BackgroundSOX9 as a member of the SOX (SRY [sex determining region Y] box) gene superfamily has been previously demonstrated to be a proto-oncogene in a variety of malignancies. However, the clinical significance of SOX9 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of SOX9 in HCC and determine its correlation with tumor progression and prognosis.MethodsOne-hundred and thirty HCC patients who had undergone curative liver resection were selected and immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, and quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR) were performed to analyze SOX9 expression in the respective tumors.ResultsImmunohistochemistry, Western blotting, and Q-PCR consistently confirmed SOX9 overexpression in HCC tissues compared with their adjacent nonneoplastic tissues (P ≪ 0.01). Additionally, immunostaining showed more SOX9 positive cells in the higher tumor stage (T3 ~ 4) and tumor grade (G3) than in the lower tumor stage (T1 ~ 2, P = 0.03) and tumor grade (G1 ~ 2, P = 0.01), respectively. Moreover, HCC patients with high SOX9 expression were significantly associated with lower 5-year overall survival (P ≪ 0.01) and lower 5-year disease-free survival (P ≪ 0.01), respectively. The Cox proportional hazards model further showed that SOX9 over-expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for both 5-year disease-free survival (hazards ratio [HR] = 2.621, 95% confidence interval[CI] = 1.548-5.829, P = 0.01) and 5-year overall survival (HR = 3.825, CI = 1.638-7.612, P = 0.003) in HCC.ConclusionOur data suggest for the first time that the overexpression of SOX9 protein in HCC tissues is of predictive value on tumor progression and poor prognosis.Virtual slidesThe virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/9029740396926377.

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The voltammetric responses of Pt disk electrodes 5-50 nm in radii in the presence of excess inert electrolyte were investigated to verify the applicability of the conventional diffusion-based voltammetric theory to nanoscale electrochemical interfaces. A so-called "inverted heat-sealing" procedure was introduced in the electrode fabrication process to eliminate the possible tiny interstice between the glass sheath and electrode wire that could severely distort the voltammetric curves of nanometer-szied electrodes. Linear relations between the limiting currents (i L ) and the concentrations of electroactive ions (c a ) were found at electrodes as small as 5 nm, seemingly inferring that the classic voltammetric theory is applicable at such small electrodes. However, a delicate analysis on the dependences of i L on the electroactive size of electrode and the charge carried by the electroactive ions revealed that the i L ∼ c a linearity is altered from the predication of the conventional voltammetric theory as the size of electrode approaches nanometer scales (e. g., <10 nm). The altered i L ∼ c a linearity at nanoelectrodes is explainable in terms of size-induced merging of electric double layer (EDL) and concentration depletion layer (CDL) and is well-predictable from the previous dynamic double layer model for nanoelectrode based on Poisson-Nernst-Planck theory (J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110, 3262). It is thus concluded that the enhanced EDL effects at nanoscale electrochemical interfaces do cause deviations from the predication of the conventional voltammetric theory, but the deviations are quantitatively small (e.g., within 20% even at electrodes of a few nanometers) and in most cases might be hardly distinguished with the experimental uncertainties.

We reported a novel injectable doxorubicin-loaded hydrogel based on host-guest interaction and Schiff's base reaction. A supramolecular polymeric prodrug was prepared through the inclusion of adamantane-modified doxorubicin into the β-cyclodextrin cavity on the polyaldehyde dextran chain, which was in situ crosslinked by carboxymethyl chitosan.

In the automobile industry, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in developing self-parking systems. For such systems, how to accurately and efficiently detect and localize the parking-slots defined by regular line segments near the vehicle is a key and still unresolved issue. In fact, kinds of unfavorable factors, such as the diversity of ground materials, changes in illumination conditions, and unpredictable shadows caused by nearby trees, make the vision-based parking-slot detection much harder than it looks. In this paper, we attempt to solve this issue to some extent and our contributions are twofold. First, we propose a novel DCNN (Deep Convolutional Neural Networks) based parking-slot detection approach, namely DeepPS, which takes the surround-view image as the input. There are two key steps in DeepPS, identifying all the marking-points on the input image and classifying local image patterns formed by pairs of markingpoints. We formulate both of them as learning problems, which can be solved naturally by modern DCNN models. Second, to facilitate the study of vision-based parking-slot detection, a largescale labeled dataset is established. This dataset is the largest in this field, comprising 12,165 surround-view images collected from typical indoor and outdoor parking sites. For each image, the marking-points and parking-slots are carefully labeled. The efficacy and efficiency of DeepPS have been corroborated on our collected dataset. To make our results fully reproducible, all the relevant source codes and the dataset have been made publicly available at https://cslinzhang.github.io/deepps/.

BackgroundNucleolin, as a multifunctional protein, has been demonstrated to play an oncogenic role in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The aim of this study was to investigate the expression pattern of nucleolin in HCC and determine its correlation with tumor progression and prognosis.MethodsNucleolin expression at both mRNA and protein levels in HCC and adjacent nonneoplastic tissues were respectively detected by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR), immunohistochemistry and western blotting.ResultsNucleolin expression, at both mRNA and protein levels, was significantly higher in HCC tissues than in the adjacent nonneoplastic tissues (both P < 0.001). In addition, the elevated nucleolin expression was markedly correlated with advanced tumor stage (P = 0.001), high tumor grade (P = 0.02) and serum AFP level (P = 0.008). Moreover, HCC patients with high nucleolin expression had shorter 5-year disease-free survival and shorter 5-year overall survival than those with low expression (both P < 0.001). Furthermore, the Cox proportional hazards model showed that nucleolin expression was an independent poor prognostic factor for both 5-year disease-free survival (hazards ratio [HR] = 3.696, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.662-8.138, P = 0.01) and 5-year overall survival (HR = 3.872, CI = 1.681-8.392, P = 0.01) in HCC.ConclusionThese results showed that the markedly and consistently increasing expression of nucleolin may be associated with aggressive characteristics of HCC, and implied that nucleolin expression may serve as a promising biochemical marker for predicting the clinical outcome of patients with this malignancy.Virtual SlidesThe virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/13000_2014_175.

Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) supported palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) with a size of ∼3 nm were synthesized using one-pot photoassisted citrate reduction. This synthetic approach allows for the formation and assembly of Pd NPs onto the rGO surface with a desired size and can be readily used for other metal NP preparation. The prepared rGO-Pd exhibited 5.2 times higher mass activity for ethanol oxidation reaction than the commercial platinum/carbon (Pt/C). In the oxygen reduction reaction tests, rGO-Pd exhibited comparable activity compared with Pt/C and maintained its high performance after 4000 cycles of potential sweep. These results demonstrate that our synthetic approach is effective for preparing graphene-supported metal NPs with excellent activity and stability in ethanol oxidation and oxygen reduction reactions.