Chinese Herbal Medicines as an Adjunctive Therapy for Unresectable Pancreatic Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Pancreatic cancer is a common malignancy with a high mortality. Most patients present clinically with advanced pancreatic cancer. Moreover, the effect of radiotherapy or chemotherapy is limited. Complementary and alternative medicines represent exciting adjunctive therapies. In this study, we ascertained the beneficial and adverse effects of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in combination with conventional therapy for inoperable pancreatic cancer by using meta-analysis methods for controlled clinical trials. We extracted data for studies searched from six electronic databases that were searched and also assessed the methodological quality of the included studies. We evaluated the following outcome measures: 6-month and 1-year survival rate, objective response rate, disease control rate, quality of life, and adverse effects. The final analysis showed CHM is a promising strategy as an adjunctive therapy to treat advanced or inoperable pancreatic cancer and that CHM in combination with conventional therapy is a promising strategy for resistant disease. However, convincing evidence must be obtained and confirmed by high-quality trials in future studies

Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry:An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package

This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange–correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear–electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an “open teamware” model and an increasingly modular design

Clinical observation of multiple evanescent white dot syndrome

AIM: To observe and describe the clinical manifestations of multiple evanescent white dot syndrome(MEWDS). METHODS:The clinical data of 25 cases diagnosed as MEWDS from January 2003 to November 2012 in our hospital were retrospectively analyzed. A variety of imaging data were analyzed, and the clinical and imaging features of MEWDS were summarized. RESULTS: All patients with mild to moderate myopia, visual field defect in different degree. Fluorescein angiography(FFA MEWDS)showed: the lesions showed round strong fluorescent spot, with time delayed fluorescence intensity, advanced showed strong fluorescence boundary was not clear staining, optic disc fluorescence enhancement, accompanied by a segment of vascular wall staining. Indocyanine green angiography(ICGA)showed: the relative weak fluorescence early posterior interspersed with different size, advanced gradually with clear boundaries of patchy fluorescence. OCT showed: location photoreceptive cells layer thickness, photoreceptor inner segments of irregular/outer segment(IS/OS)layer band local thin or missing, with reflective intensity(abnormal fluorescence foci of the part and angiography in the corresponding), and retinal inner plexiform layer and outer nuclear layer were no obvious abnormalities.CONCLUSION: MEWDS patients with fundus spot like lesions are characteristic in FFA, ICGA, OCT, these features suggest that the lesions were located in the RPE and photoreceptors, these features of MEWDS disease diagnosis and differential diagnosis

Characterization of Phyllosticta hostae causing Phyllosticta leaf spot on spider lily in China

Leaf spot disease on the spider lily [Hymenocallis littoralis (Jacq.) Salisb.] continues to cause serious problems in China. To confirm the pathogen, the pathogenicity of isolates from diseased leaves was tested according to Koch’s postulates. The isolates were tentatively identified using morphological characteristics and confirmation was done by phylogenetic analysis of the translation elongation factor 1-alpha gene (TEF1), the actin gene (ACT), and internal transcibed spacer (ITS) sequences using neighbor-joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP), and Bayesian inference (BI) methods. The pathogen was identified as Phyllosticta hostae. Molecular analysis indicated very little diversity in the TEF1, ACT, and ITS gene. This is the first report of P. hostae causing leaf spot disease on spider lily in China

Quantitative Analysis of Retinal Vasculature in Rhegmatogenous Retinal Detachment Based on Ultra-Widefield Fundus Imaging

