SFTS virus (SFTSV) is a novel bunyavirus that causes severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), an emerging infectious disease that occurred in China in recent years, with an average case ...fatality rate of 10–12%. Intervention in the early clinical stage is the most effective measure to reduce the mortality rate of disease. To elucidate the natural course of and immune mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of SFTSV, 59 laboratory-confirmed SFTS patients in the acute phase, who were hospitalized between October 2010 and September 2011, were enrolled in this study, and the patients sera were dynamically collected and tested for SFTSV viral RNA load, 34 cytokines or chemokines and other related laboratory parameters. All clinical diagnostic factors in the acute phase of SFTS were evaluated and assessed. The study showed that the severity of the disease in 11 (18.6%) patients was associated with abdominal pain (p 0.007; OR = 21.95; 95% CI, 2.32–208.11) and gingival bleeding (p 0.001; OR = 122.11; 95% CI, 6.41–2328). The IP-10, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-10, granzyme B and HSP70 levels were higher over the 7–8 days in severe cases, accompanied by altered AST, CK and LDH levels. HSP70 (p 0.012; OR = 8.29; 95% CI, 1.58–43.40) was independently correlated with the severity of the early acute phase of SFTSV infection. The severity of SFTS can be predicted based on the presence of symptoms such as abdominal pain and gingival bleeding and on the level of HSP70 in the acute phase of the disease.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are believed to have fundamental roles in tumorigenesis and have great potential for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. However, the roles of miRNAs in hepatocellular ...carcinogenesis are still not fully elucidated. We investigated the aberrantly expressed miRNAs involved in hepatoma by comparison of miRNA expression profiles in cancerous hepatocytes with normal primary human hepatocytes, and 37 dysregulated miRNAs were screened out by twofold change with a significant difference (P<0.05). Clustering analysis based on 13 miRNAs with changes over 15-folds showed that the miRNA expression patterns between the cancerous and normal hepatocytes were clearly different. Among the 13 miRNAs, we found that miR-375 was significantly downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues and cell lines. Overexpression of miR-375 in liver cancer cells decreased cell proliferation, clonogenicity, migration/invasion and also induced G1 arrest and apoptosis. To unveil the molecular mechanism of miR-375-mediated phenotype in hepatoma cells described above, we examined the putative targets using bioinformatics tools and found that astrocyte elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) was a potential target of miR-375. Then we demonstrated that miR-375 bound directly to the 3'-untranslated region of AEG-1 and inhibited the expression of AEG-1. TaqMan quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR and western blot analysis showed that miR-375 expression was inversely correlated with AEG-1 expression in HCC tissues. Knockdown of AEG-1 by RNAi in HCC cells, similar to miR-375 overexpression, suppressed tumor properties. Ectopic expression of AEG-1, conversely, could partially reverse the antitumor effects of miR-375. In a mouse model, therapeutic administration of cholesterol-conjugated 2'-O-methyl-modified miR-375 mimics (Chol-miR-375) could significantly suppress the growth of hepatoma xenografts in nude mice. In conclusion, our findings indicate that miR-375 targets AEG-1 in HCC and suppresses liver cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo, and highlight the therapeutic potential of miR-375 in HCC treatment.
High-β_{θe} (a ratio of the electron thermal pressure to the poloidal magnetic pressure) steady-state long-pulse plasmas with steep central electron temperature gradient are achieved in the ...Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak. An intrinsic current is observed to be modulated by turbulence driven by the electron temperature gradient. This turbulent current is generated in the countercurrent direction and can reach a maximum ratio of 25% of the bootstrap current. Gyrokinetic simulations and experimental observations indicate that the turbulence is the electron temperature gradient mode (ETG). The dominant mechanism for the turbulent current generation is due to the divergence of ETG-driven residual flux of current. Good agreement has been found between experiments and theory for the critical value of the electron temperature gradient triggering ETG and for the level of the turbulent current. The maximum values of turbulent current and electron temperature gradient lead to the destabilization of an m/n=1/1 kink mode, which by counteraction reduces the turbulence level (m and n are the poloidal and toroidal mode number, respectively). These observations suggest that the self-regulation system including turbulence, turbulent current, and kink mode is a contributing mechanism for sustaining the steady-state long-pulse high-β_{θe} regime.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed, millisecond-duration radio bursts1-3. Recent observations of a Galactic FRB4-8 suggest that at least some FRBs originate from magnetars, but the origin ...of cosmological FRBs is still not settled. Here we report the detection of1,863 bursts in 82 h over 54 days from the repeating source FRB 20201124A (ref.9). These observations show irregular short-time variation ofthe Faraday rotation measure (RM), which scrutinizes the density-weighted line-of-sight magnetic field strength, of individual bursts during the first 36 days, followed by a constant RM. We detected circular polarization in more than half of the burst sample, including one burst reaching a high fractional circular polarization of 75%. Oscillations in fractional linear and circular polarizations, as well as polarization angle as a function of wavelength, were detected. All of these features provide evidence for a complicated, dynamically evolving, magnetized immediate environment within about an astronomical unit (au; Earth-Sun distance) ofthe source. Our optical observations of its Milky-Way-sized, metal-rich host galaxy10-12 show a barred spiral, with the FRB source residing in a low-stellar-density interarm region at an intermediate galactocentric distance. This environment is inconsistent with a young magnetar engine formed during an extreme explosion of a massive star that resulted in a long gamma-ray burst or superluminous supernova.
