Background and Objective: Short‐chain fatty acids, such as butyric acid and propionic acid, are metabolic by‐products generated by periodontal microflora such as Porphyromonas gingivalis, and ...contribute to the pathogenesis of periodontitis. However, the effects of butyrate on the biological activities of gingival fibroblasts (GFs) are not well elucidated.
Material and Methods: Human GFs were exposed to various concentrations of butyrate (0.5–16 mm) for 24 h. Viable cells that excluded trypan blue were counted. Cell cycle distribution of GFs was analyzed by propidium iodide‐staining flow cytometry. Cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was measured by flow cytometry using 2’,7’‐dichlorofluorescein (DCF). Total RNA and protein lysates were isolated and subjected to RT‐PCR using specific primers or to western blotting using specific antibodies, respectively.
Results: Butyrate inhibited the growth of GFs, as indicated by a decrease in the number of viable cells. This event was associated with an induction of G0/G1 and G2/M cell cycle arrest by butyrate (4–16 mm) in GFs. However, no marked apoptosis of GFs was noted in this experimental condition. Butyrate (> 2 mm) inhibited the expression of cdc2, cdc25C and cyclinB1 mRNAs and reduced the levels of Cdc2, Cdc25C and cyclinB1 proteins in GFs, as determined using RT‐PCR and western blotting, respectively. This toxic effect of butyrate was associated with the production of ROS.
Conclusion: These results suggest that butyrate generated by periodontal pathogens may be involved in the pathogenesis of periodontal diseases via the induction of ROS production and the impairment of cell growth, cell cycle progression and expression of cell cycle‐related genes in GFs. These events are important in the initiation and prolongation of inflammatory processes in periodontal diseases.
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BFBNIB, CMK, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Summary
About 25% of patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) have normal cytogenetics and no nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1) mutation or Fms‐like tyrosine kinase 3 internal tandem ...duplication (FLT3‐ITD). The prognosis and best therapy for these patients is controversial. We evaluated 158 newly diagnosed adults with this genotype who achieved histological complete remission within two cycles of induction therapy and were assigned to two post‐remission strategies with and without an allotransplant. Targeted regional sequencing at diagnosis was performed and data were used to estimate their prognosis, including relapse and survival. In multivariable analyses, having wild‐type or mono‐allelic mutated CCAAT/enhancer‐binding protein alpha (CEBPA) hazard ratio (HR) 2·39, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·08–5·30; P = 0·032), mutated NRAS (HR 2·67, 95% CI 1·36–5·25; P = 0·004), mutated colony‐stimulating factor 3 receptor (CSF3R) (HR 2·85, 95% CI 1·12–7·27; P = 0·028) and a positive measurable residual disease (MRD)‐test after the second consolidation cycle (HR 2·88, 95% CI 1·32–6·30; P = 0·008) were independently correlated with higher cumulative incidence of relapse (CIR). These variables were also significantly associated with worse survival (HR 3·02, 95% CI 1·17–7·78, P = 0·022; HR 3·62, 95% CI 1·51–8·68, P = 0·004; HR 3·14, 95% CI 1·06–9·31, P = 0·039; HR 4·03, 95% CI 1·64–9·89, P = 0·002; respectively). Patients with ≥1 of these adverse‐risk variables benefitted from a transplant, whereas the others did not. In conclusion, we identified variables associated with CIR and survival in patients with AML and normal cytogenetics without a NPM1 mutation or FLT3‐ITD.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper, in order to fully investigate the great potential of increasingly powerful vehicles and their predictable mobility in improving dynamic network performance, we develop a V2V task ...offloading algorithm for SVCNs (Software-defined Vehicular Cooperative Networks). First of all, a three-layer SVCNs architecture is built with vehicle edge layer, SDN control layer and cloud layer from bottom to top, moreover, at SDN control layer, there are multiple SDN controllers responsible for data collection and resource scheduling, and a dual LSTM-based vehicle trajectory prediction model is also designed with the aim of achieving a spatiotemporal trajectory prediction process. We then formulate an optimization problem and further show our V2V task offloading algorithm design, which consists of a distributed V2V (dV2V) offloading sub-algorithm and a centralized V2V (cV2V) offloading sub-algorithm. Finally, we test our trajectory prediction model with TensorFlow, and simulate our V2V task offloading algorithm on NS3 platform, results show that not only our prediction model obtains the highest accuracy, but also our V2V task offloading design outperforms the comparison schemes in terms of average service time, task success ratio and algorithm convergence with various vehicle density and motion modes.
