The rational design of the directional charge transfer channel represents an important strategy to finely tune the charge migration and separation in photocatalytic CO2‐to‐fuel conversion. Despite ...the progress made in crafting high‐performance photocatalysts, developing elegant photosystems with precisely modulated interfacial charge transfer feature remains a grand challenge. Here, a facile one‐pot method is developed to achieve in situ self‐assembly of Pd nanocrystals (NYs) on the transition metal chalcogenide (TMC) substrate with the aid of a non‐conjugated insulating polymer, i.e., branched polyethylenimine (bPEI), for photoreduction of CO2 to syngas (CO/H2). The generic reducing capability of the abundant amine groups grafted on the molecular backbone of bPEI fosters the homogeneous growth of Pd NYs on the TMC framework. Intriguingly, the self‐assembled TMCs@bPEI@Pd heterostructure with bi‐directional spatial charge transport pathways exhibit significantly boosted photoactivity toward CO2‐to‐syngas conversion under visible light irradiation, wherein bPEI serves as an efficient hole transfer mediator, and simultaneously Pd NYs act as an electron‐withdrawing modulator for accelerating spatially vectorial charge separation. Furthermore, in‐depth understanding of the in situ formed intermediates during the CO2 photoreduction process are exquisitely probed. This work provides a quintessential paradigm for in situ construction of multi‐component heterojunction photosystem for solar‐to‐fuel energy conversion.
Non‐conjugated insulating polymer encapsulation and in‐situ growth of metal nanocrystal synergistically contribute to the spatially separated bi‐directional charge transfer pathways toward boosted solar CO2‐to‐syngas conversion.
There is little evidence that adjuvant therapy after radical surgical resection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) improves recurrence-free survival (RFS) or overall survival (OS). We conducted a ...multicentre, randomised, controlled, phase IV trial evaluating the benefit of an aqueous extract of
Murr (Huaier granule) to address this unmet need.
A total of 1044 patients were randomised in 2:1 ratio to receive either Huaier or no further treatment (controls) for a maximum of 96 weeks. The primary endpoint was RFS. Secondary endpoints included OS and tumour extrahepatic recurrence rate (ERR). The Huaier (n=686) and control groups (n=316) had a mean RFS of 75.5 weeks and 68.5 weeks, respectively (HR 0.67; 95% CI 0.55 to 0.81). The difference in the RFS rate between Huaier and control groups was 62.39% and 49.05% (95% CI 6.74 to 19.94; p=0.0001); this led to an OS rate in the Huaier and control groups of 95.19% and 91.46%, respectively (95% CI 0.26 to 7.21; p=0.0207). The tumour ERR between Huaier and control groups was 8.60% and 13.61% (95% CI -12.59 to -2.50; p=0.0018), respectively.
This is the first nationwide multicentre study, involving 39 centres and 1044 patients, to prove the effectiveness of Huaier granule as adjuvant therapy for HCC after curative liver resection. It demonstrated a significant prolongation of RFS and reduced extrahepatic recurrence in Huaier group.
NCT01770431; Post-results.
AIM To investigate the efficacy and safety of postoperative adjuvant transcatheter arterial chemoembolization(PA-TACE) in preventing tumor recurrence and improving survival in Barcelona Clinic Liver ...Cancer(BCLC) early(A) and intermediate(B) stage hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) patients with microvascular invasion(MVI).METHODS A total of 519 BCLC A or B HCC patients treated by liver resection alone or followed by PA-TACE between January 2012 and December 2015 were studied retrospectively. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to investigate the risk factors for recurrence-free survival(RFS) and overall survival(OS). Multiple logistic regression was used to identify the clinicopathological characteristics associated with MVI. The rates of RFS and OS were compared among patients with or without MVI treated with liver resection alone or followed by PA-TACE. RESULTS Univariate and multivariate analyses demonstrated that serum AFP level > 400 ng/m L, tumor size > 5 cm, tumor capsule invasion, MVI, and major hepatectomy were risk factors for poor OS. Tumor capsule invasion, MVI, tumor size > 5 cm, HBV-DNA copies > 1 x 104 IU/m L, and multinodularity were risk factors for poor RFS. Multiple logistic regression identified serum AFP level > 400 ng/m L, tumor size > 5 cm, and tumor capsule invasion as independent predictors of MVI. Both OS and DFS were significantly improved in patients with MVI who received PA-TACE as compared to those who underwent liver resection alone. Patients without MVI did not show a significant difference in OS and RFS between those treated by liver resection alone or followed by PA-TACE.CONCLUSION PA-TACE is a safe adjuvant intervention and can efficiently prevent tumor recurrence and improve the survival of BCLC early-and intermediate-stage HCC patients with MVI.
