Enhanced Breast Cancer Therapy with nsPEFs and Low Concentrations of Gemcitabine

Chemotherapy either before or after surgery is a common breast cancer treatment. Long-term, high dose treatments with chemotherapeutic drugs often result in undesirable side effects, frequent recurrences and resistances to therapy. The anti-cancer drug, gemcitabine (GEM) was used in combination with pulse power technology with nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEFs) for treatment of human breast cancer cells in vitro. Two strategies include sensitizing mammary tumor cells with GEM before nsPEF treatment or sensitizing cells with nsPEFs before GEM treatment.Breast cancer cell lines MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 were treated with 250 65 ns-duration pulses and electric fields of 15, 20 or 25 kV/cm before or after treatment with 0.38 μM GEM. Both cell lines exhibited robust synergism for loss of cell viability 24 h and 48 h after treatment; treatment with GEM before nsPEFs was the preferred order. In clonogenic assays, only MDA-MB-231 cells showed synergism; again GEM before nsPEFs was the preferred order. In apoptosis/necrosis assays with Annexin-V-FITC/propidium iodide 2 h after treatment, both cell lines exhibited apoptosis as a major cell death mechanism, but only MDA-MB-231 cells exhibited modest synergism. However, unlike viability assays, nsPEF treatment before GEM was preferred. MDA-MB-231 cells exhibited much greater levels of necrosis then in MCF-7 cells, which were very low. Synergy was robust and greater when nsPEF treatment was before GEM. Combination treatments with low GEM concentrations and modest nsPEFs provide enhanced cytotoxicity in two breast cancer cell lines. The treatment order is flexible, although long-term survival and short-term cell death analyses indicated different treatment order preferences. Based on synergism, apoptosis mechanisms for both agents were more similar in MCF-7 than in MDA-MB-231 cells. In contrast, necrosis mechanisms for the two agents were distinctly different in MDA-MB-231, but too low to reliably evaluate in MCF-7 cells. While disease mechanisms in the two cell lines are different based on the differential synergistic response to treatments, combination treatment with GEM and nsPEFs should provide an advantageous therapy for breast cancer ablation in vivo

Forecasting incidence of infectious diarrhea using random forest in Jiangsu Province, China

Background Infectious diarrhea can lead to a considerable global disease burden. Thus, the accurate prediction of an infectious diarrhea epidemic is crucial for public health authorities. This study was aimed at developing an optimal random forest (RF) model, considering meteorological factors used to predict an incidence of infectious diarrhea in Jiangsu Province, China. Methods An RF model was developed and compared with classical autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)/X models. Morbidity and meteorological data from 2012 to 2016 were used to construct the models and the data from 2017 were used for testing. Results The RF model considered atmospheric pressure, precipitation, relative humidity, and their lagged terms, as well as 1–4 week lag morbidity and time variable as the predictors. Meanwhile, a univariate model ARIMA (1,0,1)(1,0,0)52 (AIC = − 575.92, BIC = − 558.14) and a multivariable model ARIMAX (1,0,1)(1,0,0)52 with 0–1 week lag precipitation (AIC = − 578.58, BIC = − 578.13) were developed as benchmarks. The RF model outperformed the ARIMA/X models with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of approximately 20%. The performance of the ARIMAX model was comparable to that of the ARIMA model with a MAPE reaching approximately 30%. Conclusions The RF model fitted the dynamic nature of an infectious diarrhea epidemic well and delivered an ideal prediction accuracy. It comprehensively combined the synchronous and lagged effects of meteorological factors; it also integrated the autocorrelation and seasonality of the morbidity. The RF model can be used to predict the epidemic level and has a high potential for practical implementation

Clinical application of Kirschner wires combined with 5-Ethibond fixation for patella fractures

BackgroundPatella fractures that require surgery are conventionally treated using Kirschner wires (K-wires) and stainless steel wires. In recent years, the nonabsorbable polyester has been reported to have excellent outcomes clinically. Therefore, the goal of our study was to evaluate the effects of Kirschner wires combined with 5-Ethibond on treating patellar fractures.MethodsFrom July 2018 to January 2022, 22 patella fracture patients were treated with Kirschner wires combined with 5-Ethibond. Radiographs of the knees were used to evaluate fracture healing and hardware complications. The clinical results were evaluated through the functional score, knee joint range of motion (ROM), and Bostman patella fracture functional score.ResultsThe average age of patients was 57.4 ± 11.9 (range 33–74) years. The mean follow-up time was 15.2 ± 7.6 (range 4–36) months. The mean operation time was 56.8 ± 8.7 (range 45–80) min. The entire patients had bony union at an average of 10.5 ± 1.9 (range 8–14) weeks. At the final follow-up, the mean range of postoperative ROM was 123.4° ± 14.6° (range 95°–140°), and the functional score was 28.7 ± 1.2 (range 26–30) points. No patient exhibited internal fixation failure, and no symptomatic implants or skin complications were recorded.ConclusionsThe fixation approach using K-wires combined with 5-Ethibond has a lower complication rate and delivers superior clinical results. This research reveals that such technology is a safe and prospective substitute for conventional metal fixation approaches

