Joint Association of Dietary Pattern and Physical Activity Level with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors among Chinese Men: A Cross-Sectional Study

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the joint associations of physical activity level (PAL) and dietary patterns in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among Chinese men. The study population consisted of 13 511 Chinese males aged 18–59 years from the 2002 China National Nutrition and Health Survey. Based on dietary data collected by a food frequency questionnaire, four dietary patterns were identified and labeled as “Green Water” (high consumption of rice, vegetables, seafood, pork, and poultry), “Yellow Earth” (high consumption of wheat flour products and starchy tubers), “New Affluent” (high consumption of animal sourced foods and soybean products), and “Western Adopter” (high consumption of animal sourced foods, cakes, and soft drinks). From the information collected by a 1-year physical activity questionnaire, PAL was calculated and classified into 4 categories: sedentary, low active, active, and very active. As compared with their counterparts from the New Affluent pattern, participants who followed the Green Water pattern had a lower likelihood of abdominal obesity (AO; 50.2%), hypertension (HT; 37.9%), hyperglycemia (HG; 41.5%), elevated triglyceride (ETG; 14.5%), low HDL (LHDL; 39.8%), and metabolic syndrome (MS; 51.9%). When compared to sedentary participants, the odds ratio of participants with very active PAL was 0.62 for AO, 0.85 for HT, 0.71 for HG, 0.76 for ETG, 0.74 for LHDL, and 0.58 for MS. Individuals who followed both very active PAL and the Green Water pattern had a lower likelihood of CVD risk factors (AO: 65.8%, HT: 39.1%, HG: 57.4%, ETG: 35.4%, LHDL: 56.1%, and MS: 75.0%), compared to their counterparts who followed both sedentary PAL and the New Affluent pattern. In addition, adherence to both healthy dietary pattern and very active PAL presented a remarkable potential for CVD risk factor prevention

The Systemic Evaluation and Clinical Significance of Immunological Function for Advanced Lung Cancer Patients

Background and objective The actual evaluation of immunological function is significant for studing the tumor development and devising a treatment in time. The aim of this study is to evaluate the immunological function of advanced lung cancer patients systematically, and to discuss the clinical significance. Methods The nucleated cell amounts of advanced lung cancer patients and the healthy individuals were counted. The immune cell subsets and the levels of IL-4, INF-γ, perforin and granzyme in CD8+T cells by the flow cytometry were measured. The proliferation activity and the inhibition ratio of immune cells to several tumor cell lines were evaluated by MTT assay. Results The absolute amounts and subsets of T, B, NK cells of advanced lung cancer patients were lower than the healthy individuals (P < 0.05); However, the proportion of regulatory T cells of advanced lung cancer patients (4.00±1.84)% was lower than the healthy individuals (1.27±0.78)% (P < 0.05). The positive rates of IFN-γ perforin, granzyme in CD8+T cells decreased while them in IL-4 did not in the advanced lung cancer patients compared to the healthy control group (P < 0.05). The proliferation activity of immune cells, the positive rate of PPD masculine and the inhibition ratio to tumor cells in the advanced lung cancer patients was lower than the healthy subsets obviously (P < 0.05). Conclusion There was a significant immune depression in the advanced lung cancer patients compared to the healthy individuals

E6 Protein Expressed by High-Risk HPV Activates Super-Enhancers of the EGFR and c-MET Oncogenes by Destabilizing the Histone

The high-risk (HR) human papillomaviruses (HPV) are causative agents of anogenital tract dysplasia and cancers and a fraction of head and neck cancers. The HR HPV E6 oncoprotein possesses canonical oncogenic functions, such as p53 degradation and telomerase activation. It is also capable of stimulating expression of several oncogenes, but the molecular mechanism underlying these events is poorly understood. Here, we provide evidence that HPV16 E6 physically interacts with histone H3K4 demethylase KDM5C, resulting in its degradation in an E3 ligase E6AP- and proteasome-dependent manner. Moreover, we found that HPV16-positive cancer cell lines exhibited lower KDM5C protein levels than HPV-negative cancer cell lines. Restoration of KDM5C significantly suppressed the tumorigenicity of CaSki cells, an HPV16-positive cervical cancer cell line. Whole genome ChIP-seq and RNA-seq results revealed that CaSki cells contained super-enhancers in the proto-oncogenes EGFR and c-MET. Ectopic KDM5C dampened these super-enhancers and reduced the expression of proto-oncogenes. This effect was likely mediated by modulating H3K4me3/H3K4me1 dynamics and decreasing bidirectional enhancer RNA transcription. Depletion of KDM5C or HPV16 E6 expression activated these two super-enhancers. These results illuminate a pivotal relationship between the oncogenic E6 proteins expressed by HR HPV isotypes and epigenetic activation of super-enhancers in the genome that drive expression of key oncogenes like EGFR and c-MET. Significance: This study suggests a novel explanation for why infections with certain HPV isotypes are associated with elevated cancer risk by identifying an epigenetic mechanism through which E6 proteins expressed by those isotypes can drive expression of key oncogenes.</p

A Domain Decomposition Method for the Steady-State Navier-Stokes-Darcy Model with Beavers-Joseph Interface Condition

This paper proposes and analyzes a Robin-type multiphysics domain decomposition method (DDM) for the steady-state Navier-Stokes-Darcy model with three interface conditions. In addition to the two regular interface conditions for the mass conservation and the force balance, the Beavers-Joseph condition is used as the interface condition in the tangential direction. The major mathematical difficulty in adopting the Beavers-Joseph condition is that it creates an indefinite leading order contribution to the total energy budget of the system [Y. Cao et al., Comm. Math. Sci., 8 (2010), pp. 1-25; Y. Cao et al., SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 47 (2010), pp. 4239-4256]. In this paper, the well-posedness of the Navier-Stokes-Darcy model with Beavers-Joseph condition is analyzed by using a branch of nonsingular solutions. By following the idea in [Y. Cao et al., Numer. Math., 117 (2011), pp. 601-629], the three physical interface conditions are utilized together to construct the Robin-type boundary conditions on the interface and decouple the two physics which are described by Navier-Stokes and Darcy equations, respectively. Then the corresponding multiphysics DDM is proposed and analyzed. Three numerical experiments using finite elements are presented to illustrate the features of the proposed method and verify the results of the theoretical analysis

Recent Advances of Electrocatalysts and Electrodes for Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cells:from Nano to Meter Scale Challenges

Direct formic acid fuel cells are promising energy devices with advantages of low working temperature and high safety in fuel storage and transport. They have been expected to be a future power source for portable electronic devices. The technology has been developed rapidly to overcome the high cost and low power performance that hinder its practical application, which mainly originated from the slow reaction kinetics of the formic acid oxidation and complex mass transfer within the fuel cell electrodes. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the progress around this technology, in particular for addressing multiscale challenges from catalytic mechanism understanding at the atomic scale, to catalyst design at the nanoscale, electrode structure at the micro scale and design at the millimeter scale, and finally to device fabrication at the meter scale. The gap between the highly active electrocatalysts and the poor electrode performance in practical devices is highlighted. Finally, perspectives and opportunities are proposed to potentially bridge this gap for further development of this technology

Preparation and properties of compound Arnebiae radix microemulsion gel

Background: Compound Arnebiae radix oil has been clinically applied to treat burns and scalds for a long time. However, it is unstable and inconvenient to use. The aim of this study was to prepare a compound Arnebiae radix microemulsion gel for transdermal delivery system and evaluate its characteristics.Materials and Methods: Based on the solubility of Shikonin, the active component of Arnebiae radix and the results of phase studies, adequate ratio of each component in microemulsion was determined. The optimized microemulsion gel was prepared using Carbomer 940. The gels were characterized in terms of appearance, preliminary stability test and the content of Shikonin in the compound Arnebiae radix microemulsion gel with HPLC analysis.Results: The optimized conditions for preparing microemulsion were Tween-80, glycerin, isopropyl myristate (IPM) with the ratio of 6:3:2. The optimal microemulsion gel was obtained with Carbomer 940 (1.0%).Conclusion: The prepared compound Arnebiae radix microemulsion gel showed good stability over time. It is more convenience in application than the previous used formulations.Keywords: Compound Arnebiae radix oil, microemulsion gel, pseudo-ternary phase diagram, characterizatio

Synthesis of a carbon nanotube and carbon sphere coexisting catalyst for enhanced oxygen reduction reaction and its applications

Fe and N co-doped carbon nanocomposites exhibit great potential as low-cost and highly active non-precious metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). In this study, a method is demonstrated for synthesizing polymer nanospheres, which are subsequently carbonized and functionalized by anchoring Fe[sbnd]N complexes onto the carbon matrix to fabricate a composite catalyst. Characterization reveals that the as-prepared material consists of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) intricately interwoven with carbon nanospheres (CNSs) (denoted as Fe–N–CNT/CNS). Moreover, it is demonstrated that trace amounts of Fe nanoparticles can serve as active sites to significantly enhance the electrocatalytic activity. The composite catalyst with the unique structure achieves a very high specific surface area of 1790 m2/g, providing more active sites to enhance the ORR activity for application in both acidic and alkaline environment. The half-wave potential of the composite catalyst reaches 0.79 V and 0.925 V under the acidic and alkaline conditions, respectively.</p

Performance of Tuned Mass Dampers for Vibration Reduction in a TLP Floating Wind Turbine

Tension leg platform (TLP) floating wind turbines (FWTs) experience high-amplitude, dynamic structural vibrations under complex loading conditions. Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) are a simple yet effective means to reduce such loadings. This work focuses on load reduction by TMDs for the WindStar TLP system, and optimizes the TMDs' parameters in a parametric study. Dynamic analysis then assesses FWTs with and without a TMD in a selected set of load cases. Results show that optimized TMD can reduce nacelle acceleration by up to 20%, especially in extreme conditions.submittedVersio