The use of renewable energy to reduce the effects of climate change and global warming has become an increasing trend. In order to improve the prediction ability of renewable energy, various ...prediction techniques have been developed. The aims of this review are illustrated as follows. First, this survey attempts to provide a review and analysis of machine-learning models in renewable-energy predictions. Secondly, this study depicts procedures, including data pre-processing techniques, parameter selection algorithms, and prediction performance measurements, used in machine-learning models for renewable-energy predictions. Thirdly, the analysis of sources of renewable energy, values of the mean absolute percentage error, and values of the coefficient of determination were conducted. Finally, some possible potential opportunities for future work were provided at end of this survey.
The aim of the study is to investigate the alteration of plasma miRNA in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Altered microRNAs (miRNAs) expression has been found in many cancers, including ...lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer and colorectal cancer. Many recent studies have demonstrated that aberrant plasma miRNAs were also found in various types of cancers. However the alteration of plasma expression in HNSCC remains unclear. In this present study, the expression profiles of ten miRNAs,
let-7a
,
miR-21
,
miR26b
,
miR-34c
,
miR-99a
,
miR-133a
,
miR-137
,
miR-184
,
miR-194a
, and
miR-37
5, in plasma from 50 patients and 36 healthy subjects were evaluated using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Our results demonstrated that the expression level of
miR-21
was significantly up-regulated in plasma samples obtained from HNSCC patients (
p
< 0.01) than those from healthy subjects, which were in consistent with our finding in HNSCC tissues. A 7.7-fold increase of
miR-21
in cancerous parts when compared to their non-cancerous counterparts (
p
< 0.0001) was observed in HNSCC tissues. In addition, the expression levels of
miR-21
and
miR-26b
were both reduced in post-operative HNSCC patients with good prognosis. In contrast, the concentration of plasma
miR-21
and
miR-26b
stayed high after tumor removal in the expired cases. Our study suggests that detecting circulating
miR-21
and
miR-26b
pre- and post-operatively might provide a novel tumor marker for HNSCC.
NVP-BEZ235 or BEZ235 is a dual inhibitor of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-competitive phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/mammalian-target-of-rapamycin (mTOR) and is promising for cancer treatment. ...Because it targets more than one downstream effector, a dual approach is promising for cancer treatment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of NVP-BEZ235 in treating oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Two human OSCC cell lines, SCC-4 and SCC-25, were used in this study. PI3K-AKT signaling, proliferation, and cell migratory and invasion capabilities of OSCC cells were examined. In NVP-BEZ235-treated SCC-4 and SCC-25 cells, the phosphorylation of 70-kDa ribosomal S6 kinase (p70S6K), but not mTOR, decreased within 24 h. NVP-BEZ235 inhibited OSCC-cell proliferation, migration, and invasion possibly by directly deregulating the phosphorylation of p70S6K. The phospho-p70S6K inhibitor mimicked the effects of NVP-BEZ235 for preventing proliferation and weakening the migratory and invasion abilities of SCC-4 and SCC-25 cells. This study further confirmed the effect of NVP-BEZ235 on OSCC cells and provided a new strategy for controlling the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OSCC cells using the phopho-p70S6K inhibitor.
Background
For R/M HNSCC, the differences in prognosis and treatment options between distant metastasis (DM) and locoregional recurrence, especially in the DM group, remain unclear.
Methods
From the ...Taiwan Head Neck Society registry database, patients who were diagnosed with R/M HNSCC and received cetuximab‐based frontline therapy were collected for analysis.
Results
Among the enrolled patients, 59.3% (491/827) belonged to the DM group. The DM group had less primary site of oral cavity, less betel nut chewing, higher lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels, and higher LDH/albumin ratio compared with the non‐DM group. For the patients with primary site of oral cavity and current smokers, DM coexisted with poorer outcomes. In the DM group, EXTREME‐like regimen was more suitable for older patients, those with elevated LDH, and those with higher LDH/albumin ratio than TPExtreme‐like regimen.
Conclusion
DM coexisted with poorer prognosis in certain groups. LDH‐associated biomarkers may aid treatment options for DM patients.
