Modified Dachengqi Tang improves decreased gastrointestinal motility in postoperative esophageal cancer patients

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the clinical effects of modified Dachengqi Tang (DCQT) on promoting gastrointestinal motility in post-operative esophageal cancer patients.MethodsSixty postoperative esophageal cancer patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to the modified treatment group or the control group (30 patients in each group). Patients in the treatment group were given DCQT made from decocted herbs and administered via nasojejunal tube at a dosage of 150 mL. Gastrointestinal motility was assessed by recording time for recovery of bowel sounds, flatus, defecation, and the total amount of gastric drainage during the first three postoperative days. Plasma motilin (MTL) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) were measured one hour before and three days after surgery.ResultsCompared with the control group, the times to first bowel sound, flatus, and defecation were significantly shorter and there was less gastric drainage in the treatment group (P < 0.01, P < 0.01, P < 0.01, and P < 0.05, respectively). In the treatment group, postoperative plasma MTL was significantly higher (P < 0.01) and VIP was significantly lower than those in the control group (P < 0.05). There was no difference found in either MTL or VIP from before to after operation in the treatment group (P > 0.05). MTL was significantly lower and VIP was higher postoperatively in the control group, compared to before surgery (P < 0.01).ConclusionsModified DCQT effectively improved decreased gastrointestinal motility in postoperative esophageal cancer patients by increasing MTL and reducing VIP

Marine hydrographic spatial-variability and its cause at the northern margin of the Amery Ice Shelf

Conductivity, temperature and depth(CTD) data collected along a zonal hydrographic section from the northern margin of the Amery Ice Shelf on 25–27 February 2008 by the 24th Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE) cruise in the 2007/2008 austral summer are analyzed to study thermohaline structures. Analysis reveals warm subsurface water in a limited area around the east end of the northern margin, where the temperature, salinity and density have east-west gradients in the surface layer of the hydrographic section. The localization of the warm subsurface water and the causes of the CTD gradients in the surface layer are discussed. In addition, the results from these CTD data analyses are compared with those from the 22nd CHINARE cruise in the 2005/2006 austral summer. This comparison revealed that the thermoclines and haloclines had deepened and their strengths weakened in the 2007/2008 austral summer. The difference between the two data sets and the cause for it can be reasonably explained and attributed to the change in ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions at the northern margin of the Amery Ice Shelf

TSPAN8 promotes cancer cell stemness via activation of sonic Hedgehog signaling

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) represent a major source of treatment resistance and tumor progression. However, regulation of CSCs stemness is not entirely understood. Here, we report that TSPAN8 expression is upregulated in breast CSCs, promotes the expression of the stemness gene NANOG, OCT4, and ALDHA1, and correlates with therapeutic resistance. Mechanistically, TSPAN8 interacts with PTCH1 and inhibits the degradation of the SHH/PTCH1 complex through recruitment of deubiquitinating enzyme ATXN3. This results in the translocation of SMO to cilia, downstream gene expression, resistance of CSCs to chemotherapeutic agents, and enhances tumor formation in mice. Accordingly, expression levels of TSPAN8, PTCH1, SHH, and ATXN3 are positively correlated in human breast cancer specimens, and high TSPAN8 and ATXN3 expression levels correlate with poor prognosis. These findings reveal a molecular basis of TSPAN8-enhanced Sonic Hedgehog signaling and highlight a role for TSPAN8 in promoting cancer stemness

Th1/Th2 Functional Imbalance After Acute Myocardial Infarction: Coronary Arterial Inflammation or Myocardial Inflammation

