The purpose of this study was to compare two scoring systems used for the diagnosis of acute mountain sickness (AMS): the Lake Louise Scoring (AMS-LLS) and the Chinese Scoring Systems (AMS-CSS). In ...total, 339 healthy young adult volunteers residing at sea level ascended to 3200 m by train and bus over a total journey time of 48 h. All subjects ascended in the same manner and were divided into three groups that were assessed after one (N = 88), two (N = 91), and three (N = 160) nights, respectively, at altitude. The overall incidence of AMS was 17.11% (N = 58) and 29.79% (N = 101) according to the AMS-LLS and AMS-CSS, respectively. Two participants (0.59%) experienced high-altitude pulmonary edema. Both scoring systems showed the highest incidence of AMS after the second night at high altitude. The AMS-CSS and AMS-LLS scores were significantly correlated (Pearson's r = 0.820, P < 0.001). The AMS-CSS identified all AMS subjects diagnosed by the AMS-LLS, and an additional 43 subjects. The dominant symptoms were reduced exercise tolerance (61.7%), fatigue (49.0%), dizziness (28.9%), chest distress (28.3%), and headache (27.4%). Compared with the AMS-LLS, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of the AMS-CSS were 100, 84.7, 57.43, and 100%, respectively. There was no relationship between oxygen saturation levels and AMS scores at 3200 m. In summary, the AMS-CSS was similar to AMS-LLS, except that it resulted in more positive diagnoses, and headache did not play a large diagnostic role.
In this work, the microstructures of Nd2O3 reinforcements in in situ synthesized (TiB + TiC + Nd2O3)/Ti composites were examined by back-scattered scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission ...electron microscopy (TEM). The interfacial bonding microstracture and orientation relationship between Nd2O3 and alpha-Ti was observed utilizing transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HREM). The orientation relationship of Nd2O3 and alpha-Ti can be described as: 110Nd2O3//1213Ti; (111)Nd2O3//(1101)Ti; (001)Nd2O3//(2110)Ti and 001Nd2O,//1101Ti; (100)Nd2O3\\(2113)Tl.
We analyzed the expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in patients undergoing radical nephrectomy for advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CC-RCC) and evaluated the effects of the targeted ...therapies treated with sorafenib and sunitinib.
Expression of HO-1 in cancer tissue from 66 patients was measured by immunohis-tochemical staining. The patients received either oral sorafenib (n=40) or oral sunitinib (n=26) within 4 weeks after nephrectomy and were followed up long term to determine the tumor response and prognosis.
Our current study revealed a high HO-1 expression level in 57.6% (38/66) of patients and a low HO-1 expression level in 42.4% (28/66) of patients with CC-RCC. The study also revealed that patients with high HO-1 expression did not have a higher objective response rate (2.6% versus 53.6%, P<0.01), clinical benefit rate (47.4% versus 92.9%, P<0.01), longer progression-free survival (4.4 versus 42 months, P=0.022), or overall survival (χ (2)=4.775, P=0.029) than patients with low HO-1 expression. In the low HO-1 level group, a higher tumor response rate and a longer survival time was achieved in patients who received sorafenib or sunitinib. Multivariate analysis showed that HO-1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for tumor response and overall survival.
High expression of HO-1 was associated with a lower tumor response rate and a shorter overall survival time when compared with low expression of HO-1. Overall, HO-1 expression might be a useful biomarker for predicting the response to sunitinib and sorafenib for patients with metastatic CC-RCC.
Two new poly(arylene ether sulfone)s, P1 and P2, with pendant nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophores (60 and 84%, respectively) have been easily prepared by post-esterification reaction of poly(arylene ...ether sulfone) P under mild conditions. P1 and P2 are readily soluble in common organic solvents at room temperature and thermally stable up to 200
°C in both air and argon. The glass transition temperatures (T
g's) of P1 and P2 are 174 and 189
°C, respectively. The resonant nonlinear optical coefficient (d
33) values were estimated to be 29.2 and 16.5
pm/V for P1 and P2, respectively, by
in situ second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements at 1064
nm fundamental wavelength. By using the approximation two-level model, the nonresonant NLO coefficient (d
33(∞)) values of P1 and P2 were estimated to be 6.6 and 4.8
pm/V, respectively.
The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from 12 September 2015 to 19 January 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, ...namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 yr to less than 1 in 186 000 yr.
A field experiment was performed to investigate the growth performance and the growth stage-dependent changes in activities of antioxidative enzymes and concentration of malondialdehyde (MDA) in ...leaves of rice subjected to treatment with (NF-M) or without straw mulching (NF-WM) under non-flooded conditions compared with continuously flooded treatment (CF). Compared with the NF-WM treatment, mulch application significantly increased the flag leaf area per plant before heading, tillers number and plant height at the early period of tillering stage. There was no significant difference between the yield of the NF-WM and CF treatment. However, the yield of NF-WM treatment was significantly lower than CF and NF-M treatments. Significantly higher activities of peroxidase and catalase but lower concentration of superoxide dismutase and MDA were observed in straw mulching treatment than in treatment without mulching at elongation, heading and grain filling stages. The change tendency of antioxidant enzyme activity and MDA level was in line both with soil moisture status and rice yields of different treatments.
Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common malignant primary brain cancer in adults, nearly always becomes resistant to current treatments, including the chemotherapeutic temozolomide (TMZ). The long ...noncoding RNA (lncRNA) TMZ-associated lncRNA in GBM recurrence (
) promotes GBM resistance to TMZ. Exosomes can release biochemical cargo into the tumor microenvironment (TME) or transfer their contents, including lncRNAs, to other cells as a form of intercellular communication. In this study, we found that
could be incorporated into exosomes and transmitted to tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) and could promote M2 polarization of the microglia. This M2 polarization correlated with secretion of the complement components C5/C5a, which occurred downstream of
binding to ENO1 to promote the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK. In addition, C5 promoted the repair of TMZ-induced DNA damage, leading to chemotherapy resistance, and C5a-targeted immunotherapy showed improved efficacy that limited
-mediated TMZ resistance. Our results reveal that exosome-transmitted
could remodel the GBM microenvironment and reduce tumor sensitivity to TMZ chemotherapy, indicating that the
-mediated cross-talk between GBM cells and microglia could attenuate chemotherapy efficacy and pointing to potential combination therapy strategies to overcome TMZ resistance in GBM.