Transformation of urban communities from within

The state has owned most historical buildings since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Residents within are entitled to the right to use the house in the form of a lease. After entering a free trade housing market in 1988, residents in historic neighbourhoods of Shanghai have been suffering uncertainty of their identities. Residents’ role, responsibilities and obligations within urban transformation, has always been in suspense and strongly affected by multiple stakeholders’ decisions. Based on an analysis of the relationship between the native residents and the historic Lilong communities they are living in, this paper examines stakeholders’ heritage approaches in three typical transforming project, to explore residents’ mobility and behaviour within varied urban transformation and socio-economic development. Through a literature review, fieldwork and a pilot study in Xintiandi, Tianzifang and Chunyangli districts, urban transformation in historic urban communities from within is found literally rare in China. This paper argues that residents could not clarify their role by living in urban heritage, neither obtaining house-ownership to define their position nor being treated as one component of urban heritage. Government in China has been indeed the character who mediates between all stakeholders and bears the most burden

Why Factory1: The Spatial Significance of Architectural Education Buildings

The educational space of the Architecture faculty is used to cultivate architects. At the same time, it becomes the carrier of architectural ideas and teaching methods. The type of architecture and its spatial organization reflect the architectural education philosophy and attitude. Back in history, as early as the Renaissance, there had study places for architects emerged. After the industrial revolution and the modernist process, the types of architectural education sites are more diverse, and their main features are the spatial form of hybrid and box-in-box. This article preliminarily analyzes the evolution of the outline of architectural education building and interprets the spatial ideas in each period. The study focuses on the famous Dutch architectural school–BKCity of the Delft University of Technology, analyzing the teaching space logic of its distinctive Why Factory and exploring how the related space could stimulate the vitality of architectural education. By the analogy of some architectural schools, it also tries to compare the differences and characteristics of Chinese and Western architectural academies, finding out the spatial significance in architecture discipline, education method as well as sustainable application

Computational Analysis of Biomolecular Data for Medical Applications from Bulk to Single-cell

High-throughput technologies have continuously driven the generation of different biomolecular data, including the genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and other omics data in the last two decades. The developments and advances have revolutionized medical research. In this dissertation, a collection of computational analyses and tools, based on different types of biomolecular data with particular applications on human diseases are presented including 1) a cascade ensemble model based on the Dirichlet process mixture model for reconstructing tumor subclonality from tumor DNA sequencing data; 2) a meta-analysis of gene expression and DNA methylation data from prefrontal cortex samples of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders indicating a stress-related epigenetic mechanism; 3) 2DImpute, an imputation algorithm that is designed to alleviate the sparsity problem in single-cell RNA-sequencing data; and 4) a pan-cancer transformation from adipose-derived stromal cells to metastasis-associated fibroblasts revealed by single cell analysis

Long-term postoperative quality of life in childhood survivors with cerebellar mutism syndrome

BackgroundTo investigate the long-term quality of life (QoL) of children with cerebellar mutism syndrome (CMS) and explore the risk factors for a low QoL.ProcedureThis cross-sectional study investigated children who underwent posterior fossa surgery using an online Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory questionnaire. CMS and non-CMS patients were included to identify QoL predictors.ResultsSixty-nine patients were included (male, 62.3%), 22 of whom had CMS. The mean follow-up time was 45.2 months. Children with CMS had a significantly lower mean QoL score (65.3 vs. 83.7, p < 0.001) and subdomain mean scores (physical; 57.8 vs. 85.3, p < 0.001; social: 69.5 vs. 85.1, p = 0.001; academic: p = 0.001) than those without CMS, except for the emotional domain (78.0 vs. 83.7, p = 0.062). Multivariable analysis revealed that CMS (coefficient = −14.748.61, p = 0.043), chemotherapy (coefficient = −7.629.82, p = 0.013), ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt placement (coefficient = −10.14, p = 0.024), and older age at surgery (coefficient = −1.1830, p = 0.007) were independent predictors of low total QoL scores. Physical scores were independently associated with CMS (coefficient = −27.4815.31, p = 0.005), VP shunt placement (coefficient = −12.86, p = 0.025), and radiotherapy (coefficient = −13.62, p = 0.007). Emotional score was negatively associated with age at surgery (coefficient = −1.92, p = 0.0337) and chemotherapy (coefficient = −9.11, p = 0.003). Social scores were negatively associated with male sex (coefficient = −13.68, p = 0.001) and VP shunt placement (coefficient = −1.36, p = 0.005), whereas academic scores were negatively correlated with chemotherapy (coefficient = −17.45, p < 0.001) and age at surgery (coefficient = −1.92, p = 0.002). Extent of resection (coefficient = 13.16, p = 0.021) was a good predictor of higher academic scores.ConclusionCMS results in long-term neurological and neuropsychological deficits, negatively affecting QoL, and warranting early rehabilitation

