Three-Pillar Expansive Craniotomy in Children with Acute Ruptured Supratentorial Brain Arteriovenous Malformations.

OBJECTIVE: Acute rupture and hemorrhage of pediatric brain arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) may lead to cerebral herniation or intractable intracranial hypertension, necessitating emerging surgical interventions to alleviate intracranial pressure. However, there is still controversy regarding the timing of treatment for ruptured AVMs. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of utilizing three-pillar expansive craniotomy (3PEC) at different times during the treatment of pediatric ruptured supratentorial AVMs. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted on all consecutive cases of acute rupture in supratentorial AVM children who underwent 3PEC at a single institution from 2020 to 2022. General information, clinical characteristics, radiological data, and prognosis were reviewed and analyzed. RESULTS: Thirteen children were included in the analysis. The intracranial pressure of all patients decreased to below 15 mmHg within 10 days. The expansion volume of the cranial cavity of the patients increased by 18.3 cm3 (95% confidence interval, 10.2-26.3; P < 0.001) compared to the hematoma volume. None of the patients required decompressive craniectomy due to intractable intracranial hypertension caused by cerebral swelling. The median waiting period for patients with delayed AVMs treatment was 8 days, during which no rebleeding occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Emergency intervention with 3PEC in children experiencing acutely ruptured supratentorial AVMs appears to be feasible. For children requiring delayed management of the AVMs, 3PEC may diminish the risk of rebleeding during the waiting period and shorten the waiting period.

Strong Thermo-tolerant Silicone-Modified Waterborne Polyurethane/Polyimide Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive.

A waterborne polyurethane pressure-sensitive adhesive (WPUPSA) has the advantages of low pollution and good viscoelasticity. However, its poor thermo-tolerance limits its application in the field of high temperatures. Hence, a novel silicone-modified strong thermo-tolerant waterborne polyurethane/polyimide pressure-sensitive adhesive is developed as a way to remedy this problem. The single-chain structure of waterborne polyurethane (WPU) is transformed into a network structure by introducing the three-position network structure to increase the cohesive energy and heat resistance of the WPUPSA. Meanwhile, the primary chain of waterborne polyurethane (WPU) is modified by the reaction between pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) and isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI) to include an imide ring and a benzene ring with more stable structures and heat resistance. Characterization results of the prepared WPUPSA show that the thermo-tolerance index of the WPUPSA increases by 15.2% and the room temperature 180° peel strength and shear resistance of the WPUPSA increase by 80.9 and 231.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, the temperature corresponding to the maximum thermal decomposition rate of the samples is improved. More importantly, at 80 and 100 °C, the 180° peel strength and shear resistance of the modified samples are stronger than those of the unmodified samples. In addition, the energy storage modulus of WPUPSAs is also greater than the loss and increases with the increase of the frequency. Viscoelasticity dominates in the samples. This will provide new insight for the development of WPUPSAs in the field of high-temperature resistance.

Management of lateral meningocele syndrome in a child without neurological symptoms and literature review.

PURPOSE: Lateral meningocele syndrome (LMS) is a rare genetic connective tissue disorder which is associated with meningocele-related neurologic dysfunction. Several patients with LMS have been reported. But, guidelines for screening and treatment of LMS have not been established. METHOD AND RESULTS: We review the current knowledge of LMS in the article. Then, we describe a boy for whom a genomic analysis which allowed us to make a diagnosis of LMS and to begin monitoring of his condition for possible neurological complications. CONCLUSION: It would be difficult to make a diagnosis of LMS on the basis of clinical manifestations alone. The natural history of dural ectasia in patients with LMS needs to be better defined to establish surgical indications. Based upon the current literature, ventriculoperitoneal shunting (V-Ps) has been recommended as the first-line surgical treatment option for patients with symptomatic thoracolumbar meningoceles.

An energy system optimization model accounting for the interrelations of multiple stochastic energy prices.

The variation of and the interrelation between different energy markets significantly affect the competitiveness of various energy technologies, therefore complicate the decision-making problem for a complex energy system consisting of multiple competing technologies, especially in a long-term time frame. The interrelations between these markets have not been accounted for in the existing energy system modelling efforts, leading to a distortion of understanding of the market impact on the technological choices and operations in the real world. This study investigates the strategic and operational decision-making problem for such an energy system characterized by three competing technologies from crude oil, natural gas, and coal. A stochastic programming model is constructed by incorporating multiple volatile energy prices interrelated with each other. Oil price is modelled by the mean-reverting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and serves as the exogenous variable in the ARIMAX models for natural gas and downstream plastic prices. The K-means clustering method is employed to extract a handful of distinctive patterns from a large number of simulated price projections to enhance the computing efficiency without losing retaining critical information and insights from the price co-movement. The model results suggest that the high volatility of the energy market weakens the possibility of selecting the corresponding technology. The oil-based route, for example, gradually loses its market share to the coal approach, attributed to a higher volatile oil market. The proposed method is applicable to other problems of the same kind with high-dimensional stochastic variables. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10479-021-04229-3.

