Homage to Professor Shinko Ogiwara

<p><b><i>Primula undulifolia</i> sp. nov.</b> (A) Habit in Flowering; (B) Type Locality; (C) Calyx; (D) Pin and Thrum Flowers; (E) Leaf. Photographed by Yuan XU.</p

Advanced materials for aqueous supercapacitors in the asymmetric design

AbstractSupercapacitors have been recognized as one of the promising energy storage devices in the future energy technology. In this perspective, rapid progress is made in the development of fundamental and applied aspects of supercapacitors. Various techniques have been developed specifically to estimate the specific capacitance. Numerous efforts have been made in the literature to increase the specific capacitance of electrode materials. Recently, researchers pay more attention on designing supercapacitors of asymmetric type with extending cell voltage and dissimilar materials with complementary working potentials. Researchers try to increase the specific energy of asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs). Conversely, it is still a challenge to find a suitable operation conditions for ASCs in various designs, especially for the one with battery type electrode. In this review, we describe our recent research works and other reports on the preparation of various nanostructured electrode materials and the performances of both symmetric and asymmetric supercapacitors. Finally, we demonstrate effects of charge balance on the capacitive performances of ASCs which consist of one electrode material of the battery type and one capacitive material. We also demonstrate how to evaluate the charge capacities of both positive and negative electrode materials for this ASC application

A benchmark test problem toolkit for multi-objective path optimization

Due to the complexity of multi-objective optimization problems (MOOPs) in general, it is crucial to test MOOP methods on some benchmark test problems. Many benchmark test problem toolkits have been developed for continuous parameter/numerical optimization, but fewer toolkits reported for discrete combinational optimization. This paper reports a benchmark test problem toolkit especially for multi-objective path optimization problem (MOPOP), which is a typical category of discrete combinational optimization. With the reported toolkit, the complete Pareto front of a generated test problem of MOPOP can be deduced and found out manually, and the problem scale and complexity are controllable and adjustable. Many methods for discrete combinational MOOPs often only output a partial or approximated Pareto front. With the reported benchmark test problem toolkit for MOPOP, we can now precisely tell how many true Pareto points are missed by a partial Pareto front, or how large the gap is between an approximated Pareto front and the complete one

Uroplakin IIIb, a urothelial differentiation marker, dimerizes with uroplakin Ib as an early step of urothelial plaque assembly

Urothelial plaques consist of four major uroplakins (Ia, Ib, II, and III) that form two-dimensional crystals covering the apical surface of urothelium, and provide unique opportunities for studying membrane protein assembly. Here, we describe a novel 35-kD urothelial plaque-associated glycoprotein that is closely related to uroplakin III: they have a similar overall type 1 transmembrane topology; their amino acid sequences are 34% identical; they share an extracellular juxtamembrane stretch of 19 amino acids; their exit from the ER requires their forming a heterodimer with uroplakin Ib, but not with any other uroplakins; and UPIII-knockout leads to p35 up-regulation, possibly as a compensatory mechanism. Interestingly, p35 contains a stretch of 80 amino acid residues homologous to a hypothetical human DNA mismatch repair enzyme-related protein. Human p35 gene is mapped to chromosome 7q11.23 near the telomeric duplicated region of Williams-Beuren syndrome, a developmental disorder affecting multiple organs including the urinary tract. These results indicate that p35 (uroplakin IIIb) is a urothelial differentiation product structurally and functionally related to uroplakin III, and that p35–UPIb interaction in the ER is an important early step in urothelial plaque assembly

Gene expression profiling of breast cancer survivability by pooled cDNA microarray analysis using logistic regression, artificial neural networks and decision trees

BACKGROUND: Microarray technology can acquire information about thousands of genes simultaneously. We analyzed published breast cancer microarray databases to predict five-year recurrence and compared the performance of three data mining algorithms of artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees (DT) and logistic regression (LR) and two composite models of DT-ANN and DT-LR. The collection of microarray datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus, four breast cancer datasets were pooled for predicting five-year breast cancer relapse. After data compilation, 757 subjects, 5 clinical variables and 13,452 genetic variables were aggregated. The bootstrap method, Mann–Whitney U test and 20-fold cross-validation were performed to investigate candidate genes with 100 most-significant p-values. The predictive powers of DT, LR and ANN models were assessed using accuracy and the area under ROC curve. The associated genes were evaluated using Cox regression. RESULTS: The DT models exhibited the lowest predictive power and the poorest extrapolation when applied to the test samples. The ANN models displayed the best predictive power and showed the best extrapolation. The 21 most-associated genes, as determined by integration of each model, were analyzed using Cox regression with a 3.53-fold (95% CI: 2.24-5.58) increased risk of breast cancer five-year recurrence… CONCLUSIONS: The 21 selected genes can predict breast cancer recurrence. Among these genes, CCNB1, PLK1 and TOP2A are in the cell cycle G2/M DNA damage checkpoint pathway. Oncologists can offer the genetic information for patients when understanding the gene expression profiles on breast cancer recurrence