Pulmonary lymphoepithelioma‐like carcinoma (PLELC) is a rare and histologically distinctive subtype of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). High expression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD‐L1) and ...scarcity of druggable driver mutations raise the potential of immunotherapy for advanced PELEC. However, evidence on the clinical impact of immune‐checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) remained limited and unconvincing. The present study retrospectively enrolled advanced PLELC patients who received ICIs either as up‐front or salvage therapy in SYSUCC between March 15, 2017 and March 15, 2022. The comparative efficacy of chemoimmunotherapy vs chemotherapy in the first‐line setting and chemoimmunotherapy vs ICIs monotherapy in the ≥2 line setting was investigated. A total of 96 patients were finally enrolled; 49 PLELC patients received immunotherapy plus platinum‐based chemotherapy, while 45 patients received platinum‐based chemotherapy as first‐line treatment. Patients with chemoimmunotherapy significantly obtain more survival benefits than those receiving chemotherapy (median progression‐free survival PFS: 15.6 vs 8.6 months, P = .0015). Additionally, patients with chemoimmunotherapy obtained more PFS benefits than those with ICIs monotherapy in the ≥2 line of therapy (median PFS: 21.7 months vs 7.8 months, P = .094). A significant correlation was observed between prognostic nutritional index (PNI) and favorable treatment outcomes in patients receiving first‐line chemoimmunotherapy (median PFS: 17.8 months vs 7.6 months, P < .0001). Likewise, patients in the monocyte‐to‐lymphocyte ratio (MLR)‐high group had significantly shorter PFS than the MLR‐low group (median PFS: 11.2 months vs not reached, P = .0009). Our study elucidated the superior efficacy of ICIs therapy, especially chemoimmunotherapy in advanced PLELC, which may provide new insight into the role of immunotherapy in advanced PLELC.
What's new?
The high expression of PD‐L1 and scarcity of druggable driver mutations raise the potential of immunotherapy in treating advanced pulmonary lymphoepithelioma‐like carcinoma. However, evidence on the clinical impact of immune checkpoint inhibitors remains limited. Our study shows that patients receiving first‐line chemoimmunotherapy obtain more survival benefits than patients receiving traditional chemotherapy. Chemoimmunotherapy also shows a favorable treatment outcome compared to immune checkpoint inhibitors monotherapy after progression on first‐line platinum‐based chemotherapy. Moreover, the study supports the potential of the pretreatment serum prognostic nutritional index and monocyte‐to‐lymphocyte ratio as prognostic markers for immunotherapy in advanced pulmonary lymphoepithelioma‐like carcinoma.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•A drowsiness detection system based on EEGs and eyelid movements is proposed.•Nonlinear features are extracted and fused from EEG wavelet sub-bands.•An efficient detector “extremely learning ...machine” is employed.•The proposed method achieves high detection accuracy and fast computation speed.
