DAFNet: A dual attention-guided fuzzy network for cardiac MRI segmentation

Background: In clinical diagnostics, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology plays a crucial role in the recognition of cardiac regions, serving as a pivotal tool to assist physicians in diagnosing cardiac diseases. Despite the notable success of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in cardiac MRI segmentation, it remains a challenge to use existing CNNs-based methods to deal with fuzzy information in cardiac MRI. Therefore, we proposed a novel network architecture named DAFNet to comprehensively address these challenges. Methods: The proposed method was used to design a fuzzy convolutional module, which could improve the feature extraction performance of the network by utilizing fuzzy information that was easily ignored in medical images while retaining the advantage of attention mechanism. Then, a multi-scale feature refinement structure was designed in the decoder portion to solve the problem that the decoder structure of the existing network had poor results in obtaining the final segmentation mask. This structure further improved the performance of the network by aggregating segmentation results from multi-scale feature maps. Additionally, we introduced the dynamic convolution theory, which could further increase the pixel segmentation accuracy of the network. Result: The effectiveness of DAFNet was extensively validated for three datasets. The results demonstrated that the proposed method achieved DSC metrics of 0.942 and 0.885, and HD metricd of 2.50mm and 3.79mm on the first and second dataset, respectively. The recognition accuracy of left ventricular end-diastolic diameter recognition on the third dataset was 98.42%. Conclusion: Compared with the existing CNNs-based methods, the DAFNet achieved state-of-the-art segmentation performance and verified its effectiveness in clinical diagnosis

The impacts of extreme marine weather and marine scientific and technological innovation on marine economic development: Evidence form China’s coastal regions

The extreme marine weather is a very vital factor and has important implications for of marine economic development. However, there is a lack of systematic and quantitative analyses of its impact on the marine economic development. Here, we study the impacts of extreme marine weather on marine economic development of 11 coastal regions in China, using the dynamic panel model. We found that extreme marine weather exerts a significant negative impact on the marine economic development. The marine scientific and technological innovation promotes marine economic development in a prominent manner. The marine scientific and technological innovation slows down the unfavorable impact of extreme marine weather on the marine economy. After considering different industries for marine economic development and heterogeneity, we found that extreme marine weather and marine scientific and technological innovation have a great impact on marine economic development in the tertiary industry and the areas with high development concerning marine economy level, while deliver a small impact on the marine economic development in the primary industry and the areas low development level. This paper empirically studies the relationship between the two variables of marine extreme weather and marine science and technology innovation and its impact on marine economic development, enriches the research perspective of extreme weather on marine economic development, and provides new method evidence for improving the level of marine scientific and technological innovation and promoting the development of marine economy

Modified Polyethersulfone Ultrafiltration Membrane for Enhanced Antifouling Capacity and Dye Catalytic Degradation Efficiency

Catalytic membranes, as a combination of heterogeneous advanced oxidation and membrane technology reaction systems, have important application prospects in the treatment of dyes and other organics. In practical applications, it is still challenging to construct catalytic membranes with excellent removal efficiency and fouling mitigation. Herein, molybdenum disulfide-iron oxyhydroxide (MoS2-FeOOH) was fabricated using iron oxide and MoS2 nanoflakes, which were synthesized by the hydrothermal method. Furthermore, by changing the concentration of MoS2-FeOOH, the MoS2-FeOOH/polyethersulfone (PES) composite ultrafiltration membrane was obtained with improved hydrophilicity, permeability, and antifouling capacity. The pure water flux of the composite membrane reached 385.3 L/(m2·h), which was 1.7 times that of the blank PES membrane. Compared with the blank membrane, with the increase of MoS2-FeOOH content, the MoS2-FeOOH/PES composite membranes had better adsorption capacity and catalytic performance, and the membrane with 3.0% MoS2-FeOOH content (M4) could be achieved at a 60.2% methylene blue (MB) degradation rate. In addition, the membrane flux recovery ratio (FRR) of the composite membrane also increased from 25.6% of blank PES membrane (M0) to more than 70% after two cycles of bovine serum albumin (BSA) filtration and hydraulic cleaning. The membrane with 2.25% MoS2-FeOOH content (M3) had the best antifouling performance, with the largest FRR and the smallest irreversible ratio (Rir). Catalytic self-cleaning of the composite membrane M3 recovered 95% of the initial flux with 0.1 mol/L H2O2 cleaning. The MoS2-FeOOH/PES composite membranes with the functions of excellent rejection and antifouling capacity have a good prospect in the treatment of printing and dyeing wastewater composed of soluble dyes

Incidence patterns of traumatic upper limb fractures in children and adolescents Data from medical university-affiliated hospitals in Chongqing, China

