Lowly Expressed Ribosomal Protein S19 in the Feces of Patients with Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) has become one of the most common fatal cancers. CRC tumorigenesis is a complex process involving multiple genetic changes to several sequential mutations or molecular alterations. P53 is one of the most significant genes; its mutations account for more than half of all CRC. Therefore, understanding the cellular genes that are directly or indirectly related to p53 is particularly crucial for investigating CRC tumorigenesis. In this study, a p53-related ribosomal protein, ribosomal protein S19 (RPS19), obtained from the feces of CRC patients is evaluated by using specifically quantitative real-time PCR and knocked down in the colonic cell line by gene silencing. This study found that CRC patients with higher expressions of RPS19 in their feces had a better prognosis and consistent expressions of RPS19 and BAX in their colonic cells. In conclusion, the potential mechanism of RPS19 in CRC possibly involves cellular apoptosis through the BAX/p53 pathway, and the levels of fecal RPS19 may function as a prognostic predictor for CRC patients

Prognostic factors associated with the survival of oral and pharyngeal carcinoma in Taiwan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Taiwan, a distinct ethnic group variation in incidence and mortality rates has been suggested for most carcinomas. Our aim is to identify the role of prognostic factors associated with the survival of oral and pharyngeal carcinoma in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Taiwan Cancer Registry records of 9039 subjects diagnosed with oral and pharyngeal carcinoma were analyzed. The population was divided into three ethnic groups by residence, which were Taiwanese aborigines, Hakka and Hokkien communities. Five-year survival rates were estimated by Kaplan-Meier methods. Ethnic curves differed significantly by log-rank test; therefore separate models for Taiwanese aborigines, Hakka and Hokkien were carried out. The Cox multivariate proportional hazards model was used to examine the role of prognostic factors on ethnic survival.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The five-year survival rates of oral and pharyngeal carcinoma were significantly poorer for Hokkien community (53.9%) and Taiwanese aborigines community (58.1%) compared with Hakka community (60.5%). The adjusted hazard ratio of Taiwanese aborigines versus Hakka was 1.07 (95%CI, 0.86–1.33) for oral and pharyngeal carcinoma mortality, and 1.16 (95%CI, 1.01–1.33) for Hokkien versus Hakka. Males had significantly poor prognosis than females. Subjects with tongue and/or mouth carcinoma presented the worst prognosis, whereas lip carcinoma had the best prognosis. Subjects with verrucous carcinoma had better survival than squamous cell carcinoma. Prognosis was the worst in elderly subjects, and subjects who underwent surgery had the highest survival rate.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study presented that predictive variables in oral and pharyngeal carcinoma survival have been: ethnic groups, period of diagnosis, gender, diagnostic age, anatomic site, morphologic type, and therapy.</p

Prospects for Food Fermentation in South-East Asia, Topics From the Tropical Fermentation and Biotechnology Network at the End of the AsiFood Erasmus+Project

Fermentation has been used for centuries to produce food in South-East Asia and some foods of this region are famous in the whole world. However, in the twenty first century, issues like food safety and quality must be addressed in a world changing from local business to globalization. In Western countries, the answer to these questions has been made through hygienisation, generalization of the use of starters, specialization of agriculture and use of long-distance transportation. This may have resulted in a loss in the taste and typicity of the products, in an extensive use of antibiotics and other chemicals and eventually, in a loss in the confidence of consumers to the products. The challenges awaiting fermentation in South-East Asia are thus to improve safety and quality in a sustainable system producing tasty and typical fermented products and valorising by-products. At the end of the “AsiFood Erasmus+ project” (www.asifood.org), the goal of this paper is to present and discuss these challenges as addressed by the Tropical Fermentation Network, a group of researchers from universities, research centers and companies in Asia and Europe. This paper presents current actions and prospects on hygienic, environmental, sensorial and nutritional qualities of traditional fermented food including screening of functional bacteria and starters, food safety strategies, research for new antimicrobial compounds, development of more sustainable fermentations and valorisation of by-products. A specificity of this network is also the multidisciplinary approach dealing with microbiology, food, chemical, sensorial, and genetic analyses, biotechnology, food supply chain, consumers and ethnology

Model for Evaluating Outsourcing Logistics Companies in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the world’s manufacturing industry, particularly in terms of the continued increase in logistics costs that has led to an increase in business operating costs. This study proposes a two-stage model for evaluating the most appropriate outsourcing logistics companies for a manufacturing factory. In the first stage, a modified Delphi method was used to recruit experienced experts to determine criteria for evaluating outsourcing logistics vendors and establish a hierarchical structure. In the second stage, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to evaluate suitable logistics companies based on the hierarchical structure. Finally, a case study was conducted to demonstrate the suitability of the two-stage model for evaluating outsourcing logistics companies for reducing logistics costs while maintaining service quality. The proposed model can be used as a basis for evaluating outsourcing logistics companies

