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Ultrathin metal-organic framework (MOF) nanosheets possessing inherent advantages of both two-dimensional (2D) features and MOFs are attracting intensive research interest. The direct manufacture of MOF nanosheets is still a challenge up to now. Here, we have developed a novel bottom-up approach to synthesize zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) nanosheets, which can be in situ converted into CoO ultrathin nanomeshes after thermal treatment. Interestingly, the obtained CoO nanomeshes are rich in oxygen defects, providing fruitful active sites for the faradaic reaction. The modified electrode exhibits a large specific capacitance (1216.4 F g at 1 A g), as well as a high rate capability (925.5 F g at 20 A g). Moreover, an asymmetric supercapacitor made of CoO//activated carbon shows an energy density of 46.5 Wh kg at 790.7 W kg. Furthermore, the 2D CoO ultrathin nanomeshes show an outstanding performance for the oxygen evolution reaction with an overpotential of 230 mV at the onset potential and a small Tafel slope of 74.0 mV dec. The present method presents a facile avenue to the preparation of other 2D ultrathin metal oxide nanostructures with various applications in energy catalysis and conversion.

Health-cost-to-income ratio and perceived financial difficulty can be implied as objective and subjective indicators of financial burden to identify the patients who may need additional assistance. Communication on deciding on cost-effective treatments can be facilitated.

Ski used to be defined as an oncogene that contributes to the resistance of tumor cells to transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta)-induced growth arrest. As TGF-beta has a dual effect on tumor growth with both tumor-suppressing and -promoting activity depending on the stage of carcinogenesis and the cell type, the precise role of Ski in carcinogenesis remains unclear. In this study, we show that downregulation of Ski through lentivirus-mediated RNA interference decreases tumor growth both in vitro and in vivo, yet promotes cell invasiveness in vitro, and lung metastasis in vivo in the pancreatic cancer cell line SW1990, which contain wild-type Smad4 expression, and the BxPC3 cell line, which is Smad4 deficient. We also show that the downregulation of Ski increases TGF-beta-induced transcriptional activity, which is associated with increased TGF-beta-dependent Smad2/3 phosphorylation, and results in an altered expression profile of TGF-beta-inducible genes involved in metastasis, angiogenesis and cell proliferation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Immunohistochemical analysis of specimens from 71 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma showed a significant association between overexpression of Ski and decreased patient survival time (P = 0.0024). Our results suggest that Ski may act as a tumor proliferation-promoting factor or as a metastatic suppressor in human pancreatic cancer.

PurposeTo evaluate the reproducibility of radiomics features by repeating computed tomographic (CT) scans in rectal cancer. To choose stable radiomics features for rectal cancer.ResultsVolume normalized features are much more reproducible than unnormalized features. The average value of all slices is the most reproducible feature type in rectal cancer. Different filters have little effect for the reproducibility of radiomics features. For the average type features, 496 out of 775 features showed high reproducibility (ICC ≥ 0.8), 225 out of 775 features showed medium reproducibility (0.8 > ICC ≥ 0.5) and 54 out of 775 features showed low reproducibility (ICC < 0.5).Methods40 rectal cancer patients with stage II were enrolled in this study, each of whom underwent two CT scans within average 8.7 days. 775 radiomics features were defined in this study. For each features, five different values (value from the largest slice, maximum value, minimum value, average value of all slices and value from superposed intermediate matrix) were extracted. Meanwhile a LOG filter with different parameters was applied to these images to find stable filter value. Concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) and inter-class correlation coefficients (ICC) of two CT scans were calculated to assess the reproducibility, based on original features and volume normalized features.ConclusionsFeatures are recommended to be normalized to volume in radiomics analysis. The average type radiomics features are the most stable features in rectal cancer. Further analysis of these features of rectal cancer can be warranted for treatment monitoring and prognosis prediction.

Global and local gas−liquid characteristics (gas hold-up, volumetric mass transfer coefficient), and flow field, mixing time of the liquid phase are investigated for various triple-impeller configurations. Four types of impellers (Rushton turbine (RT), hollow blade turbine (HBT), wide-blade hydrofoil impeller pumping down (WHd), and pumping up (WHu)) were used to form four combinations (3RT, HBT+2WHd, HBT+2WHu, and 3WHu). The results show that the axial impellers combination (3WHu) provides more effective homogenization performance than the impellers with combined radial and axial flow (HBT+2WHu, HBT+2WHd), while the radial impellers combination (3RT) is the worst. When the gas superficial velocity is 1.625 mm s −1 , 3WHu produces a 53% higher mass transfer coefficient than HBT+2WHd, HBT+2WHu, and 3RT lie between them. When the gas superficial velocity reaches up to 8.124 mm s −1 , however, all of the tested configurations give almost similar mass transfer coefficients under equivalent power input. For 3RT, the highest hold-up is in the bottom impeller discharge stream and near the wall for the middle and top impellers. For the HBT+2WHd combination, there was no large variations of gas hold up in the bulk except the region around the bottom impeller. For HBT+2WHu and 3WHu, high gas hold-up was observed between the two up pumping impellers, and moderately low gas hold-up above the top impeller. There are three zones of higher interfacial area for the HBT +2WHu and 3RT combination, two zones of higher interfacial area for 3WHu, and only one zone of higher interfacial area for HBT+2WHd combination. At low gas velocity, the flow pattern generated by each impeller combination results in different gas bubble trajectory and different bubble breakup and coalescence kinetics, which in turn influences both local and average gas holdup directly, and also affects the local specific interfacial area, that is, influences the mass transfer coefficient indirectly. At higher gas velocity, the power drop also contributes to change of the gas hold-up and mass transfer at the same specific power consumption.

This retrospective study was to investigate whether radiomics feature come from radiotherapy treatment planning CT can predict prognosis in locally advanced rectal cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiation followed by surgery. Four-hundred-eleven locally advanced rectal cancer patients which were treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiation enrolled in this study. All patients’ radiotherapy treatment planning CTs were collected. Tumor was delineated on these CTs by physicians. An in-house radiomics software was used to calculate 271 radiomics features. The results of test-retest and contour-recontour studies were used to filter stable radiomics (Spearman correlation coefficient > 0.7). Twenty-one radiomics features were final enrolled. The performance of prediction model with the radiomics or clinical features were calculated. The clinical outcomes include local control, distant control, disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Model performance C-index was evaluated by C-index. Patients are divided into two groups by cluster results. The results of chi-square test revealed that the radiomics feature cluster is independent of clinical features. Patients have significant differences in OS (p = 0.032, log rank test) for these two groups. By supervised modeling, radiomics features can improve the prediction power of OS from 0.672 [0.617 0.728] with clinical features only to 0.730 [0.658 0.801]. In conclusion, the radiomics features from radiotherapy CT can potentially predict OS for locally advanced rectal cancer patients with neoadjuvant chemoradiation treatment.

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