The precipitate morphology in Mg–rare earth (RE) element binary alloys is predicted using a multi-scale modeling approach combining a three-dimensional (3-D) phase-field model and first-principles ...density functional theory calculations. First-principles calculations provide all the required input parameters for the phase-field model, including lattice parameters, elastic constants, formation energies and interfacial energies. This integrated model is applied to a Mg–Nd alloy as a model system. Quantitative 3-D phase-field simulations are performed to study the metastable β′ precipitate morphologies, habit plane formation and spatial distribution of the precipitates during isothermal aging. The predicted morphologies of β′ precipitates are in excellent agreement with existing experimental observations. The influence of the precipitate morphology on the mechanical properties is also evaluated using the Orowan equation. The results are expected to provide guidance for achieving desirable precipitate morphologies and thus mechanical properties in Mg alloys.
•PrFeO3 hollow nanofibers were successfully prepared via electrospinning.•Applied PrFeO3 hollow nanofibers to gas-sensing for the first time.•Our sample could detect 10ppm acetone at 180°C.•The ...sensor with rapid response time (5s) and recovery time (5s).
In this study, the perovskite praseodymium ferrite (PrFeO3 hollow nanofibers) was successfully synthesized via a facile electrospinning and calcination procedure. The structure, elemental composition and morphology were investigated by XRD, EDX, SEM and TEM. And the results of BET indicated that samples had a large specific surface area (33.74m2/g) with mesoporous characteristics. The most importantly is that the gas sensor based on PrFeO3 hollow nanofibers possessed high response value, good selectivity and good long-time stability at a low operating temperature of 180°C, even exposed to 10ppm acetone, the sensor still delivered a response to be 6. Those good properties made it become the promising candidates for practical detectors to acetone.
Efficacy of vitamin D supplementation may vary by dosing strategies and adiposity. To address such heterogeneity, we performed a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of vitamin D ...supplementation and total cancer outcomes.
PubMed and Embase were searched through January 2022. Summary relative risk (SRR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were estimated using the DerSimonian-Laird random-effects model.
For total cancer incidence (12 trials), the SRR for vitamin D supplementation vs. control group was 0.99 (95% CI, 0.94-1.03; P = 0.54; I
= 0%). No significant association was observed regardless of whether the supplement was given daily or infrequently in a large-bolus. Yet, among trials testing daily supplementation, a significant inverse association was observed among normal-weight individuals (SRR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.64-0.90; P = 0.001, I
= 0%), but not among overweight or obese individuals (P
= 0.02). For total cancer mortality (six trials), the SRR was 0.92 (95% CI, 0.82-1.03; P = 0.17; I
= 33%). A significant inverse association emerged (SRR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.78-0.96; P = 0.007; I
= 0%) among studies testing daily supplementations but not among studies that testing infrequent large-bolus supplementations (P
= 0.09).
For vitamin D supplementation, daily dosing, but not infrequent large-bolus dosing, reduced total cancer mortality. For total cancer incidence, bolus dosing did not reduce the risk and the benefits of daily dosing were limited to normal-weight individuals.
Obesity is associated with a cluster of metabolic disorders and systemic low-grade inflammation involving multiple organs. Recent findings have suggested that intestine is a key organ altered in ...response to high fat diet (HFD) feeding. Probiotics mainly lactobacillus strains have earlier been implicated in alleviating metabolic disorders. Here we aimed to examine the effects of a naturally occurring butyrate-producing probiotic clostridium butyricum CGMCC0313.1 (CB0313.1) in limiting the development of HFD-induced obesity. Mice treated with CB0313.1 exhibited reduced lipid accumulation in liver and serum, lower circulating insulin levels and improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Furthermore, CB0313.1 administration reversed the HFD-induced colonic inflammation as evidenced by reduced tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α level and increases the interleukin (IL)-10 and IL-22 levels in colon tissue. Additionally to colonic inflammation, CB0313.1 also reduced the colon permeability by upregulating the tight junction (TJ) proteins (claudin-1 and occludin) and contributed to a decreased circulating endotoxin level. In colon content, CB0313.1 administration restored the reduced production of butyrate and other short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) caused by HFD feeding. In adipose tissue, lower transcriptional levels of pro-inflammatory TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β and monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1 in adipose tissue were observed in CB0313.1-treated mice. Collectively, our data demonstrated that CB0313.1, targeting colon inflammation and permeability, ameliorated HFD-induced obesity, insulin resistance as well as adipose inflammation.
This study evaluated maintenance treatment with niraparib, a potent inhibitor of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1/2, in patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer.
In this phase III, ...double-blind, placebo-controlled study conducted at 30 centers in China, adults with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer who had responded to their most recent platinum-containing chemotherapy were randomized 2 : 1 to receive oral niraparib (300 mg/day) or matched placebo until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity (NCT03705156). Following a protocol amendment, patients with a bodyweight <77 kg or a platelet count <150 × 103/μl received 200 mg/day, and all other patients 300 mg/day, as an individualized starting dose (ISD). Randomization was carried out by an interactive web response system and stratified by BRCA mutation, time to recurrence following penultimate chemotherapy, and response to most recent chemotherapy. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS) assessed by blinded independent central review.
Between 26 September 2017 and 2 February 2019, 265 patients were randomized to receive niraparib (n = 177) or placebo (n = 88); 249 patients received an ISD (300 mg, n = 14; 200 mg, n = 235) as per protocol. In the intention-to-treat population, median PFS was significantly longer for patients receiving niraparib versus placebo: 18.3 95% confidence interval (CI), 10.9-not evaluable versus 5.4 (95% CI, 3.7-5.7) months hazard ratio (HR) = 0.32; 95% CI, 0.23-0.45; P < 0.0001, and a similar PFS benefit was observed in patients receiving an ISD, regardless of BRCA mutation status. Grade ≥3 treatment-emergent adverse events occurred in 50.8% and 19.3% of patients who received niraparib and placebo, respectively; the most common events were neutrophil count decreased (20.3% versus 8.0%) and anemia (14.7% versus 2.3%).