Gastritis cystica polyposa in an unoperated stomach

Gastritis cystica polyposa is relatively rare and characterized by polypoid hyperplasia and cystic dilatation of the gastric glands in stomach. Most cases are related to previous gastric surgeries, but a few cases have been reported in unoperated stomachs. We present a 34-year-old man who had anemic symptoms with melena and exertional dyspnea for 3 weeks. He denied any surgical history. An esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed diffuse giant folds extending from the lower to the upper body of the stomach with nodularity and no obvious bleeding site. A pathologic diagnosis of a punch biopsy specimen from the giant folds revealed only moderately active chronic inflammation with a high Helicobacter pylori density. After serial studies, the patient received a whole layer gastric biopsy during a laparoscopy. Gastritis cystica polyposa was diagnosed on the pathology report. Our present case highlights the rare clinical and endoscopic condition of gastritis cystica polyposa in an unoperated stomach

Performance Analysis and Optimization of the Coverage Probability in Dual Hop LoRa Networks With Different Fading Channels

In this work, the performance evaluation and the optimization of dual-hop LoRa network are investigated. In particular, the coverage probability (Pcov) of edge end-devices (EDs) is computed in closed-form expressions under various fading channels, i.e., Nakagami-m and Rayleigh fading. The Pcov under Nakagami-m fading is computed in the approximated closed-form expressions; the Pcov under Rayleigh fading, on the other hand, is calculated in the exact closed-form expressions. In addition, we also investigate the impact of different kinds of interference on the performance of the Pcov, i.e., intra-SF interference, inter-SF interference (or capture effect) and both intra- and inter-SF interference. Our findings show that the impact of imperfect orthogonality is not non-negligible, along with the intra-SF interference. Moreover, based on the proposed mathematical framework, we formulate an optimization problem, which finds the optimal location of the relay to maximize the coverage probability. Since it is a mixed integer program with a non-convex objective function, we decompose the original problem with discrete optimization variables into sub-problems with a convex feasible set. After that, each sub-problem is effectively solved by utilizing the gradient descent approach. Monte Carlo simulations are supplied to verify the correctness of our mathematical framework. In addition, the results manifest that our proposed optimization algorithm converges rapidly, and the coverage probability is significantly improved when the location of relay is optimized.Funding Agencies|Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) - Korean Government [20AS1100, 20ZS1200]</p

Gastritis cystica polyposa in an unoperated stomach

Gastritis cystica polyposa is relatively rare and characterized by polypoid hyperplasia and cystic dilatation of the gastric glands in stomach. Most cases are related to previous gastric surgeries, but a few cases have been reported in unoperated stomachs. We present a 34-year-old man who had anemic symptoms with melena and exertional dyspnea for 3 weeks. He denied any surgical history. An esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed diffuse giant folds extending from the lower to the upper body of the stomach with nodularity and no obvious bleeding site. A pathologic diagnosis of a punch biopsy specimen from the giant folds revealed only moderately active chronic inflammation with a high Helicobacter pylori density. After serial studies, the patient received a whole layer gastric biopsy during a laparoscopy. Gastritis cystica polyposa was diagnosed on the pathology report. Our present case highlights the rare clinical and endoscopic condition of gastritis cystica polyposa in an unoperated stomach

On the Performance of Underlay Device-to-Device Communications

This paper comprehensively investigates the performance of the D2D underlaying cellular networks where D2D communications are operated concurrently with cellular networks provided that the aggregate interference measured on licensed users is strictly guaranteed. In particular, we derive the outage probability (OP), the average rate, and the amount of fading (AoF) of the D2D networks in closed-form expressions under three distinct power allocation schemes, i.e., the path-loss-based, equal, and random allocation schemes. It is noted that the considered networks take into consideration the impact of the intra-D2D networks, the inter-interference from the cellular networks and background noise, thus involving many random variables and leading to a complicated mathematical framework. Moreover, we also reveal the behavior of the OP with respect to the transmit power based on the rigorous mathematical frameworks rather than the computer-based simulation results. The derived framework shows that increasing the transmit power is beneficial for the OP of the D2D users. Regarding the cellular networks, the coverage probability (Pcov) of the cellular users is computed in closed-form expression too. Monte Carlo simulations are given to verify the accuracy of the proposed mathematical frameworks. Our findings illustrate that the power allocation method based on prior path-loss information outperforms the other methods in the average sum rate