Measuring relative opinion from location-based social media: A case study of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Social media has become an emerging alternative to opinion polls for public opinion collection, while it is still posing many challenges as a passive data source, such as structurelessness, quantifiability, and representativeness. Social media data with geotags provide new opportunities to unveil the geographic locations of users expressing their opinions. This paper aims to answer two questions: 1) whether quantifiable measurement of public opinion can be obtained from social media and 2) whether it can produce better or complementary measures compared to opinion polls. This research proposes a novel approach to measure the relative opinion of Twitter users towards public issues in order to accommodate more complex opinion structures and take advantage of the geography pertaining to the public issues. To ensure that this new measure is technically feasible, a modeling framework is developed including building a training dataset by adopting a state-of-the-art approach and devising a new deep learning method called Opinion-Oriented Word Embedding. With a case study of the tweets selected for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we demonstrate the predictive superiority of our relative opinion approach and we show how it can aid visual analytics and support opinion predictions. Although the relative opinion measure is proved to be more robust compared to polling, our study also suggests that the former can advantageously complement the later in opinion prediction

Description of Hyloconis longivalvata Li, sp. n., with notes on its biology (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae, Lithocolletinae)

Hyloconis longivalvata Li, sp. n. is described based on adults, larvae and pupae from Tianjin and Shanxi, northern China. Campylotropis macrocarpa (Bunge) and Lespedeza bicolor Turcz. (Fabaceae) are reported as its host plants. The larval head and pupal features of the genus Hyloconis are described for the first time. Morphological characters of adult and immature stages as well as leafmines of the new species are illustrated

Enhancing for Bagasse Enzymolysis via Intercrystalline Swelling of Cellulose Combined with Hydrolysis and Oxidation

To overcome the biological barriers formed by the lignin–carbohydrate complex for releasing fermentable sugars from cellulose by enzymolysis is both imperative and challenging. In this study, a strategy of intergranular swelling of cellulose combined with hydrolysis and oxidation was demonstrated. Pretreatment of the bagasse was evaluated by one bath treatment with phosphoric acid and hydrogen peroxide. The chemical composition, specific surface area (SSA), and pore size of bagasse before and after pretreatment were investigated, while the experiments on the adsorption equilibrium of cellulose to cellulase and reagent reuse were also performed. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were employed for microscopic morphology observations and glucose analysis, respectively. The results showed that pretreated bagasse was deconstructed into cellulose with a nanofibril network, most of the hemicellulose (~100%) and lignin (~98%) were removed, and the SSA and void were enlarged 11- and 5-fold, respectively. This simple, mild preprocessing method enhanced cellulose accessibility and reduced the biological barrier of the noncellulose component to improve the subsequent enzymolysis with a high glucose recovery (98.60%)

Key Factor Regulating Inflammatory Microenvironment, Metastasis, and Resistance in Breast Cancer: Interleukin-1 Signaling

Breast cancer is one of the top-ranked cancers for incidence and mortality worldwide. The biggest challenges in breast cancer treatment are metastasis and drug resistance, for which work on molecular evaluation, mechanism studies, and screening of therapeutic targets is ongoing. Factors that lead to inflammatory infiltration and immune system suppression in the tumor microenvironment are potential therapeutic targets. Interleukin-1 is known as a proinflammatory and immunostimulatory cytokine, which plays important roles in inflammatory diseases. Recent studies have shown that interleukin-1 cytokines drive the formation and maintenance of an inflammatory/immunosuppressive microenvironment through complex intercellular signal crosstalk and tight intracellular signal transduction, which were found to be potentially involved in the mechanism of metastasis and drug resistance of breast cancer. Some preclinical and clinical treatments or interventions to block the interleukin-1/interleukin-1 receptor system and its up- and downstream signaling cascades have also been proven effective. This study provides an overview of IL-1-mediated signal communication in breast cancer and discusses the potential of IL-1 as a therapeutic target especially for metastatic breast cancer and combination therapy and current problems, aiming at enlightening new ideas in the study of inflammatory cytokines and immune networks in the tumor microenvironment.Peer Reviewe

Screening of metabolites in the treatment of liver cancer xenografts HepG2/ADR by psoralen-loaded lipid nanoparticles

Objective: Our study aimed to find potential biomarkers for drug resistance in liver cancer cells using metabolomics and further to evaluate the potential of psoralen-loaded polymer lipid nanoparticles (PSO-PLNs) to reverse the resistance of cells to doxorubicin. Methods: We used LC-MS-based non-targeted metabolomics, also known as global metabolite profiling, to screen in serum and urine of mice engrafted with a liver cancer cell line sensitive (HepG2/S) or resistant to doxorubicin (HepG2/ADR) for differentially regulated metabolites. We subsequently quantified the abundance of these metabolites in serum and the urine of mice. The mice were engrafted with HepG2 cells resistant against doxorubicin and were treated with I) doxorubicin, II) a combination of doxorubicin and psoralen and III) a combination of doxorubicin and psoralen packed in polymer lipid nanoparticles. Results: Metabolites found to be differentially present in urine of mice engrafted with resistant HepG2 cells were: hippuric acid, hyaluronic acid, pantothenic acid, and betaine; retinoic acid and α-linolenic acid were found to be reduced in serum samples of mice with HepG2 cells resistant to doxorubicin. The targeted analysis showed that the degree of regression of metabolic markers in groups differed: treatment group 2 had stronger degree of regression than treatment group 1 and the negative control group had the smallest, which indicates that the PSO-PLNs have superior properties compared with other treatments. Conclusion: Psoralen reverses drug resistance of liver cancer cells and its efficacy can be increased by encapsulation in polymer lipid nanoparticles