Experimental verification of the metal flux enhancement in a mixture of two metal complexes: the Cd/NTA/glycine and Cd/NTA/citric acid systems

Rigorous computation of the metal flux crossing a limiting surface of a system that contains a mixture of 1 : 1 metal complexes under steady-state planar diffusion in a finite domain and under excess of ligand conditions predicts, for some cases, an enhancement of the metal flux with respect to that expected in a system with independent complexes. Indeed, the coupling of the dissociation kinetics of both complexes can yield higher metal fluxes than expected with important environmental implications. By using the voltammetric techniques AGNES and stripping chronopotentiometry, this paper provides experimental evidence of this enhancement for two systems: Cd/NTA/glycine and Cd/NTA/citric acid. The flux measured in both cases is in good agreement with the flux computed for the global system, exhibiting maximum enhancement ratios above 20%. Theoretical discussion of the flux enhancement factors and of the conditions for this enhancement are also provided

FOXP3+ T cells in uterine sarcomas are associated with favorable prognosis, low extracellular matrix expression and reduced YAP activation.

Uterine sarcomas are rare but deadly malignancies without effective treatment. Immunotherapy is a promising new approach to treat these tumors but has shown heterogeneous effects in sarcoma patients. With the goal of identifying key factors for improved patient treatment, we characterized the tumor immune landscape in 58 uterine sarcoma cases with full clinicopathological annotation. Immune cell characterization revealed the overall prevalence of FOXP3+ cells and pro-tumor M2-like macrophages. Hierarchical clustering of patients showed four tumor type-independent immune signatures, where infiltration of FOXP3+ cells and M1-like macrophages associated with favorable prognosis. High CD8+/FOXP3+ ratio in UUS and ESS correlated with poor survival, upregulation of immunosuppressive markers, extracellular matrix (ECM)-related genes and proteins, and YAP activation. This study shows that uterine sarcomas present distinct immune signatures with prognostic value, independent of tumor type, and suggests that targeting the ECM could be beneficial for future treatments

Automatic Path Planning for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Using UAV Imagery

Field machines play an important role in the management of agricultural environments. Increasing use of automated machines in precision agriculture has gained significant attention of farmers and industries to minimize human work load to perform tasks such as land preparation, seeding, fertilizing, plant health monitoring and harvesting. Path planning is considered as a fundamental step for agricultural machines equipped with autonomous navigation system. For mountain vineyards, path planning is a big challenge due to terrain morphology and unstructured vineyards. This paper proposes a workflow to generate an automatic coverage path plan for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) using georeferenced imagery taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). First, image acquisition is performed over a vineyard to generate an orthomosaic and a digital surface model, which are then used to identify the vine rows and inter-row terrain. This information is then used by the algorithm to generate a path plan for UGV

Investigating the effect of synthesis selection on O3-sodium layered oxide structural changes and electrochemical properties

Transition metal (TM) layered oxides constitute a promising family of materials for use in Na-ion battery cathodes. Here O3-Na (Ni1/3Mn1/3Fe1/3) O2 was synthesised using optimised sol-gel and solid-state routes, and the physico- and electrochemical natures of the resulting materials were thoroughly studied. Significant differences in electrochemical behaviour were observed, and the use of in operando XRD determined this stemmed from the suppression of the P3 phase in the sol-gel material during cycling. This was attributable to differences in the degree of transition metal migration in the materials ensuing from the selection of synthetic route. This demonstrates that not only the choice of material, but also that of synthesis route, can have dramatic impact on the resulting structural and electrochemical nature, making such considerations critical in the future development of advanced Na-ion cathode materials

Atomic layer deposition of a MgO barrier for a passivated black phosphorus spintronics platform

We demonstrate a stabilized black phosphorus (BP) 2D platform thanks to an ultrathin MgO barrier, as required for spintronic device integration. The in-situ MgO layer deposition is achieved by using a large-scale atomic layer deposition process with high nucleation density. Raman spectroscopy studies show that this layer protects the BP from degradation in ambient conditions, unlocking in particular the possibility to carry out usual lithographic fabrication steps. The resulting MgO/BP stack is then integrated in a device and probed electrically, confirming the tunnel properties of the ultrathin MgO contacts. We believe that this demonstration of a BP material platform passivated with a functional MgO tunnel barrier provides a promising perspective for BP spin transport devices

