Study of the short-term quality of life of patients with esophageal cancer after inflatable videoassisted mediastinoscopic transhiatal esophagectomy

ObjectiveTo compare the short-term outcomes and postoperative quality of life in patients with esophageal cancer between inflatable videoasisted mediastinoscopic transhiatal esophagectomy (IVMTE) and minimally invasive Mckeown esophagectomy (MIME), and to evaluate the value of IVMTE in the surgical treatment of esophageal cancer.MethodsA prospective, nonrandomized study was adopted. A total of 60 esophageal cancer patients after IVMTE and MIME December 2019 to January 2022 were included. Among them, 30 patients underwent IVMTE and 30 patients underwent MIME. Shortterm outcomes (including the operation time, intraoperative blood loss, postoperative drainage 3 days, total postoperative tube time, postoperative hospital stay, number and number of thoracic lymph node dissection stations, postoperative complications and so on), postoperative quality of life, [including Quality of Life Core Questionnaire (QLQ-C30) and the esophageal site-specific module (QLQ-OES18)] were compared between the 2 groups.ResultsThe operation time, intraoperative blood loss, postoperative drainage volume and total postoperative intubation time in IVMTE group were significantly lower than those in MIME group (P < 0.05). A total of 22 patients had postoperative complications, including 7 patients in IVMTE group (23.3%) and 15 patients in MIME group (50.0%). There was significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.032). The physical function, role function, cognitive function, emotional function and social function and the overall health status in the IVMTE group were higher than those in the MIME group at all time points after operation, while the areas of fatigue, nausea, vomiting and pain symptoms in the MIME group were lower than those in the MIME group at all time points after operation.ConclusionIVMTE is a feasible and safe alternative to MIME. Therefore, when the case is appropriate, IVMTE should be given priority, which is conducive to postoperative recovery and improve the quality of life of patients after operation

Antihypertensive Effect of Long-Term Oral Administration of Jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) Collagen Peptides on Renovascular Hypertension

Antihypertensive effect of long-term oral administration of jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) collagen peptides (JCP) on renovascular hypertension rats (RVHs) was evaluated. The systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure of the RVHs were significantly reduced with administration of JCP (p < 0.05), compared with model control group. However, the arterial blood pressure of normal rats showed no significant changes during long-term oral treatment with high dose JCP (p > 0.05). Furthermore, effect of JCP on angiotensin II (Ang II) concentration of plasma had no significance (p > 0.05), but JCP significantly inhibited the Ang II concentration in RVHs’ kidney (p < 0.05). The kidney should be the target site of JCP

Transdifferentiation of lung adenocarcinoma in mice with Lkb1 deficiency to squamous cell carcinoma

Lineage transition in adenocarcinoma (ADC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of non-small cell lung cancer, as implicated by clinical observation of mixed ADC and SCC pathologies in adenosquamous cell carcinoma, remains a fundamental yet unsolved question. Here we provide in vivo evidence showing the transdifferentiation of lung cancer from ADC to SCC in mice: Lkb1-deficient lung ADC progressively transdifferentiates into SCC, via a pathologically mixed mAd-SCC intermediate. We find that reduction of lysyl oxidase (Lox) in Lkb1-deficient lung ADC decreases collagen disposition and triggers extracellular matrix remodelling and upregulates p63 expression, a SCC lineage survival oncogene. Pharmacological Lox inhibition promotes the transdifferentiation, whereas ectopic Lox expression significantly inhibits this process. Notably, ADC and SCC show differential responses to Lox inhibition. Collectively, our findings demonstrate the de novo transdifferentiation of lung ADC to SCC in mice and provide mechanistic insight that may have important implications for lung cancer treatment

Association analyses of the interaction between the ADSS and ATM genes with schizophrenia in a Chinese population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The blood-derived RNA levels of the adenylosuccinate synthase (<it>ADSS</it>) and ataxia telangiectasia mutated (<it>ATM</it>) genes were found to be down- and up-regulated, respectively, in schizophrenics compared with controls, and <it>ADSS </it>and <it>ATM </it>were among eight biomarker genes to discriminate schizophrenics from normal controls. ADSS catalyzes the first committed step of AMP synthesis, while ATM kinase serves as a key signal transducer in the DNA double-strand breaks response pathway. It remains unclear whether these changes result from mutations or polymorphisms in the two genes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Six SNPs in the <it>ADSS </it>gene and three SNPs in the <it>ATM </it>gene in a Chinese population of 488 schizophrenics and 516 controls were genotyped to examine their association with schizophrenia (SZ). Genotyping was performed using the Sequenom platform.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was no significant difference in the genotype, allele, or haplotype distributions of the nine SNPs between cases and controls. Using the Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR) method, we found that the interactions among rs3102460 in the <it>ADSS </it>gene and rs227061 and rs664143 in the <it>ATM </it>gene revealed a significant association with SZ. This model held a maximum testing accuracy of 60.4% and a maximum cross-validation consistency of 10 out of 10.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings suggest that the combined effects of the polymorphisms in the <it>ADSS </it>and <it>ATM </it>genes may confer susceptibility to the development of SZ in a Chinese population.</p

Effects of Heating Rate and Strain Rate on Phase Transformation in Micro-Grinding

