Development of China\u27s Export Trade, 1901-1925

If we want to understand thoroughly China\u27s future potentiality, we must give our attention to her exports. Although the Portuguese have had direct trade with China since the sixteenth century, followed by Spanish, Dutch, and British traders, and although American ships were found in the waters of South China during the early nineteenth century, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that trade with the western world was actually opened. Since that time China\u27s foreign trade has increased rapidly, especially her exports. The available download is a searchable OCR pdf

Tailored design of NKT-stimulatory glycolipids for polarization of immune responses.

Natural killer T (NKT) cell is a distinct population of T lymphocytes that can rapidly release massive amount of Th1 and Th2 cytokines upon the engagement of their T cell receptor with glycolipids presented by CD1d. The secreted cytokines can promote cell-mediated immunity to kill tumor cells and intracellular pathogens, or suppress autoreactive immune cells in autoimmune diseases. Thus, NKT cell is an attractive target for developing new therapeutics to manipulate immune system. The best-known glycolipid to activate NKT cells is α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer), which has been used as a prototype for designing new NKT stimulatory glycolipids. Many analogues have been generated by modification of the galactosyl moiety, the acyl chain or the phytosphingosine chain of α-GalCer. Some of the analogues showed greater abilities than α-GalCer in polarizing immune responses toward Th1 or Th2 dominance. Among them, several analogues containing phenyl groups in the lipid tails were more potent in inducing Th1-skewed cytokines and exhibited greater anticancer efficacy than α-GalCer. Analyses of the correlation between structure and activity of various α-GalCer analogues on the activation of iNKT cell revealed that CD1d-glycolipid complexes interacted with the same population of iNKT cell expressing similar T-cell receptor Vβ as α-GalCer. On the other hand, those phenyl glycolipids with propensity for Th1 dominant responses showed greater binding avidity and stability than α-GalCer for iNKT T-cell receptor when complexed with CD1d. Thus, it is the avidity and stability of the ternary complexes of CD1d-glycolipid-iNKT TCR that dictate the polarity and potency of immune responses. These findings provide a key to the rationale design of immune modulating glycolipids with desirable Th1/Th2 polarity for clinical application. In addition, elucidation of α-GalCer-induced anergy, liver damage and accumulation of myeloid derived suppressor cells has offered explanation for its lacklustre anti-cancer activities in clinical trials. On other hand, the lack of such drawbacks in glycolipid analogues containing phenyl groups in the lipid tails of α-GalCer coupled with the greater binding avidity and stability of CD1d-glycolipid complex for iNKT T-cell receptor, account for their superior anti-cancer efficacy in tumor bearing mice. Further clinical development of these phenyl glycolipids is warranted

Exploring soft constraints on effective actions

We study effective actions for simultaneous breaking of space-time and internal symmetries. Novel features arise due to the mixing of Goldstone modes under the broken symmetries which, in contrast to the usual Adler's zero, leads to non-vanishing soft limits. Such scenarios are common for spontaneously broken SCFT's. We explicitly test these soft theorems for $\mathcal{N}=4$ sYM in the Coulomb branch both perturbatively and non-perturbatively. We explore the soft constraints systematically utilizing recursion relations. In the pure dilaton sector of a general CFT, we show that all amplitudes up to order $s^{n} \sim \partial^{2n}$ are completely determined in terms of the $k$-point amplitudes at order $s^k$ with $k \leq n$. Terms with at most one derivative acting on each dilaton insertion are completely fixed and coincide with those appearing in the conformal DBI, i.e. DBI in AdS. With maximal supersymmetry, the effective actions are further constrained, leading to new non-renormalization theorems. In particular, the effective action is fixed up to eight derivatives in terms of just one unknown four-point coefficient and one more coefficient for ten-derivative terms. Finally, we also study the interplay between scale and conformal invariance in this context.Comment: 20+4 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added, typos corrected; v3: typos corrected, JHEP versio

Explore the Functional Connectivity between Brain Regions during a Chemistry Working Memory Task.