Physiological signals such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG) recordings are very important non-invasive measures of detecting a person’s alertness/drowsiness. Since EEG signals are non-stationary and present evident dynamic characteristics, conventional linear approaches are not highly successful in recognition of drowsy level. Furthermore, previous methods cannot produce satisfying results without considering the basic rhythms underlying the raw signals. To address these drawbacks, we propose a system for drowsiness detection using physiological signals that present four advantages: (1) decomposing EEG signals into wavelet sub-bands to extract more evident information beyond raw signals, (2) extraction and fusion of nonlinear features from EEG sub-bands, (3) fusion the information from EEGs and eyelid movements, (4) employing efficient extremely learning machine for status classification. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves not only a high detection accuracy but also a very fast computation speed. The proposed algorithm can be further developed into the monitoring and warning systems to prevent the accumulation of mental fatigue and declines of work efficiency in many environments such as vehicular driving, aviation, navigation and medical service.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
An effective method for the determination of 49 pesticide residues and 17 mycotoxins in wine by a modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) method and ultrahigh‐performance ...liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry was developed. The target compounds were extracted with 1% (v/v) formic acid–acetonitrile, and no cleanup steps were required. The extracts were separated on a C18 chromatographic column (2.1 mm × 50 mm, 1.7 µm) with acetonitrile and water with 0.2% formic acid solution and ammonium acetate (10 mM) as the mobile phases under gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The determination was conducted using electrospray ionization in positive ion mode with multiple reaction monitoring. The analytes were quantified by comparison with matrix‐matched standard solutions. The good linearities were obtained in the range of 0.05 to 500.0 µg/kg, and the correlation coefficients were all greater than 0.9935. The average recoveries of the 66 target compounds ranged from 69% to 119%, and the RSDs were in the range of 1% to 10%. The limits of detection were in the range of 0.05 to 20.0 µg/kg. The method was proved to be rapid, selective, sensitive, and stable, and it has been applied to analysis of 64 wine samples.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper considers an important class of convex programming (CP) problems, namely, the stochastic composite optimization (SCO), whose objective function is given by the summation of general ...nonsmooth and smooth stochastic components. Since SCO covers non-smooth, smooth and stochastic CP as certain special cases, a valid lower bound on the rate of convergence for solving these problems is known from the classic complexity theory of convex programming. Note however that the optimization algorithms that can achieve this lower bound had never been developed. In this paper, we show that the simple mirror-descent stochastic approximation method exhibits the best-known rate of convergence for solving these problems. Our major contribution is to introduce the accelerated stochastic approximation (AC-SA) algorithm based on Nesterov’s optimal method for smooth CP (Nesterov in Doklady AN SSSR 269:543–547,
1983
; Nesterov in Math Program 103:127–152,
2005
), and show that the AC-SA algorithm can achieve the aforementioned lower bound on the rate of convergence for SCO. To the best of our knowledge, it is also the first universally optimal algorithm in the literature for solving non-smooth, smooth and stochastic CP problems. We illustrate the significant advantages of the AC-SA algorithm over existing methods in the context of solving a special but broad class of stochastic programming problems.
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CEKLJ, DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
In order to explore a new English teaching mode, this paper constructs a hybrid teaching model of English in colleges and universities combined with multimedia to respond to the call for reform and ...innovation of teaching mode. Firstly, through analyzing three hybrid modes of teaching: complementary mode, flipped mode and cooperative mode, a multimedia-based hybrid English teaching model is constructed in combination with current multimedia technology. Secondly, the fuzzy comprehensive teaching evaluation model based on EWM-AHP-DEMATEL and the teaching quality and learning quality evaluation index system of the hybrid English teaching mode in the multimedia context were constructed. Then in the teaching evaluation system, it was found that the satisfaction of teaching materials construction after the improvement was only 85%. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but overall, all have more than 5% satisfaction improvement. In the learning evaluation system, the number of outstanding students in English class participation, English accompanying test, innovation challenge, and English practice all increased by more than 5, and the number of those needing efforts decreased by more than 3. The overall grade improved by about 12% compared to the previous semester. Finally, the conclusion found that this new teaching model can improve teaching ability and students’ English learning ability and is worth implementing in colleges and universities.
Directional solidification (DS) has become the major process for growing multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) for solar cells in the photovoltaic industry. The control of grains, as well as the grain ...boundaries, is particularly important to the crystal quality, and thus the solar cell efficiency. In this paper, we review the progress in the grain control of DS mc-Si from lab-scale to industrial-scale experiments. The control of the growth front was found effective in improving the grain size, but the grain size was found decreased with growth due to the sub-grain formation. With a better control of nucleation and grain competition by increasing the undercooling through enhanced uniform or spot cooling, grains with more Σ3 or twin boundaries were obtained. As the grain size increased with height, the growth of dislocations was found much slower than that without grain growth. The conversion efficiency of the solar cells fabricated from the wafers with grain control was significantly improved. Moreover, the seeded growth was also discussed.
► Grain control from lab- to industrial-scale experiments. ► Interface control and the control by crucible insulation and hot zone design. ► Effective initial cooling and grain competition for better grain growth control and defect reduction.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
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