Combined effect of n-3 fatty acids and phytosterol esters on alleviating hepatic steatosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease subjects: a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial.

The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effect of n-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA, at an EPA:DHA ratio of 150:500) and phytosterol esters (PS) on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Ninety-six NAFLD subjects were randomly assigned to the following groups: the PS group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS); the FO group (receiving 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d); the PS + FO combination group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS and 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d) and the PO group (a placebo group). The baseline clinical characteristics of the four groups were similar. The primary outcome was liver:spleen attenuation ratio (L:S ratio). The percentage increase in liver-spleen attenuation (≤1) in the PS + FO group was 36 % (P = 0·083), higher than those in the other three groups (PS group, 11 %, P = 0·519; FO group, 18 %, P = 0·071; PO group, 15 %, P = 0·436). Compared with baseline, transforming growth factor-ß (TGF-ß) was significantly decreased in the three study groups at the end of the trial (PS, P = 0·000; FO, P = 0·002; PS + FO, P = 0·001) and TNF-α was significantly decreased in the FO group (P = 0·036), PS + FO group (P = 0·005) and PO group (P = 0·032) at the end of the intervention. Notably, TGF-ß was reduced significantly more in the PS + FO group than in the PO group (P = 0·032). The TAG and total cholesterol levels of the PS + FO group were reduced by 11·57 and 9·55 %, respectively. In conclusion, co-supplementation of PS and EPA + DHA could increase the effectiveness of treatment for hepatic steatosis.

Cu-In Halide Perovskite Solar Absorbers.

The long-term chemical instability and the presence of toxic Pb in otherwise stellar solar absorber APbX3 made of organic molecules on the A site and halogens for X have hindered their large-scale commercialization. Previously explored ways to achieve Pb-free halide perovskites involved replacing Pb2+ with other similar M2+ cations in ns2 electron configuration, e.g., Sn2+ or by Bi3+ (plus Ag+), but unfortunately this showed either poor stability (M = Sn) or weakly absorbing oversized indirect gaps (M = Bi), prompting concerns that perhaps stability and good optoelectronic properties might be contraindicated. Herein, we exploit the electronic structure underpinning of classic Cu[In,Ga]Se2 (CIGS) chalcopyrite solar absorbers to design Pb-free halide perovskites by transmuting 2Pb to the pair [BIB + CIII] such as [Cu + Ga] or [Ag + In] and combinations thereof. The resulting group of double perovskites with formula A2BCX6 (A = K, Rb, Cs; B = Cu, Ag; C = Ga, In; X = Cl, Br, I) benefits from the ionic, yet narrow-gap character of halide perovskites, and at the same time borrows the advantage of the strong Cu(d)/Se(p) → Ga/In(s/p) valence-to-conduction-band absorption spectra known from CIGS. This constitutes a new group of CuIn-based Halide Perovskite (CIHP). Our first-principles calculations guided by such design principles indicate that the CIHPs class has members with clear thermodynamic stability, showing direct band gaps, and manifesting a wide-range of tunable gap values (from zero to about 2.5 eV) and combination of light electron and heavy-light hole effective masses. Materials screening of candidate CIHPs then identifies the best-of-class Rb2[CuIn]Cl6, Rb2[AgIn]Br6, and Cs2[AgIn]Br6, having direct band gaps of 1.36, 1.46, and 1.50 eV, and theoretical spectroscopic limited maximal efficiency comparable to chalcopyrites and CH3NH3PbI3. Our finding offers a new routine for designing new-type Pb-free halide perovskite solar absorbers.

Design of Lead-Free Inorganic Halide Perovskites for Solar Cells via Cation-Transmutation.

Hybrid organic-inorganic halide perovskites with the prototype material of CH3NH3PbI3 have recently attracted intense interest as low-cost and high-performance photovoltaic absorbers. Despite the high power conversion efficiency exceeding 20% achieved by their solar cells, two key issues-the poor device stabilities associated with their intrinsic material instability and the toxicity due to water-soluble Pb2+-need to be resolved before large-scale commercialization. Here, we address these issues by exploiting the strategy of cation-transmutation to design stable inorganic Pb-free halide perovskites for solar cells. The idea is to convert two divalent Pb2+ ions into one monovalent M+ and one trivalent M3+ ions, forming a rich class of quaternary halides in double-perovskite structure. We find through first-principles calculations this class of materials have good phase stability against decomposition and wide-range tunable optoelectronic properties. With photovoltaic-functionality-directed materials screening, we identify 11 optimal materials with intrinsic thermodynamic stability, suitable band gaps, small carrier effective masses, and low excitons binding energies as promising candidates to replace Pb-based photovoltaic absorbers in perovskite solar cells. The chemical trends of phase stabilities and electronic properties are also established for this class of materials, offering useful guidance for the development of perovskite solar cells fabricated with them.

The impact of carbon quota allocation and low-carbon technology innovation on carbon market effectiveness: a system dynamics analysis.

As the problems of "valuing compliance over trading" and quota over-allocation seriously affect the effectiveness of China's national carbon emission trading (CET) market, the quota auction mechanism will be introduced timely to solve these problems. Since implementing the quota auction means reduced free quotas, regulated enterprises are more motivated to pursue low-carbon technology innovation (L-CTI). On these grounds, by establishing a system dynamics model of the national CET market and designing seven scenarios for simulation analysis, this paper investigates the impact of quota auction and L-CTI on the emission reduction effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the national CET market. The results indicate that for the national CET market, introducing quota auction is conducive to decreasing the CET price and improving its liquidity and emission reduction effectiveness, which is one of the quota allocation mechanisms to improve the CET market effectiveness at present. However, the quota auction will increase the abatement cost and reduce the cost effectiveness. Therefore, to improve the institutional performance of China's CET system, it is necessary to conduct L-CTI to alleviate the increasing abatement cost caused by quota auction, and thus improve the emission reduction effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the national CET market.

A Prospective Clinical Study on MGMT Protein Expression and the Effect of Gene Promoter Methylation on Sensitivity to Chemotherapeutics in Spinal Glioma.

OBJECTIVE: The present study discusses the O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) protein expression of spinal glioma cells and the correlation between the sensitivity of promoter methylation of the MGMT gene to chemotherapy drugs, establishes a prediction method for the sensitivity of chemotherapy drugs on spinal gliomas, providing a theoretical basis for determining the best chemotherapy regimens for clinical patients after a spinal glioma operation. METHODS: A total of 67 patients, who received microsurgical resection for spinal glioma from October 2010 to June 2016, were selected for the present study. Immunohistochemistry and methylation were performed after the operation. Among these patients, 47 patients with postoperative chemotherapy were assigned as the experimental group, while 20 patients without chemotherapy were designated as the control group. RESULTS: Among the 47 patients in the experimental group, 39 patients had no tumor recurrence after two years, while tumors increased and symptoms were aggravated in eight patients. The progression-free survival rate of chemotherapy was 82.9%, and the two-year survival rate was 100%. The adverse reactions of patients during chemotherapy were slight. Among the 20 patients in the control group, seven patients had no tumor recurrence, while 13 patients had increased tumor size, and the progression-free survival rate was 35.0%. CONCLUSION: Under the guidance of MGMT immunohistochemical detection and MGMT gene promoter methylation detection after surgery, chemotherapy can effectively delay tumor recurrence, prevent a reoperation, and have good safety and tolerability. This chemotherapy regimen has good prospects.

JAMIP: an artificial-intelligence aided data-driven infrastructure for computational materials informatics.

Materials informatics has emerged as a promisingly new paradigm for accelerating materials discovery and design. It exploits the intelligent power of machine learning methods in massive materials data from experiments or simulations to seek new materials, functionality, and principles, etc. Developing specialized facilities to generate, collect, manage, learn, and mine large-scale materials data is crucial to materials informatics. We herein developed an artificial-intelligence-aided data-driven infrastructure named Jilin Artificial-intelligence aided Materials-design Integrated Package (JAMIP), which is an open-source Python framework to meet the research requirements of computational materials informatics. It is integrated by materials production factory, high-throughput first-principles calculations engine, automatic tasks submission and monitoring progress, data extraction, management and storage system, and artificial intelligence machine learning based data mining functions. We have integrated specific features such as an inorganic crystal structure prototype database to facilitate high-throughput calculations and essential modules associated with machine learning studies of functional materials. We demonstrated how our developed code is useful in exploring materials informatics of optoelectronic semiconductors by taking halide perovskites as typical case. By obeying the principles of automation, extensibility, reliability, and intelligence, the JAMIP code is a promisingly powerful tool contributing to the fast-growing field of computational materials informatics.

Effect of Breed on the Volatile Compound Precursors and Odor Profile Attributes of Lamb Meat.

The objective was to characterize the effect of breed on the volatile compound precursors and odor profile attributes and to provide an insight into improving the lamb production and meat flavor. Three-month-old Tan (n = 10), Hu (n = 10) and Dorper lambs (n = 10) were raised for 90 days in single barns. Longissimus thoracis et lumborum muscle of all lambs were collected for analysis of intramuscular fat, fatty acids, amino acids, and volatile compounds. The results showed Tan and Hu accumulated more intramuscular fat and saturated fatty acid than Dorper. However, Tan had lower linoleic acid, alpha linolenic acid and total polyunsaturated fatty acid proportion than Dorper. Amino acid in Dorper was significantly higher than Tan and Hu. Furthermore, (E)-2-hexenal was only found in Tan lambs, while (E)-2-nonenal and (E,E)-2,4-nonadienal were only found in Dorper lambs. Hu had the fewest volatile compounds. The results of this study demonstrated that Dorper had larger proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), amino acid and volatile compounds than Tan and Hu. However, the specific PUFA derivates of Dorper had a negative impact on the odor profile. Hence, we suggest that further works should be focused on crossbreed lambs by Dorper and Tan, to enhance the lamb production and improve meat flavor.

Publisher Correction: Comparison of Alterations in miRNA Expression in Matched Tissue and Blood Samples during Spinal Cord Glioma Progression.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Computational Design of Mixed-Valence Tin Sulfides as Solar Absorbers.

Binary tin sulfides, such as SnS and SnS2, are appealing because of their simple stoichiometry and semiconducting properties and are, therefore, being pursued as potentially cost-effective materials for optoelectronic applications. The multivalency of Sn, that is, Sn(+2) and Sn(+4) allows yet more intermediate compositions, SnxSy, whose structures and properties are of interest. Sn2S3 is already under consideration as a mixed-valence semiconductor. Other intermediate compositions, for example, Sn3S4 and Sn4S5 have remained elusive, although their existences have been alluded to in literature. Here we report a comprehensive study of phase stability of the SnxSy series compounds, utilizing swarm-intelligence crystal structure search method combined with first-principles energetic calculations. We find that the stability of mixed-valence SnxSy compounds with respect to decomposition into pure-valence SnS and SnS2 is in general weaker than the SnxOy counterparts, likely due to differences in chemical bonding. Besides identifying the experimentally discovered stable phases of Sn2S3, our calculations indicate that the Sn3S4 phase is another mixed-valence composition which shows marginal stability with respect to decomposition into SnS and SnS2. Other studied compositions may be metastable under ambient conditions, with slightly positive formation enthalpies. We find two structures of Sn3S4 having comparably low energies, both of which feature one-dimensional chain-like fragments obtained by breaking up the edge-connected octahedral layers of SnS2. Both structures indicate lattice phonon stability and one shows quasi-direct band gap with a calculated value of 1.43 eV, ideal for solar absorbers. A further analysis of the composition-structure-property relationship supports the notion that low-dimensional Sn-S motifs and van der Waals interaction may lead to diverse structure types and chemical compositions, having functional properties that are yet to be identified in the SnxSy series with mixed valency.

Comparison of Alterations in miRNA Expression in Matched Tissue and Blood Samples during Spinal Cord Glioma Progression.

Abnormal expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) contributes to glioma initiation. However, the expression of miRNAs in tumour tissue or blood of spinal cord glioma (SCG) patients, particularly in high-grade spinal gliomas (Grade IV) known as glioblastoma (GBM), remains largely unknown. In this study we aimed to determine differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRNAs) in the tissue and blood between spinal cord glioblastoma (SC-GBM) patients and low grade SCG (L-SCG) patients. Additionally, we predicted key miRNA targets and pathways that may be critical in glioma development using pathway and gene ontology analysis. A total of 74 miRNAs were determined to be differentially expressed (25 upregulated and 49 downregulated) in blood, while 207 miRNAs (20 up-regulated and 187 down-regulated) were identified in tissue samples. Gene ontology analysis revealed multicellular organism development and positive regulation of macromolecule metabolic process to be primarily involved. Pathway analysis revealed "Glioma", "Signalling pathways regulating pluripotency of stem cells" to be the most relevant pathways. miRNA-mRNA analysis revealed that hsa-miRNA3196, hsa-miR-27a-3p, and hsa-miR-3664-3p and their target genes are involved in cancer progression. Our study provides a molecular basis for SCG pathological grading based on differential miRNA expression.

InSe: a two-dimensional material with strong interlayer coupling.

Atomically thin, two-dimensional (2D) indium selenide (InSe) has attracted considerable attention due to the large tunability in the band gap (from 1.4 to 2.6 eV) and high carrier mobility. The intriguingly high dependence of the band gap on layer thickness may lead to novel device applications, although its origin remains poorly understood, and is generally attributed to the quantum confinement effect. In this work, we demonstrate via first-principles calculations that strong interlayer coupling may be mainly responsible for this phenomenon, especially in the fewer-layer region, and it could also be an essential factor influencing other material properties of ß-InSe and γ-InSe. The existence of strong interlayer coupling manifests itself in three aspects: (i) indirect-to-direct band gap transitions with increasing layer thickness; (ii) fan-like frequency diagrams of the shear and breathing modes of few-layer flakes; and (iii) strong layer-dependent carrier mobilities. Our results indicate that multiple-layer InSe may be deserving of attention from FET-based technologies and may also be an ideal system to study interlayer coupling, possibly inherent in other 2D materials.

Economic analysis of waste-to-energy industry in China.

The generation of municipal solid waste is further increasing in China with urbanization and improvement of living standards. The "12th five-year plan" period (2011-2015) promotes waste-to-energy technologies for the harmless disposal and recycling of municipal solid waste. Waste-to-energy plant plays an important role for reaching China's energy conservation and emission reduction targets. Industrial policies and market prospect of waste-to-energy industry are described. Technology, cost and benefit of waste-to-energy plant are also discussed. Based on an economic analysis of a waste-to-energy project in China (Return on Investment, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, and Sensitivity Analysis) the paper makes the conclusions.

[The efficacy of third-generation instrumentation for the treatment of adult scoliosis].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of third generation spinal instrumentation such as TSRH, CD and ISOLA for the treatment of adult scoliosis. METHODS: Thirty-five adult scoliosis patients including adult idiopathic and degenerative scoliosis were all surgically treated with third generation instrumentation such as TSRH, CD and ISOLA from July 1999 to January 2003. Preoperative mean cobb angles of major curves of the frontal plane was 58.1 degrees (42 degrees -95 degrees ). The patients received anterior combined with posterior correction or single posterior procedure. Mean follow-up was 20 months (10 - 48 months). Preoperative and postoperative Cobb angles of the frontal plane and sagittal plane and distance between C(7) and CVSL were measured. We assessed the subjective efficacy by questionnaire. RESULTS: Clinical appearance of all patients improved significantly. Mean correction of major curves of the coronal plane was 53.2%. Mean lost of correction of the coronal plane in the last follow-up was 4.3 degrees , distance between the midline of C(7) and CVSL was corrected from 2.6 cm to 0.24 cm. Questionnaire in the follow-up showed that 89.3% patients were satisfied with operation results. Two cases occurred pneumatothorax and haematothorax. Three cases still complained about low back pain in 1 year after operation, among which 2 were adjacent degeneration and 1 was pseudarthrosis. CONCLUSION: Imageology assessment and patients self-evaluation shows that the third generation instrumentation could gain good correction and trunk balance in the treatment for adult scoliosis. And patients are more satisfied and have less complications.

Pituitary carcinoma with intraspinal metastasis: report of two cases and review of the literature.

Pituitary carcinomas are rare malignant neoplasms with diagnostic and management challenges. Patients with pituitary carcinomas have extremely poor outcomes. In this report, the authors describe two cases of pituitary carcinomas with intraspinal metastasis (Case 1: 42-year-old man with a history of pituitary adenoma 16 years ago developed an intraspinal lesion at C4-C5; Case 2: 26-year-old women with a history of growth hormone-producing pituitary adenoma 9 years ago developed intraspinal lesion in the sacral canal). Both patients underwent spine surgery. The intraspinal lesions were confirmed as metastatic pituitary carcinomas based on the histomorphology and immunohistochemical stains. The authors reviewed the literature for the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of intraspinal metastasis from pituitary carcinomas.