Purpose: Adenomyosis is a relatively common disease among women of childbearing age. A minimally invasive alternative technique with low risks, faster recovery and decreased side effects is desired. We hypothesized that percutaneous microwave ablation (PMWA) under laparoscopic guidance would substantially reduce the risk of collateral thermal damage to the intestinal tract and relieve the pelvic adhesions. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility, safety and efficacy of transvaginal ultrasoundand laparoscopy-guided PMWA for the treatment of adenomyosis. Materials and methods: From May 2015 to October 2017, a total of 70 patients with symptomatic adenomyosis who underwent transvaginal ultrasound-and laparoscopy-guided PMWA were included in this study. The technical efficacy and complications of PMWA were assessed. Meanwhile, the uterine volume, lesion volume, symptom severity score (SSS) and visual analog scale (VAS) score before PMWA and at 1, 6 and 12 months after PMWA were recorded. Results: PMWA was successfully performed with transvaginal ultrasound guidance and laparoscope assistance in all patients. No major complication was found after PMWA in any patients. The uterine volume, lesion volume, SSS and VAS were all decreased significantly at follow-up (p < .01). Conclusion: Transvaginal ultrasound-and laparoscopy-guided PMWA, which significantly decreased the uterine volume, lesion volume, SSS and VAS score, is a feasible minimally invasive technique for the treatment of adenomyosis.

Malaria, caused by the genus Plasmodium, remains a global public health concern. It is estimated by the World Health Organization that over 40% of the world's population lives in areas at risk for malarial transmission, and around half a million people succumb to this infectious disease annually, which is related to the rapid spread of drug-resistant parasite strains. Indole derivatives, which possess broadspectrum pharmacological properties, play a crucial role in the discovery of new drugs. Many indole derivatives exhibited potential in vitro and in vivo activity against both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant malaria, suggesting that the indole moiety is a useful template for the development of novel antimalarial agents.

Background: This study aims to assess the value of two-dimensional speckle tracking imaging (2D-STI) combined with real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography (RT-3DE) in evaluating left heart function in patients with combined ETH and PAF. Methods: A prospective study was designed, and the research period was from January 2017 to January 2020. A PAF observation group comprised of patients with ETH and PAF, a PAF control group of patients with ETH but without PAF, and a healthy volunteer group referred to as the healthy group, each comprised of 50 patients was established. All patients underwent routine ultrasound imaging examination using 2D-STI and RT-3DE. The interventricular septum thickness (IVST), left and right atrioventricular diameter (LAD), left ventricular posterior wall thickness (PWT), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), the mean left atrium peak strain (mSs, mSe, mSa), strain rate (mSRs, mSRe, mSRa), the left ventricular mass (LVM), left ventricular mass index (LVMI), and left atrial total emptying volume (LATEV), the left atrial volume index (LAVI), left atrial total emptying fraction (LATEF), left atrium expansion index (LAEI), left atrium passive ejection fraction (LAPEF), and left atrial active ejection fraction (LAAEF) were calculated. Patients in the PAF observation group received telmisartan combined with rosuvastatin after diagnosis and 12-and 24-month-follow up visits were conducted. During these visits, 2D-STI combined with RT-3DE was used to evaluate cardiac function and each patient's blood pressure was monitored. Results: Patients in the PAF observation group had a significantly longer course of ETH than patients in the PAF control group (13.5±4.4 vs. 10.32±5.6, P=0.002). The comparison of routine 2D-STI and RT-3DE ultrasound indexes among the three groups also showed significant differences (P<0.01). During the 2-year follow-up period, the IVST, LAD, PWT, and LVEF of remaining patients significantly improved as treatment progressed (P<0.05). The LAVI, LATEF, and LAEI also improved significantly as the treatment progressed (P<0.05). After 12 months of treatment, the recurrence rate of atrial fibrillation was 16.33% (8/45) and after 24 months this was 34.21% (13/38).Conclusions: Cardiac function could be evaluated comprehensively by 2D-STI combined with RT-3DE in patients with ETH combined with PAF at initial diagnosis and follow-up. Ethical approvalAll procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013). The study was approved by the Clinical Ethics Committee of The Central Hospital of

It is necessary to develop a vehicle digital twin (DT) for urban air mobility (UAM) that uses an accurate, physics-based emulator to model the statics and dynamics of a vehicle. This is because the use of digital twins in the operation and control of UAM vehicles is essential for the UAM operational digital twin infrastructure (UAM-ODT). There are several issues that need to be addressed in this process: (i) the lack of digital twin engines for the digitalization (twinization) of the dynamics and control of UAM vehicles at the core of UAM-ODT systems; (ii) the lack of back-end system engineering in the development of UAM vehicle DTs; and (iii) the lack of fault-tolerant mechanisms for the DT cloud back-end system to run uninterrupted operations 24/7. On the other hand, software aging and rejuvenation are becoming increasingly important in a variety of computing scenarios as the demand for reliable and available services increases. With the increasing use of containerized systems, there is also a need for an orchestrator to support easy management and reduce operational costs. In this paper, an operational digital twin (ODT) of a typical urban air mobility (UAM) infrastructure is developed on a private cloud system based on Kubernetes using a proposed cloud-in-the-loop simulation approach. To ensure the ODT can provide uninterrupted operational control and services in UAM around the clock, we propose a methodology for investigating software aging in Kubernetes-based containerized clouds. We evaluate the behavior of Kubernetes software using the Nginx and K3S tools while they manage pods in an accelerated lifetime experiment. We continuously execute operations for creating and terminating pods, allowing us to observe the utilization of computing resources (e.g., CPU, memory, and I/O), the performance of the Nginx and K3S environments, and the response time of an application hosted in those environments. In some conditions and for specific metrics, such as virtual memory usage, we observed the effects of software aging, including a memory leak that is not fully cleared when the cluster is stopped. These issues could lead to system performance degradation and eventually compromise the reliability and availability of the system when it crashes due to memory space exhaustion or full utilization of swap space on the hard disk. This study helps with the deployment and maintenance of virtualized environments from the standpoint of system dependability in digital twin computing infrastructures where a large number of services are running under strict continuity requirements.

The emergence and recurrence of ovarian cancer are associated with ovarian cancer stem cells. For cancer treatment, gene delivery of microbubbles (MB)-mediated microRNA (miRNA) is considered as a promising approach. In this study, our aim is to investigate the effects of MBmediated let-7b-5p inhibitor on the proliferation and stemness characteristics of ovarian cancer (OVCA) cells. Let-7b-5p inhibitor mediated by MB was prepared (termed MB-let-7b-5p inhibitor), and the effects of MB-let-7b-5p inhibitor and let-7b-5p inhibitor on OVCA cell viability, proliferation and stemness characteristics were investigated. We found that MB-let-7b-5p inhibitor presented a higher transfection efficiency than let-7b-5p inhibitor alone. The inhibitory effect of MBlet-7b-5p inhibitor on OVCA cells was more significant than let-7b-5p inhibitor. Let-7b-5p targeted DEAD (Asp-Glu-Ala-Asp)-box helicase 19A (DDX19A), which was downregulated in OVCA cells. The downregulation of DDX19A reversed the inhibitory effects of MB-let-7b-5p inhibitor on OVCA cells. To sum up, we found that MB-let-7b-5p suppressed OVCA cell malignant behaviors by targeting DDX19A.

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