Three-pillar expansive craniotomy: a new surgical technique for cerebral decompression in children.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to conduct a retrospective review of data obtained in all consecutive patients who had undergone cerebral decompression using the 3-pillar expansive craniotomy (3PEC) in our hospital between 2016 and 2020. METHODS AND RESULTS: We developed a novel craniotomy technique using expansion cranioplasty in patients with traumatic brain injury or stroke, which could relieve intracranial hypertension, maintain cerebral protection, and avoid subsequent cranial repair. Sixteen patients aged 2-18 years old underwent the 3PEC. Two patients, who presented very severe neurological conditions at the admission, died. All surviving patients showed good neurological outcome. None of the survived patients presented with bone flap resorption or sinking flap syndrome. CONCLUSION: The role of decompressive craniectomy has been recently questioned in the pediatric population by the use of decompressive craniotomy. In this limited study of children patients experiencing stroke or traumatic brain injury, 3PEC was proved useful in reducing intracranial pressure (ICP), thus, questioning the role of decompressive craniectomy in children. The technique effectively reduces postoperative complications and eliminates subsequent cranioplasty procedures otherwise introduced by traditional decompressive craniectomy.

Chiari I malformation in patients with RASopathies.

PURPOSE: Chiari I malformation (CIM) is a common pediatric neurologic anomaly which could be associated with a variety of genetic disorders. However, it is not always clear whether the observed associations between CIM and RASopathies are real or random. The knowledge of the real association could provide useful guidance to clinicians. Furthermore, it could help to better understand the still unknown genetic etiology of CIM. METHOD AND RESULTS: We reviewed the current knowledge of CIM and RASopathies in the paper. Here, we describe one patient with CIM and Noonan syndrome and three patients with CIM and neurofibromatosis type 1. Three of the four patients underwent standard surgical therapy of Chiari decompression and had a straightforward recovery without further complications from surgery. CONCLUSION: In RASopathy, imaging of the nervous system may be necessary. With the increase in availability of magnetic resonance imaging, we believe that there will be a growing body of evidence to suggest that CIM is more commonly seen in RASopathy. Future studies should attempt to elucidate the pathogenic mechanism responsible for CIM mediated by the RAS/MAPK signaling pathway.

Production of a SCID mouse model of medulloblastoma to explore the therapeutic value of targeting tumor driver genes.

Tumor driver genes are genes where structural or sequence mutations confer a selective advantage for cancer cells. The individualized targeting of tumor driver genes has become a topic of interest for tumor treatment. The prognosis for medulloblastoma (MB), a common type of malignant intracranial tumor found in children, is poor. The tumor driver genes and the corresponding targeted drugs remain to be studied. The present study analyzed tumor driver genes from tumor tissue and peripheral blood from one patient with nodular desmoplastic MB with Sonic Hedgehog activation and screened targeted drugs for the tumor driver genes. Additionally, MB tissue was successfully implanted into the SCID mouse which were then used for subsequent drug screening. The present study explored novel treatments for MB from the perspective of tumor driver genes, and may provide new ideas for choosing individualized targeted therapies for patients with MB.

Hyperspectral Imaging as a Potential Online Detection Method of Microplastics.

Microplastic pollution in aquatic environment has raised concern and as a result a number of studies have recently been published to find solutions for its rapid increase. Different methods have been proposed for microplastic identification. Spectral imaging shows a lot of promise for polymer identification; however, the identification time needs to be improved. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) combined with chemometric analysis can reduce the identification times. In this study, we provide a review of recent studies related to polymer identification using HSI with a focus on the adopted classification algorithm and its factors for the online implementation of HSI. Furthermore, we review the limit of detection by HSI and the effect of particle size on classification accuracy. Additionally, performance of this method for various types of samples is also discussed. We conclude that HSI is possible to be a fast alternative for online microplastic detection.

Mapping Small-Scale Horizontal Velocity Field in Panzhinan Waterway by Coastal Acoustic Tomography.

Mapping small-scale high-precision velocity fields is of great significance to oceanic environment research. Coastal acoustic tomography (CAT) is a frontier technology used to observe large-scale velocity field in the horizontal slice. Nonetheless, it is difficult to observe the velocity field using the CAT in small-scale areas, specifically where the flow field is complex such as ocean ranch and artificial upwelling areas. This paper conducted a sound transmission experiment using four 50 kHz CAT systems in the Panzhinan waterway. Notably, sound transmission based on the round-robin method was recommended for small-scale CAT observation. The travel time between stations, obtained by correlation of raw data, was applied to reconstruct the horizontal velocity fields using Tapered Least Square inversion. The minimum net volume transport was 8.7 m3/s at 12:32, 1.63% of the total inflow volume transport indicating that the observational errors were acceptable. The relative errors of the range-average velocity calculated by differential travel time were 1.54% (path 2) and 0.92% (path 6), respectively. Moreover, the inversion velocity root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) were 0.5163, 0.1494, 0.2103, 0.2804 and 0.2817 m/s for paths 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, respectively. The feasibility and acceptable accuracy of the CAT method in the small-scale velocity profiling measurement were validated. Furthermore, a three-dimensional (3-D) velocity field mapping should be performed with combined analysis in horizontal and vertical slices.