Spatiotemporal control over the delivery of therapeutic agents is an outstanding challenge to cancer treatment. By taking advantage of recent advances in DNA aptamer biology and mesoporous silica ...nanotechnology, we report a general approach to design and fabricate controlled release drug delivery systems that are able to effectively target cancer cells. Specifically, polyvalent mesoporous silica nanocarriers‐aptamer bioconjugates were constructed; the high‐surface‐area nanoporous core allowed high drug loading and the surface‐conjugated aptamer facilitated the nanoparticle targeting of nucleolin overexpressed MCF‐7 cells. The efficient cancer‐cell‐specific fluorescent imaging and drug delivery of the bioconjugates outline the great potential for therapeutic applications.
Aptamar biology is combined with nanotechnology. Polyvalent mesoporous silica nanocarriers functionalized with aptamer capable of targeting nucleolin were constructed; the high‐surface‐area nanoporous core allowed high drug loading and the surface‐conjugated aptamer facilitated the nanoparticle targeting of nucleolin‐overexpressed MSF‐7 cells. Efficient cancer‐cell‐specific fluorescent imaging and drug delivery were demonstrated.
Thyroid cancer remains the most common endocrine malignancy worldwide, and its incidence has steadily increased over the past four years. Papillary Thyroid Cancer (PTC) is the most common ...differentiated thyroid cancer, accounting for 80–85% of all thyroid cancers. Mitochondrial proteins (MRPs) are an important part of the structural and functional integrity of the mitochondrial ribosomal complex. It has been reported that MRPL9 is highly expressed in liver cancer and promotes cell proliferation and migration, but it has not been reported in PTC. In the present study we found that MRPL9 was highly expressed in PTC tissues and cell lines, and lentivirus-mediated overexpression of MRPL9 promoted the proliferation and migration ability of PTC cells, whereas knockdown of MRPL9 had the opposite effect. The interaction between MRPL9 and GGCT (γ-glutamylcyclotransferase) was found by immunofluorescence and co-immunoprecipitation experiments (Co-IP). In addition, GGCT is highly expressed in PTC tissues and cell lines, and knockdown of GGCT/MRPL9 in vivo inhibited the growth of subcutaneous xenografts in nude mice and inhibited the formation of lung metastases. Mechanistically, we found that knockdown of GGCT/MRPL9 inhibited the MAPK/ERK signaling pathway. In conclusion, our study found that the interaction of GGCT and MRPL9 modulates the MAPK/ERK pathway, affecting the proliferation and migration of PTC cells. Therefore, GGCT/MRPL9 may serve as a potential biomarker for PTC monitoring and PTC treatment.
Living vegetation volume (LVV), one of the most difficult tree parameters to calculate, is among the most important factors that indicates the biological characteristics and ecological functions of ...the crown. Obtaining precise LVV estimates is, however, challenging task because the irregularities of many crown shapes are difficult to capture using standard forestry field equipment. Terrestrial light detection and ranging (T-LiDAR) can be used to record the three-dimensional structures of trees. The primary branches of Larix olgensis and Quercus mongolica in the Qingyuan Experimental Station of Forest Ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) were taken as the research objects. A new rapid LVV estimation method called the filling method was proposed in this paper based on a T-LiDAR point cloud. In the proposed method, the branch point clouds are divided into leaf points and wood points. We used RiSCAN PRO 1.64 to manually separate the leaf points and wood points under careful visual inspection, and calculated that leaf points and wood points accounted for 91% and 9% of the number of the point clouds of branches. Then, the equation LVV = V1N (where N is the number of leaf points, and V1 is cube size) is used to calculate LVV. When the laser transmission frequency is 300,000 points/second and the point cloud is diluted to 30% using the octree method, the point cloud can be replaced by a cube (V1) of 6.11 cm3 to fill the branch space. The results showed that good performance for this approach, the measuring accuracy for L. olgensis and Q. mongolica at the levels of α = 0.05 and α = 0.01, respectively (94.35%, 90.01% and 91.99%, 85.63%, respectively). The results suggest that the proposed method can be conveniently used to calculate the LVV of coniferous and broad-leaf species under specific scanning settings. This work is explorative because hypotheses or a theoretical framework have not been previously defined. Rather, we would like to contribute to the formation of hypotheses as a background for further studies.
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate tumor development and progression by promoting proliferation, invasion, and metastasis. The oncogenic role of lncRNA SNHG16 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ...has not been revealed. LncRNA SNHG16 is upregulated in HCC and correlates with poorer prognosis. Patients with high SNHG16 expression showed lower rates of overall and disease‐free survival than patients with low SNHG16 expression. Multivariate Cox regression revealed that SNHG16 expression was an independent predictor of poor overall and disease‐free survival. In vitro, SNHG16 promoted HCC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion while inhibiting apoptosis; in vivo, it accelerated tumor development. Altering SNHG16 expression altered levels of miR‐17‐5p, which in turn modified expression of p62, which has been shown to regulate the mTOR and NF‐κB pathways. Indeed, altering SNHG16 expression in HCC cells activated mTOR and NF‐κB signaling. These results reveal a potential mechanism for the oncogenic role of SNHG16 in HCC. SNHG16 may therefore be a promising diagnostic marker as well as therapeutic target in HCC.
