This study aimed to conduct a systematic review to sum up evidence of the associations between different aspects of night shift work and female breast cancer using a dose–response meta-analysis ...approach.
We systematicly searched all cohort and case–control studies published in English on MEDLINE, Embase, PSYCInfo, APC Journal Club and Global Health, from January 1971 to May 2013. We extracted effect measures (relative risk, RR; odd ratio, OR; or hazard ratio, HR) from individual studies to generate pooled results using meta-analysis approaches. A log-linear dose–response regression model was used to evaluate the relationship between various indicators of exposure to night shift work and breast cancer risk. Downs and Black scale was applied to assess the methodological quality of included studies.
Ten studies were included in the meta-analysis. A pooled adjusted relative risk for the association between ‘ever exposed to night shift work’ and breast cancer was 1.19 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05–1.35. Further meta-analyses on dose–response relationship showed that every 5-year increase of exposure to night shift work would correspondingly enhance the risk of breast cancer of the female by 3% (pooled RR = 1.03, 95% CI 1.01–1.05; Pheterogeneity < 0.001). Our meta-analysis also suggested that an increase in 500-night shifts would result in a 13% (RR = 1.13, 95% CI 1.07–1.21; Pheterogeneity = 0.06) increase in breast cancer risk.
This systematic review updated the evidence that a positive dose–response relationship is likely to present for breast cancer with increasing years of employment and cumulative shifts involved in the work.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous, non-coding, single-stranded small RNAs involved in a variety of cellular processes, including ontogeny, cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. They can ...also function as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. Recent studies have revealed that miRNA-451 (miR-451) is involved in the regulation of various human physiological and pathological processes. Furthermore, it has been shown that miR-451 not only directly affects the biological functions of tumor cells but also indirectly affects tumor cell invasion and metastasis upon secretion into the tumor microenvironment via exosomes. Thus, miR-451 also influences the progression of tumorigenesis and drug resistance. This review summarizes the expression of miR-451 in various cancer types and the relationship between miR-451 and the diagnosis, treatment, and drug resistance of solid tumors. In addition, we address possible mechanisms of action of miR-451 and its potential application as a biomarker in the diagnosis and treatment of human cancers.
We present a new algorithm for generating merger trees and halo catalogs which explicitly ensures consistency of halo properties (mass, position, and velocity) across time steps. Our algorithm has ...demonstrated the ability to improve both the completeness (through detecting and inserting otherwise missing halos) and purity (through detecting and removing spurious objects) of both merger trees and halo catalogs. In addition, our method is able to robustly measure the self-consistency of halo finders; it is the first to directly measure the uncertainties in halo positions, halo velocities, and the halo mass function for a given halo finder based on consistency between snapshots in cosmological simulations. We use this algorithm to generate merger trees for two large simulations (Bolshoi and Consuelo) and evaluate two halo finders (ROCKSTAR and BDM). We find that both the ROCKSTAR and BDM halo finders track halos extremely well; in both, the number of halos which do not have physically consistent progenitors is at the 1%-2% level across all halo masses. Our code is publicly available at http://code.google.com/p/consistent-trees. Our trees and catalogs are publicly available at http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/.
Capsule: Neighbourhood greenness may benefit mental health by decreasing air pollution.
Display omitted
•NDVI and streetscape greenery (SVG) were used to assess greenness exposure, and trees ...(SVG-tree) and grasses (SVG-grass) were distinguished.•Both objective (PM2.5 and NO2) and subjective (perceived air pollution) measures were used to quantify air pollution exposure.•NDVI, SVG-tree and SVG-grass were positively associated with psychological well-being.•The SVG-mental health association was mediated by ambient PM2.5, NO2 and perceived air pollution in parallel mediation models.•The SVG-mental health association was mediated by ambient PM2.5-perceived air pollution and NO2-perceived air pollution in serial mediation models.•Neither measures of air pollution mediated the association between NDVI and psychological well-being.