PurposeTo quantitatively analyze retinal vascular morphological features, such as vascular density, caliber, and tortuosity, in rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD). MethodsA total of 244 patients with RRD and 400 healthy controls (HC) were included. Retinal fundus images were collected using OPTOS PLC Daytona P200T. Retinal images were divided into RRD and non-RRD regions of interest (ROIs). All visible retinal fundus vessels were then extracted mainly based on edge detection within ROI to form the whole-vascular image. Retinal vasculature parameters, such as vascular density, caliber, and tortuosity, were calculated. ResultsFor the absolute density, the mean rank (MR) value of normal controls was significantly higher than that in non-RRD (p < 0.001). A consistent tendency of significant vascular density was increased from non-RRD to RRD (p < 0.001). The average and median diameters of normal controls were both significantly larger than RRD (p < 0.001). The average and median diameters were also appeared significantly thinner in non-RRD. Unweighted and width-inversely-weighted vascular tortuosity in RRD and non-RRD comparison exhibited non-significant differences. All types of tortuosity calculated from HC were significantly larger (p < 0.001) in values compared to RRD. All types of tortuosity values of HC were significantly higher than non-RRD. Compared with non-RRD, RRD was significantly larger in area-weighted, length-weighted, and width-weighted vascular tortuosity. ConclusionsThis study showed that RRD affects both the quantity and morphology of retinal vasculature, such as RRD and non-RRD areas. Smaller average and medium vascular diameters and tortuosity values were found in RRD. However, the absolute vascular density, the average and median diameter, and tortuosity values were also reduced in non-RRD although the retina is still attached. This work indicates that RRD may affect the retinal vasculature beyond the detached retina

Orphan nuclear receptor NR4A2 inhibits hepatic stellate cell proliferation through MAPK pathway in liver fibrosis

Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) play a crucial role in liver fibrosis, which is a pathological process characterized by extracellular matrix accumulation. NR4A2 is a nuclear receptor belonging to the NR4A subfamily and vital in regulating cell growth, metabolism, inflammation and other biological functions. However, its role in HSCs is unclear. We analyzed NR4A2 expression in fibrotic liver and stimulated HSCs compared with control group and studied the influence on cell proliferation, cell cycle, cell apoptosis and MAPK pathway after NR4A2 knockdown. NR4A2 expression was examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction, Western blotting, immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence analyses. NR4A2 expression was significantly lower in fibrotic liver tissues and PDGF BB or TGF-β stimulated HSCs compared with control group. After NR4A2 knockdown α-smooth muscle actin and Col1 expression increased. In addition, NR4A2 silencing led to the promotion of cell proliferation, increase of cell percentage in S phase and reduced phosphorylation of ERK1/2, P38 and JNK in HSCs. These results indicate that NR4A2 can inhibit HSC proliferation through MAPK pathway and decrease extracellular matrix in liver fibrogenesis. NR4A2 may be a promising therapeutic target for liver fibrosis

[In Press] Quantitative evaluation of thermal conductivity of single-bent microwire using vanadium dioxide temperature tag

Stress/strain engineering is believed to be an effective way to adjust the thermal conductivity of materials dynamically or as needed. Compared with bulk materials, micro-/nanoscale structures can withstand greater stress/deformations that lead to evident changes in their thermal conductivity after undergoing stress/ strain; this phenomenon has been predicted by theoretical simulations. Nevertheless, measuring the effective thermal conductivity of a single wire of a small size upon controllable bending angles has faced major challenges. Herein, a method using VO2 tag as a temperature indicator is developed to achieve the in situ quantitative measurement of the thermal conductivity of bent silicon microwires (MWs), where thermally insulated spider silk is used to adjust the position of the suspended end of wires for different bending angles. It is found that the thermal conductivity of Si wires increases and then decreases upon subsequent bending; it indicates that the thermal conductivity of MWs can be dynamically tuned by bending. Further studies reveal that the variation of thermal conductivity is reversible with small bending (elastic) and irreversible with large bending (plastic). With this setup, new thermophysical properties of materials are explored at small scales, and possible stress/strain-gated thermal switches emerge

Lattice-Mismatch-Induced Oscillatory Feature Size and Its Impact on the Physical Limitation of Grain Size

We find that the misfit strain may lead to the oscillatory size distributions of heteroepitaxial nanostructures. In heteroepitaxial FePt thin films grown on single-crystal MgO substrate, -oriented mazelike and granular patterns with "quantized" feature sizes are realized in scanning-electron-microscope images. The physical mechanism responsible for the size oscillations is related to the oscillatory nature of the misfit strain energy in the domain-matching epitaxial FePt/MgO system, which is observed by transmission electron microscopy. Based on the experimental observations, a model is built and the results suggest that when the FePt island sizes are an integer times the misfit dislocation period, the misfit strain can be completely canceled by the misfit dislocations. With applying the mechanism, small and uniform grain is obtained on the TiN (200) polycrystalline underlayer, which is suitable for practical application. This finding may offer a way to synthesize nanostructured materials with well-controlled size and size distribution by tuning the lattice mismatch between the epitaxial-grown heterostructure