The peculiar filamentary HI structure of NGC 6145

In this paper, we report the peculiar HI morphology of the cluster spiral galaxy NGC 6145, which has a 150 kpc HI filament on one side that is nearly parallel to its major axis. This filament is made up of several HI clouds and the diffuse HI gas between them, with no optical counterparts. We compare its HI distribution with other one-sided HI distributions in the literature, and find that the overall HI distribution is very different from the typical tidal and ram-pressure stripped HI shape, and its morphology is inconsistent with being a pure accretion event. Only about 30% of the total HI gas is anchored on the stellar disk, while most of HI gas forms the filament in the west. At a projected distance of 122 kpc, we find a massive elliptical companion (NGC 6146) with extended radio emission, whose axis points to an HI gap in NGC 6145. The velocity of the HI filament shows an overall light-of- sight motion of 80 to 180 km/s with respect to NGC 6145. Using the long-slit spectra of NGC 6145 along its major stellar axis, we find that some outer regions show enhanced star formation, while in contrast, almost no star formation activities are found in its center (less than 2 kpc). Pure accretion, tidal or ram-pressure stripping is not likely to produce the observed HI filament. An alternative explanation is the jet-stripping from NGC 6146, although direct evidence for a jet-cold gas interaction has not been found.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures; Accepted for publication in A

Experimental study on fracture plugging effect of irregular-shaped lost circulation materials

Using micro-visualization experimental device for the formation of fracture plugging zone, the plugging behavior of irregular-shaped lost circulation materials (LCMs) with different types and concentrations in fractures was experimentally analyzed. The results show that the sealing time decreases significantly with the increase of material concentration. When the concentration is 20%, the sealing times of materials LCM-1∼LCM-5 are 6s, 7s, 5s, 6s, 4s, respectively. The formation of fracture plugging zone includes two stages, and the main factors affecting the formation of fracture plugging zone are flatness, roundness, convexity and concentrations. Flatness affects the retention stage of LCMs through the matching degree between particle size and fracture width. Convexity and roundness affect the retention stage by increasing the friction coefficient between particles. The high-efficiency retention ability of irregular LCMs is characterized by strong matching to fracture width, and strong friction and sliding resistance between particles. It is recommended that the optimized geometric parameters of high-efficiency retention materials should meet the requirements of “low flatness, low roundness and low convexity” (flatness \u3c0.6, roundness \u3c0.6 and convexity \u3c0.8), which can improve the plugging effect significantly

Clinical applications of radiomics in non-small cell lung cancer patients with immune checkpoint inhibitor-related pneumonitis

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) modulate the body’s immune function to treat tumors but may also induce pneumonitis. Immune checkpoint inhibitor-related pneumonitis (ICIP) is a serious immune-related adverse event (irAE). Immunotherapy is currently approved as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and the incidence of ICIP in NSCLC patients can be as high as 5%-19% in clinical practice. ICIP can be severe enough to lead to the death of NSCLC patients, but there is a lack of a gold standard for the diagnosis of ICIP. Radiomics is a method that uses computational techniques to analyze medical images (e.g., CT, MRI, PET) and extract important features from them, which can be used to solve classification and regression problems in the clinic. Radiomics has been applied to predict and identify ICIP in NSCLC patients in the hope of transforming clinical qualitative problems into quantitative ones, thus improving the diagnosis and treatment of ICIP. In this review, we summarize the pathogenesis of ICIP and the process of radiomics feature extraction, review the clinical application of radiomics in ICIP of NSCLC patients, and discuss its future application prospects

Cloning of neuraminidase (NA) gene and identification of its antiviral activity

Neuraminidase not only works as an antigen, inducing target-specific antibodies, but also plays a role of  enzyme activity and destroys the sialic acid receptor required by virus infection of the host cell surface which  protects the host from virus damage. In order to explore a new idea to use neuraminidase (NA) gene and  produce disease-resistant transgenic poultry, prokaryotic expression vector pGEX-NA was constructed to  make NA polyclone antibody. Eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.0-NA and pcDNA3.0/EGFP-NA was  constructed to reveal its subcelluar location by immunofluorescence and enhanced green fluorescent fusion  protein (EGFP). Chicken embryonic fibroblast (CEF) cells were transfected with pcDNA3.0-NA and selected by  G418 for two weeks, the transfected cells were challenged by Newcastle disease virus (NDV), the morphology of CEF cells were observed to detect the antiviral ability of NA gene. CEF cells were incubated by the cell  lysates extracted from the NIH 3T3 cells, which were transfected with pcDNA3.0-NA. The results show that  pGEX-NA could express NA protein in vitro and NA polyclone antibody worked very well; immunofluorescence and EGFP fusion protein revealed that NA protein located at the cytoplasm near the membrane; NDV-CEF  inhibition experiment showed the NA protein could resist and delayed CEF cells from NDV infection.Key words: Neuraminidase (NA), newcastle disease virus (NDV), antiviral activity, chicken embryonic fibroblast (CEF)

Electrostatic-spray ionization mass spectrometry sniffing for perfume fingerprinting

RATIONALE: The perfume market is growing significantly, and it is easy to find imitative fragrances of probably all types of perfume. Such imitative fragrances are usually of lower quality than the authentic ones, creating a possible threat for perfume companies. Therefore, it is important to develop efficient chemical analysis techniques to screen rapidly perfume samples. METHODS: Electrostatic-spray ionization (ESTASI) was used to analyze directly samples sprayed or deposited on different types of paper. A linear ion trap mass spectrometer was used to detect the ions produced by ESTASI with a modified extended transfer capillary for ’sniffing’ ions from the paper. RESULTS: Several commercial perfumes and a model perfume were analyzed by ESTASI-sniffing. The results obtained by paper ESTASI-MS of commercial fragrances were compared with those obtained from ESI-MS. In addition, a commercial fragrance was first nebulized on the hand and then soaked up by blotting paper, which was afterwards placed on an insulating plate for ESTASI-MS analysis. Analysis of peptides and proteins was also performed to show that the paper ESTASI-MS could be used for samples with very different molecular masses. CONCLUSIONS: Paper ESTASI-MS yields a rapid fingerprinting characterization of perfume fragrances, avoiding timeconsuming sample-preparation steps, and thereby performing a rapid screening in a few seconds

Comparison of the Electrochemical Performance and Thermal Stability for Three Kinds of Charged Cathodes

The electrochemical performance and thermal stability of Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2, LiMn2O4, and LiFePO4 are investigated by the multi-channel battery cycler, electrochemical workstation, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and C80 instrument in this work. For electrochemical performance, Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2 shows the highest specific capacity but the worst cycle stability. For the thermal stability, the experimental results of thermogravimetry and C80 indicate that the charged Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2 has the worst thermal stability compared with charged LiFePO4 and LiMn2O4. It is also testified by calculating the chemical kinetic parameters of cathode materials based on the Arrhenius law. The pure Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2 starts to self-decompose at around 250°C with total heat generation of −88 J/g. As for a full battery, the total heat generation is −810 J/g with exothermic peak temperature of 242°C. The present results show that thermal runaway is more likely to occur for Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2 with the full battery