Tianjin Port has 3 container sea-rail combined transport channels leading to inland ports, and it is one of the intermodal transportation nodes of my country’s “One Belt One Road” key construction. ...This paper introduces the development status of Tianjin Port’s container sea-rail combined transport, uses SWOT to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the development of Tianjin Port’s sea-rail combined transport, and proposes optimization strategies on this basis.
Cerebral infarction (CI) is a common cerebrovascular disease worldwide, and the burden caused by the sequelae of CI has increased significantly. However, current treatment guidelines lack ...standardized recommendations for pharmacotherapy of sequelae of CI. This retrospective study collected and analyzed 1.98 million prescriptions concerning sequelae of CI from patients admitted to Zhiyun Health Internet Hospital in 2022. The mean age of patients was 66.2 ± 11.4 years, and 52.40% were male. 79.73% had one or more comorbidities. For treatment, the prescriptions of 1-, 2- and ≥ 3-drug accounted for 64.55%, 23.77% and 11.68% respectively. Chinese patent medicine (CPM) prescriptions, western medicine (WM) prescriptions, and CPM and WM combined (CPM + WM) prescriptions accounted for 53.81%, 27.33%, and 18.86% respectively. In CPM prescriptions, the most frequently prescribed medications were Salvia miltiorrhiza (34.81%), Ginkgo biloba (24.96%), Panax notoginseng (20.67%), Gastrodia (7.15%) and Ligusticum Wallichii (4.90%). For WM prescriptions, the most commonly prescribed agents were anti-hypertensive (32.82%), anti-thrombotic (16.06%), vasodilator (15.70%), anti-dementia (10.88%), and lipid-lowering (9.58%) drugs. Among CPM + WM prescriptions, 72.61% had CPM/WM = 1, 21.20% had CPM/WM < 1, and 6.19% had CPM/WM > 1. This research utilized real-world data extracted from internet hospitals in China to present valuable evidence of online prescription patterns among patients experiencing sequelae of CI.
A major challenge in vaccine delivery is to achieve robust lymph‐node (LN) accumulation, which can capitalize on concentrated immunocytes and cytokines in LNs to stimulate the onset and persistence ...of adaptive immune responses. Previous attempts at developing vaccine delivery systems have focused on the sizes, charges, or surface ligands but not on their deformability. In fact, the LN homing of antigen‐presenting cells depends on deformability to pass through the cellular gaps. Herein, the deformability of albumin‐stabilized emulsions is engineered. Owing to self‐adaptive deformability, the droplets (≈330 nm) can attach to and deform between cells and adjust their sizes to pass through the endothelial gaps (20–100 nm), favoring direct LN transfer (intercellular pathway). Additionally, owing to relatively large sizes, some emulsions can be retained at the administration sites for potent antigen uptake and activation of APCs as well as LN‐targeted delivery of vaccines (intracellular pathway). Compared with solid particles, the dual LN transfer strategy evidently enhances antigen accumulation and activation of LN drainage, potently stimulates cellular immune responses, and increases the survival rate of tumor‐bearing mice. Thus, the deformability of albumin‐stabilized droplets may offer an efficient strategy for potent LN targeting and enhanced vaccinations.
A deformable albumin‐stabilized emulsion with self‐adaptive deformability, which can squeeze through the cellular gaps of lymphatic vessels for lymph node (LN) delivery (intercellular pathway), is engineered. Concurrently, they tend to also be internalized and drained to the LNs by the immunocytes (intracellular pathway). Through the dual LN‐transfer, exploiting the deformability may offer an alternative way for efficient LN delivery and vaccinations.
Due to the increase in the number of obese individuals, the incidence of obesity-related complications such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes is higher. The aim of the present study was ...to explore the effects of silybin on protein expression in obese mice. Firstly, serum was collected, and it was used to detect serum lipids and other serological indicators. Secondly, total protein from epididymal adipose tissue was extracted for differential expression analysis by quantitative tandem mass tag (TMT) combined with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), followed by bioinformatics and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analyses of these proteins. Lastly, real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) were used to further validate the expression of identified differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) at the mRNA and protein level, respectively. The results revealed that silybin could improve abnormal lipid metabolism caused by the high fat diet in obese mice. A total of 341, 538 and 243 DEPs were found in the high fat/control (WF/WC), silybin/high fat (WS/WF) and WS/WC groups, respectively. These DEPs mainly participated in lipid metabolism and energy metabolism. Notably, tropomyosin 1 (TPM1), myosin light chain 2 (MYL2), myosin heavy chain 11 (MYH11) and other DEPs were involved in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy and other pathways. Silybin could protect cardiac function by inducing the protein expression of TPM1, MYL2 and MYH11 in the adipose tissue of obese mice.
