Nondestructive Nonlinear Optical Microscopy Revealed the Blackening Mechanism of Ancient Chinese Jades

Jade is most valued in Chinese culture since ancient times. For unearthed jade artifacts, the alteration color resulting from weathering effects and human activities provides information for cultural heritage conservation, archaeology, and history. Currently, the noninvasive 3-dimensional characterization of jade artifacts with high chemical and spatial resolution remains challenging. In this work, we applied femtosecond pump–probe microscopy and second harmonic generation microscopy techniques to study the black alteration of an ancient jade artifact of the late Spring and Autumn period (546 to 476 BC). The direct cause of the “mercury alteration” phenomena was discovered to be the conversion of metacinnabar from buried cinnabar in the tomb. Furthermore, a 3-dimensional optical reconstruction of the black alteration was achieved, providing a high-resolution method for analyzing the blackening mechanism without the need of sample damage. Our approach opens up new opportunities to extract microscopic spatiochemical information for a broad range of alteration colors in jade artifacts

Stimulated Raman scattering microscopy for rapid brain tumor histology

Rapid histology of brain tissues with sufficient diagnostic information has the great potential to aid neurosurgeons during operations. Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy is an emerging label-free imaging technique, with the intrinsic chemical resolutions to delineate brain tumors from normal tissues without the need of time-consuming tissue processing. Growing number of studies have shown SRS as a “virtual histology” tool for rapid diagnosis of various types of brain tumors. In this review, we focus on the basic principles and current developments of SRS microscopy, as well as its applications for brain tumor imaging

The use of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs during radical resection correlated with the outcome in non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract Aims The use of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is conventional in management of postoperative pain in cancer patients, and further investigations have reported that some of these drugs correlated with the outcome in cancers. However, the prognostic value of the use of NSAIDs during surgery in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients has been less addressed. Methods NSCLC patients staged I–III are retrospectively enrolled, and the data of the use of NSAIDs during surgery are collected. Patients are divided into two subgroups according to the use intensity (UI) (low or high) of the NSAIDs, which was calculated by the accumulate dosage of all the NSAIDs divided by the length of hospitalization. The differences of the clinical features among these groups were checked. And the disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) differences in these groups were compared by Kaplan–Meier analysis; risk factors for survival were validated by using a Cox proportional hazards model. Results The UI was significant in predicting the DFS (AUC = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.57–0.73, P = 0.001) and OS (AUC = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.59–0.81, P = 0.001). Clinical features including type of resection (P = 0.001), N stages (P < 0.001), and TNM stages (P = 0.004) were significantly different in UI low (< 74.55 mg/day) or high (≥ 74.55 mg/day) subgroups. Patients in UI-high subgroups displayed significant superior DFS (log rank = 11.46, P = 0.001) and OS (log rank = 7.63, P = 0.006) than the UI-low ones. At last, the UI was found to be an independent risk factor for DFS (HR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.28–0.95, P = 0.034). Conclusions The use of NSAIDs during radical resection in NSCLC patients correlated with the outcome and patients with a relative high UI has better outcome

Hybrid Label-Free Molecular Microscopies for Simultaneous Visualization of Changes in Cell Wall Polysaccharides of Peach at Single- and Multiple-Cell Levels during Postharvest Storage

Softening of fruit during the postharvest storage, which is mainly associated with both compositional and spatial changes of polysaccharides within cell wall, affects the texture and quality of fruit. Current research on the fruit softening mechanism lacks an understanding of the overall softening at the cell level. The objective of this work was to investigate the change in the spatial distribution of cell wall polysaccharides in peach flesh cells at both single- and multiple-cell levels in a label-free way during the postharvest storage. Nonmelting peaches (Prunus persica L. Batsch cv.&rdquo;Zhonghuashoutao&rdquo;) at commercial maturity were stored at 0 &deg;C and 20 &deg;C. Firmness measurement and chemical analysis were performed at each storage time. In addition, three molecular imaging techniques, namely confocal Raman microspectroscopy (CRM), Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIRM), and stimulated Raman scattering microscopy (SRS) were used to visualize changes in the spatial distribution of cell wall polysaccharides of peach fruit in a label-free way during the postharvest storage. The combination of CRM and FTIRM provided complementary spectral information to visualize the spatial changes of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin in the cell wall of peach flesh during softening at the single-cell level, and found that the cell wall polysaccharides tended to be concentrated in the cell corner of parenchymal cells at the late stage. Furthermore, SRS, which is an ultrafast Raman imaging technique (approximately three or four orders of magnitude faster than CRM), was used for high-throughput cell wall phenotypes measurement. Different degradation degrees of parenchymal cells during fruit softening were found based on the gray-scale statistical analysis of SRS data. In general, cell wall polysaccharides decreased during softening and tended to be concentrated in the cell corner for most parenchymal cells at the late stage, but there were also some cells not in line with the whole softening trends. The results show that there were differences in the content and spatial changes of cell wall polysaccharides among parenchymal cells of peach fruit during the softening process, and the hybrid use of CRM, FTIRM, and SRS is a promising method for simultaneous visualization of changes in cell wall polysaccharides of peach