Predictive Value of Plasma MicroRNA-216a/b in the Diagnosis of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common human malignancy with poor survival, which was usually diagnosed at an advanced stage. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of single stranded noncoding RNAs with only 17-25 ribonucleotides, were demonstrated to play an important role in lots of cancers. In the recent years, increasing evidence revealed that circulating miRNAs exhibited great potential in the diagnosis of various types of cancers. The present study was designed to evaluate the diagnostic value of plasma miRNA-216a/b for ESCC. Our results showed that the expression level of plasma miRNA-216a/b was significantly lower in ESCC patients compared with that of healthy controls. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis yielded an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.877 [95% CI (confidence interval): 0.818-0.922] for miRNA-216a and 0.756 (95% CI: 0.685-0.819) for miRNA-216b. Clinical data indicated that plasma miRNA-216a/b were inversely correlated with lymph node metastasis and TNM stage. Additionally, the plasma miRNA-216b expression level was significantly upregulated in postoperative samples compared to preoperative samples. Our study, for the first time, demonstrated that plasma miRNA-216a/b might serve as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of ESCC and dysregulation of miRNA-216a/b might be involved in the progression of ESCC

Disrupted Asymmetry of Inter- and Intra-Hemispheric Functional Connectivity at Rest in Medication-Free Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Disrupted functional asymmetry of cerebral hemispheres may be altered in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, little is known about whether anomalous brain asymmetries originate from inter- and/or intra-hemispheric functional connectivity (FC) at rest in OCD. In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was applied to 40 medication-free patients with OCD and 38 gender-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls (HCs). Data were analyzed using the parameter of asymmetry (PAS) and support vector machine methods. Patients with OCD showed significantly increased PAS in the left posterior cingulate cortex, left precentral gyrus/postcentral gyrus, and right inferior occipital gyrus and decreased PAS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), bilateral middle cingulate cortex (MCC), left inferior parietal lobule, and left cerebellum Crus I. A negative correlation was found between decreased PAS in the left DLPFC and Yale–Brown Obsessive-compulsive Scale compulsive behavior scores in the patients. Furthermore, decreased PAS in the bilateral MCC could be used to distinguish OCD from HCs with a sensitivity of 87.50%, an accuracy of 88.46%, and a specificity of 89.47%. These results highlighted the contribution of disrupted asymmetry of intra-hemispheric FC within and outside the cortico-striato-thalamocortical circuits at rest in the pathophysiology of OCD, and reduced intra-hemispheric FC in the bilateral MCC may serve as a potential biomarker to classify individuals with OCD from HCs

Modeling Travel Time Reliability of Road Network Considering Connected Vehicle Guidance Characteristics Indexes

Travel time reliability (TTR) is one of the important indexes for effectively evaluating the performance of road network, and TTR can effectively be improved using the real-time traffic guidance information. Compared with traditional traffic guidance, connected vehicle (CV) guidance can provide travelers with more timely and accurate travel information, which can further improve the travel efficiency of road network. Five CV characteristics indexes are selected as explanatory variables including the Congestion Level (CL), Penetration Rate (PR), Compliance Rate (CR), release Delay Time (DT), and Following Rate (FR). Based on the five explanatory variables, a TTR model is proposed using the multilogistic regression method, and the prediction accuracy and the impact of characteristics indexes on TTR are analyzed using a CV guidance scenario. The simulation results indicate that 80% of the RMSE is concentrated within the interval of 0 to 0.0412. The correlation analysis of characteristics indexes shows that the influence of CL, PR, CR, and DT on the TTR is significant. PR and CR have a positive effect on TTR, and the average improvement rate is about 77.03% and 73.20% with the increase of PR and CR, respectively, while CL and DT have a negative effect on TTR, and TTR decreases by 31.21% with the increase of DT from 0 to 180 s

Pollutants Source Assessment and Load Calculation in Baiyangdian Lake Using Multi-Model Statistical Analysis

Baiyangdian lake, the largest fresh lake on the Haihe Basin in North China, has attracted wide attention on account of the distinguished ecological water bodies in Xiong’an New Area. Although remarkable achievements have been made in pollution control in Baiyangdian lake, the problem facing the overall water environment remains serious. The complex pollutant sources, drastic pollutant flux changes, and the unclear impact of the role of pollutants pose great challenges to the water quality, water environment management, and long-term restoration of the ecological environment. Here, the potential pollution sources, their contribution ratio, and the influence of the pollution load of different sources on the water quality in the priority source areas of Baiyangdian lake are discussed in detail based on collected and existing monitoring data. It is proven that the primary pollution sources of for nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic pollutants are from agricultural and rural non-point source pollution; the load contribution rates exceed 50%, of which the contribution rate to the total phosphorus load reaches 73.37%. The total load contribution of runoff to the three pollutants was small, although the contribution of soil erosion to total nitrogen was 22.95%. The contribution of point source pollution to COD was high, with a rate of 22.33%. In order to ensure the environmental quality of Baiyangdian lake, it is obligatory to strengthen the control of agricultural and rural pollution discharge and to standardize the pollution discharge of livestock and poultry breeding. This study provides a helpful support for protecting the water ecology of the national Xiong’an New Area

Characterization of a hybrid polyacrylamide and its flocculation properties in cyanide tailing suspensions

