Long Noncoding RNA Expression Signatures of Metastatic Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma and Their Prognostic Value

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have recently been found to play important roles in various cancer types. The elucidation of genome-wide lncRNA expression patterns in metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) could reveal novel mechanisms underlying NPC carcinogenesis and progression. In this study, lncRNA expression profiling was performed on metastatic and primary NPC tumors, and the differentially expressed lncRNAs between these samples were identified. A total of 33,045 lncRNA probes were generated for our microarray based on authoritative data sources, including RefSeq, UCSC Knowngenes, Ensembl, and related literature. Using these probes, 8,088 lncRNAs were found to be significantly differentially expressed (2-fold). To identify the prognostic value of these differentially expressed lncRNAs, four lncRNAs (LOC84740, ENST00000498296, AL359062, and ENST00000438550) were selected; their expression levels were measured in an independent panel of 106 primary NPC samples via QPCR. Among these lncRNAs, ENST00000438550 expression was demonstrated to be significantly correlated with NPC disease progression. A survival analysis showed that a high expression level of ENST00000438550 was an independent indicator of disease progression in NPC patients (). In summary, this study may provide novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for NPC, as well as a novel understanding of the mechanism underlying NPC metastasis and potential targets for future treatment

Design and synthesis of piperidine derivatives as novel human heat shock protein 70 inhibitors for the treatment of drug-resistant tumors

AbstractHSP70 is a potential target for tumour treatment. HSP70 plays significant roles in several biological processes, including the regulation of apoptosis. In this study, piperidine derivatives were designed as novel HSP70 inhibitors based on virtual fragment screening performed in Dock 4.0, Discovery Studio 2.5 and SYBYL 6.9. A total of 67 novel piperidine derivatives were synthesized. Cell viability assays were performed in 16 cancer cell lines. The emphasis was placed on lapatinib-resistant breast cancer cells (BT/LapR1.0, MDA-MB-361, SK/LapR1.0, and MDA-MB-453). The compounds HSP70-36/37/40/43/46 significantly inhibited the proliferation of human breast cancer cells. Compound HSP70-36 inhibited the growth of BT474 and BT/LapR1.0 cells with IC50 values of 1.41 μM and 1.47 μM, respectively. The binding affinity of HSP70-36/HSP70 was evaluated by surface plasmon resonance and yielded Kd values of 2.46 μM. The LD50 was 869.0 mgkg−1. These data suggest that HSP70-36 may be a potential candidate compound for tumour treatment

Study on Temperature-Dependent Uniaxial Tensile Tests and Constitutive Relationship of Modified Polyurethane Concrete

Modified polyurethane concrete (MPUC) is a new material for steel deck pavements. In service, the pavement is often cracked due to excessive tensile stress caused by temperature changes. In order to study the tensile properties of MPUC in the diurnal temperature range of steel decks, uniaxial tensile tests of MPUC were carried out at five temperatures. Three kinds of specimens and a novel fixture were designed and fabricated to compare the results of four different tensile test methods. The deformation of the specimen was collected synchronously by two methods: pasting strain gauge and digital image correlation (DIC) technique. Based on the experiment, the tensile mechanical properties, failure modes, and constitutive relations of MPUC were studied under the effect of temperature. The research results show that the novel fixture can avoid stress concentration. By observing the fracture surface of the specimens, the bonding performance is great between the binder and the aggregate at different temperatures. The tensile strength and elastic modulus of MPUC decrease with increasing temperatures, while the fracture strain, and fracture energy increase with increasing temperatures. The formulas of temperature-dependent tensile strength, fracture strain, and elastic modulus of MPUC were established, and the constitutive relationship of MPUC is further constructed in the rising stage under uniaxial tension. The calculation results show good agreement with experimental ones

Study on Agricultural Socialized Service System in Guangdong Province

This paper analyzed the current situation of the construction of agricultural socialized service system in Guangdong Province and summarizes five typical services, namely the public service, "company + base + farmer", "company + research institute + base + farmer", "specialized cooperative + farmer, and government + enterprise + farmer". In view of the existing problems in the construction of agricultural socialized service system in Guangdong Province, it came up with recommendations including making proper top level design, strengthening the construction efforts, actively cultivating service entities, improving the structure of information service system, and establishing and improving rural financial system

Synthesis of an inorganic-framework molecularly imprinted Fe-doped TiO2 composite and its selective photo-Fenton-like degradation of acid orange II

BACKGROUND: The heterogeneous photo-Fenton-like process is emerging as a promising treatment of dye-containingwastewater because of its economic feasibility and high efficiency. However, it is still required to develop photo-Fenton-like catalysts with highly selective degradation ability and reusability. RESULTS: Inorganic-framework molecularly imprinted Fe-doped TiO2 composites (MIP/Fe-TiO2) were successfully prepared by the sol-gel method, with acid orange II as the template and TiO2 as the matrix material. The photo-Fenton-like catalysts were characterized using FESEM, EDS, BET, X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. These methods revealed the well-crystallized anatase phase and good nanometer-level particle sizes. The adsorption property and photo-Fenton-like activity of the catalysts were also studied in single and binary systems, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with non-imprinted Fe-TiO2 composites (NIP/Fe-TiO2), MIP/Fe-TiO2 showed higher adsorption capacity and selectivity toward the template molecule. In addition, it was found that the molecular recognition ability of MIP/Fe-TiO2 provided the catalysts with rapidly selective photo-Fenton-like degradation of low target pollutant levels (20 mg L-1) in the presence of high levels of interferential pollutant sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (100 mg L-1). Moreover, because of the stable physicochemical properties of the inorganic framework, the new photo-Fenton-like catalysts were resistant to photochemical attack and showed favorable reusability. (c) 2017 Society of Chemical Industr

Surfactant-free Hydrothermal Synthesis and Sensitivity Characterization of Pd-doped SnO2 Nano Crystals on Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes

In the present study, a simple approach has been presented to in situ deposition of Pd-doped well-crystallized SnO2 nanocrystals on the surface of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in the ethanol solution of SnCl2. The morphology, microstructure and surface chemistry of the as-prepared nanocomposites were characterized by high resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The HRTEM and XRD results show that the well-crystallized SnO2 nanocrystals with uniform crystal size (about 5 nm) tightly and homogenously coat on the entire surface of the MWCNTs. The carboxylic function groups on the MWCNTs surface may supply nucleation sites for facilitating the in situ deposition of SnO2 nanocrystals. The XPS results reveal that the chemical states of the nanocomposites and the dopant of Pd mainly exists in two chemical states as Pd2+ and Pd4+. The response of the 2.5 at% Pd-doped SnO2/MWCNTs nanocomposites to 1000 ppm NO at the temperature of 250 degrees C behaviors better, whose response time is about 70 s and the sensitivity is about 4.62

Digital Self-Interference Canceler with Joint Channel Estimator for Simultaneous Transmit and Receive System

Simultaneous transmit and receive wireless communications have been highlighted for their potential to double the spectral efficiency. However, it is necessary to mitigate self-interference (SI). Considering both the SI channel and remote transmission (RT) channel need to be estimated before equalizing the received signal, we propose two adaptive algorithms for linear and nonlinear self-interference cancellation (SIC), based on a multi-layered joint channel estimator structure. The proposed algorithms estimate the RT channel while performing SIC, and the multi-layered structure ensures improved performance across various interference-to-signal ratios. The M-estimate function enhances the robustness of the algorithm, allowing it to converge even when affected by impulsive noise. For nonlinear SIC, this paper introduces an adaptive algorithm based on generalized Hammerstein polynomial basis functions. The simulation results indicate that this approach achieves a better convergence speed and normalized mean squared difference compared to existing SIC methods, leading to a lower system bit error rate

IMU-Based Automated Vehicle Slip Angle and Attitude Estimation Aided by Vehicle Dynamics

The slip angle and attitude are vital for automated driving. In this paper, a systematic inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based vehicle slip angle and attitude estimation method aided by vehicle dynamics is proposed. This method can estimate the slip angle and attitude simultaneously and autonomously. With accurate attitude, the slip angle can be estimated precisely even though the vehicle dynamic model (VDM)-based velocity estimator diverges for a short time. First, the longitudinal velocity, pitch angle, lateral velocity, and roll angle were estimated by two estimators based on VDM considering the lever arm between the IMU and rotation center. When this information was in high fidelity, it was applied to aid the IMU-based slip angle and attitude estimators to eliminate the accumulated error correctly. Since there is a time delay in detecting the abnormal estimation results from VDM-based estimators during critical steering, a novel delay estimation and prediction structure was proposed to avoid the outlier feedback from vehicle dynamics estimators for the IMU-based slip angle and attitude estimators. Finally, the proposed estimation method was validated under large lateral excitation experimental tests including double lane change (DLC) and slalom maneuvers

Striation-Based Beamforming with Two-Dimensional Filtering for Suppressing Tonal Interference

Based on the interference spectrogram in the element–frequency domain using the data measured by the horizontal linear array, the source range can be estimated through the striation-based beamforming (SBF) method and its variants. Estimation of the striation slope is the basis for these ranging methods. But in practical scenarios, the tonal interferences and other noise make it difficult to estimate the slope. In this paper, we proposed a two-dimensional low-pass filtering method after the two-dimensional discrete Fourier transform (2D-DFT) of the element–frequency domain spectrogram. The signals can be separated from the interference and noise using this filter. For the linear frequency-modulated signal without a known waveform, we also proposed an extraction and phase compensation method based on the time–frequency spectrogram, and the acoustic data obtained can be used for source ranging. The experimental results indicate that the methods proposed are feasible

Kinetic and Thermodynamic Insights into Advanced Energy Storage Mechanisms of Battery-Type Bimetallic Metal–Organic Frameworks

The engineering of high-performance battery-type electrode materials highly depends on the guidance from the combination of experimental analysis and theoretical simulation. Herein, the joint experimental–theoretical investigation provides a mechanistic explanation for the electrochemical performance enhancement in bimetallic metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). The superior CoNi-MOF in our study exhibits advanced electrochemical energy storage performance, achieving a high specific capacity of 382 C g–1 (1 A g–1), 2.0 and 1.4 times that of Co-MOF and Ni-MOF, respectively. Such a significant enhancement results from the surface-controlled reaction kinetics and the low onset potential contributed by the well-tuned electronic structures of bimetallic MOFs. Our study opens up new perspectives for understanding the advantages of mixed metal sites in MOFs for electrochemical energy storage