Prognostic prediction and diagnostic role of Rspondin 1 expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

CONTEXT: Rspondin 1 (Rspo1), a protein family member featuring secreted furin-like domains, plays a pivotal role in cancer development and exhibits a positive correlation with tumor progression. However, its expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is still unknown. AIMS: Here, we assessed the correlation between Rspo1 and clinicopathological features of ESCC patients, and further investigated the potential role of Rspo1 in ESCC development and clinical outcomes. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: This was a pilot study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 112 paraffin-embedded tumor samples from patients with ESCC, including 68 matched adjacent normal tissues, were collected post-surgery. Subsequently, tissue microarray (TMA) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) techniques were employed to assess the protein levels of Rspo1. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: All statistical analyses were performed with SPSS 20.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL). RESULTS: We found that Rspo1 expression was significantly higher in ESCC than in adjacent normal tissues (P < 0.0001). Moreover, Rspo1 was highly expressed in ESCC tumor specimens and showed a significant correlation with the T classification of ESCC (P < 0.05). Additionally, our findings indicate a positive relationship between Rspo1 and survival time in ESCC. Patients exhibiting moderate to high levels of Rspo1 expression demonstrated superior survival outcomes compared to those with low expression (P = 0.0002). CONCLUSIONS: Our investigation has demonstrated that Rspo1 is upregulated in ESCC and exhibits a positive correlation with disease progression. Furthermore, we have observed a significant association between Rspo1 overexpression and improved patient survival rates, indicating its potential as a prognostic marker and therapeutic target for ESCC treatment.

T-YOLO: a lightweight and efficient detection model for nutrient buds in complex tea-plantation environments.

BACKGROUND: Quick and accurate detection of nutrient buds is essential for yield prediction and field management in tea plantations. However, the complexity of tea plantation environments and the similarity in color between nutrient buds and older leaves make the location of tea nutrient buds challenging. RESULTS: This research presents a lightweight and efficient detection model, T-YOLO, for the accurate detection of tea nutrient buds in unstructured environments. First, a lightweight module, C2fG2, and an efficient feature extraction module, DBS, are introduced into the backbone and neck of the YOLOv5 baseline model. Second, the head network of the model is pruned to achieve further lightweighting. Finally, the dynamic detection head is integrated to mitigate the feature loss caused by lightweighting. The experimental data show that T-YOLO achieves a mean average precision (mAP) of 84.1%, the total number of parameters for model training (Params) is 11.26 million (M), and the number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) is 17.2 Giga (G). Compared with the baseline YOLOv5 model, T-YOLO reduces Params by 47% and lowers FLOPs by 65%. T-YOLO also outperforms the existing optimal detection YOLOv8 model by 7.5% in terms of mAP. CONCLUSION: The T-YOLO model proposed in this study performs well in detecting small tea nutrient buds. It provides a decision-making basis for tea farmers to manage smart tea gardens. The T-YOLO model outperforms mainstream detection models on the public dataset, Global Wheat Head Detection (GWHD), which offers a reference for the construction of lightweight and efficient detection models for other small target crops. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.

Compressed-Sensing Reconstruction Based on Block Sparse Bayesian Learning in Bearing-Condition Monitoring.

Remote monitoring of bearing conditions, using wireless sensor network (WSN), is a developing trend in the industrial field. In complicated industrial environments, WSN face three main constraints: low energy, less memory, and low operational capability. Conventional data-compression methods, which concentrate on data compression only, cannot overcome these limitations. Aiming at these problems, this paper proposed a compressed data acquisition and reconstruction scheme based on Compressed Sensing (CS) which is a novel signal-processing technique and applied it for bearing conditions monitoring via WSN. The compressed data acquisition is realized by projection transformation and can greatly reduce the data volume, which needs the nodes to process and transmit. The reconstruction of original signals is achieved in the host computer by complicated algorithms. The bearing vibration signals not only exhibit the sparsity property, but also have specific structures. This paper introduced the block sparse Bayesian learning (BSBL) algorithm which works by utilizing the block property and inherent structures of signals to reconstruct CS sparsity coefficients of transform domains and further recover the original signals. By using the BSBL, CS reconstruction can be improved remarkably. Experiments and analyses showed that BSBL method has good performance and is suitable for practical bearing-condition monitoring.

Perioperative changes in peripheral regulatory B cells of patients with esophageal cancer.

Current treatments for esophageal cancer (EC) rely on tumor eradication by surgery or chemoradiotherapy. However, such treatments do not account for the assessment and adjustment of the immune status of the patients. Regulatory B cells (Bregs) have been confirmed as a negative regulatory subtype in B­cell populations. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been no direct studies on Bregs in patients with EC. The present study enrolled sixty patients with EC and sixty healthy donors to detect the presence of Bregs in peripheral blood and to determine their clinical significance. The percentage of peripheral Bregs was measured using flow cytometry with fluorescence­labeled antibodies against cluster of differentiation (CD) 5, CD19, interleukin (IL)­10, forkhead box protein 3 (Foxp3) and transforming growth factor­ß1 (TGF­ß1) prior to and following radical surgery. The level of circulating Bregs in patients with EC was observed to be significantly higher than that in the healthy donors. However, this level was observed to decrease following surgery. The percentage of circulating TGF­ß­producing Bregs and Foxp3­expressing Bregs in patients with EC also decreased following surgery. By contrast, the percentage of peripheral IL­10­producing Bregs (B10s) significantly increased in patients with advanced EC following surgery. These findings suggest that Bregs have a negative immunoregulatory role in the development and progression of EC. Furthermore, postoperative combination therapies against Bregs, particularly B10s, may improve the outcome of patients with EC following resection.

Distribution of serum total protein in elderly Chinese.

The serum total protein levels of the elderly possibly decrease gradually with aging. However, serum total protein levels are not suitable as a uniform reference standard for the elderly at different ages and genders. Thus, we investigated the total serum protein distribution in different gender and age groups of 11,453 elderly individuals aged ≥60 years and without liver or renal disease from Lianyungang, Jiangsu, China. The total protein levels (TPL) of these individuals exhibited normal distribution (Z = 1.206, P = 0.109), whereas the reference range (95% CI) was 54.1 g/L to 82.3 g/L. TPL was higher in females than in males for those aged between 60 and 75 years, whereas no significant difference was observed for those aged between 80 and 95 years. TPL was negatively correlated with age in males (r = -0.1342, P<0.05), females (r = -0.304, P<0.05), and the total group (r = -0.2136, P<0.05). TPL also decreased with aging and showed a faster rate in women than in men. These results indicated that an appropriate range of serum total protein based on age and gender differences should be used for clinical applications.

Protective effects of Gingko biloba extract 761 on myocardial infarction via improving the viability of implanted mesenchymal stem cells in the rat heart.

When introduced into the infarcted heart, bone marrow­derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) prevent the heart from deleterious remodeling and improve its recovery. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb) 761 on the infarcted myocardium microenvironment following MSC transplantation. The established rat myocardial infarction (MI) model, with implanted PKH­26 marked MSCs (1x105 cells), were randomly divided into two groups: The control group (injected with normal saline) and the EGb 761 treatment group (injected with 100 mg/kg/day EGb 761). The following indices for cardiac function, including the extent of inflammation, oxidative stress, MSC apoptosis and MSC differentiation were measured 1, 2 and 7 days after treatment. The anti­inflammatory effect of EGb 761 was observed by histological examination. Compared with the respective control group, the malondialdehyde content significantly decreased and the superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase activity significantly increased in the EGb761­treated groups. In addition, the apoptotic index gradually decreased (P<0.05) with the extension of MI time in the EGb761-treated groups compared to the respective control groups, suggesting that EGb761 exhbits anti-oxidative effects. In addition, the level of the Fas protein was positively correlated with the implanted MSC apoptotic ratio. Following 7 days of MSC transplantation with EGb 761 treatment, the expression of cTnI in PKH26­labeled MSCs was observed in the transplanted myocardium. Cardiac function, including the ejection fraction, left ventricular end­systolic pressure and dp/dtmax significantly increased, and the left ventricular end diastolic diameters, left ventricular end­diastolic volumes and left ventricular end­diastolic pressure significantly decreased (P<0.05, vs. the control group). The results demonstrated that EGb 761 is important in improving cardiac function and the infarcted myocardium microenvironment. The present study indicated that the protective effects of EGb 761 on the infarcted myocardium may be mediated by improving the viability and the differentiation of the implanted MSCs into cardiomyocytes.

IL-18 levels in the semen of male infertility: semen analysis.

This study investigated the relationship between interleukin (IL)-18 levels and male infertility. Semen samples from 57 infertile and normal males were subjected to semen analysis. The pH of the semen samples from normal and abnormal groups showed no significant difference (p>0.05). However, semen volume, density, forward movement percentage, activity, survival rate, and normal morphology rate of the sperms in the normal group were significantly higher than those of the abnormal group (p<0.01). The IL-18 levels of semen in the abnormal group (810.91 pg/mL) were higher than that of the normal group (402.74 pg/mL; p<0.01). Analyses indicate that seminal fluid IL-18 positively correlates with IL-6, IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor-α. Seminal IL-18 level does not affect bacterial colony count. Results indicate that IL-18 may be important in male reproduction.