Revisiting the Marrow Metabolic Changes after Chemotherapy in Lymphoma: A Step towards Personalized Care

Purpose. The aims were to correlate individual marrow metabolic changes after chemotherapy with bone marrow biopsy (BMBx) for its potential value of personalized care in lymphoma. Methods. 26 patients (mean age, 58 ± 15 y; 13 female, 13 male) with follicular lymphoma or diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, referred to FDG-PET/CT imaging, who had BMBx from unilateral or bilateral iliac crest(s) before chemotherapy, were studied retrospectively. The maximal standardized uptake value (SUV) was measured from BMBx site over the same area on both initial staging and first available restaging FDG-PET/CT scan. Results. 35 BMBx sites in 26 patients were evaluated. 12 of 35 sites were BMBx positive with interval decrease in SUV in 11 of 12 sites (92%). The remaining 23 of 35 sites were BMBx negative with interval increase in SUV in 21 of 23 sites (91%). The correlation between SUV change over the BMBx site before and after chemotherapy and BMBx result was significant (P < 0.0001). Conclusions. This preliminary result demonstrates a strong correlation between marrow metabolic changes (as determined by FDG PET) after chemotherapy and bone marrow involvement proven by biopsy. This may provide a retrospective means of personalized management of marrow involvement in deciding whether to deliver more extended therapy or closer followup of lymphoma patients

Robust Structure Preserving Nonnegative Matrix Factorization for Dimensionality Reduction

As a linear dimensionality reduction method, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has been widely used in many fields, such as machine learning and data mining. However, there are still two major drawbacks for NMF: (a) NMF can only perform semantic factorization in Euclidean space, and it fails to discover the intrinsic geometrical structure of high-dimensional data distribution. (b) NMF suffers from noisy data, which are commonly encountered in real-world applications. To address these issues, in this paper, we present a new robust structure preserving nonnegative matrix factorization (RSPNMF) framework. In RSPNMF, a local affinity graph and a distant repulsion graph are constructed to encode the geometrical information, and noisy data influence is alleviated by characterizing the data reconstruction term of NMF with l2,1-norm instead of l2-norm. With incorporation of the local and distant structure preservation regularization term into the robust NMF framework, our algorithm can discover a low-dimensional embedding subspace with the nature of structure preservation. RSPNMF is formulated as an optimization problem and solved by an effective iterative multiplicative update algorithm. Experimental results on some facial image datasets clustering show significant performance improvement of RSPNMF in comparison with the state-of-the-art algorithms

Cyanobacteria bloom prevention and control and salvage disposal integrated management system

Cyanobacteria are large single-cell prokaryotes that can undergo oxygen-producing photosynthesis. However, if the cyanobacteria are contaminated by nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements, cyanobacteria will cause the phenomenon of “water bloom” in the lake, which will seriously endanger the safety of humans, animals, fish and shrimps. To help lake management units to prevent and control the outbreak of cyanobacteria, this paper designed and developed a comprehensive management system for the prevention and control of cyanobacteria blooms and salvage treatment. The system consists of four subsystems: the operational reporting subsystem, the monitoring data management system, the algae environmental protection disposal process management system, and the real-time cyanobacteria monitoring system. The three-dimensional interaction between the WEB end and the mobile patrol handheld terminal makes the system more efficient and convenient. The neighborhood image is denoised by the neighborhood averaging method, and the K-means algorithm is used for clustering training, which makes the classification of the algae pictures taken. The realization of the system effectively prevented the large-scale outbreak of cyanobacteria, providing a new idea for monitoring and processing cyanobacteria blooms

Design and Implementation of Visualization System for Wastewater Treatment in Dianchi Lake Based on WebGIS

Based on the current state’s emphasis on environmental governance, combined with a series of pollution problems faced by Dianchi Lake, traditional environmental governance methods do not have real-time effective information analysis and processing capabilities. Therefore, the construction of an information visualization system that meets Dianchi wastewater treatment is currently the general trend of environmental construction.In this paper, the (B/S) model system architecture is used to establish a WebGIS-based Dianchi basin wastewater treatment visualization system, which greatly improves the system’s interaction and development costs.The system database adopts the spatial database model of GeoDatabase, which well solves the correlation between spatial data and attribute data, and can display and analyze corresponding data according to the data format and attributes.It provides an accurate and efficient visualization platform system for Dianchi pollution treatment. The commissioning of this system has greatly improved the governance efficiency of the relevant management departments of Dianchi Lake, and provided reliable data support for the dynamic adjustment of the department’s governance strategy

Atom-Ratio-Conducted Tailoring of PdAu Bimetallic Nanocrystals with Distinctive Shapes and Dimensions for Boosting the ORR Performance

Systematically manipulating the shape, dimension, and surface structure of PdAu nanocrystals is an active subject because it offers a powerful means to regulate and investigate their structure-activity relationship. Meanwhile, it is still urgent to reduce the use of two-dimensional precious-metal-based nanomaterials. This work demonstrates that PdAu nanocrystals with a variety of shapes/dimensions, including 1D anisotropic nanowires, 2D porous nanosheets, and 3D penetrative nanoflowers, can be systematically synthesized by simply adjusting the atomic ratio or the reaction time in the same protocol. The resultant PdAu nanocrystals with distinctive shapes, but the same building blocks triumphantly avoid the effects of facet and surface properties; this represents an ideal platform for directly comparing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity. 2D porous PdAu nanosheets demonstrate superior ORR performance (E-onset = 1.040 V, E-1/2 = 0.932 V) compared with other-dimension-based samples and commercial Pd black; this is attributed to the abundant surface atoms and omni-directional mass-transfer channels. This work not only paves the way for systematically measuring a series of distinctive PdAu nanocrystals as non-Pt electrocatalysts, but also sheds light on the study of structures/dimensions in tuning the catalytic properties of bimetallic nanocrystals

Accelerating Effect of Vegetation on the Instability of Rainfall-Induced Shallow Landslides

Rainfall-induced shallow landslides are widespread throughout the world, and vegetation is frequently utilized to control them. However, in recent years, shallow landslides have continued to frequently occur during the rainy season on the vegetated slopes of the Loess Plateau in China. To better probe this phenomenon, we considered vegetation cover in the sensitivity analysis of landslide hazards and used the transient rainfall infiltration and grid-based regional slope stability (TRIGRS) model to quantitatively describe the impacts of different types of vegetation cover on slope stability. Based on the rainfall information for landslide events, the spatiotemporal distributions of the pore water pressure and the factor of safety of the vegetated slopes were inverted under the driving changes in the soil properties under different vegetation types, and the average prediction accuracy reached 79.88%. It was found that there was a strong positive correlation between the cumulative precipitation and the proportion of landslide-prone areas in woodland covered by tall trees, grassland covered by shrubs and grasses, and cultivated land. The highest landslide susceptibility, which has the greatest potential to hasten the occurrence of rainfall-induced landslides, is found in woodland with tall trees. Therefore, this paper proposes the promoting relationship between vegetation and landslide erosion, which provides a new scientific perspective on watershed management to prevent shallow landslide disasters and manage and develop watershed vegetation

In vitro bioassays to evaluate complex chemical mixtures in recycled water

With burgeoning population and diminishing availability of freshwater resources, the world continues to expand the use of alternative water resources for drinking, and the quality of these sources has been a great concern for the public as well as public health professionals. In vitro bioassays are increasingly being used to enable rapid, relatively inexpensive toxicity screening that can be used in conjunction with analytical chemistry data to evaluate water quality and the effectiveness of water treatment. In this study, a comprehensive bioassay battery consisting of 36 bioassays covering 18 biological endpoints was applied to screen the bioactivity of waters of varying qualities with parallel treatments. Samples include wastewater effluent, ultraviolet light (UV) and/or ozone advanced oxidation processed (AOP) recycled water, and infiltrated recycled groundwater. Based on assay sensitivity and detection frequency in the samples, several endpoints were highlighted in the battery, including assays for genotoxicity, mutagenicity, estrogenic activity, glucocorticoid activity, arylhydrocarbon receptor activity, oxidative stress response, and cytotoxicity. Attenuation of bioactivity was found to be dependent on the treatment process and bioassay endpoint. For instance, ozone technology significantly removed oxidative stress activity, while UV based technologies were most efficient for the attenuation of glucocorticoid activity. Chlorination partially attenuated genotoxicity and greatly decreased herbicidal activity, while groundwater infiltration efficiently attenuated most of the evaluated bioactivity with the exception of genotoxicity. In some cases, bioactivity (e.g., mutagenicity, genotoxicity, and arylhydrocarbon receptor) increased following water treatment, indicating that transformation products of water treatment may be a concern. Furthermore, several types of bioassays with the same endpoint were compared in this study, which could help guide the selection of optimized methods in future studies. Overall, this research indicates that a battery of bioassays can be used to support decision-making on the application of advanced water treatment processes for removal of bioactivity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

IL-21 Expands HIV-1-Specific CD8+ T Memory Stem Cells to Suppress HIV-1 Replication In Vitro

Due to the existence of viral reservoirs, the rebound of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) viremia can occur within weeks after discontinuing combined antiretroviral therapy. Immunotherapy could potentially be applied to eradicate reactivated HIV-1 in latently infected CD4+ T lymphocytes. Although the existence of HIV-1-specific CD8+ T memory stem cells (TSCMs) is well established, there are currently no reports regarding methods using CD8+ TSCMs to treat HIV-1 infection. In this study, we quantified peripheral blood antigen-specific CD8+ TSCMs and then expanded HIV-1-specific TSCMs that targeted optimal antigen epitopes (SL9, IL9, and TL9) in the presence of interleukin- (IL-) 21 or IL-15. The suppressive capacity of the expanded CD8+ TSCMs on HIV-1 production was measured by assessing cell-associated viral RNA and performing viral outgrowth assays. We found that the number of unmutated TL9-specific CD8+ TSCMs positively correlated with the abundance of CD4+ T cells and that the expression of IFN-γ was higher in TL9-specific CD8+ TSCMs than that in non-TL9-specific CD8+ TSCMs. Moreover, the antiviral capacities of IL-21-stimulated CD8+ TSCMs exceeded those of conventional CD8+ memory T cells and IL-15-stimulated CD8+ TSCMs. Thus, we demonstrated that IL-21 could efficiently expand HIV-1-specific CD8+ TSCMs to suppress HIV-1 replication. Our study provides new insight into the function of IL-21 in the in vitro suppression of HIV-1 replication