We report a remarkable sensitivity of self-assembled structures of giant surfactants on their chemical compositions and molecular topology, which facilitate the engineering of various ...nanophase-separated structures with sub-10 nm feature sizes. Two classes of giant surfactants composed of various functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) heads tethered with one or two polystyrene (PS) tails were efficiently prepared from common precursors of vinyl-substituted POSS–PS conjugates via one-step “thiol–ene” postpolymerization functionalization. With identical molecular weights of the PS tails, the resulting giant surfactants exhibited distinct highly ordered phases, as evidenced by small-angle X-ray scattering and transmission electron microscopy observations. Moreover, comparison between the topological isomers revealed that the self-assembled structures are also highly sensitive to molecular topology. Introduction of two PS tails with half-length not only shifted the boundaries between different ordered phases but also altered the packing configurations of the functional POSS cages, leading to further reduced feature sizes of the self-assembled nanodomains. Interestingly, a lower order–disorder transition temperature was also observed in the fluorinated F13POSS tethered with two PS17 tails, compared to its topological isomer composed of F13POSS tethered with one PS35 tail, indicating that the topological effect also existed in phase transition behaviors. These results provide insights to rationally design and precisely tailor self-assembled structures by controlling both primary chemical compositions and molecular topology in POSS-based giant surfactants.
With the exploitation of mineral resources, pollution of the ecological environment in mines has garnered public attention. Particularly,erosion of the surrounding ecological environment re-sulting ...from heavy metals in tailings pond could be highly concerning. Instead of traditional field sampling and laboratory analysis method, remote sensing can be used to high-precisi es-timation soil heavy metal with less time and effort. soil heavy metal content is generally low, the spectral sensitivities of various heavy metals are insignificant, and the surface landscape is complex, there exist difficulties associated with heavy metal content estimation. Therefore, herein, we propose optimization of the commonly used partial least-square regression (PLS) method. In the optimized method, a variety of remote sensing indices and the modeled heavy metals were added as modeling factors to indirect estimation soil heavy metal. The method was validated via inversion experiments of heavy metals (Ni, Cu, and Zn) in the tailing pond and its surrounding environment,it improve the goodness-of-fit of Ni, Cu, and Zn by 0.0852,0.2291, and 0.2919 compared with traditional PLS. Spatia l analysis was then conducted on the entire studied area using the estimation model of the three heavy metals. It was shown that the results were essentially consistent with the actual heavy metal distribution in the area. Therefore, the indirect PLS model with multiple factors proves effective for the estimation of soil heavy metals. It also provides technical support for treatment and evaluation of ecological environments in mining areas.
Mining subsidence prediction plays an important role in underground mining under buildings, water bodies, railways, and other important structures. Underground mining takes a considerable amount of ...time, and the influence on ground structures depends on its duration; hence, a dynamic mining subsidence prediction method is required to illustrate the real ground surface deformation during the mining period, even long after mining has been completed.
Prior studies have indicated that mining-induced surface dynamic cracks in eastern China only undergo one “expanding-closure” development cycle. However, field measurements from the Bulianta mines of ...northwestern China demonstrated that ground dynamic cracks in the Ordos region went through two “expanding-closure” cycle. Using in situ measurement data and theoretical analysis, we find that the strata control theory cannot reasonably explain this special phenomenon. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation from the perspective of soil mechanics. A comparison of two field examples in eastern and northwestern China demonstrates that our theoretical explanation is in agreement with in situ observations and therefore is a reasonable interpretation for the secondary development of ground dynamic cracks in the Bulianta mines. This study provides a theoretical basis for the mechanism of mining-induced ground dynamic cracks.
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors have breakthrough designations for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). We performed a meta-analysis of current clinical trials to ...evaluate the efficacy of PARP inhibitors in mCRPC patients based on their genetic status.
On August 2020, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Web of Science were searched for phase II/III clinical studies on PARP inhibitors in mCRPC patients. Data were extracted independently by two investigators and analyzed using Review Manager software version 5.3. Primary endpoints included overall response rate (ORR) and progression-free survival (PFS).
Nine clinical trials were identified and analyzed for the clinical benefit of PARP inhibitors in mCRPC patients (
= 1,219). Pooled analyses demonstrated that PARP inhibitors could provide a significant improvement of ORR and PFS in patients with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) when compared with non-HRD patients. Within the HRD subgroup,
mutation patients achieved significantly higher ORR odds ratio (OR): 9.97, 95% confidence interval (CI): 6.08-16.35 and PFS rates at 12 months (OR: 3.23, 95% CI: 1.71-6.10) when compared with
wild-type patients. Furthermore, patients harboring HRD without
mutations have a higher objective response after PARP inhibitor treatment compared with non-HRD patients.
PARP inhibitor is an effective treatment option for mCRPC patients with mutations in genes related to the HR DNA repair pathway when compared with non-HRD patients. In addition to
mutations, other HRD-related gene aberrations may also be used as novel biomarkers to predict the efficacy of PARP inhibitors.
A titanium oxide (TiO
2
) compact layer was used to enhance the performance of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) by reducing the electrical loss from recombination at the indium tin oxide ...(ITO)/electrolyte interface and by improving the electrical contact between ITO and the zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-rod photoelectrode. The TiO
2
compact layer was deposited on ITO glass using the liquid phase deposition (LPD) method. DSSCs fabricated with and without the LPD-TiO
2
compact layer were compared. In addition, various thicknesses of the LPD-TiO
2
compact layer were evaluated. The light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of the DSSC increased from 0.43 to 0.75% by incorporating the LPD-TiO
2
compact layer. Experimental results demonstrated that the LPD method is a promising alternative to the conventional TiO
2
compact layer technology for the production of high-performance DSSCs.
To elucidate the association between the anticancer activities of piperlongumine (PL) and its potential target, transient receptor potential melastatin 7 channel (TRPM7), in oral squamous cell ...carcinoma (OSCC).
The expression levels and electrical characteristics of TRPM7 as well as cell viability in response to various PL treatments were investigated in the OSCC cell line Cal27.
PL treatment resulted in a concentration- and time-dependent reduction in TRPM7 mRNA and protein expression in Cal27 cells. Furthermore, PL treatment inhibited TRPM7-like rectifying currents in Cal27 cells; however, this inhibition was less effective than that of the TRPM7 antagonist waixenicin A. Rapid perfusion and washout experiments revealed an immediate inhibitory effect of PL on TRPM7-like currents. The antagonistic effect of PL occurred within 1 min and was not completely reversed following washout. Notably, the extracellular Ca2+ concentration still influenced PL-induced changes in the TRPM7-like current, indicating that PL can directly but gently antagonize the TRPM7 channel. Functional changes in TRPM7 correlated with the observed antiproliferative and cytotoxic effects of PL in Cal27 cells.
These findings suggest that PL exhibits potent inhibitory effects on TRPM7 and exerts its anti-cancer effects by downregulating TRPM7 expression and antagonizing channel currents.
Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors have shown promising results in metastatic triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs). We therefore performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to ...evaluate the efficacy and safety of this drug in patients with advanced or metastatic TNBC.
A systematic literature search of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials for synonyms of "PARP inhibitors" and "breast cancer" was carried out. All published phase II/III clinical studies of PARP inhibitors in patients with advanced/metastatic TNBC were screened. Data were extracted independently by two authors and analyzed using Review Manager software version 5.3. End points include overall response rate (ORR), progression-free survival (PFS), and adverse events.
Ten clinical trials were identified, with a total of 1,495 patients included. Pooled analyses showed that PARP inhibitors could provide a significant improvement of ORR risk ratio (RR) = 2.00; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.14-3.50; p = 0.02) and PFS hazard ratio (HR) = 0.68; 95%Cl, 0.59-0.77; p < 0.0001) compared to chemotherapy in the whole population. In subgroup analysis, patients with
mutation had a higher objective response to PARP inhibitor, with an RR of 2.85 (95%CI, 1.34-6.06; p = 0.007) compared to
wild-type patients. However, no significant difference in ORR was observed between the homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) positive and non-HRD subgroups (RR = 1.82; 95%CI, 0.81-4.08; p = 0.14). Hematological toxicity is a common adverse event of PARP inhibitors.
PARP inhibitors are effective options for the treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic TNBC. Compared with patients without germline
mutation, patients with germline
mutation could benefit more from PARP inhibitors. In clinical setting, hematological toxicity associated with PARP inhibitors should be monitored regularly.
Hotspots, a small set of tuples frequently read/written by a large number of transactions, cause contention in a concurrency control protocol. While a hotspot may comprise only a small fraction of a ...transaction's execution time, conventional strict two-phase locking allows a transaction to release lock only after the transaction completes, which leaves significant parallelism unexploited. Ideally, a concurrency control protocol serializes transactions only for the duration of the hotspots, rather than the duration of transactions.
We observe that exploiting such parallelism requires violating two-phase locking. In this paper, we propose Bamboo, a new concurrency control protocol that can enable such parallelism by modifying the conventional two-phase locking, while maintaining the same guarantees in correctness. We thoroughly analyzed the effect of cascading aborts involved in reading uncommitted data and discussed optimizations that can be applied to further improve the performance. Our evaluation on TPC-C shows a performance improvement up to 4x compared to the best of pessimistic and optimistic baseline protocols. On synthetic workloads that contain a single hotspot, Bamboo achieves a speedup up to 19x over baselines.
This study explores the effects of different types of augmented reality (AR) mandala coloring activities on mindfulness and flow in college students.
A total of 76 college students participated in ...the study and were divided into two groups based on their drawing skills: the high-skilled group (
= 38) and the low-skilled group (
= 38). With the help of AR technology, two groups of subjects carried out three mandala coloring experiments with structured mandala, free mandala and cooperative mandala in order. The measurement evaluation in the experimental program included a pre-test before all the experiments (Time 0) and each post-test after three mandala coloring activities (Time 1, Time 2 and Time 3). The balance dimensions of flow and challenge skills of the two groups were measured.
ANOVA results showed that a single 30-min short-term datura coloring activity did not significantly improve mindfulness (
= 2.339,
= 0.074,
= 0.031), but did significantly improve flow (
= 11.918,
= < 0.001,
= 0.139). Linear regression results found positive correlations between mindfulness and certain dimensions of flow (e.g., focus on a task, unambiguous feedback, sense of control, challenge -- skill balance, and automatic experience). Mindfulness was also found to be negatively correlated with the loss of the self-conscious component of flow. We also found that the free mandala was quite challenging for subjects in the low-skill group, while the teamwork in the cooperative mandala helped them overcome difficulties and cope with challenges.
Flow can be quickly and effectively improved through short AR mandala coloring exercises. The contribution of this study is to provide inspiration and reference for further exploring how AR mandola coloring can improve subjects' mental state and promote the perfection and development of positive psychological mechanism.
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