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Background Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are the most common cancers in the head and neck. Therapeutic response-related genes (TRRGs) are closely associated with carcinogenesis and prognosis in HNSCC. However, the clinical value and prognostic significance of TRRGs are still unclear. We aimed to construct a prognostic risk model to predict therapy response and prognosis in TRRGs-defined subgroups of HNSCC. Methods The multiomics data and clinical information of HNSCC patients were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The profile data GSE65858 and GSE67614 chip was downloaded from public functional genomics data Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Based on TCGA-HNSC database, patients were divided into a remission group and a non-remission group according to therapy response, and differentially expressed TRRGs between those two groups were screened. Using Cox regression analysis and Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis, candidate TRRGs that can predict the prognosis of HNSCC were identified and used to construct a TRRGs-based signature and a prognostic nomogram. Result A total of 1896 differentially expressed TRRGs were screened, including 1530 upregulated genes and 366 downregulated genes. Then, 206 differently expressed TRRGs that was significantly associated with the survival were chosen using univariate Cox regression analysis. Finally, a total of 20 candidate TRRGs genes were identified by LASSO analysis to establish a signature for risk prediction, and the risk score of each patient was calculated. Patients were divided into a high-risk group (Risk-H) and a low-risk group (Risk-L) based on the risk score. Results showed that the Risk-L patients had better overall survival (OS) than Risk-H patients. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed great predictive performance for 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS in TCGA-HNSC and GEO databases. Moreover, for patients treated with post-operative radiotherapy, Risk-L patients had longer OS and lower recurrence than Risk-H patients. The nomogram involves risk score and other clinical factors had good performance in predicting survival probability. Conclusions The proposed risk prognostic signature and Nomogram based on TRRGs are novel promising tools for predicting therapy response and overall survival in HNSCC patients.

In Guiyu, an electronic waste recycling site near Shantou, Guangdong province, China, primitive ways of e-waste processing have caused severe cadmium and lead pollution to the local residents. However, the possible effects of cadmium or lead pollution to genomic integrity of the local residents have not been investigated. We examined the possible relationship between cadmium and lead concentrations in placenta and placental telomere length in Guiyu and compared the data with that of a non-polluted town. Graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry and real-time PCR were used to determine placental cadmium and lead concentrations, and placental telomere length. We found that placental cadmium concentration was negatively correlated with placental telomere length (r = -0.138, p = 0.013). We also found that placental cadmium concentration of 0.0294 µg/g might be a critical point at which attrition of placental telomere commenced. No significant correlation between placental lead concentration and placental telomere length was detected (r = 0.027, p = 0.639). Our data suggest that exposure to cadmium pollution during pregnancy may be a risk factor for shortened placental telomere length that is known to be related to cancer development and aging. Furthermore, grave consequence on the offspring from pregnancies in e-waste polluted area is indicated.

At present, safety of letrozole administration as an ovulation-inducing drug still remains controversial. Investigation of the safety of letrozole use for the induction of ovulation in the Chinese population is scant. The present study aimed to fill this gap. Data concerning mothers using letrozole and birth outcomes of their singleton offspring were collected as the letrozole group (n=194), equivalent data from mothers using non-letrozole drugs and their singleton offspring were included as the non-letrozole group (control, n=154). Birth outcomes, congenital anomalies and neonatal complications were compared and analyzed between the two groups. Univariate analysis, Spearman's rank correlation analysis and the logistic regression model were utilized. For birth outcomes, the percentage of caesarean section deliveries in the letrozole group was lower than the non-letrozole group (43.8 vs. 56.4%, P=0.019). For congenital anomalies, no significant difference was found between the two groups (all P>0.05). The statistical P-value for the correlation between the maternal use of letrozole and neonatal complications was marginal (P=0.051). Results from the logistic regression analysis confirmed that maternal use of letrozole was not a significant contributor for neonatal complications, independent of statistical adjustment [crude odds ratio (OR), 1.436; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.803-2.569; P=0.223 vs. adjusted OR, 1.406; 95% CI, 0.748-2.643; P=0.290). The results of the present study suggested that maternal use of letrozole for ovulation induction does not associate with poorer birth outcomes or increased risk of congenital anomalies and neonatal complications.

The use of halogen bond is widespread in drug discovery, design, and clinical trials, but is overlooked in drug biosynthesis. Here, the role of halogen bond in the nitrilase-catalyzed synthesis of ortho-, meta-, and para-chlorophenylacetic acid was investigated. Different distributions of halogen bond induced changes of substrate binding conformation and affected substrate selectivity. By engineering the halogen interaction, the substrate selectivity of the enzyme changed, with the implication that halogen bond plays an important role in biosynthesis and should be used as an efficient and reliable tool in enzymatic drug synthesis.

This paper analyzed the compositional and structural changes of humic acid (HA) after combined with phosphate fertilizer (PHA), and investigated its effects on the growth of maize seedlings with four humic acid concentrations. The results showed that the atomic ratios of O/C and (O + N)/N of PHA were significantly lower than those of HA, which indicated that PHA had poor hydrophilicity compared with HA. The spectra of FTIR and NMR results suggested that the relative content of carboxyl group in PHA was higher than that in HA. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technology showed that the relative amount of C–C in PHA was lower than that in HA, while C–H was the opposite. The above changes were attributed to the crack of HA structure during the preparation of humic acid enhanced phosphate fertilizer, which was verified by the results from the determination of gel permeation chromatography that there were more low molecular weight components in PHA than that in HA. However, compared with HA, PHA showed a worse effect in promoting growth and the uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium by maize seedlings. This worse effect might be attributed to the poor hydrophilicity and unsuitable addition amount of PHA.

We report a framing imaging based on noncollinear optical parametric amplification (NCOPA), named FINCOPA, which applies NCOPA for the first time to single-shot ultrafast optical imaging. In an experiment targeting a laser-induced air plasma grating, FINCOPA achieved 50 fs-resolved optical imaging with a spatial resolution of ∼83  lp  /  mm and an effective frame rate of 10 trillion frames per second (Tfps). It has also successfully visualized an ultrafast rotating optical field with an effective frame rate of 15 Tfps. FINCOPA has simultaneously a femtosecond-level temporal resolution and frame interval and a micrometer-level spatial resolution. Combining outstanding spatial and temporal resolutions with an ultrahigh frame rate, FINCOPA will contribute to high-spatiotemporal resolution observations of ultrafast transient events, such as atomic or molecular dynamics in photonic materials, plasma physics, and laser inertial-confinement fusion.

In the field of mechanical and electrical equipment, the motor rolling bearing is a workpiece that is extremely prone to damage and failure. However, the traditional fault diagnosis methods cannot keep up with the development pace of the times because they need complex manual pretreatment or the support of specific expert experience and knowledge. As a rising star, the data-driven fault diagnosis methods are increasingly favored by scholars and experts at home and abroad. The convolutional neural network has been widely used because of its powerful feature extraction ability for all kinds of complex information and its outstanding research results in image processing, target tracking, target diagnosis, time-frequency analysis, and other scenes. Therefore, this paper introduces a convolutional neural network and applies it to motor-bearing fault diagnosis. Aiming at the shortcomings of fault signal and convolutional neural network, a large-scale maximum pooling strategy is proposed and optimized by wavelet transform to improve the fault diagnosis efficiency of motor bearing under high-voltage operation. Compared with other machine learning algorithms, the convolution neural network fault diagnosis model constructed in this paper not only has high accuracy (up to 0.9871) and low error (only 0.032) but also is simple to use. It provides a new way for motor bearing fault diagnosis and has very important economic and social value.

Comprehensive characterization of ultrafast optical field is critical for ultrashort pulse generation and its application. This paper combines two-step phase-shifting (TSPS) into the spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) to improve the reconstruction of ultrafast optical-fields. This novel SPIDER can remove experimentally the dc portion occurring in traditional SPIDER method by recording two spectral interferograms with π phase-shifting. As a result, the reconstructed results are much less disturbed by the time delay between the test pulse replicas and the temporal widths of the filter window, thus more reliable. What is more, this SPIDER can work efficiently even the time delay is so small or the measured bandwidth is so narrow that strong overlap happens between the dc and ac portions, which allows it to be able to characterize the test pulses with complicated temporal/spectral structures or narrow bandwidths.

To investigate the genetic polymorphism of Y chromosome short tandem repeat (Y-STR) loci in Dong, Miao, Tujia, and Yao minority populations from Hunan Province, China. Fifty Y-STRs (DYS392, DYS389I/II, DYS447, DYS438, DYS527, DYS645, DYS596, DYS391, DYS456, DYS19, DYS593, DYS448, DYS627, DYS557, DYS437, DYS481, DYS533, DYS390, DYS385, DYF387S1, DYS460, DYS393, Y_GATA_H4, DYS439, DYS635, DYS444, DYS643, DYS549, DYS576, DYS570, DYS458, DYS449, DYS518, DYS531, DYS630, DYS622, DYS552, DYS510, DYS459a/b, DYS446, DYS443, DYS587, Y_GATA_A10, DYS520, DYS522) were analyzed for 2553 unrelated healthy male individuals from Hunan (643 Dong males, 666 Miao males, 633 Tujia males, 611 Yao males) using AGCU Y37 and AGCU Y SUPP STR amplification system. There were 624 different haplotypes in 643 unrelated Dong males, 662 in 666 unrelated Miao males, 627 in 633 unrelated Tujia males, and 587 in 611 unrelated Yao males. The haplotype diversities of Dong, Miao, Tujia, and Yao were determined as 0.999879, 0.999982, 0.999970, and 0.999860, respectively. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) tests demonstrated that genetic distance between Miao and Tujia was the smallest (0.0003), while the genetic distance between Dong and Yao was the largest (0.0252). The 50 Y-STR loci in the four minority populations from Hunan Province revealed a highly polymorphic genetic distribution, which showed a high potential for population genetics and forensic practice.

Previous results on the prognostic value of programmed death-ligand (PD-L)1 expression in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remain limited and conflicting. The present study aimed to determine whether PD-L1 expression status predicts prognosis in patients with ESCC, particularly in those undergoing different postoperative treatments. Immunohistochemical staining for PD-L1 was performed on surgical specimens that were obtained from 246 patients with ESCC, who underwent surgical treatment but did not undergo preoperative chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy or immune therapy. The association of PD-L1 expression with the clinicopathological factors and the association of PD-L1 expression with survival of patients with ESCC, including subgroups of patients undergoing different postoperative treatments (surgery alone, surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy, surgery with adjuvant radiotherapy and surgery with adjuvant chemo-radiotherapy groups), were statistically analyzed. Positive PD-L1 expression was significantly associated with advanced tumor-node metastasis stage (P=0.022). Median overall survival (OS) time was compared between patients with positive PD-L1 expression and those with negative PD-L1 expression in the overall patient population. In patients who were treated with postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy, the prognosis was significantly improved in patients who were PD-L1-positive compared with those who were PD-L1-negative (P=0.046). In patients treated with adjuvant chemotherapy, median OS was poorer in patients with positive PD-L1 expression compared with those with negative PD-L1 expression. However, the difference was not significant. Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that PD-L1 expression status was not an independent prognostic factor in patients with ESCC. High PD-L1 expression was associated with a favorable prognosis in patients with ESCC undergoing postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy, and it was concluded that patients with positive PD-L1 expression might benefit from postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy.