays a foundation for automatic and rapid identification of pelvic injuries.

Correlation between genetic polymorphisms in apolipoprotein E and atrial fibrillation.

This work explores correlations between genetic polymorphisms in apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and atrial fibrillation (AF). We detected polymorphisms in the APOE gene in 64 patients with AF and 49 non-AF volunteers at the Department of Cardiology of Lianyungang Second People's Hospital between July 2017 and July 2019. We found significant differences in age, body mass index, left atrial diameter, and left ventricular ejection fraction between the two groups. Six APOE genotypes were observed: ɛ2/ɛ2; ɛ2/ɛ3; ɛ2/ɛ4; ɛ3/ɛ3; ɛ3/ɛ4; and ɛ4/ɛ4. The ɛ3/ɛ3 genotype was significantly less frequent in the AF group than in the control group, while the ɛ3/ɛ4 and ɛ4/ɛ4 genotypes were significantly more frequent in the AF group than in the control group (p<0.05). ApoE3 penetrance was significantly lower in the AF group than in the control group (p<0.05), while ApoE4 penetrance was significantly higher in the AF group than in the control group (p<0.05). ApoE3 penetrance was significantly lower in the AF group than in the control group (p<0.05). Binary logistic regression analysis showed that age, body mass index, left atrial diameter, left ventricular ejection fraction, and ApoE4 were risk factors for AF. Finally, we found that ApoE polymorphisms impacted the occurrence of AF and that ApoE4 is an AF-sensitive phenotype.

Analysis of the Efficacy and Safety of Pulpitis Treated with Different Root Canal Flushing Fluids Based on VAS and Temporomandibular Joint Function.

Pulpitis is one of the common diseases indicated by the department of stomatology that is located in the tooth and contains abundant nerve vessels. In order to evaluate the pain degree and functional recovery of patients after treatment by visual analogue pain scale (VAS) and temporomandibular joint function score, a retrospective analysis was performed on 128 patients diagnosed with pulpitis who received root canal treatment in the department of stomatology from January 2020 to March 2021. The results show that 3%NaClO combined with 0.9% sodium chloride injection can effectively relieve the pain degree of patients after treatment, and the antibacterial effect is significantly better than 3%H2O2 combined with 0.9% normal saline. Meanwhile, it can effectively improve the temporomandibular joint function and reduce the recurrence rate, which has good clinical application value.

Conversion Surgery Following Immunochemotherapy in Initially Unresectable Locally Advanced Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma-A Real-World Multicenter Study (RICE-Retro).

Purpose: The present study sets out to evaluate the feasibility, safety, and effectiveness of conversion surgery following induction immunochemotherapy for patients with initially unresectable locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in a real-world scenario. Materials and Methods: In this multi-center, real-world study (NCT04822103), patients who had unresectable ESCC disease were enrolled across eight medical centers in China. All patients received programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) inhibitor plus chemotherapy every 3 weeks for at least two cycles. Patients with significant relief of cancer-related clinical symptoms and radiological responsive disease were deemed surgical candidates. Feasibility and safety profile of immunochemotherapy plus conversion surgery, radiological and pathological tumor responses, as well as short-term survival outcomes were evaluated. Moreover, data of an independent ESCC cohort receiving induction chemotherapy (iC) were compared. Results: One hundred and fifty-five patients were enrolled in the final analysis. Esophagectomy was offered to 116 patients, yielding a conversion rate of 74.8%. R0 resection rate was 94%. Among the 155 patients, 107 (69.0%) patients experienced at least one treatment-related adverse event (TRAE) and 45 (29.0%) patients reported grade 3 and above TRAEs. Significant differences in responsive disease rate were observed between iC cohort and induction immunochemotherapy (iIC) cohort [objective response rate: iIC: 63.2% vs. iC: 47.7%, p = 0.004; pathological complete response: iIC: 22.4% vs. iC: 6.7%, p = 0.001). Higher anastomosis fistula rate was observed in the iC group (19.2%) compared with the iIC group (4%). Furthermore, Significantly higher event-free survival was observed in those who underwent conversion surgery. Conclusion: Our results supported that conversion surgery following immunochemotherapy is feasible and safe for patients with initially unresectable locally advanced ESCC. Both radiological and pathological response rates were significantly higher in the iIC cohort compared with those in the traditional iC cohort.