Cellular senescence is a specialized form of growth arrest that is generally irreversible. Upregulated p16, p53, and p21 expression and silencing of E2F target genes have been characterized to ...promote the establishment of senescence. It can be further aided by the transcriptional repression of proliferation-associated genes by the action of HP1γ, HMGA, and DNMT proteins to produce a repressive chromatin environment. Therefore, senescence has been suggested to functions as a natural brake for tumor development and plays a critical role in tumor suppression and aging.
An in vitro senescence model has been established by using K562 cells treated with 50 nM doxorubicin (DOX). Since p53 and p16 are homozygously deleted in the K562 cells, the DOX-induced senescence in K562 cells ought to be independent of p53 and p16-pRb pathways. Indeed, no change in the expression of the typical senescence-associated premalignant cell markers in the DOX-induced senescent K562 cells was found. MicroRNA profiling revealed upregulated miR-375 in DOX-induced senescent K562 cells. Treatment with miR-375 inhibitor was able to reverse the proliferation ability suppressed by DOX (p<0.05) and overexpression of miR-375 suppressed the normal proliferation of K562 cells. Upregulated miR-375 expression was associated with downregulated expression of 14-3-3zeta and SP1 genes. Autophagy was also investigated since DOX treatment was able to induce cells entering senescence and eventually lead to cell death. Among the 24 human autophagy-related genes examined, a 12-fold increase of ATG9B at day 4 and a 20-fold increase of ATG18 at day 2 after DOX treatment were noted.
This study has demonstrated that in the absence of p53 and p16, the induction of senescence by DOX was associated with upregulation of miR-375 and autophagy initiation. The anti-proliferative function of miR-375 is possibly exerted, at least in part, by targeting 14-3-3zeta and SP1 genes.
Disruption of circadian rhythm is believed to play a critical role in cancer development. To gain further insights into the roles of circadian genes in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), we analyzed ...peripheral blood from 53 healthy individuals and 35 CML patients for the expression of the nine circadian genes. The expression levels of hPER1, hPER2, hPER3, hCRY1, hCRY2 and hBMAL1 were significantly impaired in both chronic phase and blastic crisis of CML cases compared with those in healthy individuals (P < 0.001). Methylation studies in the promoter areas of these six genes revealed that only the CpG sites of the hPER3 gene were methylated in all of the CML patients, and the methylated CpG frequencies differed significantly in patients at blastic crisis (8.24 ± 0.73) or at chronic phase (4.48 ± 0.48). The CpG sites of the hPER2 gene were also methylated in 40% of the CML patients. No mutation was found within the coding region of hPER3 in CML cases. Our results suggest that the downregulated hPER3 expression in CML is correlated with the inactivation of hPER3 by methylation. (Cancer Sci 2006; 97: 1298–1307)
For hotel management, occupancy is a crucial indicator. Online reviews from customers have gradually become the main reference for customers to evaluate accommodation choices. Thus, this study ...employed online customer rating scores and review text provided by booking systems to forecast monthly hotel occupancy using long short-term memory networks (LSTMs). Online customer reviews of hotels in Taiwan in various languages were gathered, and Google’s natural language application programming interface was used to convert online customer reviews into sentiment scores. Five other forecasting models—back propagation neural networks (BPNN), general regression neural networks (GRNN), least square support vector regression (LSSVR), random forest (RF), and gaussian process regression (GPR)—were employed to predict hotel occupancy using the same datasets. The numerical data indicated that the long short-term memory network model outperformed the other five models in terms of forecasting accuracy. Integrating hotel online customer review sentiment scores and customer rating scores can lead to more accurate results than using unique scores individually. The novelty and applicability of this study is the application of deep learning techniques in forecasting room occupancy rates in multilingual comment scenarios with data gathered from review text and customers’ rating scores. This study reveals that using long short-term memory networks with sentiment analysis of review text and customers’ rating scores is a feasible and promising alternative in forecasting hotel room occupancy.