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•A biocharcoal-based electrode was used to improve Cl− and Cr3+ removal.•The adsorption and regeneration performance of the KOBC15 were analyzed and evaluated.•Optimization of ...operation parameters for the CDI system was performed.
Red oak biocharcoal, a novel electrode material that is inexpensive and highly conductive, was used for capacitive deionization (CDI) to simultaneously remove Cl− and Cr3+ from leather processing wastewater. The results showed that both the carbonization temperature and time played important roles in reducing the resistivity (ρ) of biocharcoal. Additionally, at 1000 °C and 3 h, the ρ value was reduced from 4.68 to 1.19 Ω·cm after the addition of Fe2O3. KOH impregnation enhanced the desalination capacity of the biocharcoal electrodes by increasing the specific surface area and hydrophilicity. Under the optimal operating parameters (voltage of 1.8 V, flow rate of 10 ml/min and electrode spacing of 2 mm), the KOBC15 electrode exhibited a maximum adsorption capacity of 13.79 mg/g. After 10 cycles of CDI system operation, the removal rates of Cl− and Cr3+ reached 86.7% and 100%, respectively, in simulated leather processing wastewater. Thiswork provides new ideas and methods for the treatment of high-salinity wastewater.
In the UAV swarm, the degradation in the health status of some UAVs often brings negative effects to the system. To compensate for the negative effect, we present a fault-tolerant Multi-Agent ...Reinforcement Learning Algorithm that can control an unstable Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Multi-UAV) system to perform exploration tasks. Different from traditional multi-agent methods that require the agents to remain healthy during task execution, our approach breaks this limitation and allows the agents to change status during the task. In our algorithm, the agent can accept both the adjacency state matrix about the neighboring agents and a kind of healthy status vector to integrate both and generate the communication topology. During this process, the agents with poor health status are given more attention for returning to normal status. In addition, we integrate a temporal convolution module into our algorithm and enable the agent to capture the temporal information during the task. We introduce a scenario regarding Multi-UAV ground exploration, where the health status of UAVs gradually weakens over time before dropping into a fault status; the UAVs require rescues from time to time. We conduct some experiments in this scenario and verify our algorithm. Our algorithm can increase the drone’s survival rate and make the swarm perform better.
Background It has been demonstrated that circularRNA (circRNAs) plays a critical role in various cancers. While the potential molecular mechanism of circRNAs in the progression of colorectal cancer ...(CRC) remains uncertain. Methods Differentially expressed circRNAs were identified by RNA sequencing. RT-qPCR detected the expression of circ_0009092, miR-665, and NLK in CRC tissues and cells. Functions of circ_0009092 on tumor cell proliferation, migration, and invasion were investigated by a series of in vitro assays. The underlying mechanism of circ_0009092 was explored by bioinformatics analysis, RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) and luciferase assays. A co-culture assay in vitro was performed to detect the affection of circ_0009092 on macrophage recruitment in the tumor microenvironment (TME). A xenograft mouse model was used to explore the effect of circ_0009092 on tumor growth. Results Circ_0009092 was downregulated in CRCand predicted a good prognosis. Overexpression of circ_0009092 reduced tumor cell EMT, proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, circ_0009092 elevated the NLK expression via sponging miR-665 and suppressed the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway. EIF4EA3 induced circ_0009092 expression in CRC cells. In addition, NLK regulates phosphorylation and O-GlcNAcylation of STAT3 by binding to STAT3, thereby inhibiting CCL2 expression, in which it inhibits macrophage recruitment in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Conclusion EIF4A3 suppressed circ_0009092 biogenesis, whichinhibits CRC progression by sponging miR-665 to downregulate NLK. Circ_0009092/miR-665/NLK suppressed tumor EMT, proliferation, migration, and invasion by acting on the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway. NLK directly interacted with STAT3 and decreased the CCL2 expression, inhibiting the recruitment of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in the TME. Our study provided novel insights into the roles of circ_0009092 as a novel promising prognostic and therapeutic target in CRC. Keywords: Colorectal cancer, circ_0009092, miR-665, NLK, CCL2, TAMs
Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a nuclear receptor known to play protective roles in anti-hepatocarcinogenesis and regulation of the basal metabolism of glucose, lipids, and bile acids. FXR expression ...is low or absent in HBV-associated hepatocarcinogenesis. Full-length HBx and HBx C-terminal truncation are frequently found in clinical HCC samples and play distinct roles in hepatocarcinogenesis by interacting with FXR or FXR signaling. However, the impact of C-terminal truncated HBx on the progression of hepatocarcinogenesis in the absence of FXR is unclear. In this study, we found that one known FXR binding protein, a C-terminal truncated X protein (HBx C40) enhanced obviously and promoted tumor cell proliferation and migration by altering cell cycle distribution and inducing apoptosis in the absence of FXR. HBx C40 enhanced the growth of FXR-deficient tumors in vivo. In addition, RNA-sequencing analysis showed that HBx C40 overexpression could affect energy metabolism. Overexpressed HSPB8 aggravated the metabolic reprogramming induced by down-regulating glucose metabolism-associated hexokinase 2 genes in HBx C40-induced hepatocarcinogenesis. Overall, our study suggests that C-terminal truncated HBx C40 synergizes with FXR deficiency by altering cell cycle distribution as well as disturbing glucose metabolism to promote HCC development.
