Optimization of Flash Extraction Process and Antioxidant Activity of American Ginseng Flower Polysaccharides

Objective: To study the optimal process conditions of flash extraction and antioxidant activity of American ginseng flower polysaccharides (AGFPs). Methods: American ginseng flower (AGF) as the raw material, the effects of extraction voltage, liquid-material ratio, and extraction time on the yield of AGFPs were explored. The flash extraction process of AGFPs was improved by response surface methodology. The scavenging effect on DPPH and hydroxy free radicals and total reduction capacity of AGFPs were determined to assess the antioxidant activity of AGFPs. Results: The optimal extraction conditions were determined as 130 V of extraction voltage, 30:1 mL/g of liquid-material ratio, and 100 s of extraction time, resulting in an AGFPs yield of 11.12%±0.23%, which agreed with the model prediction. The AGFPs exhibited significant scavenging effects on DPPH and hydroxyl radicals, with IC50 values of 1.34 mg/mL and 1.42 mg/mL, respectively, and had a certain reducing power. Conclusion: These results suggested that flash extraction was an efficient and rapid method for obtaining AGFPs from AGF, and that AGFPs had promising antioxidant potential for further applications. This study can provide a theoretical basis for the development and application of AGF

Predictive and prognostic value of aurora kinase A combined with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in medullary thyroid carcinoma

BackgroundAurora kinase A (AURKA) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are both known to play an essential role in tumorigenesis. However, the expression and prognostic value of the AURKA and TILs in medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) have not yet been investigated.Patients and methodsSurgical specimens and clinical data of 137 patients diagnosed with MTC were collected. AURKA expression and TILs infiltration were quantified by immunohistochemistry and hematoxylin-eosin staining. Subsequently, the prognostic value of AURKA expression and TIL infiltration in MTC was evaluated.ResultsAURKA was highly expressed in patients with multifocal tumor, cervical lymph node metastasis, and an advanced TNM stage, indicating a high probability of recurrence. AURKA further exhibited a positive correlation with TILs (R = 0.44, P < 0.001). High expression of AURKA combined with a low numbers of TILs (AURKAhigh/TILslow) was identified as an independent prognostic factor for biochemical recurrence (odds ratio: 4.57, 95% confidence interval: 1.54–14.66, P < 0.01) and recurrence-free survival (hazard ratio: 3.64, 95% confidence interval: 1.52–8.71, P < 0.001). The combination of AURKA and TILs apparently improves the prognostic value for biochemical recurrence (area under the curve: 0.751) and structural recurrence (area under the curve: 0.836) of MTC. Notably, AURKAhigh/TILslow demonstrated a high value for prediction of distant or unresectable locoregional recurrence, with an overall accuracy of 86.9%.ConclusionAURKAhigh is associated with the MTC malignancy. The combination of AURKAhigh/TILslow was identified as novel independent prognostic marker in MTC, predicting incurable disease recurrence with high accuracy

DeepSeek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Model

We present DeepSeek-V2, a strong Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model characterized by economical training and efficient inference. It comprises 236B total parameters, of which 21B are activated for each token, and supports a context length of 128K tokens. DeepSeek-V2 adopts innovative architectures including Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) and DeepSeekMoE. MLA guarantees efficient inference through significantly compressing the Key-Value (KV) cache into a latent vector, while DeepSeekMoE enables training strong models at an economical cost through sparse computation. Compared with DeepSeek 67B, DeepSeek-V2 achieves significantly stronger performance, and meanwhile saves 42.5% of training costs, reduces the KV cache by 93.3%, and boosts the maximum generation throughput to 5.76 times. We pretrain DeepSeek-V2 on a high-quality and multi-source corpus consisting of 8.1T tokens, and further perform Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) to fully unlock its potential. Evaluation results show that, even with only 21B activated parameters, DeepSeek-V2 and its chat versions still achieve top-tier performance among open-source models

Facile synthesis of iron-based oxide from natural ilmenite with morphology controlled adsorption performance for Congo red

Three different morphologies of FeTiOx materials (microcubes, etched-microcubes and microspheres) were prepared by a facile method using acid leachate of ilmenite as the precursor. The three FeTiOx materials exhibited different adsorption performance for Congo red (CR). Among them, the FeTiOx microspheres showed the highest adsorption capacity (723.8 mg/g) for CR, followed by the FeTiOx etched-microcubes (617.8 mg/g) and the FeTiOx microcubes (296.5 mg/g). Characterization results showed that the three FeTiOx materials had distinctive phase composition, pore structure and surface functional group, which ultimately lead to their difference in adsorption performance. The adsorption mechanism of the three FeTiOx materials mainly includes ion exchange, electrostatic adsorption and mesopore filling, but the contribution of each type is different

Mechanism of Magnetic Permeability Perturbation in Magnetizing-Based Eddy Current Nondestructive Testing