Thrombin is a multifunctional serine protease and an important fibrotic mediator that induces CCN2 expression. We previously showed that thrombin induces CCN2 expression via an ASK1-dependent ...JNK/AP-1 pathway in human lung fibroblasts. In this study, we further investigated the roles of c-Src, JAK2, and STAT3 in thrombin-induced CCN2 expression. Thrombin-induced CCN2 expression and CCN2-Luc activity were attenuated by a JAK inhibitor (AG490) and JAK2DN, STAT3DN, and the STAT decoy ODN. Moreover, transfection of cells with a CCN2-mtSTAT-Luc construct inhibited thrombin-induced CCN2-Luc activity. Treatment of cells with thrombin caused JAK2 phosphorylation at Tyr1007/1008 and STAT3 phosphorylation at Tyr705 in time-dependent manners. Thrombin-induced STAT3 phosphorylation was inhibited by AG490 and JAK2DN. Thrombin-induced STAT3 binding to the CCN2 promoter was analyzed by a DNA-binding affinity pull-down assay. In addition, thrombin-induced CCN2 expression and CCN2-Luc activity were inhibited by c-SrcDN and PP2 (an Src inhibitor). Transfection of cells with c-SrcDN also inhibited thrombin-induced JAK2 and STAT3 phosphorylation. Taken together, these results indicate that thrombin might activate c-Src to induce JAK2 activation, which in turn, causes STAT3 activation, and finally induces CCN2 expression in human lung fibroblasts.
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) include a group of malignant neoplasms that arise from the upper aerodigestive tract and represent the seventh most common cause of cancer-related death. ...The overall 5-year survival rates have not significantly improved for decades in spite of the advances in the field of oncology and surgery, encouraging further research on factors that might modify disease prognosis. The silent information regulator (
SIR
) genes (
Sirtuins
) play key roles in cellular stress and are associated with aging-related diseases including cancer. Currently, seven human
sirtuin
(
SIRT1
–
7
) genes have been identified, but the roles of
SIRT
genes in HNSCC are still uncertain. Therefore, in this study, we used real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction to investigate the expressions of the seven
SIRT
genes in human HNSCC tissues to assess the changes in cancerous and noncancerous parts and the correlation with different tumor behaviors. Our results demonstrated that the expression levels of
SIRT1
,
SIRT2
,
SIRT3
,
SIRT5
,
SIRT6
, and
SIRT7
were significantly downregulated in cancerous tissues compared with noncancerous tissues (all
p
< 0.01). The expression levels of
SIRT1
,
SIRT2
,
SIRT3
,
SIRT5
, and
SIRT7
showed downregulation in advanced stages in respect to early stages (
p
< 0.05). These results indicate that the downregulation of
SIRT
genes expression may contribute to the development of cancer and trigger the neoplastic disease to more advanced stages. Our study indicates that
SIRT
genes expression could help in the diagnosis and represent a prognostic biomarker in HNSCC.
Currently, mismatch repair-deficient (dMMR) status is a promising candidate for targeted immune checkpoint inhibition therapy in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, however, the potential immunological ...mechanism has not yet been well clarified and some other predictors need to be excavated as well.
We collected 330 CRC patients by the match of mismatch repair-proficient (167) and dMMR (163), explored the relationship between MMR status and some important immune molecules including MHC class I, CD3, CD4, CD8, CD56, programmed death-1 and programmed death ligand-1, and investigated the risk factors for dMMR status as well as low MHC class I expression. The Pearson Chi square test was used for analyzing the associations between clinicopathological and immune characteristics and MMR status, and two categories logistic regression model was used for univariate and multivariate analysis to predict the odds ratio of risk factors for dMMR status and low MHC class I expression.
Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that low MHC class I and CD4 expression and high CD8 expression were significant risk factors for dMMR status odds ratio (OR) = 24.66, 2.94 and 2.97, respectively; all p < 0.05 and dMMR status was the only risk factor for low MHC class I expression (OR = 15.34; p < 0.001).
High CD8 and low MHC class I expression suggests the contradiction and complexity of immune microenvironment in dMMR CRC patients. Some other immunocytes such as CD56
cells might also participate in the process of immune checkpoint inhibition, whereas needs further investigations.