Objectives: The study clarified whether the T-helper (Th)1/Th2 imbalance existed only in coronary arterial inflammation or in both coronary arterial inflammation and myocardial inflammation and explored the significance of the imbalance of Th1/Th2 function after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Background: There are two different inflammatory processes in patients with AMI: the coronary arterial inflammation that leads to the pathogenesis of AMI and the myocardial inflammation after AMI that leads to ventricular remodeling, which are positively and negatively regulated by Th1 and Th2 lymphocytes, respectively. Methods : Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 33 AMI patients, 22 unstable angina (UA) patients and splenocytes from 35 AMI Wistar rats were collected. Cytokine-producing Th cells were ambulatorily monitored by 3-color flow cytometry. Interferon (IFN)-γ and interleukin (IL)-4 mRNA in the rat myocardium and chemokine receptors CCR3,CCR5 and CXCR3 mRNA on the surface of rat T-lymphocytes after AMI were measured by RT-PCR. Results: IFN-γ-producing T-cells significantly increased in patients with AMI and UA within 24 hours after the onset of symptom. The high ratio of IFN-γ-producing T-cells recovered 1 week after the onset in UA patients, while it could be examined 1 week and even 1 month after the onset in AMI patients. The up-regulation of Th1 cell function is consistent with bad heart function. There was no significant difference on the frequencies of IL-4-producing T-cells between each group. 1 week, 2 weeks and 1 month after AMI, IFN-γ mRNA increased in the myocardium of rats, but there was no significant change on global Th cell functions. Conclusions: Th1/Th2 functional imbalance exists in both coronary arterial inflammation and myocardial inflammation processes. The up-regulation of Th1 cell-functions may participate in the immune-mediated ventricular remodeling after AMI.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44845/1/10875_2005_Article_4088.pd

Self-Attention ConvLSTM for Spatiotemporal Forecasting of Short-Term Online Car-Hailing Demand

As a flourishing basic transportation service in recent years, online car-hailing has made great achievements in metropolitan cities. Accurate spatiotemporal forecasting plays a significant role in the deployment of a network for online car-hailing demand services. A self-attention mechanism in convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) is proposed to accurately predict the online car-hailing demand. It can more effectively address the disadvantage that ConvLSTM is not good at capturing spatial correlation over a large spatial extent. Furthermore, it can generate features by aggregating pair-wise similarity scores of features at all positions of input and memory, and thus obtain the function of long-range spatiotemporal dependencies. First, the online car-hailing trajectories dataset was converted into images after geographic grid matching, and image enhancement was performed by cropping. Then, the effectiveness of the ConvLSTM embedded with a self-attention mechanism (SA-ConvLSTM) was demonstrated by comparing it to existing models. The experimental results showed that the proposed model performed better than the existing models, and including spatiotemporal information in images would perform better predictions than including spatial information in time-series pixels

A New Continuum Model considering Driving Behaviors and Electronic Throttle Effect on a Gradient Highway

In order to explore the potential impact of sloping road on traffic flow, an improved car-following model considering electronic throttle (ET) dynamics and driver’s driving characteristics on slope is proposed. Based on the improved car-following model, a new continuum model is established through the conversion relationship between microscopic variables and macroscopic variables. Firstly, the stability condition of the model is obtained by using the linear stability theory, after that the evolution process of traffic flow density wave near the neutral stability curve is studied by using the nonlinear analysis method, and we also get the improved KdV-Burgers equation. At the same time, numerical experiments and experimental verification of the model are carried out; the theoretical analysis and numerical results show that the ET effect and aggressive driving of drivers play an important role in alleviating traffic congestion to a certain extent

An Extended Car-Following Model Based on Visual Angle and Electronic Throttle Effect

With the continuous advancement of electronic technology, auto parts manufacturing institutions are gradually applying electronic throttles to automobiles for precise control. Based on the visual angle model (VAM), a car-following model considering the electronic throttle angle of the preceding vehicle is proposed. The stability conditions are obtained through linear stability analysis. By means of nonlinear analysis, the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau (TDGL) equation is derived first, and then the modified Korteweg-de-Vries (mKdV) equation is derived. The relationship between the two is thus obtained. Finally, in the process of numerical simulations and exploration, it is shown how the visual angle and electronic throttle affect the stability of traffic flow. The simulation results in MATLAB software verify the validity of the model, indicating that the visual angle and electronic throttle can improve traffic stability