Background
Liver transplantation (LT), resection (LR), and ablation (LA) are three curative‐intent treatment options for patients with early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We aimed to develop a ...prognostic calculator to compare the long‐term outcomes following each of these therapies.
Methods
A total of 976 patients with HCC within the Milan criteria who underwent LT, LR, and LA between 2009 and 2019 from four institutions were evaluated. Multistate competing risks prediction models for recurrence‐free survival (RFS), recurrence within the Milan criteria (RWM), and HCC‐specific survival (HSS) were derived to develop a prognostic calculator.
Results
During a median follow‐up of 51 months, 420 (43%) patients developed recurrence. In the multivariate analysis, larger tumor size, multinodularity, older age, male, higher alpha‐fetoprotein (AFP), higher albumin‐bilirubin (ALBI) grade, and the presence of portal hypertension were significantly associated with higher recurrence and decreased survival rates. The RFS and HSS were both significantly higher among patients treated by LT than by LR or LA and significantly higher between patients treated by LR than by LA (all p < 0.001). For multinodular HCC ≤3 cm, although LT had better RFS and HSS than LR or LA, LA was noninferior to LR. An online prognostic calculator was then developed based on the preoperative clinical factors that were independently associated with outcomes to evaluate RFS, RWM, and HSS at different time intervals for all three treatment options.
Conclusions
Although LT resulted in the best recurrence and survival outcomes, LR and LA also offered durable long‐term alternatives. This prognostic calculator is a useful tool for clinicians to guide an informed and personalized discussion with patients based on their tumor biology and liver function.
For patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) within the Milan Criteria (MC), three curative‐intent treatment options are liver transplantation (LT), resection (LR) and ablation (LA). This online prognostic calculator was developed based on the preoperative clinical factors that were independently associated with outcomes to evaluate and compare recurrence‐free survival (RFS), recurrence within the Milan criteria (RWM), and HCC‐specific survival (HSS) at different time intervals for all three treatment options. Patients who recurred within the MC are potentially eligible for salvage transplantation.
Gold nanorods are excellent anisotropic building blocks for plasmonic chiral nanostructures. The near-infrared plasmonic band of nanorods makes them highly desirable for biomedical applications such ...as chiral bioimaging and sensing, in which a strong circular dichroism (CD) signal is required. Chiral assemblies of gold nanorods induced by self-associating peptides are especially attractive for this purpose as they exhibit plasmonic-enhanced chiroptical activity. Here, we showed that the presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) micelles in a gold nanorod solution promoted the self-association of l-/d-glutathione (GSH) and significantly enhanced the chirality of the resulting plasmonic nanochains. Chiroptical signals for the ensemble in the presence of CTAB micelles were 20 times greater than those obtained below the critical micelle concentration of CTAB. The strong optical activity was attributed to the formation of helical GSH oligomers in the hydrophobic core of the CTAB micelles. The helical GSH oligomers led the nanorods to assemble in a chiral, end-to-end crossed fashion. The CD signal intensities were also proportional to the fraction of nanorods in the nanochains. In addition, finite-difference time-domain simulations agreed well with the experimental extinction and CD spectra. Our work demonstrated a substantial effect from the CTAB micelles on gold nanoparticle assemblies induced by biomolecules and showed the importance of size matching between the inorganic nanobuilding blocks and the chiral molecular templates (i.e., the GSH oligomers in the present case) in order to attain strong chiroptical activities.
Counterdiabatic driving (CD) exploits auxiliary control fields to tailor the nonequilibrium dynamics of a quantum system, making possible the suppression of dissipated work in finite-time ...thermodynamics and the engineering of optimal thermal machines with no friction. We show that while the mean work done by the auxiliary controls vanishes, CD leads to a broadening of the work distribution. We derive a fundamental inequality that relates nonequilibrium work fluctuations to the operation time and quantifies the thermodynamic cost of CD in both critical and noncritical systems.
Hydrophilic Fe
3
O
4
@PDA@UIO-66-NH
2
is employed to consecutively enrich urinary exosomes and exosomal phosphopeptides through the strong bond between Zr and phosphate groups. The recovery of ...exosomes reached 95% and 707 phosphopeptides were identified from 255 phosphoproteins
via
LC-MS/MS. This work will make a great contribution to further functional analysis of exosomes.
Fe
3
O
4
@PDA@UIO-66-NH
2
is a biocompatible material that can be applied to enrich exosomes and phosphopeptides from urinary exosomes consecutively.
Although alkaline zinc-manganese dioxide batteries have dominated the primary battery applications, it is challenging to make them rechargeable. Here we report a high-performance rechargeable ...zinc-manganese dioxide system with an aqueous mild-acidic zinc triflate electrolyte. We demonstrate that the tunnel structured manganese dioxide polymorphs undergo a phase transition to layered zinc-buserite on first discharging, thus allowing subsequent intercalation of zinc cations in the latter structure. Based on this electrode mechanism, we formulate an aqueous zinc/manganese triflate electrolyte that enables the formation of a protective porous manganese oxide layer. The cathode exhibits a high reversible capacity of 225 mAh g
and long-term cyclability with 94% capacity retention over 2000 cycles. Remarkably, the pouch zinc-manganese dioxide battery delivers a total energy density of 75.2 Wh kg
. As a result of the superior battery performance, the high safety of aqueous electrolyte, the facile cell assembly and the cost benefit of the source materials, this zinc-manganese dioxide system is believed to be promising for large-scale energy storage applications.The development of rechargeable aqueous zinc batteries are challenging but promising for energy storage applications. With a mild-acidic triflate electrolyte, here the authors show a high-performance Zn-MnO
battery in which the MnO
cathode undergoes Zn
(de)intercalation.