CD8(+) T Cells Involved in Metabolic Inflammation in Visceral Adipose Tissue and Liver of Transgenic Pigs

Anti-inflammatory therapies have the potential to become an effective treatment for obesity-related diseases. However, the huge gap of immune system between human and rodent leads to limitations of drug discovery. This work aims at constructing a transgenic pig model with higher risk of metabolic diseases and outlining the immune responses at the early stage of metaflammation by transcriptomic strategy. We used CRISPR/Cas9 techniques to targeted knock-in three humanized disease risk genes, GIPR(dn) , hIAPP and PNPLA3(I148M) . Transgenic effect increased the risk of metabolic disorders. Triple-transgenic pigs with short-term diet intervention showed early symptoms of type 2 diabetes, including glucose intolerance, pancreatic lipid infiltration, islet hypertrophy, hepatic lobular inflammation and adipose tissue inflammation. Molecular pathways related to CD8(+) T cell function were significantly activated in the liver and visceral adipose samples from triple-transgenic pigs, including antigen processing and presentation, T-cell receptor signaling, co-stimulation, cytotoxicity, and cytokine and chemokine secretion. The similar pro-inflammatory signaling in liver and visceral adipose tissue indicated that there might be a potential immune crosstalk between the two tissues. Moreover, genes that functionally related to liver antioxidant activity, mitochondrial function and extracellular matrix showed distinct expression between the two groups, indicating metabolic stress in transgenic pigs' liver samples. We confirmed that triple-transgenic pigs had high coincidence with human metabolic diseases, especially in the scope of inflammatory signaling at early stage metaflammation. Taken together, this study provides a valuable large animal model for the clinical study of metaflammation and metabolic diseases.Peer reviewe

Epidemiological characteristics, clinical presentations, and prognoses of pediatric brain tumors: Experiences of national center for children’s health

BackgroundWe aimed to describe the epidemiological characteristics, clinical presentations, and prognoses in a national health center for children.MethodsFrom January 2015 to December 2020, 484 patients aged 0-16 years, who were diagnosed with brain tumors and received neurosurgery treatment, were enrolled in the study. Pathology was based on the World Health Organization 2021 nervous system tumor classification, and tumor behaviors were classified according to the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, third edition.ResultsAmong the 484 patients with brain tumors, the median age at diagnosis was 4.62 [2.19, 8.17] years (benign tumors 4.07 [1.64, 7.13] vs. malignant tumors 5.36 [2.78, 8.84], p=0.008). The overall male-to-female ratio was 1.33:1(benign 1.09:1 vs. malignant 1.62:1, p=0.029). Nausea, vomiting, and headache were the most frequent initial symptoms. The three most frequent tumor types were embryonal tumors (ET, 22.8%), circumscribed astrocytic gliomas (20.0%), and pediatric-type diffuse gliomas (11.0%). The most common tumor locations were the cerebellum and fourth ventricle (38.67%), the sellar region (22.9%) and ventricles (10.6%). Males took up a higher proportion than females in choroid plexus tumors (63.6%), ET (61.1%), ependymal tumors (68.6%), and germ cell tumors (GCTs, 78.1%). Patients were followed for 1 to 82 months. The overall 5-year survival rate was 77.5%, with survival rates of 91.0% for benign tumors and 64.6% for malignant tumors.ConclusionBrain tumors presented particularly sex-, age-, and regional-dependent epidemiological characteristics. Our results were consistent with previous reports and might reflect the real epidemiological status in China