Chicken Pleiotrophin: Regulation of Tissue Specific Expression by Estrogen in the Oviduct and Distinct Expression Pattern in the Ovarian Carcinomas

Pleiotrophin (PTN) is a developmentally-regulated growth factor which is widely distributed in various tissues and also detected in many kinds of carcinomas. However, little is known about the PTN gene in chickens. In the present study, we found chicken PTN to be highly conserved with respect to mammalian PTN genes (91–92.6%) and its mRNA was most abundant in brain, heart and oviduct. This study focused on the PTN gene in the oviduct where it was detected in the glandular (GE) and luminal (LE) epithelial cells. Treatment of young chicks with diethylstilbesterol induced PTN mRNA and protein in GE and LE, but not in other cell types of the oviduct. Further, several microRNAs, specifically miR-499 and miR-1709 were discovered to influence PTN expression via its 3′-UTR which suggests that post-transcriptional regulation influences PTN expression in chickens. We also compared expression patterns and CpG methylation status of the PTN gene in normal and cancerous ovaries from chickens. Our results indicated that PTN is most abundant in the GE of adenocarcinoma of cancerous, but not normal ovaries of hens. Bisulfite sequencing revealed that 30- and 40% of −1311 and −1339 CpG sites are demethylated in ovarian cancer cells, respectively. Collectively, these results indicate that chicken PTN is a novel estrogen-induced gene expressed mainly in the oviductal epithelia implicating PTN regulation of oviduct development and egg formation, and also suggest that PTN is a biomarker for epithelial ovarian carcinoma that could be used for diagnosis and monitoring effects of therapies for the disease

Summer sea surface temperature variability off Vancouver Island from satellite data, 1984-1991

Satellite-sensed Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data over eight summers (1984-1991) were used to analyze the summer SST patterns of variability off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of the spatial variance for 133 nearly cloud-free summer images was performed. The first EOF mode, which resembled the mean of all images, showed a strong cool water band located at the northwest corner of Vancouver Island, a cool tongue extending seaward from the Strait of Juan de Fuca and a warm patch off Barkley Sound. The second mode revealed topographically controlled upwelling -- coolwater over the shelf region with its seaward boundary roughly following the 200-m depth contour, plus a cold eddy located just north of the Juan de Fuca Canyon. The third mode displayed cool water extending southwestward off Brooks Peninsula, while the fourth mode showed a cool water plume extending off Cape Scott at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. These 4 modes accounted for respectively, 33, 12, 10 and 5% of the SST variance. With the first 4 modes accounting for 60% of the total variance, the EOF method is highly effective in condensing the huge amount of satellite data. The temporal amplitude of the EOF modes revealed how the SST features changed as summer progressed. From these images, we also constructed an overall seasonal coolness index, which revealed the summers of 1986 and 1991 to have the coolest coastal water, with both summers immediately preceding an El Nino.Science, Faculty ofEarth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department ofGraduat

Summer Sea-Surface Temperature Variability Off Vancouver Island from Satellite Data

Satellite-sensed advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) sea surface temperature (SST) data over eight summers (1984–1991) were used to analyze the summer SST patterns of variability off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of the spatial variance for 133 nearly cloud-free summer images was performed. The first EOF mode, which resembled the mean of all images, showed a strong cool water band located at the northwest corner of Vancouver Island, a cool tongue extending seaward from the Strait of Juan de Fuca and a warm patch off Barkley Sound. The second mode revealed topographically controlled upwelling: cool water over the shelf region with its seaward boundary roughly following the 200-m depth contour, plus a cold eddy located just north of the Juan de Fuca Canyon. The third mode displayed cool water extending southwestward off Brooks Peninsula, while the fourth mode showed a cool water plume extending off Cape Scott at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. These four modes accounted for 33, 12, 10, and 5% of the SST variance, respectively. The temporal amplitude of these EOF modes revealed how the SST features changed as summer progressed. From these images, we also constructed an overall seasonal coolness index, which revealed the summers of 1986 and 1991 to have the coolest coastal water, with both summers immediately preceding an El Niño. An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 1993 American Geophysical Union.Science, Faculty ofEarth and Ocean Sciences, Department ofReviewedFacult

Adaptive Sampling-Based Information Collection for Wireless Body Area Networks

To collect important health information, WBAN applications typically sense data at a high frequency. However, limited by the quality of wireless link, the uploading of sensed data has an upper frequency. To reduce upload frequency, most of the existing WBAN data collection approaches collect data with a tolerable error. These approaches can guarantee precision of the collected data, but they are not able to ensure that the upload frequency is within the upper frequency. Some traditional sampling based approaches can control upload frequency directly, however, they usually have a high loss of information. Since the core task of WBAN applications is to collect health information, this paper aims to collect optimized information under the limitation of upload frequency. The importance of sensed data is defined according to information theory for the first time. Information-aware adaptive sampling is proposed to collect uniformly distributed data. Then we propose Adaptive Sampling-based Information Collection (ASIC) which consists of two algorithms. An adaptive sampling probability algorithm is proposed to compute sampling probabilities of different sensed values. A multiple uniform sampling algorithm provides uniform samplings for values in different intervals. Experiments based on a real dataset show that the proposed approach has higher performance in terms of data coverage and information quantity. The parameter analysis shows the optimized parameter settings and the discussion shows the underlying reason of high performance in the proposed approach

Exploring the diverse expectations of stakeholders in industrial land redevelopment projects in China: The case of Shanghai

In China, while large-scale industrial land redevelopment has played a significant role in promoting economic growth, it has also triggered a series of unsustainable problems. To date, few studies have explored the expectations of stakeholders in industrial redevelopment projects in China. Gaining an in-depth understanding of the diverse expectations among core stakeholders is an essential step towards realizing social sustainability. This study aims to analyze these diverse expectations in industrial land redevelopment projects. For this purpose, 19 factors were identified and compared across the following core stakeholders: local governments, consulting experts, the general public, and original land users of state-led redevelopment and land user-led redevelopment projects, using questionnaires and interviews conducted in Shanghai, China. The findings show there to be tremendous differences between the expectations of different stakeholder groups in terms of economic, social and environmental aspects. Major differences were also found between the expectations of original land users across different project types. Moreover, the negative externalities, the balance between industrial and residential space, the diverse needs of original land users in different project types, and the barriers to stakeholders' participation, in industrial land redevelopment in China were discussed. The findings of the current paper are conducive to optimizing stakeholder participation in industrial land redevelopment so as to enhance social sustainability.</p

The summer-fall anticyclonic eddy west of Luzon: Structure and evolution in 2012 and interannual variability

The Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) and acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements along 18 degrees N off the western Luzon in the South China Sea (SCS), collected during a cruise from August 12-14,2012, were used to explore the vertical structure of an anticyclonic eddy (AE) during the observational period. Further, the French Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data (AVISO) sea level anomaly (SLA) and corresponding anomalous surface geostrophic velocity were used to study the temporal evolution of the AE. The vertical structure of the AE along 18 degrees N in August 2012 showed a trough located near 117.5 degrees E. The AE extended vertically downward and its distinct feature was identifiable to 200 m depth. Seasonal variations of SIA indicate that the AE lasted for 5 months (June to early November), going through the growth and nearly stationary period from mid-June to late August and then propagating westward along 18 degrees N with varying phase speeds and shapes to the continental slope off the southeastern Hainan Island during late September to November. Furthermore, T-S characteristics suggest that the AE was generated off the western Luzon. Interannual variations of the summer (July-September) SLA presented by Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis, indicates that the local circulation was enhanced by the anomalous anticyclonic eddy along 18 degrees N in the years of 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 during the period from1993 to 2014. (c) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Research on Load Reverse Engineering and Vibration Fatigue Analysis Technology of Rapid Box Wagon

The overall stiffness and modal frequency of the car body of a rapid box car are reduced by the design of the full-side open movable side door structure. The vibration fatigue performance of the welded structure in this car body needs to be verified. The rigid-flexible coupling model of the rapid box wagon was established first, and the model was verified by modal test data. By the application of the virtual iteration method on this model, the displacement excitation loads of this vehicle were acquired. The effectiveness of the load reverse obtaining technology was verified through the comparison between calculated data and the experimental data. Based on the rigid-flexible coupling model and the load obtained by reverse engineering, the fatigue life of the welded structure in the car body was evaluated through the modal structural stress method. The calculated results show that the car body structure obtains obvious modal vibration, which leads to short fatigue life in several weld lines. According to the application requirements of this wagon, the local improvement scheme was proposed, and the effect of the improvement program was evaluated. In this paper, a new fatigue evaluation technology based on the load reverse method of test data was proposed, which provides a theoretical basis for the structural design and program improvement of railway vehicles