A schematic hypothetical model shows how SNHG16 acts as an oncogenic long noncoding RNA that promotes hepatocarcinogenesis by acting as a competing endogenous RNA that binds to miR‐17‐5p, thereby de‐repressing expression of p62 and its signal pathways AFB1, aflatoxin B1.
Stable representation of information in distributed neural connectivity is critical to function effectively in the world. Despite the dynamic nature of the brain’s functional architecture, ...characterizing its temporal stability within a continuous state has been largely neglected. Here we characterized stability of functional architecture at a dynamic timescale (~1 min) for each brain voxel by measuring the concordance of dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) over time, compared between association and unimodal regions, and established its reliability using test-retest resting-state fMRI data of adults from an open dataset. After the measure of functional stability was established, we further employed another fMRI open dataset which included movie-watching and resting-state data of children and adolescents, to explore how stability was modified by natural viewing from its intrinsic form, with specific focus on the associative and primary visual cortices. The results showed that high-order association regions, especially the default mode network, demonstrated high stability during resting-state scans, while primary sensory-motor cortices revealed relatively lower stability. During movie watching, stability in the primary visual cortex was decreased, which was associated with larger DFC variation with neighboring regions. By contrast, higher-order regions in the ventral and dorsal visual stream demonstrated increased stability. The distribution of functional stability and its modification describes a profile of the brain’s stability property, which may be useful reference for examining distinct mental states and disorders.
•Functional stability is the concordance of dynamic functional connectivity over time.•High-order association regions show higher intrinsic stability than unimodal regions.•Natural viewing task increases stability in associative visual areas.•Natural viewing task decreases stability in primary visual areas.
It is generally accepted that the glacial‐interglacial variations of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) are controlled by the volume of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (NHIS), but the fact that ...they exhibit different evolution patterns during glacial inceptions is often overlooked. By generating an independent chronology framework and integrating multi‐proxy records from the loess sections on the central Chinese Loess Plateau, here we show that the rapid intensifying of the EAWM during glacial inceptions reflects millennial perturbations in the large‐scale atmospheric circulation in East Asia in response to insolation‐triggered abrupt North Atlantic cooling. This climate teleconnection between North Atlantic and East Asia is found to be particularly effective only when the NHIS reaches a critical large size. Our integrated multi‐proxy records thus highlight the key role of ice volume in modulating the response of the EAWM to insolation‐triggered North Atlantic cooling during the interglacial‐glacial transitions.
Plain Language Summary
The strength of the East Asian winter monsoon is thought to be dynamically linked to the volume of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during the Quaternary glacial‐interglacial cycles. Nevertheless, paleoclimatic records generally indicate a rapid shift in the East Asian winter monsoon intensity in the mid‐way of the gradual build‐up of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, meaning that our current understanding of the East Asian winter monsoon dynamics remains elusive. By generating an independent chronology framework and integrating multi‐proxy records from the loess sections on the central Chinese Loess Plateau, here we show that the rapid intensifying of the East Asian winter monsoon during glacial inceptions, previously demonstrated as a direct response to the build‐up of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, actually reflects millennial perturbations in the large‐scale atmospheric circulation in East Asia caused by insolation‐triggered abrupt North Atlantic cooling when Northern Hemisphere ice sheets reach a critically large size. Our results thus offer new insights into how the climate teleconnections between high‐ and middle‐latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere have controlled the East Asian winter monsoon during glacial inceptions.
Key Points
Microcodium 87Sr/86Sr record captures the cooling trend in East Asia at the interglacial‐glacial transitions
Decoupled evolution of East Asian winter monsoon and temperature occurred during glacial inceptions
Ice volume modulates the response of East Asian winter monsoon to insolation‐triggered North Atlantic cooling during glacial inceptions
Cognitive studies suggest that bilingualism plays an additional role in the development of cognitive control, specifically in that bilingualism has been found to promote cognitive abilities in ...switching and inhibition. In recent years functional neuroimaging studies suggest that long-term experience of speaking two languages results in changes of neural activity in the cognitive control network. Here we explore the impacts of second language proficiency on intrinsic functional connectivity of the executive function network using resting-state functional MRI. Seed regions centering on different components of cognitive control were selected for the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis based on previous studies. We performed a functional connectivity analysis of high- versus low-proficiency bilinguals and found that language proficiency affected distinct components of the cognitive control system. Specifically, for switching, the rsFC of high-proficiency bilinguals was weaker than that of the low-proficiency peers in the left anterior cingulated cortex and for inhibition, in the right middle frontal gyrus. For working memory, however, the rsFC showed no difference as a result of proficiency. Finally, the strength of rsFC showed a significant negative correlation with behavioral performance in both bilingual groups. These findings were interpreted within the current debates on bilingualism and cognitive control.
•Language proficiency could be interpreted to cause changes on some but not other components of domain-general cognitive control.•Significant changes of resting-state functional connectivity were observed in cognitive flexibility and inhibition between high- and low-proficiency bilinguals. However, no difference was found in working memory.•The strength of resting-state functional connectivity showed a significantly negative correlation with behavioral performance.
PDF
