catena-Poly[[dinitratocopper(II)]-μ-4,4′′-bis­(1H-benzimidazol-1-yl)-1,1′:4′,1′′-terphen­yl]

In the title one-dimensional coordination polymer, [Cu(NO3)2(C32H22N4)]n, the Cu2+ ion (site symmetry 2) is coordinated by two nitrate O atoms and two N atoms from two 4,4′-bis­(benzoimidazol-1-yl)terphenyl (L) ligands in a distorted cis-CuN2O2 square-planar coordination geometry. An alternative description of the metal coordination geometry, if long Cu—O contacts to the bonded nitrate anions are considered, is an extremely distorted cis-CuN2O4 octa­hedron. The complete L ligand is generated by crystallographic twofold symmetry and connects the metal ions into infinite chains propagating in [10]. The dihedral angle between the benzimidazole ring system and the adjacent benzene (B) ring is 51.12 (11)° and the dihedral angle between the B ring and the central ring is 19.45 (13)°

The ancient, Present and Future Prospects of Tongue Manifestation

Tongue inspection with a long history is one of the most distinctive methods in diagnosis of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The emergence and improvement of tongue inspection theory is the crystallization of countless ancient medical doctors' wisdom. We should combine the theory of tongue inspection and modern technology and interchange TCM and western medicine, which is conducive to clinical research and promotes the objective development of tongue inspection, achieving the inheritance of TCM and creating TCM of our time. Keywords: tongue inspection; ancient; modern; future prospect

Germline Variants and Genetic Interactions of Several EMT Regulatory Genes Increase the Risk of HBV-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role in the development of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We hypothesized that germline variants in the major EMT regulatory genes (SNAIL1, ZEB1, ZEB2, TWIST1) may influence the development of HBV-related HCC. We included 421 cases of HBsAg-positive patients with HCC, 1371 cases of HBsAg-positive subjects without HCC [patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) or liver cirrhosis (LC)] and 618 cases of healthy controls in the case-control study. Genotype, allele, and haplotype associations in the major EMT regulatory genes were tested. Environment-gene and gene-gene interactions were analysed using the non-parametric model-free multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) method. The SNAIL1rs4647958T>C was associated with a significantly increased risk of both HCC (CT+CC vs. TT: OR=1.559; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.073-2.264; P=0.020) and CHB+LC (CT+CC vs. TT: OR=1.509; 95% CI, 1.145-1.988; P=0.003). Carriers of the TWIST1rs2285681G>C (genotypes CT+CC) had an increased risk of HCC (CG+CC vs. GG: OR=1.407; 95% CI, 1.065-1.858; P=0.016). The ZEB2rs3806475T>C was associated with significantly increased risk of both HCC (Precessive =0.001) and CHB+LC (Precessive<0.001). The CG haplotype of the rs4647958/rs1543442 haplotype block was associated with significant differences between healthy subjects and HCC patients (P=0.0347). Meanwhile, the CT haplotype of the rs2285681/rs2285682 haplotype block was associated with significant differences between CHB+LC and HCC patients (P=0.0123). In MDR analysis, the combination of TWIST1rs2285681, ZEB2rs3806475, SNAIL1rs4647958 exhibited the most significant association with CHB+LC and Health control in the three-locus model. Our results suggest significant single-gene associations and environment-gene/gene-gene interactions of EMT-related genes with HBV-related HCC

Preoperative radiomic signature based on CT images for noninvasive evaluation of localized nephroblastoma in pediatric patients

BackgroundNephron sparing nephrectomy may not reduce the prognosis of nephroblastoma in the absence of involvement of the renal capsule, sinus vessels, and lymph nodes, However, there is no accurate preoperative noninvasive evaluation method at present.Materials and methods105 nephroblastoma patients underwent contrast-enhanced CT scan between 2013 and 2020 in our hospital were retrospectively collected, including 59 cases with localized stage and 46 cases with non-localized stage, and then were divided into training cohort (n= 73) and validation cohort (n= 32) according to the order of CT scanning time. After lesion segmentation and data preprocessing, radiomic features were extracted from each volume of interest. The multi-step procedure including Pearson correlation analysis and sequential forward floating selection was performed to produce radiomic signature. Prediction model was constructed using the radiomic signature and Logistic Regression classifier for predicting the localized nephroblastoma in the training cohort. Finally, the model performance was validated in the validation cohort.ResultsA total of 1652 radiomic features have been extracted, from which TOP 10 features were selected as the radiomic signature. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the prediction model were 0.796, 0.795, 0.732 and 0.875 for the training cohort respectively, and 0.710, 0.719, 0.611 and 0.857 for the validation cohort respectively. The result comparison with prediction models composed of different machine learning classifiers and different parameters also manifest the effectiveness of our radiomic model.ConclusionA logistic regression model based on radiomic features extracted from preoperative CT images had good ability to noninvasively predict nephroblastoma without renal capsule, sinus vessel, and lymph node involvement

Demonstration of coherent terahertz transition radiation from relativistic laser-solid interactions

Coherent transition radiation in the terahertz (THz) region with energies of sub-mJ/pulse has been demonstrated by relativistic laser-driven electron beams crossing the solid-vacuum boundary. Targets including mass-limited foils and layered metal-plastic targets are used to verify the radiation mechanism and characterize the radiation properties. Observations of THz emissions as a function of target parameters agree well with the formation-zone and diffraction model of transition radiation. Particle-in-cell simulations also well reproduce the observed characteristics of THz emissions. The present THz transition radiation enables not only a potential tabletop brilliant THz source, but also a novel noninvasive diagnostic for fast electron generation and transport in laser-plasma interactions

Functional building blocks for scalable multipartite entanglement in optical lattices

Featuring excellent coherence and operated parallelly, ultracold atoms in optical lattices form a competitive candidate for quantum computation. For this, a massive number of parallel entangled atom pairs have been realized in superlattices. However, the more formidable challenge is to scale-up and detect multipartite entanglement due to the lack of manipulations over local atomic spins in retro-reflected bichromatic superlattices. Here we developed a new architecture based on a cross-angle spin-dependent superlattice for implementing layers of quantum gates over moderately-separated atoms incorporated with a quantum gas microscope for single-atom manipulation. We created and verified functional building blocks for scalable multipartite entanglement by connecting Bell pairs to one-dimensional 10-atom chains and two-dimensional plaquettes of $2\times4$ atoms. This offers a new platform towards scalable quantum computation and simulation

Hospitalization Costs of COVID-19 Cases and Their Associated Factors in Guangdong, China: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to health system and consumed a lot of health resources. However, evidence on the hospitalization costs and their associated factors in COVID-19 cases is scarce.Objectives: To describe the total and components of hospitalization costs of COVID-19 cases, and investigate the associated factors of costs.Methods: We included 876 confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted to 33 designated hospitals from January 15th to April 27th, 2020 in Guangdong, China, and collected their demographic and clinical information. A multiple linear regression model was performed to estimate the associations of hospitalization costs with potential associated factors.Results: The median of total hospitalization costs of COVID-19 cases was $2,869.4 (IQR:$3,916.8). We found higher total costs in male (% difference: 29.7, 95% CI: 15.5, 45.6) than in female cases, in older cases than in younger ones, in severe cases (% difference: 344.8, 95% CI: 222.5, 513.6) than in mild ones, in cases with clinical aggravation than those without, in cases with clinical symptoms (% difference: 47.7, 95% CI: 26.2, 72.9) than those without, and in cases with comorbidities (% difference: 21.1%, 21.1, 95% CI: 4.4, 40.6) than those without. We also found lower non-pharmacologic therapy costs in cases treated with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapy (% difference: −47.4, 95% CI: −64.5 to −22.0) than cases without.Conclusion: The hospitalization costs of COVID-19 cases in Guangdong were comparable to the national level. Factors associated with higher hospitalization costs included sex, older age, clinical severity and aggravation, clinical symptoms and comorbidities at admission. TCM therapy was found to be associated with lower costs for some non-pharmacologic therapies