Background Pneumonia and lung cancer are both major respiratory diseases, and observational studies have explored the association between their susceptibility. However, due to the presence of ...potential confounders and reverse causality, the comprehensive causal relationships between pneumonia and lung cancer require further exploration. Methods Genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary-level data were obtained from the hitherto latest FinnGen database, COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative resource, and International Lung Cancer Consortium. We implemented a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) framework to evaluate the causal relationships between several specific types of pneumonia and lung cancer. The causal estimates were mainly calculated by inverse-variance weighted (IVW) approach. Additionally, sensitivity analyses were also conducted to validate the robustness of the causalty. Results In the MR analyses, overall pneumonia demonstrated a suggestive but modest association with overall lung cancer risk (Odds ratio OR: 1.21, 95% confidence interval CI: 1.01 - 1.44, P = 0.037). The correlations between specific pneumonia types and overall lung cancer were not as significant, including bacterial pneumonia (OR: 1.07, 95% CI: 0.91 - 1.26, P = 0.386), viral pneumonia (OR: 1.00, 95% CI: 0.95 - 1.06, P = 0.891), asthma-related pneumonia (OR: 1.18, 95% CI: 0.92 - 1.52, P = 0.181), and COVID-19 (OR: 1.01, 95% CI: 0.78 - 1.30, P = 0.952). Reversely, with lung cancer as the exposure, we observed that overall lung cancer had statistically crucial associations with bacterial pneumonia (OR: 1.08, 95% CI: 1.03 - 1.13, P = 0.001) and viral pneumonia (OR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.01 - 1.19, P = 0.037). Sensitivity analysis also confirmed the robustness of these findings. Conclusion This study has presented a systematic investigation into the causal relationships between pneumonia and lung cancer subtypes. Further prospective study is warranted to verify these findings. Keywords: Pneumonia, Lung cancer, Mendelian randomization, Causal relationship
Flexible electronics have found useful applications in both the scientific and industrial communities. However, substrates traditionally used for flexible electronics, such as plastic, cause many ...environmental issues. Therefore, a transparent substrate made from natural materials provides a promising alternative because it can be degraded in nature. The traditional bottom-up fabrication method for transparent paper is expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and time-consuming. In this work, for the first time, we developed a top-down method to fabricate isotropic, transparent paper directly from anisotropic wood. The top-down method includes two steps: a delignification process to bleach the wood by lignin removal and a pressing process for removing light-reflecting and -scattering sources. The resulting isotropic, transparent paper has high transmittance of about 90% and high haze over 80% and is demonstrated as a nature-disposable substrate for electronic/optical devices. Adjusting the pressing ratio used changes the density of the resulting paper, which tunes the microstructure-related properties of the isotropic, transparent paper. This top-down method is simple, fast, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective, which can greatly promote the development of paper-based green optical and electronic devices.
We demonstrate high-resolution photonic RF filters using an RF bandwidth scaling approach based on integrated Kerr optical micro-combs. By employing both an active nonlinear micro-ring resonator ...(MRR) as a high-quality micro-comb source and a passive high-Q MRR to slice the RF spectra modulated on the shaped comb, a large RF instantaneous bandwidth of 4.64 GHz and a high resolution of 117 MHz are achieved, together with a broad RF operation band covering 3.28–19.4 GHz (L to Ku bands) using thermal tuning. We achieve programmable RF transfer functions including binary-coded notch filters and RF equalizing filters with reconfigurable slopes. Our approach is an attractive solution for RF spectral shaping with high performance and flexibility.
•An iterative source correction based immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann (IB-LB) method is proposed to enforce the Dirichlet boundary condition when simulating the thermal flow.•The intrinsic ...relation between the temperature jump and the LB relaxation time is found through a theoretical analysis.•A 3D sedimentation of a single particle with heat transfer is simulated to demonstrate its ability in simulating complicated fluid-structure-interaction problems.
Temperature jump at the boundary occurs when the conventional immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann (IB-LB) method is applied to simulating the near boundary flows with heat transfer. To remedy this problem, an iterative correction is proposed to modify the heat source term in the IB-LB method. The source term in the LB equation is treated by Cheng’s scheme, in which the heat source at the next timestep is taken as unknowns and iteratively corrected until the resulting boundary temperature matches its desired value. Typical verification cases, including the two-dimensional (2D) heat transfer between two horizontal plates, the natural convection between two concentric circular cylinders, and 2D sedimentation of a single particle with heat convection are simulated to analyze the accuracy of the method. It is shown that the boundary temperature jump can be effectively removed for a certain range of LB relaxation time τ, while the first-order spatial convergence of the IB method is still maintained. Also, a theoretical analysis is conducted based on the case of heat transfer between two plates. It is shown that the proposed method outperforms the widely-used direct source method in treating the Dirichlet boundary conditions when τ is smaller than 1.624. To further demonstrate its capability for resolving complicated fluid-structure interaction problems, a three-dimensional sedimentation of a single particle in a vertical channel is analyzed. We find that the thermal convection may fundamentally affect the way the particle interacts with the surrounding fluid.