Acquired Chiari type I malformation managed by expanding posterior fossa volume and literature review.

PURPOSE: The acquired Chiari type I malformation is a rare late complication of supratentorial shunting in children which is often accompanied by abnormal cranial vault thickening. Several surgical treatments for this disease have been proposed including supratentorial skull enlarging procedures and subtentorial craniotomy. But there is still debate about the best treatment strategy for this disease. METHOD AND RESULTS: We reviewed the current knowledge of this disease in the paper. We illustrated one patient of symptomatic acquired Chiari type I malformation who had cysto-peritoneal (C-P) shunting and ventriculoperitoneal (V-P) shunting. We observed the CSF flow dynamic of this patient at different periods. The acquired Chiari type I malformation disappeared on imaging after thinning the occipital planum combined with the standard surgical therapy of Chiari decompression. The symptoms of the patient were relieved after surgery. CONCLUSION: Overshunting manifestations require prompt recognition and management. Preventive measures should be taken which include making a stringent selection of cases being considered for surgery, avoiding C-P drainage, and placing of a programmable valve as initial treatment of intracranial arachnoid cysts (AC) if shunting is considered.

On-site visualized classification of transparent hazards and noxious substances on a water surface by multispectral techniques.

This paper investigated the use of spectra and multispectral images for on-site visualized classification of transparent hazards and noxious substances (HNS), such as benzene, xylene, and palm oil, floating on a water surface with the potential use for rapid classification of multiple HNS during a leak accident. Partial least-squares discrimination analysis (PLS-DA) and least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) models achieved a classification accuracy of 100% for spectral reflectance (325-900 nm) and multispectral image at nine wavelengths. Wavelength division and selection were applied for spectra and spectral images, respectively, to reduce the difficulty in data collection and to simplify the redundant bands. This was followed by PLS-DA and LS-SVM modeling. The LS-SVM model based on the least wavelengths (365, 410, 450, and 850 nm) of multispectral images was suggested as the most effective method for on-site visualized classification of transparent HNS on a water surface.

Intracranial arterial dolichoectasia and skull damage in a girl with Jaffe-Campanacci syndrome: a case report.

ᅟJaffe-Campanacci is a rare syndrome characterised by axillary freckles, multiple non-ossifying fibromas of the long bones and jaw, and café-au-lait spots, associated with some features of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). Cherix et al. and Colby and Saul suggested that Jaffe-Campanacci syndrome (JCS) might be a distinct form of NF1. Intracranial arterial dolichoectasia (IADE) is defined as an increase in the length and diameter of at least one intracranial artery. Affected intracranial arteries are dilated, elongated and sometimes tortuous. But in this rare disease of JCS, neither skull damage nor IADE has been previously reported. Here, we introduce the case of an 11-year-old Chinese girl with IADE, skull damage and features of JCS.

Downregulation of Survivin Gene Expression Affects Ionizing Radiation Resistance of Human T98 Glioma Cells.

Survivin is a tumor-associated gene, which has been detected in a wide variety of human tumors. Previous research has shown that Survivin can affect hepatoma carcinoma cell radiosensitivity. However, little is known about the role of Survivin in ionizing radiation resistance in glioma cells. In this study, we aimed to identify the effects of Survivin on ionizing radiation resistance in glioma cell line T98. Our results showed that downregulation of Survivin gene expression and ionizing irradiation could both inhibit T98 cell proliferation by assays in vitro including CCK-8 and immunohistochemistry. The inhibitory effect of downregulation of Survivin combined with irradiation was the most significant compared with other groups. Results of Western blotting and flow cytometric analysis also showed that downregulation of Survivin combined with the irradiation group achieved the highest apoptosis rate. Experimental results in vivo by intracranial implanting into nude mice were consistent with those in vitro. These findings indicated that ionizing radiation resistance of human T98 glioma cells can be inhibited effectively after Survivin gene silencing.

Adaptive measurement method for miniature spectrometers used in cold environments.

