Publications by authors named "Di Cao"

Carbon-nanotube-modified biochar (CNT3-CBC) with a nanostructured surface was prepared by using cattle manure as the raw material via the impregnation method. This modified biochar was then used to adsorb petroleum and Ni(II) from aqueous solutions. Various physicochemical characterization techniques were employed, including SEM, BET analysis, FTIR, and XPS.

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Bartonella henselae is a Gram-negative bacillus, mainly parasitizing on cats. When a child is scratched by a cat, they may present with the disease symptoms including regional lymphadenopathy, malaise, fever, and splenomegaly, which is known as cat-scratch disease (CSD). Ocular manifestations occur in 5-10% of patients with CSD.

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  • Skull Base Foramen Invasion (SBFI) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is linked to poor overall survival, particularly when classified as severe SBFI.
  • A study involving 1,752 nonmetastatic NPC patients found that those with severe SBFI have survival outcomes similar to T4 patients, leading to recommendations for classifying severe SBFI cases as T4 for better prognosis.
  • Severe SBFI patients also showed significant survival benefits when treated with induction chemotherapy, highlighting the need for adjusted staging in NPC treatment strategies.
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  • Bacterial wilt (BW), caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, negatively affects peanut yield and quality, with the ABA signaling pathway playing a crucial role in peanut resistance, although its molecular mechanisms are not well understood.
  • Researchers identified 18 ABA receptor genes in the peanut genome, focusing on AhPYL6 and AhPYL16, which were significantly activated by stress signals and R. solanacearum infection.
  • The study further revealed that overexpression of AhPYL6 enhances resistance to the bacteria by increasing the expression of defense-related genes, indicating a vital role for PYL ABA receptors in plant defense mechanisms.
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Individuals with cerebellar ataxia often face significant challenges in controlling reaching, especially when multijoint movements are involved. This study investigated the effects of kinematic and dynamic demands on reaching movements by individuals with cerebellar ataxia and healthy controls using a virtual reality task. Participants reached to target locations designed to elicit a range of coordination strategies between shoulder and elbow joint movements.

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Background: Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease in the world and carries an increased risk of liver-related events, but no approved medicine. Electroacupuncture has been used to treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but its effect was uncertain because of the poor quality of prior studies. We designed this trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of electroacupuncture for MAFLD.

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a metabolic disorder. Discovering the metabolic products involved in the development of AD may help not only in the early detection and prevention of AD but also in understanding its pathogenesis and treatment. This study investigated the causal association between the latest large-scale plasma metabolites (1091 metabolites and 309 metabolite ratios) and AD.

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  • Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are effective for in vivo gene therapy but are challenged by the immune system, particularly CD8 T-cell responses against transgene products.* -
  • The study found that blocking multiple innate immune pathways is necessary to reduce immune responses; however, simply blocking these pathways might not completely prevent immune activation, especially at higher vector doses.* -
  • A strategy incorporating CpG depletion and TLR9 inhibitory sequences, along with muscle-specific promoters, showed promise in sustaining transgene expression with minimal immune activation, highlighting the complexity of immune responses in gene therapy.*
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  • The study introduces a new dual-aware computed tomography ventilation imaging (CTVI) method that combines anatomical data from CT scans with motion data from Jacobian maps to enhance the accuracy of lung ventilation images used in functional lung avoidance radiotherapy (FLART).
  • Researchers utilized a dataset from 66 patients with four-dimensional CT (4DCT) images to develop a dual-path fusion network (DPFN) that processes these two types of data through specialized pathways for effective feature extraction.
  • Results indicated that the DPFN method achieved a mean Spearman's correlation coefficient of 0.70 when compared to reference ventilation images, significantly outperforming several other CTVI methods.
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  • Induction chemotherapy (IC) doesn’t always improve survival for patients with locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (LANPC), and traditional methods of choosing IC often lead to poor treatment decisions.
  • This study developed a new system called projected individual treatment effect (PITE) to better personalize IC recommendations, analyzing data from 1,213 patients using imaging and clinical data to predict individual survival chances.
  • The results showed that PITE could effectively categorize patients into three groups, leading to better outcomes: IC significantly improved survival for those who should receive it, had no effect on some, and even worsened survival for others where it wasn't suitable.
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Repositioning approved antitumor drugs for different cancers is a cost-effective approach. Gilteritinib was FDA-approved for the treatment of FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukemia in 2018. However, the therapeutic effects and mechanism of Gilteritinib on other malignancies remain to be defined.

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Background: Protein-protein interactions are the primary means through which proteins carry out their functions. These interactions thus have crucial roles in life activities. The wide availability of fully sequenced animal and plant genomes has facilitated establishment of relatively complete global protein interaction networks for some model species.

