To help understand the chemical properties of marine aerosols and the long‐distance transport of continental aerosols to remote oceanic regions, total suspended particulates (TSP) samples were collected over the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean during two cruises in September–December 2007 (cruise I) and March–April 2008 (cruise II) aboard the M/V Oceanic II. Data were analyzed and interpreted with the aid of back trajectory, principal component, and multiple linear regression analyses. Compared with the results over the South Pacific from 2 decades ago, the non‐sea‐salt sulfate (NSS‐SO42−) concentrations over the South Pacific have increased by a factor of ∼1.5, while the NO3− concentration has remained constant. On average, NSS‐SO42− accounted for 30–52% of the total SO42− during the two cruises. Chloride deficit was observed in all samples, with NSS‐SO42− being the preferred species for acid displacement over the South Pacific and the Mediterranean Sea. Persistent clean marine air masses were only observed over the northern Atlantic and South Pacific during cruise I, while more frequent impacts of continental air (dust, biomass burning, and industrial plumes) were observed during cruise II. Combined with the NAAPS aerosol maps, these results indicate that during cruise II, (1) southern Atlantic was influenced by Southern Africa and the interhemisphere transport of biomass burning plumes in Central Africa, (2) northern Atlantic was under the combined pollution plumes of Sahara dust intrusion and biomass burning, and (3) the Mediterranean Sea was affected by the mixed pollution from biomass burning and industrial contamination, as well as Saharan dust.

An equivalence relation called isometry is introduced to classify constacyclic codes over a finite field; the polynomial generators of constacyclic codes of length ℓ t p s are characterized, where p is the characteristic of the finite field and ℓ is a prime different from p.

Although a number of studies have reported efficacy of autologous adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSCs) in treating osteoarthritis (OA) no reliable evidences demonstrate whether allogeneic AD-MSCs can efficiently block OA progression in a large animal model. This study explored the efficacy and survival of allogeneic AD-MSCs combined with hyaluronic acid (HA) after intra-articular (IA) injection in a sheep OA model, which were conventionally established by anterior cruciate ligament resection and medial meniscectomy. Allogeneic AD-MSCs from donor sheep at high (5 × 10 cells) and low (1 × 10 cells) doses combined with HA, HA alone, or saline alone were injected into the OA sheep at 3 and 6 weeks after surgery, respectively. Evaluations by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), macroscopy, micro-computed tomography, and cartilage-specific staining demonstrated that AD-MSCs+HA treated groups preserved typical articular cartilage feature. Inflammatory factors from synovial fluid of AD-MSCs+HA treated groups were significantly lower than those in the HA alone group. Notably, transforming growth factor beta 1 and insulin-like growth factor 1 were detected in the supernatant of cultured AD-MSCs. In addition, labeling signals of allogeneic AD-MSCs could be detected by MRI after 14 weeks of injection and be found in synovium by histology. These results indicated that IA injection of allogeneic AD-MSCs combined with HA could efficiently block OA progression and promote cartilage regeneration and allogeneic AD-MSCs might survive at least 14 weeks after IA injection.

Symbol-pair codes introduced by Cassuto and Blaum (2010) are designed to protect against pair errors in symbol-pair read channels. The higher the minimum pair distance, the more pair errors the code can correct. MDS symbol-pair codes are optimal in the sense that pair distance cannot be improved for given length and code size. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First we present three lower bounds for the minimum pair distance of constacyclic codes, the first two of which generalize the previously known results due to Cassuto and Blaum (2011) and Kai et al. (2015). The third one exhibits a lower bound for the minimum pair distance of repeated-root cyclic codes. Second we obtain new MDS symbol-pair codes with minimum pair distance seven and eight through repeated-root cyclic codes.

The current study explored whether intra-articular (IA) injection of autologous adipose mesenchymal stem cells (ASCs) combined with hyaluronic acid (HA) achieved better therapeutic efficacy than autologous stromal vascular fraction (SVF) combined with HA to prevent osteoarthritis (OA) progression and determined how long autologous ASCs combined with HA must remain in the joint to observe efficacy. OA models were established by performing anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) and medial meniscectomy (MM). Autologous SVF (1×107 mononuclear cells), autologous low-dose ASCs (1×107), and autologous high-dose ASCs (5×107) combined with HA, and HA alone, or saline alone were injected into the OA model animals at 12 and 15 weeks after surgery, respectively. Compared with SVF+HA treatment, low-dose ASC+HA treatment yielded better magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scores and macroscopic results, while the cartilage thickness of the tibial plateau did not differ between low, high ASC+HA and SVF+HA treatments detected by micro-computed tomography (µCT). Immunohistochemistry revealed that high-dose ASC+HA treatment rescued hypertrophic chondrocytes expressing collagen X in the deep area of articular cartilage. Western blotting analysis indicated the high- and low-dose ASC+HA groups expressed more collagen X than did the SVF+HA group. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay showed treatment with both ASC+HA and SVF+HA resulted in differing anti-inflammatory and trophic effects. Moreover, superparamagnetic iron oxide particle (SPIO)-labeled autologous ASC signals were detected by MRI at 2 and 18 weeks post-injection and were found in the lateral meniscus at 2 weeks and in the marrow cavity of the femoral condyle at 18 weeks post-injection. Thus, IA injection of autologous ASC+HA may demonstrate better efficacy than autologous SVF+HA in blocking OA progression and promoting cartilage regeneration, and autologous ASCs (5×107 cells) combined with HA potentially survive for at least 18 weeks after IA injection.

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BackgroundEvidence suggests that cytoglobin (Cygb) may function as a tumor suppressor gene.MethodsWe immunohistochemically evaluated the expression of Cygb, phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI-3K), phosphorylated (p)-Akt, Interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in 88 patients with 41 high-grade gliomas and 47 low-grade gliomas. Intratumoral microvessel density (IMD) was also determined and associated with clinicopathological factors.ResultsLow expression of Cygb was significantly associated with the higher histological grading and tumor recurrence. A significant negative correlation emerged between Cygb expression and PI3K, p-Akt, IL-6, TNFα or VEGF expression. Cygb expression was negatively correlated with IMD. There was a positive correlation between PI3K, p-Akt, IL-6, TNFα and VEGF expression with IMD.High histologic grade, tumor recurrence, decreased Cygb expression, increased PI3K expression, increased p-Akt expression and increased VEGF expression correlated with patients’ overall survival in univariate analysis. However, only histological grading and Cygb expression exhibited a relationship with survival of patients as independent prognostic factors of glioma by multivariate analysis.ConclusionsCygb loss may contribute to tumor recurrence and a worse prognosis in gliomas. Cygb may serve as an independent predictive factor for prognosis of glioma patients.