Many photocatalytic reactions such as CO2 reduction and N2 fixation are often limited by the activation of some key molecules. Defects in solid materials can robustly introduce coordinately ...unsaturated sites to serve as highly active sites for molecular chemisorption and activation. As a result, rational defect engineering has endowed a versatile approach to further develop photocatalytic applications beyond water splitting. The subtly designed defects in photocatalysts can play critical and decisive roles in molecular activation as proven in recent years. The defects cannot only serve as active sites for molecular chemisorption, but also spatially supply channels for energy and electron transfer. In this review, we aim to summarize the diversiform photocatalytic applications using defects as active sites, including but not limited to CO2 reduction, O2 activation, H2O dissociation, N2 fixation as well as activation of other molecules. In particular, we emphatically outline how the parameters of defects (e.g., concentration, location, geometric and electronic structures) can serve as the knobs for maneuvering molecular adsorption and activation as well as altering subsequent reaction pathway. Moreover, we underline the remaining challenges at the current stage and the potential development in the future. It is anticipated that this review consolidates the in-depth understanding towards the structure-activity relationship between defects and related reactions.
This review outlines the progress on defect engineering toward various photocatalytic applications with a focus on the activation of key molecules. Display omitted
Quantifying source-oriented risk can identify primary pollution sources to help alleviate risks to ecosystems and human health posed by soil heavy metals. Taking Yulin National Energy and Chemical ...Industry Base as an example, ecosystem and human health risk assessments of each identified source category were quantitatively calculated by combining the Potential Ecological Risk (RI) and Total Carcinogenic Risk (Total-CR)/Total Hazard Index (Total-HI) assessment models with the positive matrix factorization (PMF) receptor model. In this work, an analysis of the Geoaccumulation Index (Igeo), Contamination Index (Pi), RI, CR and HI of heavy metals (As, Cr, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, Hg and Mn) identified universal ecosystem risks and both carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic health risks in most sites. Source apportionment results indicated that the dominant source of heavy metals in the soil was coal-related activities (52.5%), followed by industrial activities (22.0%), traffic activities (13.2%) and agricultural activities (12.3%). The source-oriented quantitative risk assessment results showed that coal-related activities are the greatest contributor to RI and Total-HI, while industrial activities are the largest source of Total-CR, which should be controlled, to reduce the carcinogenic health risk posed by exposure to heavy metals.
Display omitted
•The level of heavy metals in soils from Yulin were investigated.•Igeo, Pi, RI, CR and HI values in soil indicated high risk to ecological and human health.•Four source categories were identified using PMF model.•Source contributions to ecological and human health risks were quantitatively and spatially identified.•Coal-related activities caused the greatest potential ecological risk and hazard index.
Nonlinear optical (NLO) switchable materials are important for photonic and optoelectronic technologies. One important issue for NLO photoswitching, the most studied physical switching approach, is ...how to improve the switching contrast of second harmonic generation (SHG) in crystals, because the known values are generally below 3 times. Thermoswitching, as another approach, has shown impressive high SHG-switching contrasts (4-∞ times), but the fast decay of thermally induced states demands constant heat sources to maintain specific SHG intensities. We have synthesized a photochromic and thermochromic bistable acentric compound, β-(MQ)ZnCl
(MQ
=
-methyl-4,4'-bipyridinium), which represents the first crystalline compound with both photo- and heat-induced SHG-switching behavior and the first example of a thermoswitchable NLO crystal that can maintain its expected second-order NLO intensity without any heat source. The SHG-switching contrast can reach about 8 times after laser irradiation or 2 times after thermal annealing. The former value is the highest recorded for photoswitchable NLO crystals. This work also indicates that higher SHG-switching contrasts may be obtained through increasing electron-transfer efficiency, variation of permanent dipole moment, and self-absorption.
Mobile edge computing (MEC) provides a promising approach to significantly reduce network operational cost and improve quality of service (QoS) of mobile users by pushing computation resources to the ...network edges, and enables a scalable Internet of Things (IoT) architecture for time-sensitive applications (e-healthcare, real-time monitoring, and so on.). However, the mobility of mobile users and the limited coverage of edge servers can result in significant network performance degradation, dramatic drop in QoS, and even interruption of ongoing edge services; therefore, it is difficult to ensure service continuity. Service migration has great potential to address the issues, which decides when or where these services are migrated following user mobility and the changes of demand. In this paper, two conceptions similar to service migration, i.e., live migration for data centers and handover in cellular networks, are first discussed. Next, the cutting-edge research efforts on service migration in MEC are reviewed, and a devisal of taxonomy based on various research directions for efficient service migration is presented. Subsequently, a summary of three technologies for hosting services on edge servers, i.e., virtual machine, container, and agent, is provided. At last, open research challenges in service migration are identified and discussed.
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