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Background: Pathways for intravenously administered gadolinium-based-contrast-agents (GBCAs) entering cerebrospinal-fluid (CSF) circulation in the human brain are not well-understood. The blood-CSF-barrier (BCSFB) in choroid-plexus (CP) has long been hypothesized to be a main entry-point for intravenous-GBCAs into CSF. Most existing studies on this topic were performed in animals and human patients with various diseases.

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  • Acanthosis nigricans (AN) is a skin condition characterized by dark patches, and this article aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis to outline trends and research hotspots in its literature from 1900 to 2024.
  • The analysis included 1,675 publications, with the U.S. leading the research, notably the University of Texas System, and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism having the most publications.
  • Key research areas identified include the connection between AN and other diseases, its relationship with insulin resistance, and treatment strategies focusing on underlying causes and improving skin conditions.*
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The diagnosis of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is challenging due to nonspecific early symptoms, complex diagnostic processes, and small lesion sizes. This study aims to develop an automatic diagnosis method for CTEPH using non-contrasted computed tomography (NCCT) scans, enabling automated diagnosis without precise lesion annotation.A novel cascade network (CN) with multiple instance learning (CNMIL) framework was developed to improve the diagnosis of CTEPH.

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Iron Dextran is a widely used iron oxide compound to treat iron-deficiency anemia patients in the clinic. Similar to other iron oxide compounds such as Ferumoxytol, it can also be used off-label as an intravascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent due to its strong iron-induced T2 and T2* shortening effects. In this study, we seek to evaluate the feasibility of using Iron Dextran enhanced multi-echo susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) MRI at 7T to image arterial and venous blood vessels in the human brain.

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Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) manifests with a higher rate of occurrence in women. Previous epidemiological studies have suggested a potential association between AD and gynecological cancers, but the causal relationship between them remains unclear. This study aims to explore the causal link between 12 types of gynecological cancers and AD using a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) approach.

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Background: Among patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), there is no established method to distinguish between patients with residual disease that may eventually progress and those who have achieved cured. We thus aimed to assess the prognostic value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based lymph node regression grade (LRG) in the risk stratification of patients with NPC following radiotherapy (RT).

Methods: This study retrospectively enrolled 387 patients newly diagnosed with NPC between January 2010 and January 2013.

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Context And Results: In this work, we perform a systematic study on the thermoelectric properties of ZrNiSnHf using first-principles calculations combined with Boltzmann transport equations. The power factor of ZrNiSnHf increases as the temperature increases from 300 to 1200 K, because the increase in electrical conductivity is greater than the decrease in the Seebeck coefficient. The power factor of ZrNiSnHf is larger than that of other ZrNiSnHf thermoelectric materials, but the thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) is similar to that of others materials.

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Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are covalently closed, single-stranded RNAs that play critical roles in various biological processes and diseases, including cancers. However, the functions and mechanisms of circRNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) need further clarification. Here, we identified and confirmed that circATF6 is downregulated in HCC tissues and negatively associated with the overall survival of HCC patients.

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  • Tocilizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets the IL-6 receptor, and BAT1806/BIIB800 is a biosimilar developed to match its properties. The study aimed to show that BAT1806/BIIB800 is similar to the original tocilizumab drug (TCZ) in terms of quality attributes.
  • Over 20 methods were used to compare samples from both BAT1806/BIIB800 and TCZ, focusing on their structural and functional properties using techniques like chromatography, mass spectrometry, and cell-based assays.
  • The results indicated that BAT1806/BIIB800 and TCZ are highly similar in key quality aspects, with only minor
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Adeno-associated virus (AAV) based viral vectors are widely used in human gene therapy and form the basis of approved treatments for several genetic diseases. Immune responses to vector and transgene products, however, substantially complicate these applications in clinical practice. The role of innate immune recognition of AAV vectors was initially unclear, given that inflammatory responses early after vector administration were typically mild in animal models.

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This study investigates the role of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in the context of Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV) lytic infection. We employ two sequencing technologies, short-read sequencing and long-read sequencing, following RNase R treatment on VZV-infected neuroblastoma cells to identify and characterize both cellular and viral circRNAs. Our large scanning analysis identifies and subsequent experiments confirm 200 VZV circRNAs.

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To characterize the combustion properties of solid propellants, the synchronized measurement method of burning rate and combustion temperature is proposed combined shadow imaging and radiation imaging. Using spectroscopic and filtering imaging, shadow and radiation images of a solid propellant specimen are obtained synchronously. Burning rate is calculated by burning surface movement velocity of shadow images, and combustion temperature is calculated by radiation image thermometry.

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