The tourniquet is a common medical instrument used in total knee arthroplasty (TKA). However, there has always been a debate about the use of a tourniquet and there is no published meta-analysis to ...study the effects of a tourniquet on blood loss in primary TKA for patients with osteoarthritis.
We performed a literature review on high-quality clinical studies to determine the effects of using a tourniquet or not on blood loss in cemented TKA. PubMed, Web of Science, MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched up to November 2018 for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We conducted a meta-analysis following the guidelines of the Cochrane Reviewer's Handbook. We used the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing the risk of bias of each trial. The statistical analysis was performed with Review Manager statistical software (version 5.3).
Eleven RCTs involving 541 patients (541 knees) were included in this meta-analysis. There were 271 patients (271 knees) in the tourniquet group and 270 patients (270 knees) in the no tourniquet group. The results showed that using a tourniquet significantly decreased intraoperative blood loss (P < 0.002), calculated blood loss (P < 0.002), and the time of operation (P < 0.002), but tourniquet use did not significantly decrease postoperative blood loss (P > 0.05), total blood loss (P > 0.05), the rate of transfusion (P > 0.05), and of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) (P > 0.05) in TKA.
Using a tourniquet can significantly decrease intraoperative blood loss, calculated blood loss, and operation time but does not significantly decrease the rate of transfusion or the rate of DVT in TKA. More research is needed to determine if there are fewer complications in TKA without the use of tourniquets.
Tuning the metal insulator transition (MIT) behavior of VO2 film through the interfacial strain is effective for practical applications. However, the mechanism for strain-modulated MIT is still under ...debate. Here we directly record the strain dynamics of ultrathin VO2 film on TiO2 substrate and reveal the intrinsic modulation process by means of synchrotron radiation and first-principles calculations. It is observed that the MIT process of the obtained VO2 films can be modulated continuously via the interfacial strain. The relationship between the phase transition temperature and the strain evolution is established from the initial film growth. From the interfacial strain dynamics and theoretical calculations, we claim that the electronic orbital occupancy is strongly affected by the interfacial strain, which changes also the electron–electron correlation and controls the phase transition temperature. These findings open the possibility of an active tuning of phase transition for the thin VO2 film through the interfacial lattice engineering.
Magnetic localization methods have been widely studied to provide accurate position and orientation information of intra-body objects, such as wireless capsule endoscopes. However, these methods ...cannot work well in dynamic scenarios when using a wearable sensor array due to the geomagnetic field. In this article, we propose a novel approach for tracking wireless capsules in a mobile setup based on differential signals from adjacent magnetic sensors. Compared to the previous passive magnetic localization framework, the proposed algorithm can eliminate the interference of the geomagnetic field without introducing other compensation sensors or signals. As a result, the proposed method can be used for wearable sensor arrays without knowing the distribution of the geomagnetic field and the movement of the sensor array in advance. Moreover, the relationship between position error and distance of adjacent sensors has been studied to improve tracking accuracy. Finally, a sensor array with 16 three-axis magnetic sensors is developed. Both static and dynamic experiments have been carried out, whose results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Permanent magnet-based localization is a very promising method for the tracking of minimally invasive medical devices inside the human body, such as a wireless capsule endoscope. Current research ...mainly focuses on single-object tracking or multi-object tracking using the same magnets, which make it difficult to identify each target based on only the position information. In this paper, we proposed a multiple objects positioning and identification method based on the magnetic tracking system. The tracking system is built based on a magnetic sensor array. The multi-magnet tracking method has been applied to estimate the position and orientation information of each magnet by using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. In this method, each magnetic target has a different magnitude of the magnetic moment. During the tracking, each magnet can be identified with its magnetic moment value. The feasibility of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experimental results.
We demonstrate spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching of amorphous CoTb single-layer films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). The switching sustains even the film thickness is above 10 nm, ...where the critical switching current density stays almost constant. Without the need of overcoming the strong interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction caused by the heavy metal, a quite low assistant field of ∼20 Oe is sufficient to realize the full switching. The SOT effective field decreases and undergoes a sign change with the decrease of the Tb concentration, implying that a combination of the spin Hall effect from both Co and Tb as well as an asymmetric spin current absorption accounts for the SOT switching mechanism. Our findings advance the use of magnetic materials with bulk PMA for energy-efficient and thermally stable nonvolatile memories, and add a different dimension for understanding the ordering and asymmetry in amorphous thin films.
Magnetic tracking has been well studied for the localization of wireless capsule robots. However, most of the existing magnetic localization systems require a stable background magnetic field, which ...is not suitable for wearable applications as the movement of the human body inevitably changes the magnetic field to each sensor. The purpose of this study is to reduce the disturbance of the ambient magnetic field for localizations in different background scenarios. The proposed approach applies the magnetic density of multiple sampling points for simultaneous localization. By subtracting the magnetic field value in different positions, the background noise (BGN) field can be offset. As a result, multipoint simultaneous positioning can be achieved by using an optimization algorithm. The influence of the signal-to-noise ratio on localization accuracy has been determined through simulation analysis. Experiments first verified the feasibility of multipoint simultaneous positioning and then conducted in different geomagnetic noise and permanent magnet environments. The results show that the proposed method has been verified to be robust in different BGN environments. The proposed method is expected to be used in wearable systems for tracking magnetic capsule endoscope (MCE).
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