Meta-analysis of expression and methylation signatures indicates a stress-related epigenetic mechanism in multiple neuropsychiatric disorders

Abstract Similar environmental risk factors have been implicated in different neuropsychiatric disorders (including major psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases), indicating the existence of common epigenetic mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis shared by different illnesses. To investigate such commonality, we applied an unsupervised computational approach identifying several consensus co-expression and co-methylation signatures from a data cohort of postmortem prefrontal cortex (PFC) samples from individuals with six different neuropsychiatric disorders—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s—as well as healthy controls. Among our results, we identified a pair of strongly interrelated co-expression and co-methylation (E–M) signatures showing consistent and significant disease association in multiple types of disorders. This E–M signature was enriched for interneuron markers, and we further demonstrated that it is unlikely for this enrichment to be due to varying subpopulation abundance of normal interneurons across samples. Moreover, gene set enrichment analysis revealed overrepresentation of stress-related biological processes in this E–M signature. Our integrative analysis of expression and methylation profiles, therefore, suggests a stress-related epigenetic mechanism in the brain, which could be associated with the pathogenesis of multiple neuropsychiatric diseases

Salicylic Acid Enhances Cadmium Tolerance and Reduces Its Shoot Accumulation in <i>Fagopyrum tataricum</i> Seedlings by Promoting Root Cadmium Retention and Mitigating Oxidative Stress

Soil cadmium (Cd) contamination seriously reduces the production and product quality of Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum), and strategies are urgently needed to mitigate these adverse influences. Herein, we investigated the effect of salicylic acid (SA) on Tartary buckwheat seedlings grown in Cd-contaminated soil in terms of Cd tolerance and accumulation. The results showed that 75–100 µmol L−1 SA treatment enhanced the Cd tolerance of Tartary buckwheat, as reflected by the significant increase in plant height and root and shoot biomass, as well as largely mitigated oxidative stress. Moreover, 100 µmol L−1 SA considerably reduced the stem and leaf Cd concentration by 60% and 47%, respectively, which is a consequence of increased root biomass and root Cd retention with promoted Cd partitioning into cell wall and immobile chemical forms. Transcriptome analysis also revealed the upregulation of the genes responsible for cell wall biosynthesis and antioxidative activities in roots, especially secondary cell wall synthesis. The present study determines that 100 µmol L−1 is the best SA concentration for reducing Cd accumulation and toxicity in Tartary buckwheat and indicates the important role of root in Cd stress in this species

Cardioprotective effects of Schisantherin A against isoproterenol-induced acute myocardial infarction through amelioration of oxidative stress and inflammation via modulation of PI3K-AKT/Nrf2/ARE and TLR4/MAPK/NF-κB pathways in rats

Abstract Background and aims The scientific community is concerned about cardiovascular disease mortality and morbidity, especially myocardial infarction (MI). Schisantherin A (SCA), a dibenzocyclooctadiene lignan monomer found in S. chinensis fruits has cardiovascular advantages such as increasing NO production in isolated rat thoracic aorta and reducing heart damage caused by ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) through decreasing apoptosis. The present study was undertaken to explore the potential effects of SCA on ISO-induced myocardial infarction in rats. Methods Rats were randomly allocated to four groups: control; ISO-treated, and two additional groups of ISO + SCA (5 or 10 mg/kg body weight). All SCA-treated groups were administered with SCA for 20 days and all ISO groups were challenged with ISO on days 19 and 20. Results SCA significantly attenuated ISO-induced rise in heart/body weight ratio, myocardial infarct size, and cardiac functional biomarkers (CK-MB, cTnI and BNP). SCA pre- and co-treatment resulted in a significant reduction in oxidative stress (via MDA, NO and GSH and increased activities of SOD, CAT and GPx) and inflammation (via decreased levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β) markers when compared to the same levels in cardiac tissue of ISO-treated rats. This study also showed that SCA protects ISO-induced oxidative stress and inflammation by activating the PI3K-AKT/Nrf2/ARE pathway and suppressing TLR4/MAPK/NF-κB pathways. Furthermore, SCA treatment protected histopathological alterations observed in only ISO-treated cardiac transverse sections of rats. Conclusion In conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that SCA protects against cardiac injury in the ISO-induced MI model of rats