Cancer Survival in Adults in Spain: A Population-Based Study of the Spanish Network of Cancer Registries (REDECAN)

© 2022.This document is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0/ This document is the published version of a published work that appeared in final form in CancersThe assessment of cancer survival at the population level is essential for monitoring progress in cancer control. We aimed to assess cancer survival and its trends in adults in Spain. Individual records of 601,250 adults with primary cancer diagnosed during 2002-2013 and followed up to 2015 were included from 13 population-based cancer registries. We estimated net survival up to five years after diagnosis and analyzed absolute changes between 2002-2007 and 2008-2013. Estimates were age-standardized. Analyses were performed for 29 cancer groups, by age and sex. Overall, age-standardized five-year net survival was higher in women (61.7%, 95% CI 61.4-62.1%) than in men (55.3%, 95% CI 55.0-55.6%), and ranged by cancer from 7.2% (pancreas) to 89.6% (prostate) in men, and from 10.0% (pancreas) to 93.1% (thyroid) in women in the last period. Survival declined with age, showing different patterns by cancer. Between both periods, age-standardized five-year net survival increased overall by 3.3% (95% CI 3.0-3.7%) in men and 2.5% (95% CI 2.0-3.0%) in women, and for most cancer groups. Improvements were greater in patients younger than 75 years than in older patients. Chronic myeloid leukemia and myeloma showed the largest increases. Among the most common malignancies, the greatest absolute increases in survival were observed for colon (5.0%, 95% CI 4.0-6.0%) and rectal cancers (4.5%, 95% CI 3.2-5.9%). Survival improved even for some cancers with poor prognosis (pancreas, esophagus, lung, liver, and brain cancer). Further investigation of possible sociodemographic inequalities is warranted. This study contributes to the evaluation of cancer control and health services' effectiveness

Wnt3a deficiency irreversibly impairs hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and leads to defects in progenitor cell differentiation

Canonical Wnt signaling has been implicated in various aspects of hematopoiesis. Its role is controversial due to different outcomes between various inducible Wnt-signaling loss-of-function models and also compared with gain-of-function systems. We therefore studied a mouse deficient for a Wnt gene that seemed to play a nonredundant role in hematopoiesis. Mice lacking Wnt3a die prenatally around embryonic day (E) 12.5, allowing fetal hematopoiesis to be studied using in vitro assays and transplantation into irradiated recipient mice. Here we show that Wnt3a deficiency leads to a reduction in the numbers of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and progenitor cells in the fetal liver (FL) and to severely reduced reconstitution capacity as measured in secondary transplantation assays. This deficiency is irreversible and cannot be restored by transplantation into Wnt3a competent mice. The impaired long-term repopulation capacity of Wnt3a-/- HSCs could not be explained by altered cell cycle or survival of primitive progenitors. Moreover, Wnt3a deficiency affected myeloid but not B-lymphoid development at the progenitor level, and affected immature thymocyte differentiation. Our results show that Wnt3a signaling not only provides proliferative stimuli, such as for immature thymocytes, but also regulates cell fate decisions of HSC during hematopoiesis

Photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence of Eu:La2O3 nanoparticles synthesized by several methods

Abstract : Europium-doped La2O3 nanocrystalline powders with sizes ranging from 4 nm to 300 nm have been obtained by the modified Pechini, hydrothermal with conventional furnace, hydrothermal with microwave furnace, and precipitation with ultrasonic bath methods. X-ray diffraction techniques were used to study the evolution of the prepared gels towards the desired crystalline phase. We determined the size and the morphology of the nanoparticles by electronic microscopy. Finally, we studied and analyzed the luminescence properties of the trivalent europium in the hexagonal La2O3 nanocrystals by photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence