Subtype-Based Analysis of Cell-in-Cell Structures in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Cell-in-cell (CIC) structures are defined as the special structures with one or more cells enclosed inside another one. Increasing data indicated that CIC structures were functional surrogates of complicated cell behaviors and prognosis predictor in heterogeneous cancers. However, the CIC structure profiling and its prognostic value have not been reported in human esophageal squamous cell Carcinoma (ESCC). We conducted the analysis of subtyped CIC-based profiling in ESCC using “epithelium-macrophage-leukocyte” (EML) multiplex staining and examined the prognostic value of CIC structure profiling through Kaplan-Meier plotting and Cox regression model. Totally, five CIC structure subtypes were identified in ESCC tissue and the majority of them was homotypic CIC (hoCIC) with tumor cells inside tumor cells (TiT). By univariate and multivariate analyses, TiT was shown to be an independent prognostic factor for resectable ESCC, and patients with higher density of TiT tended to have longer post-operational survival time. Furthermore, in subpopulation analysis stratified by TNM stage, high TiT density was associated with longer overall survival (OS) in patients of TNM stages III and IV as compared with patients with low TiT density (mean OS: 51 vs 15 months, P = 0.04) and T3 stage (mean OS: 57 vs 17 months, P=0.024). Together, we reported the first CIC structure profiling in ESCC and explored the prognostic value of subtyped CIC structures, which supported the notion that functional pathology with CIC structure profiling is an emerging prognostic factor for human cancers, such as ESCC

Social weather: A review of crowdsourcing‐assisted meteorological knowledge services through social cyberspace

Abstract Crowdsourcing has significantly motivated the development of meteorological services. Starting from the beginning of 2010s and highly motivating after 2014, crowdsourcing‐driven meteorological services have evolved from a single collection and observation of data to the systematic acquisition, analysis and application of these data. In this review, by focusing on papers and databases that have combined crowdsourcing methods to promote or implement meteorological knowledge services, we analysed the relevant literature in three dimensions: data collection, information analysis and meteorological knowledge applications. First, we selected the potential data sources for crowdsourcing and discussed the characteristics of the collected data in four dimensions: consciousness, objectiveness, mobility and multidisciplinary. Second, based on the purpose of these studies and the extent of utilizing data as well as knowledge, we categorize the crowdsourcing‐based meteorological analysis into three levels: relationship discovery, knowledge generalization and systemized service. Third, according to the application scenario, we discussed the applications that have already been put into use, and we suggest current challenges and future research directions. These previous studies show that the use of crowdsourcing in social space can expand the coverage as well as enhance the performance of meteorological service. It was also evident that current researches are contributing towards a systemic and intelligent knowledge service to establish a better bridge among academic, industrial and individual community

Optimized Nitrogen Application Increases Soil Water Extraction by Changing in-Season Maize Root Morphology and Distribution in Rainfed Farmland

The proper promotion of a deep root system is important for maize cultivation to improve water use efficiency in the arid and semi-arid Loess Plateau. Here, a field experiment was conducted to assess the effect of combined controlled release urea and normal urea on root growth and water extraction of maize in dryland fields. Maize in the combined controlled release urea and normal urea treatment had greater root systems compared to those in the normal urea treatment and no N application treatment. Compared to the urea treatment, combined controlled release urea and normal urea advanced the root length density and root weight density in the 0–10 cm soil layer at R1 stage by 30.99% and 45.03% in 2016 and by 20.54% and 19.13% in 2017. The root length density also increased at the dent stage (R5) by 52.05% and 47.75% in 2016 and 2017, and root weight density increased by 19.58% in 2016. Combined controlled release urea and normal urea promoted production of fine roots and root distribution, as well as decreased soil water storage (SWS) in the deep soil layer at the R5 stage. The grain yield was positively correlated with root length density and root weight density in the topsoil layer at the silking stage (R1) and in the whole soil profile at the R5 stage, suggesting that better root system management is helpful for increasing crop grain yield. Therefore, this work demonstrates that combined use of controlled release urea and normal urea to higher crop yields might attribute to increasing water extraction by optimizing in-season maize root morphology and distribution in the rainfed farmland of the Loess Plateau

Modeling and Mitigating LED Nonlinearity using Nonlinear ARX model with Wavelet Networks

In this paper, a nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX) model with a wavelet network is applied to model and compensate the nonlinearity of the LED in Visible Light Communications (VLC). The NARX model shows the ability to accurately describe the response of the LED. PAM-4 signal with a symbol rate of 5 Msym/s is used to demonstrate the performance of the NARX adaptive compensator. The eyediagrams show that this compensator can substantially improve the distorted signal. The complexity of the NARX adaptive compensator is relatively low, with only 15 units. This also facilitates the adaptive parameters updating process due to the small number of parameters in the NARX adaptive compensator

LED Nonlinearity Post-compensator with Legendre polynomials in Visible Light Communications

The nonlinear effect of Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) is one of the important factors that hamper the bit rate of Visible Light Communications (VLC). To mitigate the nonlinearity, we propose a Legendre-polynomials-based post-compensator derived from a post-distorter deduced by a physical-based nonlinear LED model. We represent the formulation of the post-distorter with Legendre series expansion to ease the computation burden for training coefficients. Since only feed-forward structure is embodied in the series representation, the coefficients of the proposed compensator are easy to access with adaptive algorithms of low complexity. To validate the effectiveness of our proposed model, we adopt Recursive Least Square (RLS) and Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithms to train the coefficients of our proposed compensator with the same iteration steps. In particular, RLS achieves lower Mean square Errors (MSEs) with faster convergence speed. Due to the relatively low complexity of these nonlinear algorithms, our proposed compensator is more actual for implementation on VLC hardware platforms like Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)

Achievable Rate of MIMO-OFDM VLC over Low-Pass Channels

Visible light communication (VLC) is a short-range optical wireless communication (OWC) utilizing white light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, so that the VLC systems can provide both illumination and communication. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is an attractive technology to efficiently improve the achievable rate of VLC with multiple LED luminaries which experience a low-pass effect in practical channels. In this paper, we investigate the performance of MIMO-VLC over three general low-pass channels, including exponential, first-order and Gaussian low-pass channels. Over frequency domain, two power loading strategies for multi-subcarrier orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are considered, namely uniform power loading and water-filling power loading. Expressions on the achievable rate to the corresponding link power budget and bandwidth are derived. Low-pass MIMO-OFDM VLC with a matrix channel decomposition has not extensively been treated theoretically in literature, to the best of our knowledge

Cold-Water Corals in Gas Hydrate Drilling Cores from the South China Sea: Occurrences, Geochemical Characteristics and Their Relationship to Methane Seepages

Cold-water corals (CWCs) are frequently found at cold seep areas. However, the relationship between fluid seepage and CWC development is not clear. Here, for the first time, we report the occurrences, species identification, mineralogy, carbon and oxygen isotopes, as well as elemental compositions of fossil CWC skeletons from gas-hydrate-bearing sediment in drilling cores from the South China Sea (SCS). Three sites (GMGS-08, GMGS-09B, and GMGS-16) were investigated but CWCs were only found at one site (GMGS-09B). Interestingly, the CWCs were found in three horizons and they were all embedded with authigenic carbonates. Three genera of fossil CWCs (Crispatotrochus sp., Solenosmilia sp. and Enallopsammia sp.) were identified. The CWC fragments are predominantly aragonite. The CWCs exhibit δ13C values between −8.4‰ and −0.6‰ that are significantly higher than δ13C values of the associated seep carbonates (δ13C values with an average of −55.6‰, n = 19), which indicates a carbon source other than methane for the CWCs. It appears that authigenic carbonates provide a substratum for coral colonization. Bathymetric high points, appropriate water temperature and stronger bottom-water currents at site GMGS-09B might be crucial to keep conditions favorable for the growth of CWCs in the studied area. In addition, high trace-element concentrations of Cr, Ni, Pb, U, Ba, Th, and Sr suggest that the CWCs are influenced by strong fluid seepage that can reach the water-sediment interface, and associated microbial activity. Hence, it also becomes evident that CWCs in hydrocarbon-rich seepage areas not only provide a critical constraint on the impact of fluid emission on the bottom water chemistry, but also are likely to be very precise recorders of the end time of cold seep activity

Dalpiciclib partially abrogates ER signaling activation induced by pyrotinib in HER2+HR+ breast cancer

Recent evidences from clinical trials (NCT04486911) revealed that the combination of pyrotinib, letrozole, and dalpiciclib exerted optimistic therapeutic effect in treating HER2+HR+ breast cancer; however, the underlying molecular mechanism remained elusive. Through the drug sensitivity test, the drug combination efficacy of pyrotinib, tamoxifen, and dalpiciclib to BT474 cells was tested. The underlying molecular mechanisms were investigated using immunofluorescence, Western blot analysis, immunohistochemical staining, and cell cycle analysis. Potential risk factor that may indicate the responsiveness to drug treatment in HER2+/HR+ breast cancer was identified using RNA-sequence and evaluated using immunohistochemical staining and in vivo drug susceptibility test. We found that pyrotinib combined with dalpiciclib exerted better cytotoxic efficacy than pyrotinib combined with tamoxifen in BT474 cells. Degradation of HER2 could enhance ER nuclear transportation, activating ER signaling pathway in BT474 cells, whereas dalpiciclib could partially abrogate this process. This may be the underlying mechanism by which combination of pyrotinib, tamoxifen, and dalpiciclib exerted best cytotoxic effect. Furthermore, CALML5 was revealed to be a risk factor in the treatment of HER2+/HR+ breast cancer and the usage of dalpiciclib might overcome the drug resistance to pyrotinib + tamoxifen due to CALML5 expression. Our study provided evidence that the usage of dalpiciclib in the treatment of HER2+/HR+ breast cancer could partially abrogate the estrogen signaling pathway activation caused by anti-HER2 therapy and revealed that CALML5 could serve as a risk factor in the treatment of HER2+/HR+ breast cancer

Visible-extended mid-infrared wide spectrum detector based on InAs/GaSb type-Ⅱ superlattices (T2SL)

The authors report an innovative design of wide spectrum detector that can detect visible and mid-infrared spectrum, from 0.4 to 5 μm, simultaneously. The detector is designed with microstructure of various types of photon traps fabricated on mid-infrared InAs/GaSb type-II superlattice materials. Quantum efficiency has been significantly improved due to the action of photon traps which can decrease the reflectivity of the surface of InAs/GaSb type-Ⅱ superlattice down to less than 5%. Under the condition of 77 K and 200 mV bias voltage, the responsivity of the detector is about 0.025–0.45 A/W in the visible wavelength regime of 400–790 nm, more than 0.3 A/W in spectrum of 800–2000 nm, respectively. Through the optimized photon trap structure, the responsivity of detector is to 1.25 A/W and predominantly improve the quantum efficiency of the detector up to 52.5% at 3 μm.</p