China’s rapid urbanization has led to an increasing level of exposure to air pollution and a decreasing level of exposure to vegetation among urban populations. Both trends may pose threats to psychological well-being. Previous studies on the interrelationships among greenness, air pollution and psychological well-being rely on exposure measures from remote sensing data, which may fail to accurately capture how people perceive vegetation on the ground. To address this research gap, this study aimed to explore relationships among neighbourhood greenness, air pollution exposure and psychological well-being, using survey data on 1029 adults residing in 35 neighbourhoods in Guangzhou, China. We used the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and streetscape greenery (SVG) to assess greenery exposure at the neighbourhood level, and we distinguished between trees (SVG-tree) and grasses (SVG-grass) when generating streetscape greenery exposure metrics. We used two objective (PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations) measures and one subjective (perceived air pollution) measure to quantify air pollution exposure. We quantified psychological well-being using the World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5). Results from multilevel structural equation models (SEM) showed that, for parallel mediation models, while the association between SVG-grass and psychological well-being was completely mediated by perceived air pollution and NO2, the relationship between SVG-tree and psychological well-being was completely mediated by ambient PM2.5, NO2 and perceived air pollution. None of three air pollution indicators mediated the association between psychological well-being and NDVI. For serial mediation models, measures of air pollution did not mediate the relationship between NDVI and psychological well-being. While the linkage between SVG-grass and psychological well-being scores was partially mediated by NO2-perceived air pollution, SVG-tree was partially mediated by both ambient PM2.5-perceived air pollution and NO2-perceived air pollution. Our results suggest that street trees may be more related to lower air pollution levels and better mental health than grasses are.
Interest in single-cell whole-transcriptome analysis is growing rapidly, especially for profiling rare or heterogeneous populations of cells. We compared commercially available single-cell RNA ...amplification methods with both microliter and nanoliter volumes, using sequence from bulk total RNA and multiplexed quantitative PCR as benchmarks to systematically evaluate the sensitivity and accuracy of various single-cell RNA-seq approaches. We show that single-cell RNA-seq can be used to perform accurate quantitative transcriptome measurement in individual cells with a relatively small number of sequencing reads and that sequencing large numbers of single cells can recapitulate bulk transcriptome complexity.
Quantum quenches in a holographic Kondo model Erdmenger, Johanna; Flory, Mario; Newrzella, Max-Niklas ...
The journal of high energy physics,
04/2017, Volume:
2017, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A
bstract
We study non-equilibrium dynamics and quantum quenches in a recent gauge/gravity duality model for a strongly coupled system interacting with a magnetic impurity with SU(
N
) spin. At large
...N
, it is convenient to write the impurity spin as a bilinear in Abrikosov fermions. The model describes an RG flow triggered by the marginally relevant Kondo operator. There is a phase transition at a critical temperature, below which an operator condenses which involves both an electron and an Abrikosov fermion field. This corresponds to a holographic superconductor in AdS
2
and models the impurity screening. We quench the Kondo coupling either by a Gaussian pulse or by a hyperbolic tangent, the latter taking the system from the condensed to the uncondensed phase or vice-versa. We study the time dependence of the condensate induced by this quench. The timescale for equilibration is generically given by the leading quasinormal mode of the dual gravity model. This mode also governs the formation of the screening cloud, which is obtained as the decrease of impurity degrees of freedom with time. In the condensed phase, the leading quasinormal mode is imaginary and the relaxation of the condensate is over-damped. For quenches whose final state is close to the critical point of the large
N
phase transition, we study the critical slowing down and obtain the combination of critical exponents
zν
= 1. When the final state is exactly at the phase transition, we find that the exponential ringing of the quasinormal modes is replaced by a power-law behaviour of the form ∼
t
−
a
sin(
b
log
t
). This indicates the emergence of a discrete scale invariance.
This study used spinach extract, ipomoea leaf extract and their mixed extracts as the natural dyes for a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Spinach and ipomoea leaves were first placed separately in ...ethanol and the chlorophyll of these two kinds of plants was extracted to serve as the natural dyes for using in DSSCs. In addition, the self-developed nanofluid synthesis system prepared a TiO
2 nanofluid with an average particle size of 50
nm. Electrophoresis deposition was performed to let the TiO
2 deposit nanoparticles on the indium tin oxide (ITO) conductive glass, forming a TiO
2 thin film with the thickness of 11.61
μm. This TiO
2 thin film underwent sintering at 450
°C to enhance the compactness of thin film. Finally, the sintered TiO
2 thin film was immersed in the natural dye solutions extracted from spinach and ipomoea leaves, completing the production of the anode of DSSC. This study then further inspected the fill factor, photoelectric conversion efficiency and incident photon current efficiency of the encapsulated DSSC. According to the experimental results of current–voltage curve, the photoelectric conversion efficiency of the DSSCs prepared by natural dyes from ipomoea leaf extract is 0.318% under extraction temperature of 50
°C and pH value of extraction fluid at 1.0. This paper also investigated the influence of the temperature in the extraction process of this kind of natural dye and the influence of pH value of the dye solution on the UV–VIS patterns absorption spectra of the prepared natural dye solutions, and the influence of these two factors on the photoelectric conversion efficiency of DSSC.
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