An inorganic-organic hybrid flocculant Al(OH)(3)-polyacrylamide (Al-PAM) with narrow molecular weight distribution was synthesized using inverse microemulsion polymerization. The hybrid polymer Al-PAM was characterized by Infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, and it was found that it had a &#39;star-like&#39; structure in which Al(OH)(3) colloidal particles acted as cores linking PAM chains. The properties of Al-PAM were investigated in flocculating 10 wt% cyanide tailing suspensions. It was found that as the amount of Al-PAM(M1) with high molecular weight and aluminum content increased, the initial settling rate of particles accelerated, achieving the maximum 6.6 m/h, 17.3 times the rate of the control without flocculants. The turbidity of the supernatant decreased to 35 +/- 2 NTU accordingly, compared to 353 +/- 2 NTU of that in the control, which meant that 90.0% of turbidity was removed from the cyanide tailing suspensions. The flocculation mechanism was further explored by floccule size and. potential measurements. The superior performance of cationic Al-PAM in flocculating negatively charged particles compared to commercial non-ionic GG indicated that electrostatic repulsion between tailing particles was a crucial factor in deciding the flocculation performance of the polymer. The study demonstrated that both charge neutralization and bridge adsorption were conductive to the particle flocculation.</p

Arsenic removal from alkaline leaching solution using Fe (III) precipitation

The alkaline leaching solution from arsenic-containing gold concentrate contains a large amount of arsenate ions, which should be removed because it is harmful to the production process and to the environment. In this study, conventional Fe (III) precipitation was used to remove arsenic from the leaching solution. The precipitation reaction was carried out at the normal temperature, and the effects of pH value and Fe/As ratio on the arsenic removal were investigated. The results show that the removal rate of arsenic is distinctive at different pH values, and the effect is best within the pH range of 5.25-5.96. The removal rate can be further increased by increasing the ratio of Fe/As. When the pH = 5.25-5.96 and Fe/As &gt; 1.8, the arsenic in the solution can be reduced to below 5 mg/L. However, the crystallinity of ferric arsenate is poor, and the particle size is small, most of which is about 1 mu m. The leaching toxicity test shows the leaching toxicity of precipitates gradually decreased by the increase of Fe/As. The precipitates can be stored safely as the ratio of Fe/As exceeded 2.5.</p

Predictive Value of Plasma MicroRNA-216a/b in the Diagnosis of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common human malignancy with poor survival, which was usually diagnosed at an advanced stage. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of single stranded noncoding RNAs with only 17–25 ribonucleotides, were demonstrated to play an important role in lots of cancers. In the recent years, increasing evidence revealed that circulating miRNAs exhibited great potential in the diagnosis of various types of cancers. The present study was designed to evaluate the diagnostic value of plasma miRNA-216a/b for ESCC. Our results showed that the expression level of plasma miRNA-216a/b was significantly lower in ESCC patients compared with that of healthy controls. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis yielded an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.877 [95% CI (confidence interval): 0.818–0.922] for miRNA-216a and 0.756 (95% CI: 0.685–0.819) for miRNA-216b. Clinical data indicated that plasma miRNA-216a/b were inversely correlated with lymph node metastasis and TNM stage. Additionally, the plasma miRNA-216b expression level was significantly upregulated in postoperative samples compared to preoperative samples. Our study, for the first time, demonstrated that plasma miRNA-216a/b might serve as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of ESCC and dysregulation of miRNA-216a/b might be involved in the progression of ESCC

Influence of a Cr2O3 glass coating on enhancing the oxidation resistance of 20MnSiNb structural steel

In this paper, a glass protective coating containing chromium oxide deposited on a high-quality 20MnSiNb structural steel was prepared by a slurry-spraying technique at high temperature. Compared with a bare sample, the effect of the coating on the steel was investigated at a temperature range from 700 degrees C to 1150 degrees C in the air. The experimental results showed the coating had significant oxidation resistance and effective descaling ability for 20MnSiNb structure steel. The coating could enhance protective effect by 86% after heating for 60 min at 1050 degrees C compared with the bare sample. The formation of a dense chromium and silicon compound film on the 20MnSiNb structural steel prevented the diffusion of oxygen and iron ions. Due to the difference of the thermal expansion coefficient between the coating and the steel, the coating spalled during the cooling process, which enhanced the descaling ability significantly. The sample was characterized by XRD, SEM-EDS and TG-DTA/DSC to clarify the possible protective mechanism, which was the synergy between the glass coating and the protective film formed by the migration of chromium, preventing the diffusion of oxygen and iron ions. Because of the low cost and easy handling method, the coating has potentially applicable for reheating process of 20MnSiNb structural steel. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V

The use of the organic-inorganic hybrid polymer Al(OH)(3)-polyacrylamide to flocculate particles in the cyanide tailing suspensions

The organic-inorganic hybrid polymer Al(OH)(3)-polyacrylamide (Al-PAM) was investigated in flocculation of particles in 10 wt% cyanide tailing suspensions in this study. The effect of Al-PAM was evaluated with photoelectric turbidimeter, focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) and particle video microscope (PVM). It was found that as the amount of Al-45-PAM with maximum zeta potential and molecular weight increased, the initial settling rate of particles increased, reaching the highest 11.7 m/h, 18.5 times of the blank without flocculants. Correspondingly, the turbidity of the supernatant was 0.95 NTU, compared to 291.6 NTU in the blank, which was over 98% of turbidity removal efficiency. The cationic Al-PAM demonstrated better flocculation to the particles in the cyanide tailing suspensions than the commercial non-ionic guar gum (GG), and has potential for commercialization. The electrostatic repulsion between tailing particles was regarded as a critical parameter in determining polymer flocculation and our study indicated that both charge neutralization and bridge adsorption contributed to the particle flocculation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved