To report the long-term outcomes of Chinese rectal cancer patients after adopting a Watch and Wait (W&W) strategy following neoadjuvant therapy (NAT).
This multicenter, cross-sectional study was ...based on real-world data. The study cohort comprised rectal cancer patients who had achieved complete or near complete clinical responses (cCRs, near-cCRs) after NAT and were thereafter managed by a W&W approach, as well as a few patients who had achieved good responses after NAT and had then undergone local excision for confirmation of pathological complete response. All participants had been followed up for ≥2 years. Patients with distant metastases at baseline or who opted for observation while living with the tumor were excluded. Data of eligible patients were retrospectively collected from the Chinese Wait-and-Watch Data Collaboration Group database. These included baseline characteristics, type of NAT, pre-treatment imaging results, evaluation of post-NAT efficacy, salvage measures, and treatment outcomes. We he
Many industrial combustion devices rely on jet flame combustion in the crossflow to achieve mixing and reaction. Previous research offers a limited predictive capability regarding the coupling ...effects of the crossflow and jet flow on the flame radiative fraction. In this work, a new theoretical equation is derived to relate the radiative fraction to the fuel flow rate and the crossflow velocity. The experimental results show that the flame length increases as the crossflow velocity increases for all considered flames. The results of this work suggest that the stretching factor is 0.08 s. The radiative fraction is almost independent of the nozzle diameter in the case of a low crossflow velocity. The crossflow has the strongest effect on the radiative fraction for a smaller nozzle diameter. This is because of the effect of the crossflow and jet flow velocities on the soot residence time, which is proportional to the radiative fraction.
The mechanisms responsible for thrombocytopenia associated with dengue fever (DF) and dengue hemorrhage fever (DHF) remain unclear.
In this study, we investigated the pathogenic effects of dengue ...virus (DENV) non-structural protein 1 (NS1) on the elicitation of platelet cross-reactive antibodies.
The results showed that anti-DENV NS1 immunoglobulins (Igs) derived from both patients with DF/DHF and recombinant NS1-immunized rabbits could opsonize normal human platelets and enhance platelet-macrophage engagements in vitro. In addition, treatments with anti-NS1 Igs abnormally activated human platelets and induced thrombocytopenia in mice. These prothrombotic characteristics of anti-NS1 Ig might increase the disease burden of coagulant-aberrant DHF patients. To test this hypothesis, we injected anti-NS1 Igs into C57BL/6J mice that were preconditioned into a hypercoagulable state by warfarin treatments. When given before but not after platelet-lysate pre-adsorption, the anti-NS1 Igs injection treatments significantly increased mortality, fibrin deposition in lung, and plasma D-dimer levels, but significantly decreased anticoagulant proteins C, protein S and antithrombin III.
These results suggest that the platelet-bound antibody fractions of anti-NS1 Ig are prothrombotic, which might exacerbate the severity of disease in hosts with an imbalanced coagulant system.
Summary
Sustainable agricultural management practices improve soil processes, prevent soil erosion and consequently enhance crop productivity. The integrated agricultural practice (IP) developed in ...northeast China, by altering row spacing of planting, adopting no‐tillage and returning all crop residues, showed great benefit in sustaining crop yield. However, its effect on the soil microbiome remains largely elusive. This study evaluated the effect of 12‐year integrated agricultural practice on the structure and activity of the soil microbial community at different soil depths in China's Mollisols zone. The experiment consisted of integrated agricultural practice and conventional practice (CP) treatments in a split‐plot arrangement. The soil microbial community was characterized by MiSeq sequencing. The results showed that agricultural practices affected 12 phyla, 24 classes, 32 orders and 75 families in the bacterial community and one phyla, four classes, 12 orders and 18 families in the fungal community. Integrated agricultural practice resulted in greater bacterial richness and diversity, and increased the relative abundances of Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Verrucomicrobia and Ascomycota, but reduced Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Basidiomycota in the dominant bacterial and fungal phyla. These findings suggested that integrated agricultural practice modified the soil physiochemical properties and consequently altered microbial community structure and diversity, which in turn affected soil microbial biomass and enzyme activities. These changes under integrated agricultural practice could have contributed to the enhanced crop yield, suggesting that IP is a sustainable agricultural practice.
Highlights
How does soil microbial community change in the IP and CP soils?
IP affected the soil microbial community and activity.
Bacterial and fungal community structure correlated significantly with soil physiochemical properties.
IP is a promising sustainable agricultural practice.
To detect the display rate and flow velocity of intracranial circle of Willis (anterior, middle, and posterior cerebral arteries) with transcranial contrast-enhanced transcranial color-coded ...sonography (CE-TCCS), using digital subtraction angiography (DSA) as the golden diagnostic standard.
We collected data from 104 patients with suspected stroke treated in our hospital between December 2019 and October 2021. The detection rate of the intracranial circle of Willis, anterior cerebral artery (ACA), middle cerebral artery (MCA), and posterior cerebral artery (PCA) were analyzed based on routine TCCS and CE-TCCS data. Based on digital subtraction angiography (DSA) data, the degree of MCA stenosis was divided into mild stenosis (<50%), moderate stenosis (50-69%), severe stenosis (70-99%), and bilateral middle cerebral artery CE-TCCS examinations were performed. We evaluated MCA color blood flow on CE-TCCS, and recorded the peak systolic velocity (PSV), end-diastolic velocity (EDV), and mean flow velocity (MFV).
The display rates of ACA, MCA, and PCA were significantly improved on the CE-TCCS, and the PSV, EDV and MFV of the MCA stenosis group were higher than those of the normal group. The flow velocity of each stenosis subgroup was increased compared to the normal group. The optimal cutoff values of normal and stenosis under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were PSV = 168.5 cm/s, EDV = 61.5 cm/s, and MFV = 110.5 cm/s. The optimal cutoff values for mild and moderate stenosis and for moderate and severe stenosis were PSV = 201.5 cm/s and 249.5 m/s, EDV = 95.2 cm/s and 141.5 cm/s, and MFV = 137.6 cm/s and 160.5 cm/s, respectively. PSV and MFV had the most significant sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy.
Transcranial contrast-enhanced ultrasonography can improve the display rate of intracranial blood vessels and can accurately diagnose MCA stenosis.
The corrosion evolution mechanism of N80 tubing steel in 8 MPa supercritical CO2 and 0.1 MPa H2S environment was investigated. The results show that although the corrosion rate of N80 steel decreases ...with the prolonged corrosion time, it still maintains a high level of about 1.06 mm/y after a long period of 360 h. As the corrosion progresses, the corrosion products change from FeS to a mixture of FeS and FeCO3. The corrosion form of N80 steel changes from uniform corrosion to localized corrosion. The origin credited for localized corrosion is the detachment of large particles of FeS in the early corrosion stage. A double-layer film consisting of an outer layer of FeS and an inner layer of FeCO3 forms in the area of corrosion pits after a prolonged period of corrosion, which provides protection for the substrate, thereby causing the decrease of localized corrosion rate of N80 steel.
•Abaqus Explicit user's law implementation of a thermodynamic model of NiTi SMA.•Good agreement between experimental and numerical results for impact SHTB tests.•High strain level ahead of a ...transformation front is due to the loading conditions.•A virtual impulse without the rising time generates a single transformation front.•Simulated single front speed can exceed the shear wave speed at high impact speed.
A numerical investigation of NiTi SMA alloy under impact loading is presented in this paper. It is aimed at better understanding the observed behavior of NiTi SMA specimen loaded at impact velocities (up to 50m/s). A phenomenological thermodynamic model with an explicit integration frame is chosen and implemented as a user's law in Abaqus explicit commercial code. The parameters of the model are determined from the usual thermal-mechanical testing data without any tuning. The comparison between numerical and experimental results shows a satisfactory agreement, which proves the pertinence of the proposed numerical model.
Using this numerical model, the reason of the experimentally observed inconstant strain level ahead of the phase transformation front is found. Instead of a material feature of NiTi SMA under impact loading, such a phenomenon is only due to the loading condition. Virtual tests at very high impact velocities are performed. Steep impulses without a rising time is chosen in order to have only one transformation front propagating inside the specimen, knowing that it is not possible to obtain such a simple condition in a real tensile test. A steady transformation front is observed and there is an asymptotical speed limit of this propagating front when the impact velocity increases. This speed limit is higher than the shear elastic wave speed but lower than the longitudinal elastic wave speed.
We report the first results of a light weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) search from the CDEX-10 experiment with a 10 kg germanium detector array immersed in liquid nitrogen at the China ...Jinping Underground Laboratory with a physics data size of 102.8 kg day. At an analysis threshold of 160 eVee, improved limits of 8×10^{-42} and 3×10^{-36} cm^{2} at a 90% confidence level on spin-independent and spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon cross sections, respectively, at a WIMP mass (m_{χ}) of 5 GeV/c^{2} are achieved. The lower reach of m_{χ} is extended to 2 GeV/c^{2}.
Summary
This study investigated the effects of Moringa oleifera (MO) as a partial substitute of alfalfa hay on milk yield, nutrient apparent digestibility and serum biochemical indexes of dairy cows. ...MO was harvested at 120 days post‐seeding. Fresh MO was cut, mixed with chopped oat hay (425:575 on a DM basis), ensiled and stored for 60 days. Sixty healthy Holstein dairy cows were allocated to one of three groups: NM (no MO or control), LM (low MO; 25% alfalfa hay and 50% maize silage were replaced by MO silage) or HM (high MO; 50% alfalfa hay and 100% maize silage were replaced by MO silage). The feeding trial lasted 35 days. The LM and HM diets did not affect dry matter (DM) intake, milk yield or milk composition (lactose, milk fat, milk protein and somatic cell count). The apparent digestibility of DM and NDF was lower for HM group than NM group. Additionally, there were no significant differences in serum biochemical indexes between the LM and NM groups. The HM group had lower serum concentrations of total cholesterol, high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol, and low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol and higher serum concentrations of urea than the NM group. The partial replacement of alfalfa hay (≤50%) and maize silage with MO silage had no negative effects on milk yield, in vivo nutrient apparent digestibility or serum biochemical indexes of lactating cows.
Three-point bending experiments were performed on as-cast and annealed samples of Zr
52.5Cu
17.9Ni
14.6Al
10Ti
5 (Vit105) bulk metallic glasses over a wide range of temperatures varying from room ...temperature (293
K) to liquid nitrogen temperature (77
K). The results demonstrated that the free volume decrease due to annealing and/or cryogenic temperature can reduce the propensity for the formation of multiple shear bands and hence deteriorate plastic deformation ability. We clearly observed a sharp ductile-to-brittle transition (DBT), across which microscopic fracture feature transfers from micro-scale vein patterns to nano-scale periodic corrugations. Macroscopically, the corresponding fracture mode changes from ductile shear fracture to brittle tensile fracture. The shear transformation zone volume, taking into account free volume, temperature and strain rate, is proposed to quantitatively characterize the DBT behavior in fracture of metallic glasses.
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