Previous studies have rarely examined how temporal dynamic patterns, event-related coherence, and phase-locking are related to each other. This study assessed reaction-time-sorted spectral perturbation and event-related spectral perturbation in order to examine the temporal dynamic patterns in the frontal midline (F), central parietal (CP), and occipital (O) regions during a chemistry working memory task at theta, alpha, and beta frequencies. Furthermore, the functional connectivity between F-CP, CP-O, and F-O were assessed by component event-related coherence (ERCoh) and component phase-locking (PL) at different frequency bands. In addition, this study examined whether the temporal dynamic patterns are consistent with the functional connectivity patterns across different frequencies and time courses. Component ERCoh/PL measured the interactions between different independent components decomposed from the scalp EEG, mixtures of time courses of activities arising from different brain, and artifactual sources. The results indicate that the O and CP regions' temporal dynamic patterns are similar to each other. Furthermore, pronounced component ERCoh/PL patterns were found to exist between the O and CP regions across each stimulus and probe presentation, in both theta and alpha frequencies. The consistent theta component ERCoh/PL between the F and O regions was found at the first stimulus and after probe presentation. These findings demonstrate that temporal dynamic patterns at different regions are in accordance with the functional connectivity patterns. Such coordinated and robust EEG temporal dynamics and component ERCoh/PL patterns suggest that these brain regions' neurons work together both to induce similar event-related spectral perturbation and to synchronize or desynchronize simultaneously in order to swiftly accomplish a particular goal. The possible mechanisms for such distinct component phase-locking and coherence patterns were also further discussed

Malignant phyllodes tumors display mesenchymal stem cell features and aldehyde dehydrogenase/disialoganglioside identify their tumor stem cells.

IntroductionAlthough breast phyllodes tumors are rare, there is no effective therapy other than surgery. Little is known about their tumor biology. A malignant phyllodes tumor contains heterologous stromal elements, and can transform into rhabdomyosarcoma, liposarcoma and osteosarcoma. These versatile properties prompted us to explore their possible relationship to mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and to search for the presence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in phyllodes tumors.MethodsParaffin sections of malignant phyllodes tumors were examined for various markers by immunohistochemical staining. Xenografts of human primary phyllodes tumors were established by injecting freshly isolated tumor cells into the mammary fat pad of non-obese diabetic-severe combined immunodeficient (NOD-SCID) mice. To search for CSCs, xenografted tumor cells were sorted into various subpopulations by flow cytometry and examined for their in vitro mammosphere forming capacity, in vivo tumorigenicity in NOD-SCID mice and their ability to undergo differentiation.ResultsImmunohistochemical analysis revealed the expression of the following 10 markers: CD44, CD29, CD106, CD166, CD105, CD90, disialoganglioside (GD2), CD117, Aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH), and Oct-4, and 7 clinically relevant markers (CD10, CD34, p53, p63, Ki-67, Bcl-2, vimentin, and Globo H) in all 51 malignant phyllodes tumors examined, albeit to different extents. Four xenografts were successfully established from human primary phyllodes tumors. In vitro, ALDH+ cells sorted from xenografts displayed approximately 10-fold greater mammosphere-forming capacity than ALDH- cells. GD2+ cells showed a 3.9-fold greater capacity than GD2- cells. ALDH+/GD2+cells displayed 12.8-fold greater mammosphere forming ability than ALDH-/GD2- cells. In vivo, the tumor-initiating frequency of ALDH+/GD2+ cells were up to 33-fold higher than that of ALDH+ cells, with as few as 50 ALDH+/GD2+ cells being sufficient for engraftment. Moreover, we provided the first evidence for the induction of ALDH+/GD2+ cells to differentiate into neural cells of various lineages, along with the observation of neural differentiation in clinical specimens and xenografts of malignant phyllodes tumors. ALDH+ or ALDH+/GD2+ cells could also be induced to differentiate into adipocytes, osteocytes or chondrocytes.ConclusionsOur findings revealed that malignant phyllodes tumors possessed many characteristics of MSC, and their CSCs were enriched in ALDH+ and ALDH+/GD2+ subpopulations

Injury assessment via stress analysis of the human knee joint

The largest articulation inside human body is the knee joint which is composed by hard components, soft tissues and surrounded muscles. The knee is a mobile hinge, and it permits flexion, extension, slight internal and external rotation of the leg. The knee joint is vulnerable to both sharp injury and chronic osteoarthritis. Once have been injured, the knee joint is not easily restored. This study employs separately the experimental measurement, reverse engineering and finite element analysis to investigate the dynamic characteristics of intricate knee joint. The three-dimensional geometric model of each component of knee joint includes hard tissues and soft tissues. The hard tissues have femur, tibia, fibula, patella and the soft tissues have meniscus, patellar ligament, medial and lateral collateral ligament, a pair of cruciate ligaments, etc. Then the model is imported into ANSYS software. Via modal, periodic excitation and impact analysis, the dynamic characteristics of each component and the whole knee model are received. The fundamental mode shapes, natural frequencies and stresses of all the components of knee are also obtained. These normal modes are essential when investigating the dynamic motion of the whole knee. The results show that after impact, the soft tissues have larger displacement than that of the hard tissues. Consequently, the fracture occurs when the stretch which is caused by external force excess ultimate strength of the component. It also explains why the athletes frequently injure the ligaments and tendons of the knee or ankle during the intensive exercise. Therefore, by reducing the motion of articulation, the professional player could not only reduce the generated internal stresses in the tissue but also consequently lessen the chance of injury