DC magnetization is generally considered to suppress the usual local magnetic permeability variation and increase the penetration depth for magnetizing-based eddy current testing (MB-ECT) of ferromagnetic materials. In fact, such simple explanations lead to rough nondestructive evaluation and cause new neglected non-uniform magnetic characteristics. Hence, the “perturbation” of the internal magnetic field variation is analyzed using a magnetic dipole model and the mechanism of magnetic permeability perturbation in MB-ECT is revealed. The theoretical analysis and simulations show that a significant permeability perturbation always appears around a defect and presents opposite features with strong and weak magnetization. Furthermore, experimental results indicate that the hidden signal component arising from the local permeability perturbation is critical for both far-side surface and near-side surface defects in the MB-ECT method

Population Genetics and Evolution Analysis Reveal Diversity and Origin of Ammopiptanthus in China

Abstract Background Elucidating and revealing the population genetic structure, genetic diversity and recombination is essential for understanding the evolution and adaptation of species. Ammopiptanthus, which is an endangered survivor from the Tethys in the Tertiary Period, is the only evergreen broadleaf shrub grown in Northwest of China. However, little is known about its genetic diversity and underlying adaptation mechanisms. Results Here, 111 Ammopiptanthus individuals collected from fifteen natural populations in estern China were analyzed by means of the specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq). Based on the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertions and deletions (InDels) detected by SLAF-seq, genetic diversity and markers associated with climate and geographical distribution variables were identified. The results of genetic diversity and genetic differentiation revealed that all fifteen populations showed medium genetic diversity, with PIC values ranging from 0.1648 to 0.3081. AMOVA and Fst indicated that a low genetic differentiation existed among populations. Phylogenetic analysis showed that NX-BG and NMG-DQH of fifteen populations have the highest homology,while the genetic structure analysis revealed that these Ammopiptanthus germplasm accessions were structured primarily along the basis of their geographic collection, and that an extensive admixture occurred in each group. In addition, the genome-wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) and principal component analysis showed that Ammopiptanthus nanus had a more diverse genomic background, and all genetic populations were clearly distinguished, although different degrees of introgression were detected in these groups. Conclusion Our study could provide guidance to the future design of association studies and the systematic utilization and protection of the genetic variation characterizing the Ammopiptanthus.</jats:p

Effect of Aurora Kinase A Expression on Biochemical Cure in Patients after Medullary Thyroid Cancer Resection

Background The relationship between aurora kinase A (Aurora A) expression level in the medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) tissue and the clinicopathological characteristics and biochemical cure of patients remains unclear. Objective To analyze the relationship between Aurora A expression level in medullary thyroid tissue and the clinicopathological characteristics of patients, to further analyze the risk factors for biochemical cure and clarify the correlation between Aurora A expression and biochemical cure. Methods A total of 90 patients with MTC who were hospitalized with MTC resection in the Department of Head and Neck Oncology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital from February 2011 to July 2019 were enrolled, the clinical data of the patients were collected, and Aurora A expression level in the tissues was detected by immunohistochemical detection, and the influencing factors of biochemical cure of MTC patients were explored by multivariate Logistic regression model. Results 62 patients with high Aurora A expression level and 28 patients with low Aurora A expression were included, 40 patients achieved biochemical cure and 18 patients experienced recurrence. There were significant differences in gender, maximum tumor length, T stage, N stage, AJCC8th clinical stage, biochemical cure, and recurrence between patients with high Aurora A expression level and low Aurora A expression level (P&lt;0.05). There were significant differences in gender, number of lesions, T stage, N stage, AJCC8th clinical stage, and Aurora A expression level between biochemically cured patients and those who were not biochemically cured (P&lt;0.05). Multiple lesions〔OR=3.18, 95%CI (1.01, 9.97), P=0.047〕, T staging as T3/T4〔OR=3.69, 95%CI (1.05, 12.93), P=0.042〕, and high Aurora A expression level〔OR=3.22, 95%CI (1.07, 9.74), P=0.038〕were the influencing factors of biochemical cure in patients with MTC. Conclusion High Aurora A expression level is associated with tumor invasion of MTC, and the expression level of Aurora A can influence the biochemical cure in patients with MTC

Mechanism of Magnetic Permeability Perturbation in Magnetizing-Based Eddy Current Nondestructive Testing

DC magnetization is generally considered to suppress the usual local magnetic permeability variation and increase the penetration depth for magnetizing-based eddy current testing (MB-ECT) of ferromagnetic materials. In fact, such simple explanations lead to rough nondestructive evaluation and cause new neglected non-uniform magnetic characteristics. Hence, the “perturbation” of the internal magnetic field variation is analyzed using a magnetic dipole model and the mechanism of magnetic permeability perturbation in MB-ECT is revealed. The theoretical analysis and simulations show that a significant permeability perturbation always appears around a defect and presents opposite features with strong and weak magnetization. Furthermore, experimental results indicate that the hidden signal component arising from the local permeability perturbation is critical for both far-side surface and near-side surface defects in the MB-ECT method.</jats:p