China's child population ranked second in the world. However, data on the overall patterns and epidemiologic trends of TULFs among children and adolescents in Chongqing, China are scarce. With development of urbanization, motorization, building industry, the incidence patterns of traumatic upper limb fractures in children and adolescents might be about to change. To investigate the incidence patterns of traumatic upper limb fractures in children and adolescents (<= 18 years old) according to age (<= 3 years old, 3-6 years old, 6-12 years old, and 12-18 years old), gender, time, and etiology groups in Chongqing, China, we retrospectively reviewed 1078 children and adolescents who had traumatic upper limb fractures and who came to our university-affiliated hospitals from 2001 to 2010. The patients were grouped into different age groups, genders, year of admission range groups, and aetiologies. We used Pearson chi-square tests and independent samples t tests to assess differences of the grouped data and continuous variables, respectively. This study enrolled 1078 patients (849 males, 229 females) aged 11.0 +/- 4.7 years old. The most common aetiologies and fracture sites of patients were low falls (705, 65.4%) and humerus (492, 45.6%). A total of 146 (13.5%) patients suffered a nerve injury, 94 (8.7%) patients sustained associated injuries, and 106 (9.8%) patients sustained complications. The proportion of injuries due to motor vehicle collisions increased with increasing age and year of admission. Female patients presented with significantly higher proportion of injuries due to motor vehicle collisions and significantly lower proportion of injuries due to hit by others. The proportion decreased from 63.2% to 33.3% in humeral fracture, increased from 8.8% to 35.5% in radius fracture, increased from 7.4% to 28.9% in ulna fracture with increasing age. Female patients presented with significantly higher proportion of humeral fracture, clavicle fracture and significantly lower proportion of radius fracture, ulna fracture, and hand fracture. Low falls and humerus fractures were the most common aetiologies and fracture sites. The pattern of traumatic upper limb fractures has specific age, gender, time, and etiology differences

Exosome circATP8A1 induces macrophage M2 polarization by regulating the miR-1-3p/STAT6 axis to promote gastric cancer progression

Abstract Circular RNAs (circRNAs) play important roles in gastric cancer progression but the regulatory role of circRNAs in controlling macrophage function remains elusive. Exosomes serve as cargo for circRNAs and play a crucial role as mediators in facilitating communication between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment. In this study, we found that circATP8A1, a previously unreported circular RNA, is highly expressed in both gastric cancer tissues and exosomes derived from plasma. Increased circATP8A1 was associated with advanced TNM stage and worse prognosis in patients with gastric cancer. We showed that  the circATP8A1 knockdown significantly inhibited gastric cancer proliferation and invasion in vitro and in vivo. Functionally, exosome circATP8A1 induced the M2 polarization of macrophages through the STAT6 pathway instead of the STAT3 pathway. Mechanistically, circATP8A1 was shown to activate the STAT6 pathway through competitive binding to miR-1-3p, as confirmed by Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH), RNA immunoprecipitation, RNA pulldown, and Luciferase reporter assays. The reversal of circATP8A1-induced STAT6 pathway activation and macrophage polarization was observed upon blocking miR-1-3p. Macrophages treated with exosomes from gastric cancer cells overexpressing circATP8A1 were able to promote gastric cancer migration, while knockdown of circATP8A1 reversed these effects in vivo. In summary, exosome-derived circATP8A1 from gastric cancer cells induce macrophages M2 polarization via the circATP8A1/miR-1-3p/STAT6 axis, and tumor progression. Our results highlight circATP8A1 as a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in gastric cancer

DataSheet_1_The impacts of extreme marine weather and marine scientific and technological innovation on marine economic development: Evidence form China’s coastal regions.docx

The extreme marine weather is a very vital factor and has important implications for of marine economic development. However, there is a lack of systematic and quantitative analyses of its impact on the marine economic development. Here, we study the impacts of extreme marine weather on marine economic development of 11 coastal regions in China, using the dynamic panel model. We found that extreme marine weather exerts a significant negative impact on the marine economic development. The marine scientific and technological innovation promotes marine economic development in a prominent manner. The marine scientific and technological innovation slows down the unfavorable impact of extreme marine weather on the marine economy. After considering different industries for marine economic development and heterogeneity, we found that extreme marine weather and marine scientific and technological innovation have a great impact on marine economic development in the tertiary industry and the areas with high development concerning marine economy level, while deliver a small impact on the marine economic development in the primary industry and the areas low development level. This paper empirically studies the relationship between the two variables of marine extreme weather and marine science and technology innovation and its impact on marine economic development, enriches the research perspective of extreme weather on marine economic development, and provides new method evidence for improving the level of marine scientific and technological innovation and promoting the development of marine economy.</p

PUM1 Promotes Tumor Progression by Activating DEPTOR‐Meditated Glycolysis in Gastric Cancer

Abstract RNA‐binding proteins (RBPs) play essential roles in tumorigenesis and progression, but their functions in gastric cancer (GC) remain largely elusive. Here, it is reported that Pumilio 1 (PUM1), an RBP, induces metabolic reprogramming through post‐transcriptional regulation of DEP domain‐containing mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)‐interacting protein (DEPTOR) in GC. In clinical samples, elevated expression of PUM1 is associated with recurrence, metastasis, and poor survival. In vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that knockdown of PUM1 inhibits the proliferation and metastasis of GC cells. In addition, RNA‐sequencing and bioinformatics analyses show that PUM1 is enriched in the glycolysis gene signature. Metabolomics studies confirm that PUM1 deficiency suppresses glycolytic metabolism. Mechanistically, PUM1 binds directly to DEPTOR mRNA pumilio response element to maintain the stability of the transcript and prevent DEPTOR degradation through post‐transcriptional pathway. PUM1‐mediated DEPTOR upregulation inhibits mTORC1 and alleviates the inhibitory feedback signal transmitted from mTORC1 to PI3K under normal conditions, thus activating the PI3K–Akt signal and glycolysis continuously. Collectively, these results reveal the critical epigenetic role of PUM1 in modulating DEPTOR‐dependent GC progression. These conclusions support further clinical investigation of PUM1 inhibitors as a metabolic‐targeting treatment strategy for GC