We demonstrate enhanced four-wave mixing (FWM) in doped silica waveguides integrated with graphene oxide (GO) layers. Owing to strong mode overlap between the integrated waveguides and GO films that ...have a high Kerr nonlinearity and low loss, the FWM efficiency of the hybrid integrated waveguides is significantly improved. We perform FWM measurements for different pump powers, wavelength detuning, GO coating lengths, and number of GO layers. Our experimental results show good agreement with theory, achieving up to ∼9.5-dB enhancement in the FWM conversion efficiency for a 1.5-cm-long waveguide integrated with 2 layers of GO. We show theoretically that for different waveguide geometries an enhancement in FWM efficiency of ∼20 dB can be obtained in the doped silica waveguides and more than 30 dB in silicon nanowires and slot waveguides. This demonstrates the effectiveness of introducing GO films into integrated photonic devices in order to enhance the performance of nonlinear optical processes.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a microwave photonic intensity differentiator based on a Kerr optical comb generated by a compact integrated micro-ring resonator (MRR). The on-chip Kerr ...optical comb, containing a large number of comb lines, serves as a high-performance multi-wavelength source for implementing a transversal filter, which will greatly reduce the cost, size, and complexity of the system. Moreover, owing to the compactness of the integrated MRR, frequency spacings of up to 200-GHz can be achieved, enabling a potential operation bandwidth of over 100 GHz. By programming and shaping individual comb lines according to calculated tap weights, a reconfigurable intensity differentiator with variable differentiation orders can be realized. The operation principle is theoretically analyzed, and experimental demonstrations of the first-, second-, and third-order differentiation functions based on this principle are presented. The radio frequency amplitude and phase responses of multi-order intensity differentiations are characterized, and system demonstrations of real-time differentiations for a Gaussian input signal are also performed. The experimental results show good agreement with theory, confirming the effectiveness of our approach.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate the enhancement in the filtering quality (Q)
factor of an integrated micro-ring resonator (MRR) by embedding it in an integrated
Fabry-Perot (FP)
cavity
...formed by cascaded Sagnac loop reflectors. By utilizing coherent interference within
the FP cavity to reshape the transmission spectrum of the MRR, both the Q
factor and the extinction ratio (ER) can be significantly improved. The device is
theoretically analyzed and practically fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator wafer.
Experimental results show that up to 11-times improvement in the Q factor, together with
an 8-dB increase in the ER, can be achieved via our proposed method. The impact of varying
structural parameters on the device performance is also investigated and verified by the
measured spectra
of the fabricated devices with different structural parameters.
The saturation of a common-mode (CM) choke is a practical problem in the electromagnetic interference filter application. As an important factor of the CM choke saturation, the self-resonance of the ...CM path is analyzed based on the low-frequency CM model of the variable-frequency drive system. Combining the analysis and the conducted emission test results of the system, the main cause of the CM choke saturation in our experiment is studied. Meanwhile, a novel online impedance measurement method is proposed to observe the saturation effect of the CM choke. To eliminate the saturation effect, a new method is proposed in this paper. A damping resistor is connected in parallel with Y capacitor of an electromagnetic interference filter to suppress the self-resonance. Through comparing the experimental results of the original filter and the improved filter, the effectiveness of the resonance suppression method is validated and the saturation of the CM choke is prevented.
Background The advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) therapy has resulted in significant survival benefits in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without increasing toxicity. ...However, the utilisation of immunotherapy for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) remains unclear, with a scarcity of systematic comparisons of therapeutic effects and safety of immunotherapy in these two major lung cancer subtypes. Herein, we aimed to provide a comprehensive landscape of immunotherapy and systematically review its specific efficacy and safety in advanced lung cancer, accounting for histological types. Methods We identified studies assessing immunotherapy for lung cancer with predefined endpoints, including overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and treatment-related adverse events (TRAE), from PubMed, Embase, Medline, and Cochrane library. A random-effects or fixed-effect model was adopted according to different settings. Results Overall, 38 trials with 20,173 patients with lung cancer were included in this study. ICI therapy resulted in a significantly prolonged survival in both patients with NSCLC and SCLC when compared with chemotherapy (hazard ratio HR = 0.74; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.70-0.79 and HR = 0.82; 95% CI, 0.75-0.90, respectively). The magnitude of disease control and survival benefits appeared superior with ICI plus standard of care (SOC) when compared with SOC alone. OS and PFS advantages were observed only when immunotherapy was employed as the first-line treatment in patients with SCLC. Conclusion ICI therapy is a promising therapeutic option in patients with NSCLC and SCLC. ICI plus SOC can be recommended as the optimal first-line treatment for patients with SCLC, and double-target ICIs combined with SOC are recommended in patients with NSCLC as both the first and subsequent lines of treatment. Additionally, non-first-line immunotherapy is not recommended in patients with SCLC. Keywords: Immune checkpoint inhibitor, Efficacy, Non-small-cell lung cancer, Small-cell lung cancer
Epigenetics plays an important role in regulating stem cell signaling, as well as in the oncogenesis of lung cancer and therapeutic resistance. Determining how to employ these regulatory mechanisms ...to treat cancer is an intriguing medical challenge. Lung cancer is caused by signals that cause aberrant differentiation of stem cells or progenitor cells. The different pathological subtypes of lung cancer are determined by the cells of origin. Additionally, emerging studies have demonstrated that the occurrence of cancer treatment resistance is connected to the hijacking of normal stem cell capability by lung cancer stem cells, especially in the processes of drug transport, DNA damage repair, and niche protection. In this review, we summarize the principles of the epigenetic regulation of stem cell signaling in relation to the emergence of lung cancer and resistance to therapy. Furthermore, several investigations have shown that the tumor immune microenvironment in lung cancer affects these regulatory pathways. And ongoing experiments on epigenetics-related therapeutic strategies provide new insight for the treatment of lung cancer in the future.
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