Niraparib maintenance treatment reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 68% and prolonged PFS compared to placebo in patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer. Individualized niraparib dosing is effective and safe and should be considered standard practice in this setting.
•Chinese patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer received maintenance niraparib (n = 177) or placebo (n = 88).•Median PFS was longer for niraparib versus placebo: 18.3 versus 5.4 months (HR = 0.32; 95% CI, 0.23-0.45; P < 0.0001).•Niraparib had a similar PFS benefit for 249 patients receiving individualized dosing based on bodyweight and platelet count.•Grade ≥3 treatment-emergent adverse events occurred in 50.8% and 19.3% of patients who received niraparib and placebo, respectively.•In the niraparib group, Grade ≥3 platelet count decreased/thrombocytopenia occurred in 11.3% of patients.
A guard-gate based flip-flop circuit temporally hardened against single-event effects is presented in this paper. Compared to several existed techniques, the organization of components inside the ...proposed design allows the improved performance- only one \tau (the maximum width of a single-event transient (SET) to tolerate) is added into the setup time. A previously reported low-power delay element is applied, which helps make the proposed design power-efficient. The proposed design was implemented in a 65 nm CMOS bulk technology. Alpha and heavy-ions radiation experiments were performed to characterize its soft-error rates. Experimental results show that the proposed design presents no error with LETs up to 37.3 MeV-cm 2 /mg. Simulation results from the TFIT further validate the experimental results.
Biodegradable polymers and bioactive ceramics are being combined in a variety of composite materials for tissue engineering scaffolds. Materials and fabrication routes for three-dimensional (3D) ...scaffolds with interconnected high porosities suitable for bone tissue engineering are reviewed. Different polymer and ceramic compositions applied and their impact on biodegradability and bioactivity of the scaffolds are discussed, including in vitro and in vivo assessments. The mechanical properties of today's available porous scaffolds are analyzed in detail, revealing insufficient elastic stiffness and compressive strength compared to human bone. Further challenges in scaffold fabrication for tissue engineering such as biomolecules incorporation, surface functionalization and 3D scaffold characterization are discussed, giving possible solution strategies. Stem cell incorporation into scaffolds as a future trend is addressed shortly, highlighting the immense potential for creating next-generation synthetic/living composite biomaterials that feature high adaptiveness to the biological environment.
Elemental compositions of organic aerosol (OA) particles provide useful constraints on OA sources, chemical evolution, and effects. The Aerodyne high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass ...spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) is widely used to measure OA elemental composition. This study evaluates AMS measurements of atomic oxygen-to-carbon (O : C), hydrogen-to-carbon (H : C), and organic mass-to-organic carbon (OM : OC) ratios, and of carbon oxidation state (OS C) for a vastly expanded laboratory data set of multifunctional oxidized OA standards. For the expanded standard data set, the method introduced by Aiken et al. (2008), which uses experimentally measured ion intensities at all ions to determine elemental ratios (referred to here as "Aiken-Explicit"), reproduces known O : C and H : C ratio values within 20% (average absolute value of relative errors) and 12%, respectively. The more commonly used method, which uses empirically estimated H2O+ and CO+ ion intensities to avoid gas phase air interferences at these ions (referred to here as "Aiken-Ambient"), reproduces O : C and H : C of multifunctional oxidized species within 28 and 14% of known values. The values from the latter method are systematically biased low, however, with larger biases observed for alcohols and simple diacids. A detailed examination of the H2O+, CO+, and CO2+ fragments in the high-resolution mass spectra of the standard compounds indicates that the Aiken-Ambient method underestimates the CO+ and especially H2O+ produced from many oxidized species. Combined AMS-vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) ionization measurements indicate that these ions are produced by dehydration and decarboxylation on the AMS vaporizer (usually operated at 600 degree C). Thermal decomposition is observed to be efficient at vaporizer temperatures down to 200 degree C. These results are used together to develop an "Improved-Ambient" elemental analysis method for AMS spectra measured in air. The Improved-Ambient method uses specific ion fragments as markers to correct for molecular functionality-dependent systematic biases and reproduces known O : C (H : C) ratios of individual oxidized standards within 28% (13%) of the known molecular values. The error in Improved-Ambient O : C (H : C) values is smaller for theoretical standard mixtures of the oxidized organic standards, which are more representative of the complex mix of species present in ambient OA. For ambient OA, the Improved-Ambient method produces O : C (H : C) values that are 27% (11%) larger than previously published Aiken-Ambient values; a corresponding increase of 9% is observed for OM : OC values. These results imply that ambient OA has a higher relative oxygen content than previously estimated. The OS C values calculated for ambient OA by the two methods agree well, however (average relative difference of 0.06 OS C units). This indicates that OS C is a more robust metric of oxidation than O : C, likely since OS C is not affected by hydration or dehydration, either in the atmosphere or during analysis.
Ovarian cancer is one of the most malignant genital cancers, with a high mortality rate. Many researchers have suggested that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have remarkably high expression in ...ovarian cancer tissues. MMPs are considered to be related to the occurrence, development, invasion and metastasis of ovarian cancer. Moreover, some studies have discovered that the unbalance between MMPs and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) are associated with the malignant phenotype of tumors. This review summarizes the latest research progress of MMPs in ovarian cancer. The investigation of MMP mechanism in ovarian cancer will facilitate the development of effective anti-tumor drugs, and thereby improve the survival rate of patients with ovarian cancer.
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