The phase transformation in the grinding process could have a significant impact on the processing performance of the products. Although grinding process can lead to high heating and strain rates, the current studies on the phase transformation typically consider temperature only that limits their accuracy. In this study, based on the phase transformation model, by conducting the micro-grinding experiment of maraging steel C250, the mechanism controlling impacts of heating and strain rates on phase transformation has been analyzed, and a new process optimization scheme to control phase transformation has been proposed. In this research was determinate main characteristic parameters of the phase transformation prediction model and influence of the heating rate parameters on the structure of the material. The main conclusions of this work are aimed increasing productivity, as well as criteria for optimizing the micro grinding process are defined

Rethink Transfer Learning in Medical Image Classification

Transfer learning (TL) with deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) is crucial for modern medical image classification (MIC). However, the current practice of finetuning the entire pretrained model is puzzling, as most MIC tasks rely only on low- to mid-level features that are learned by up to mid layers of DCNNs. To resolve the puzzle, we perform careful empirical comparisons of several existing deep and shallow models, and propose a novel truncated TL method that consistently leads to comparable or superior performance and compact models on two MIC tasks. Our results highlight the importance of transferring the right level of pretrained visual features commensurate with the intrinsic complexity of the task

Effects of Heating Rate and Strain Rate on Phase Transformation in Micro-Grinding

The phase transformation in the grinding process could have a significant impact on the processing performance of the products. Although grinding process can lead to high heating and strain rates, the current studies on the phase transformation typically consider temperature only that limits their accuracy. In this study, based on the phase transformation model, by conducting the micro-grinding experiment of maraging steel C250, the mechanism controlling impacts of heating and strain rates on phase transformation has been analyzed, and a new process optimization scheme to control phase transformation has been proposed. In this research was determinate main characteristic parameters of the phase transformation prediction model and influence of the heating rate parameters on the structure of the material. The main conclusions of this work are aimed increasing productivity, as well as criteria for optimizing the micro grinding process are defined

Link Investigation of IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks in Forests

Wireless sensor networks are expected to automatically monitor the ecological evolution and wildlife habits in forests. Low-power links (transceivers) are often adopted in wireless sensor network applications, in order to save the precious sensor energy and then achieve long-term, unattended monitoring. Recent research has presented some performance characteristics of such low-power wireless links under laboratory or outdoor scenarios with less obstacles, and they have found that low-power wireless links are unreliable and prone to be affected by the target environment. However, there is still less understanding about how well the low-power wireless link performs in real-world forests and to what extent the complex in-forest surrounding environments affect the link performances. In this paper, we empirically evaluate the low-power links of wireless sensors in three typical different forest environments. Our experiment investigates the performance of the link layer compatible with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and analyzes the variation patterns of the packet reception ratio (PRR), the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and the link quality indicator (LQI) under diverse experimental settings. Some observations of this study are inconsistent with or even contradict prior results that are achieved in open fields or relatively clean environments and thus, provide new insights both into effectively evaluating the low-power wireless links and into efficiently deploying wireless sensor network systems in forest environments

Data collection in sensornets with heterogeneous duty cycles: pursuit of efficient opportunity

Abstract For sensornets with heterogeneous duty cycles, sensor nodes wake up with different sleeping periods, which combined with unreliable links, making it very challenging to enhance the network performance. This paper presents a new opportunistic routing protocol, called EOF (Efficient Opportunistic Forwarding), which mainly involves a forwarding metric that can efficiently exploit the single-hop forwarding opportunity and a delay-aware forwarder selection scheme. Different from previous opportunistic routings for sensornets, EOF comprehensively considers the effect of heterogeneous duty cycles and link unreliability on the overall network performance. The experimental results show that compared to the state-of-the-art protocol, EOF can achieve better overall network performance with almost identical energy cost, especially when it is applied to the sensornet with significant heterogeneity of duty cycle

Wavefield interpolation in 3D large-step Fourier wavefield extrapolation

Extrapolating wavefields and imaging at each depth during three-dimensional recursive wave-equation migration is a time-consuming endeavor. For efficiency, most commercial techniques extrapolate wavefields through thick slabs followed by wavefield interpolation within each thick slab. In this article, we develop this strategy by associating more efficient interpolators with a Fourier-transform-related wavefield extrapolation method. First, we formulate a three-dimensional first-order separation-of-variables screen propagator for large-step wavefield extrapolation, which allows for wide-angle propagations in highly contrasting media. This propagator significantly improves the performance of the split-step Fourier method in dealing with significant lateral heterogeneities at the cost of only one more fast Fourier transform in each thick slab. We then extend the two-dimensional Kirchhoff and Born-Kirchhoff local wavefield interpolators to three-dimensional cases for each slab. The three-dimensional Kirchhoff interpolator is based on the traditional Kirchhoff formula and applies to moderate lateral velocity variations, whereas the three-dimensional Born-Kirchhoff interpolator is derived from the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation under the Born approximation and is adapted to highly laterally varying media. Numerical examples on the three-dimensional salt model of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists/European Association of Geoscientists demonstrate that three-dimensional first-order separation-of-variables screen propagator Born-Kirchhoff depth migration using thick-slab wavefield extrapolation plus thin-slab interpolation tolerates a considerable depth-step size of up to 72 ms, eventually resulting in an efficiency improvement of nearly 80% without obvious loss of imaging accuracy. Although the proposed three-dimensional interpolators are presented with one-way Fourier extrapolation methods, they can be extended for applications to general migration methods