Nanocellulose is currently in the limelight of extensive research from fundamental science to technological applications owing to its renewable and carbon‐neutral nature, superior biocompatibility, ...tailorable surface chemistry, and unprecedented optical and mechanical properties. Herein, an up‐to‐date account of the recent advancements in nanocellulose‐derived functional materials and their emerging applications in areas of chiral photonics, soft actuators, energy storage, and biomedical science is provided. The fundamental design and synthesis strategies for nanocellulose‐based functional materials are discussed. Their unique properties, underlying mechanisms, and potential applications are highlighted. Finally, this review provides a brief conclusion and elucidates both the challenges and opportunities of the intriguing nanocellulose‐based technologies rooted in materials and chemistry science. This review is expected to provide new insights for nanocellulose‐based chiral photonics, soft robotics, advanced energy, and novel biomedical technologies, and promote the rapid development of these highly interdisciplinary fields, including nanotechnology, nanoscience, biology, physics, synthetic chemistry, materials science, and device engineering.
Nanocellulose is one of the most promising sustainable and carbon‐neutral biopolymers. This review summarizes the recent advances of nanocellulose‐based functional materials and their emerging applications in areas of chiral photonics, soft actuators, energy storage, and biomedical systems. The existing challenges and future perspectives are also provided.
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To examine population-based improvements in survival and the impact of clinical covariates on outcome among children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) enrolled onto Children's ...Oncology Group (COG) clinical trials between 1990 and 2005.
In total, 21,626 persons age 0 to 22 years were enrolled onto COG ALL clinical trials from 1990 to 2005, representing 55.8% of ALL cases estimated to occur among US persons younger than age 20 years during this period. This period was divided into three eras (1990-1994, 1995-1999, and 2000-2005) that included similar patient numbers to examine changes in 5- and 10-year survival over time and the relationship of those changes in survival to clinical covariates, with additional analyses of cause of death.
Five-year survival rates increased from 83.7% in 1990-1994 to 90.4% in 2000-2005 (P < .001). Survival improved significantly in all subgroups (except for infants age ≤ 1 year), including males and females; those age 1 to 9 years, 10+ years, or 15+ years; in whites, blacks, and other races; in Hispanics, non-Hispanics, and patients of unknown ethnicity; in those with B-cell or T-cell immunophenotype; and in those with National Cancer Institute (NCI) standard- or high-risk clinical features. Survival rates for infants changed little, but death following relapse/disease progression decreased and death related to toxicity increased.
This study documents ongoing survival improvements for children and adolescents with ALL. Thirty-six percent of deaths occurred among children with NCI standard-risk features emphasizing that efforts to further improve survival must be directed at both high-risk subsets and at those children predicted to have an excellent chance for cure.
One of the major considerations in the automotive industry is the reduction of hybrid electric vehicle fuel consumption and operation cost. This paper is the first to use the nondominated sorting ...genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) for power-split plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) applications. The NSGA-II, one of the most efficient multiobjective genetic algorithms (MOGAs), simultaneously optimized operation cost, including gasoline and electricity consumption. The Pareto optimal solutions are discussed for the parameter calibrations of the rule-based control strategy as a useful guide in PHEV development, particularly in the earlier phases. The optimized operation cost at the different power-split device (PSD) gear ratios is used to determine the ideal PSD gear ratio to further minimize the operation cost. To validate the proposed strategy, dynamic PSD and powertrain models of PHEV are developed in the numerical analysis. The two typically different driving cycles, namely, the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) and the Highway Fuel Economic Drive Schedule (HWFET), with different numbers of driving cycles, are used for control strategy optimization.
The differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into type II alveolar epithelial (AT II) cells is critical for reepithelization and recovery in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and ...Wnt signaling was considered to be the underlying mechanisms. In our previous study, we found that canonical Wnt pathway promoted the differentiation of MSCs into AT II cells, however the role of the noncanonical Wnt pathway in this process is unclear. It was disclosed in this study that noncanonical Wnt signaling in mouse bone marrow-derived MSCs (mMSCs) was activated during the differentiation of mMSCs into AT II cells in a modified co-culture system with murine lung epithelial-12 cells and small airway growth media. The levels of surfactant protein (SP) C, SPB and SPD, the specific markers of AT II cells, increased in mMSCs when Wnt5a was added to activate noncanonical Wnt signaling, while pretreatment with JNK or PKC inhibitors reversed the promotion of Wnt5a. The differentiation rate of mMSCs also depends on their abilities to accumulate and survive in inflammatory tissue. We found that the Wnt5a supplement promoted the vertical and horizontal migration of mMSCs, ameliorated the cell death and the reduction of Bcl-2/Bax induced by H2O2. The effect of Wnt5a on the migration of mMSCs and their survival after H2O2 exposure were partially inhibited with PKC or JNK blockers. In conclusion, Wnt5a through Wnt/JNK signaling alone or both Wnt/JNK and Wnt/PKC signaling promoted the differentiation of mMSCs into AT II cells and the migration of mMSCs; through Wnt/PKC signaling, Wnt5a increased the survival of mMSCs after H2O2 exposure in vitro.
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Application of AHP to Road Selection Han, Yuan; Wang, Zhonghui; Lu, Xiaomin ...
ISPRS international journal of geo-information,
02/2020, Volume:
9, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a decision-making method, allows the relative prioritization and assessment of alternatives under multiple criteria contexts. This method is also well suited for ...road selection. The method for road selection based on AHP involves four steps: (i) Points of Interest (POIs), the point-like representations of the facilities and habitations in maps, are used to describe and build the contextual characteristic indicator of roads; (ii) form an AHP model of roads with topological, geometrical, and contextual characteristic indicators to calculate their importance; (iii) select roads based on their importance and the adaptive thresholds of their constituent density partitions; and (iv) maintain the global connectivity of the selected network. The generalized result at a scale of 1:200,000 by AHP-based methods better preserved the structure of the original road network compared with other methods. Our method also gives preference to roads with relatively significant contextual characteristics without interfering with the structure of the road network. Furthermore, the result of our method largely agrees with that of the manual method.
Summary
While survival in paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is excellent, survival following relapse is poor. Previous studies suggest proteasome inhibition with chemotherapy improves ...relapse ALL response rates. This phase 2 Children's Oncology Group study tested the hypothesis that adding the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib to chemotherapy increases complete response rates (CR2). Evaluable patients (n = 135, 103 B‐ALL, 22 T‐ALL, 10 T‐lymphoblastic lymphoma) were treated with reinduction chemotherapy plus bortezomib. Overall CR2 rates were 68 ± 5% for precursor B‐ALL patients (<21 years of age), 63 ± 7% for very early relapse (<18 months from diagnosis) and 72 ± 6% for early relapse (18–36 months from diagnosis). Relapsed T‐ALL patients had an encouraging CR2 rate of 68 ± 10%. End of induction minimal residual disease (MRD) significantly predicted survival. MRD negative (MRDneg; MRD <0·01%) rates increased from 29% (post‐cycle 1) to 64% following cycle 3. Very early relapse, end‐of‐induction MRDneg precursor B‐ALL patients had 70 ± 14% 3‐year event‐free (EFS) and overall survival (OS) rates, vs. 3‐year EFS/OS of 0–3% (P = 0·0001) for MRDpos (MRD ≥0·01) patients. Early relapse patients had similar outcomes (MRDneg 3‐year EFS/OS 58–65% vs. MRDpos 10–19%, EFS P = 0·0014). These data suggest that adding bortezomib to chemotherapy in certain ALL subgroups, such as T‐cell ALL, is worthy of further investigation. This study is registered at http://www.clinical.trials.gov as NCT00873093.
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IMPORTANCE: With cure rates of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) exceeding 85%, there is a need to mitigate treatment toxicities that can compromise quality of life, including peripheral ...neuropathy from vincristine treatment. OBJECTIVE: To identify genetic germline variants associated with the occurrence or severity of vincristine-induced peripheral neuropathy in children with ALL. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Genome-wide association study of patients in 1 of 2 prospective clinical trials for childhood ALL that included treatment with 36 to 39 doses of vincristine. Genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis and vincristine-induced peripheral neuropathy were assessed in 321 patients from whom DNA was available: 222 patients (median age, 6.0 years; range, 0.1-18.8 years) enrolled in 1994-1998 in the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital protocol Total XIIIB with toxic effects follow-up through January 2001, and 99 patients (median age, 11.4 years; range, 3.0-23.8 years) enrolled in 2007-2010 in the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) protocol AALL0433 with toxic effects follow-up through May 2011. Human leukemia cells and induced pluripotent stem cell neurons were used to assess the effects of lower CEP72 expression on vincristine sensitivity. EXPOSURE: Treatment with vincristine at a dose of 1.5 or 2.0 mg/m2. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Vincristine-induced peripheral neuropathy was assessed at clinic visits using National Cancer Institute criteria and prospectively graded as mild (grade 1), moderate (grade 2), serious/disabling (grade 3), or life threatening (grade 4). RESULTS: Grade 2 to 4 vincristine-induced neuropathy during continuation therapy occurred in 28.8% of patients (64/222) in the St Jude cohort and in 22.2% (22/99) in the COG cohort. A SNP in the promoter region of the CEP72 gene, which encodes a centrosomal protein involved in microtubule formation, had a significant association with vincristine neuropathy (meta-analysis P = 6.3×10−9). This SNP had a minor allele frequency of 37% (235/642), with 50 of 321 patients (16%; 95% CI, 11.6%-19.5%) homozygous for the risk allele (TT at rs924607). Among patients with the high-risk CEP72 genotype (TT at rs924607), 28 of 50 (56%; 95% CI, 41.2%-70.0%) developed at least 1 episode of grade 2 to 4 neuropathy, a higher rate than in patients with the CEP72 CC or CT genotypes (58/271 patients 21.4%; 95% CI, 16.9%-26.7%; P = 2.4×10−6). The severity of neuropathy was greater in patients homozygous for the TT genotype compared with patients with the CC or CT genotype (2.4-fold by Poisson regression P<.0001 and 2.7-fold based on mean grade of neuropathy: 1.23 95% CI, 0.74-1.72 vs 0.45 95% CI, 0.3-0.6; P = .004 by t test). Reducing CEP72 expression in human neurons and leukemia cells increased their sensitivity to vincristine. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this preliminary study of children with ALL, an inherited polymorphism in the promoter region of CEP72 was associated with increased risk and severity of vincristine-related peripheral neuropathy. If replicated in additional populations, this finding may provide a basis for safer dosing of this widely prescribed anticancer agent.
The network Voronoi diagram has been extensively applied in many fields, such as influence area construction, location selection and urban planning, owing to its high accuracy and validity in space ...division. Taking advantage of parallel processing and auto-wave division of the pulse coupled neural network (PCNN), an algorithm for generating a weighted network Voronoi diagram is proposed in this paper. First, in order to better accommodate the scenes of urban facility points and road networks, the PCNN is improved. Second, the speed of the auto-wave in the improved PCNN is calculated by the weights of the facility points and the attributes of the related road network. Third, the nodes in the road network are considered as neurons, the facility points are projected onto the nearest road segments and the projected points are treated as initial neurons. The initial neurons generate auto-waves simultaneously, and the auto-waves transmit along the shortest path from neurons to other neurons with the calculated speed until all the neurons are fired. During this procedure, the road network and the corresponding space are assigned to the initial neurons and the weighted network Voronoi diagram is constructed. The experiments on the specific region with the real POIs present the feasibility, applicability and efficiency of the algorithm.
The basic leucine zipper (
) family of transcription factors (TFs) regulate diverse phenomena during plant growth and development and are involved in stress responses and hormone signaling. However, ...only a few
have been functionally characterized. In this paper, 54 maize
genes were screened from previously published drought and rewatering transcriptomes. These genes were divided into nine groups in a phylogenetic analysis, supported by motif and intron/exon analyses. The 54 genes were unevenly distributed on 10 chromosomes and contained 18 segmental duplications, suggesting that segmental duplication events have contributed to the expansion of the maize
family. Spatio-temporal expression analyses showed that
genes are widely expressed during maize development. We identified 10 core
involved in protein transport, transcriptional regulation, and cellular metabolism by principal component analysis, gene co-expression network analysis, and Gene Ontology enrichment analysis. In addition, 15 potential stress-responsive ZmbZIPs were identified by expression analyses. Localization analyses showed that
,
,
, and
are nuclear proteins. These results provide the basis for future functional genomic studies on
TFs in maize and identify candidate genes with potential applications in breeding/genetic engineering for increased stress resistance. These data represent a high-quality molecular resource for selecting resistant breeding materials.
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