Aim
This study aimed to analyze the effects of sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors on the indexes of liver fibrosis in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus complicated with ...non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease, and also to observe the effects on liver enzymes and liver fat.
Methods
This meta‐analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 statistical software.
Results
SGLT2 inhibitors could significantly reduce the level of hepatic fibrosis index: fibrosis‐4 (mean difference MD 0.25, 95% CI −0.39 to −0.11, p = 0.0007); serum type Ⅳ collagen 7s (MD 0.32, 95% CI −0.59 to −0.04, p = 0.02); and ferritin (MD 26.7, 95% CI 50.64, 2.76, p = 0.03). SGLT2 inhibitors could significantly reduce the level of liver enzymes: alanine aminotransferase (MD 3.49, 95% CI −5.1 to 1.58, p < 0.0001); aspartate aminotransferase (MD 3.64, 95% CI −5.10 to −2.18, p < 0.00001); and glutamate aminotransferase (MD 7.13, 95% CI −12.95 to −1.32, p = 0.02). SGLT2 inhibitors could significantly reduce the level of liver fat: liver‐to‐spleen attenuation ratio (MD 0.16, 95% CI 0.10–0.22, p < 0.00001); magnetic resonance imaging proton density fat fraction (MD 1.97, 95% CI −3.49 to −0.45, p = 0.01); liver controlled attenuation parameter (MD 0.29, 95% CI −26.95 to −13.64, p < 0.00001); liver fat score (MD 0.55, 95% CI 1.04 to −0.05, p = 0.03); and liver fat index (MD 11.21, 95% CI −16.53 to −5.89, p < 0.0001).
Conclusion
SGLT2 inhibitors could improve liver fibrosis, liver enzymes, liver fat, and metabolic indexes in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus complicated with non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme catalytic polypeptide-like 2 (APOBEC2) is associated with nucleotide alterations in the transcripts of tumor-related genes which are contributed to ...carcinogenesis. Expression and prognosis value of APOBEC2 in stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD) remains unclear.
The APOBEC2 gene alteration frequency of STAD and APOBEC2 gene expression in STAD and normal tissues were investigated in cBioportal and GEPIA, respectively. We detected expression of APOBEC2, infiltration of CD66b
tumor-associated neutrophils and CD163
tumor-associated macrophages in tissue microarrays by immunohistochemistry. APOBEC2 gene expression was explored by western blot and qRT-PCR. Relationships between APOBEC2 and CD66b, CD163, and other clinicopathological characteristics were investigated. Associations among APOBEC2 expression status and patient survival outcome were further analyzed.
APOBEC2 gene alteration frequency was 5%, and APOBEC2 gene was downexpressed in STAD compared to normal tissues (P < 0.05). APOBEC2 expression status were associated with the infiltration of CD66b
TANs, differentiation grade, TNM stage, histological type and gender (all P < 0.05) in STAD. Little or no APOBEC2 expression was detected in STAD and adjacent normal tissues by western blot. We failed to show that APOBEC2 was an independent risk factor for OS (Hazard Ratio 0.816, 95%CI 0.574-1.161, P = 0.259) or DFS (Hazard Ratio 0.821, 95%CI 0.578-1.166, P = 0.270) in STAD by multivariate Cox regression analysis, but APOBEC2 negative subgroup has a worse OS and DFS among patients with adjuvant chemotherapy.
APOBEC2 correlates with CD66b, differentiation grade, TNM stages, histological classification, and gender in STAD. APOBEC2 is not an independent prognostic factor for STAD, our results suggest that patients with positive APOBEC2 can benefit from postoperative chemotherapy, and combination of APOBEC2 and CD66b is helpful to further stratify patients into different groups with distinct prognoses.