Optoelectronic properties and ultrafast carrier dynamics of copper iodide thin films

As a promising high mobility p-type wide bandgap semiconductor, copper iodide has received increasing attention in recent years. However, the defect physics/evolution are still controversial, and particularly the ultrafast carrier and exciton dynamics in copper iodide has rarely been investigated. Here, we study these fundamental properties for copper iodide thin films by a synergistic approach employing a combination of analytical techniques. Steady-state photoluminescence spectra reveal that the emission at ~420 nm arises from the recombination of electrons with neutral copper vacancies. The photogenerated carrier density dependent ultrafast physical processes are elucidated with using the femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. Both the effects of hot-phonon bottleneck and the Auger heating significantly slow down the cooling rate of hot-carriers in the case of high excitation density. The effect of defects on the carrier recombination and the two-photon induced ultrafast carrier dynamics are also investigated. These findings are crucial to the optoelectronic applications of copper iodide

Clinical Characteristics and Prognostic Factors of Primary Splenic Angiosarcoma: A Retrospective Clinical Analysis from China

Background/Aims: Primary splenic angiosarcoma is an aggressive malignancy originating from endothelial cells with a particularly poor outcome despite radical therapy. Owing to its extremely low incidence, available data for splenic angiosarcoma are limited. The present study aimed to address this limitation by presenting a thorough retrospective analysis of Chinese primary splenic angiosarcoma patients over a 53-year period (1963-2016). Methods: To determine the characteristics of Chinese primary splenic angiosarcoma and identify factors that impact the outcomes of this histology, we retrospectively retrieved reports of 110 Chinese primary splenic angiosarcoma cases published between 1963-2012. Results: In total, 61 males and 49 females diagnosed with primary splenic angiosarcoma were included in the present study. The median age at diagnosis was 50 years (range 2.5–76 years). Of these patients, 25.5% had received prior radiotherapy. The rate of splenic rupture was 59.11%. The 1-year overall survival rate was 19.1% with a median overall survival time of 8.1 months. Age, gender, and radiation history showed no correlation with survival rate. However, by univariate analysis, we found that significant adverse predictors of survival were splenic rupture before surgery and large tumor size (&#x3e; 5 cm), while adjuvant chemotherapy was a favorable predictor. Furthermore, multivariate analysis revealed that splenic rupture and adjuvant chemotherapy were independent adverse and favorable predictors, respectively. Conclusion: Our large series describes and confirms the characteristics and poor prognosis of Chinese primary splenic angiosarcoma, thus indicating a critical role for early diagnosis and surgical intervention (prior to rupture) in management, and highlights the promising potential of adjuvant chemotherapy for improving the outcome in these cases

Calorimetric evidence for two phase transitions in Ba1−xKxFe2As2 with fermion pairing and quadrupling states

Materials that break multiple symmetries allow the formation of four-fermion condensates above the superconducting critical temperature (T c). Such states can be stabilized by phase fluctuations. Recently, a fermionic quadrupling condensate that breaks the Z 2 time-reversal symmetry was reported in Ba1−xKxFe2As2. A phase transition to the new state of matter should be accompanied by a specific heat anomaly at the critical temperature where Z 2 time-reversal symmetry is broken (TcZ2>Tc). Here, we report on detecting two anomalies in the specific heat of Ba1−xKxFe2As2 at zero magnetic field. The anomaly at the higher temperature is accompanied by the appearance of a spontaneous Nernst effect, indicating the breakdown of Z 2 symmetry. The second anomaly at the lower temperature coincides with the transition to a zero-resistance state, indicating the onset of superconductivity. Our data provide the first example of the appearance of a specific heat anomaly above the superconducting phase transition associated with the broken time-reversal symmetry due to the formation of the novel fermion order