Adaptive measurement is a major concern when using miniature spectrometers in extreme environments, especially when the ambient temperatures and incident light intensities vary greatly. In this study, parameters, including the signal output and the relevant noise and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a fiber optic spectrometry system composed of a photodiode array miniature spectrometer and external driver electronics were examined at multiple integration times from -50°C to 30°C, well below the specified operating temperature of this spectrometer. The relationships between those parameters and incident light level were also examined, at a single temperature of 0°C. Based on these examinations, temperature-induced biases in the linear operating range of the spectrometer were identified. Signal output and the relevant noise and SNR in response to different integration times, temperatures, and incident light levels were assessed separately. These assessments were then used to develop an adaptive measurement method for estimating the incident light level and setting up an optimal integration time for this spectrometer, while autonomously adapting the variation in the ambient temperature and incident light level simultaneously. This approach provides a general framework for developing an adaptive measurement algorithm for miniature spectrometers, which face tremendous variations in ambient temperature and incident light level.

Nuclear factor-kappa B1 inhibits early apoptosis of glioma cells by promoting the expression of Bcl-2.

Glioma is one of the most common types of adult primary brain tumors, and the underlying molecular mechanisms still remain unclear. Nuclear factor-kappa B1 (NF-κB1) is involved in a variety of malignancies and is widely expressed in malignant tumors. However, the expression of NF-κB1 in different grades of glioma, the correlation between NF-κB1 and Bcl-2 expressions in gliomas, and the research between NF-κB1 and early apoptosis of glioma cells have not been reported so far. In this study, the expression level of NF-κB1 in 31 human glioma tissues and six nonneoplastic brain tissues was determined using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results showed that the expression of NF-κB1 in human glioma tissues and glioma cell lines, SHG44 and U87, was significantly higher compared to noncancerous brain tissues and that the expression increased with increasing degrees of tumor malignancy. Similar results were demonstrated with the expression of Bcl-2 in the same human glioma specimens. Flow cytometry results showed that inhibition of NF-κB1 expression significantly promoted apoptosis of SHG44 and U87 in human glioma cells. Western blot analysis further confirmed decreased expression of Bcl-2 protein after inhibition of NF-κB1 protein expression. Taken together, NF-κB1 overexpression inhibits early apoptosis of glioma cells and high expression of NF-κB1 promotes the expression of antiapoptotic gene Bcl-2. Therefore, our study results provide a theoretical basis for antiapoptotic mechanism of tumor cells in association with NF-κB1.

Model-based restoration of underwater spectral images captured with narrowband filters.

Underwater spectral imaging is a promising method for mapping, classification and health monitoring of coral reefs and seafloor inhabitants. However, the spectrum of light is distorted during the underwater imaging process due to wavelength-dependent attenuation by the water. This paper presents a model-based method that accurately restores brightness of underwater spectral images captured with narrowband filters. A model is built for narrowband underwater spectral imaging. The model structure is derived from physical principles, representing the absorption, scattering and refraction by water and the optical properties of narrowband filters, lenses and image sensors. The model coefficients are calibrated based on spectral images captured underwater and in air. With the imaging model available, energy loss due to water attenuation is restored for images captured at different underwater distances. An experimental setup is built and experiments are carried out to verify the proposed method. Underwater images captured within an underwater distance of 260 cm are restored and compared with those in air. Results show that the relative restoration error is 3.58% on average for the test images, thus proving the accuracy of the proposed method.

Generalized weighted ratio method for accurate turbidity measurement over a wide range.

Turbidity measurement is important for water quality assessment, food safety, medicine, ocean monitoring, etc. In this paper, a method that accurately estimates the turbidity over a wide range is proposed, where the turbidity of the sample is represented as a weighted ratio of the scattered light intensities at a series of angles. An improvement in the accuracy is achieved by expanding the structure of the ratio function, thus adding more flexibility to the turbidity-intensity fitting. Experiments have been carried out with an 850 nm laser and a power meter fixed on a turntable to measure the light intensity at different angles. The results show that the relative estimation error of the proposed method is 0.58% on average for a four-angle intensity combination for all test samples with a turbidity ranging from 160 NTU to 4000 NTU.

miR-132 can inhibit glioma cells invasion and migration by target MMP16 in vitro.

Gliomas are the most common malignant primary brain tumors, and new clinical biomarkers and therapeutic targets are imminently required. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a novel class of small non-coding RNAs (∼22nt) involved in the regulation of various biological processes. Here, by using real-time polymerase chain reaction, miRNA-132 was found to be significantly deregulated in glioma tissues. Based on the prediction of the target genes of miR-132, we hypothesized that there is a significant association between miR-132 and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 16 (MT3-MMP), a protein of the MMP family. We showed that the up-expression of miR-132 inhibited cell migration and invasion in the human glioma cell lines A172, SHG44, and U87. Furthermore, the overexpression of miR-132 reduced the expression of MMP16 in A172, SHG44, and U87 cells. Taken together, our study suggested that miR-132 affects glioma cell migration and invasion by MMP16 and implicates miR-132 as a metastasis-inhibiting miRNA in gliomas.