No abstract

The carotid artery was blocked in three patients. In one of these the artery was reconstructed with a vascular prosthesis, while two underwent carotid ligation. Eight patients suffered from a cranial nerve dysfunction (defect) and two suffered postoperatively from a hoarse voice, four had a glossal deviation, five had Horner's syndrome and one had a deviation of the lip angle. One patient had a congestive cough. The histopathological diagnosis in all nine cases was MCBT. One patient had metastases to a cervical lymph node and lung and another had liver metastasis. The median follow-up period was 3 years (range 6 months to 14 years). Six patients survived surgery, of whom two underwent radiotherapy. Two patients died and one could not be traced.

A search for the decays B 0 s → e þ e − and B 0 → e þ e − is performed using data collected with the LHCb experiment in proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 1, 2, and 2 fb −1 , respectively. No signal is observed. Assuming no contribution from B 0 → e þ e − decays, an upper limit on the branching fraction BðB 0 s → e þ e − Þ < 9.4ð11.2Þ × 10 −9 is obtained at 90(95)% confidence level. If no B 0 s → e þ e − contribution is assumed, a limit of BðB 0 → e þ e − Þ < 2.5ð3.0Þ × 10 −9 is determined at 90(95)% confidence level. These upper limits are more than one order of magnitude lower than the previous values.

Calcium signal plays an important role in a variety of cancer cell metabolism, but knowledge on its role in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is limited. Store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) is the principal Ca2+ entry mechanism that maintains calcium concentration and produces calcium signal in non-excitable cells. SOCE is triggered by stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1), which is located in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) as Ca2+ sensor. Although, many studies demonstrated that STIM1 and SOCE play important functions in the regulation of many cancer progressions, their clinical relevance in HNSCC remains unclear. In this study, STIM1 expression levels notably increased in 89% HNSCC tissues compared with those in adjacent normal tissues. Meanwhile, this overexpression was close associated with tumor size but not with neck lymph node metastasis. Thus, this study mainly focuses on STIM1 function in HNSCC tumor growth. Three HNSCC cell lines, namely, TSCCA (oral cancer cell line) and Hep2 (laryngeal cell line) with high STIM1 expression levels and Tb3.1 (oral cancer cell line) with STIM1 expression level lower than previous two cell lines, were selected for in vitro study. Downregulated STIM1 expression levels in TSCCA and Hep2 arrested cells in G0/G1 stages, promoted cell apoptosis, and inhibited cell proliferation. By contrast, upregulated STIM1 expression in Tb3.1 inhibited cell apoptosis and promoted cell proliferation. Induced by thapsigargin (TG), ER stress was amplified when STIM1 expression was downregulated but was attenuated as STIM1 expression was upregulated. Furthermore, TSCCA cell xenograft models confirmed that STIM1 could promote HNSCC tumor growth in vivo. The present study provides new insight into HNSCC molecular mechanism and potential therapeutic target through targeting SOCE-dependent process. However, whether STIM1 participates in HNSCC metastasis requires further study.

The wind resource has the intermittence characteristic, and the electricity quantity of a wind farm is determined by the local wind resource. In practice, it is difficult to compare the economic operation situations of wind farms in different conditions. Evaluation indicators of economic operation for wind farms are discussed according to actual operation and monitoring situations of wind farms. The high/low frequency ride through of wind farms, the low voltage ride through of wind turbines, the SVC/SVG dynamic response characteristics and the ability of active power control are used for evaluation on wind farms. Then through consistency processing, dimensionless processing and weight calculating, a comprehensive evaluation method based on the variation coefficient method and the distance integrated evaluation method is established. The effectiveness of the evaluation system is verified by comparison of three different wind farms. Finally, the operation conditions of all the wind farms are ranked by the obtained relative approach degrees.