Publications by authors named "Hu I"

Background: Belching is a common physiological occurrence, but it becomes bothersome when it occurs excessively and disrupts one's quality of life. It is hypothesized that psychiatric diagnoses may be an etiology and exacerbation for intractable belching.  Case presentation: We present a case report of a female in her 70s with a psychiatric history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) with symptoms of intractable belching.

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  • This study focused on the effectiveness of perioperative immunotherapy in early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, specifically looking at tissue and imaging biomarkers during a phase II clinical trial.
  • Nineteen patients receiving either neoadjuvant nivolumab combined with ipilimumab or nivolumab alone showed that major pathologic response (MPR) was linked to larger tumors initially, but a significant reduction in size post-treatment and increased immune activity markers like CD8 and granzyme B.
  • The findings suggest that changes in tumor size and immune cell dynamics could serve as potential predictors for how well patients respond to neoadjuvant immunotherapy in treating resectable HCC.*
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Spatial hindrance-based pro-antibodies (pro-Abs) are engineered antibodies to reduce monoclonal antibodies' (mAbs) on-target toxicity using universal designed blocking segments that mask mAb antigen-binding sites through spatial hindrance. By linking through protease substrates and linkers, these blocking segments can be removed site-specifically. Although many types of blocking segments have been developed, such as coiled-coil and hinge-based Ab locks, the molecular structure of the pro-Ab, particularly the region showing how the blocking fragment blocks the mAb, has not been elucidated by X-ray crystallography or cryo-EM.

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  • mRNA vaccines can be limited in effectiveness due to liver accumulation when delivered via lipid nanoparticles (LNPs); this study introduces an oral formulation that targets immune cells in the gastrointestinal tract.
  • The new vaccine, βGlus/mRNA@LNPs, combines mRNA with β-glucans and utilizes LNPs to protect the mRNA from degradation in the GI environment while allowing for immune cell uptake.
  • Testing showed that this oral vaccine triggers strong immune responses in tumor-bearing mice without significant side effects, offering a promising, easy-to-administer alternative in cancer immunotherapy.
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  • The influenza virus constantly evolves to avoid human immunity, requiring annual updates of vaccine strains for effectiveness against seasonal epidemics.* -
  • A new computational method called beth-1 has been developed to forecast virus evolution and select optimal vaccine strains by analyzing mutation fitness and immune response data.* -
  • In tests, beth-1 outperformed existing methods in predicting viral changes and showed better or comparable results in neutralization experiments in mice, making it a valuable tool for selecting influenza vaccine strains.*
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Aging increases the risk of age-related diseases, imposing substantial healthcare and personal costs. Targeting fundamental aging mechanisms pharmacologically can promote healthy aging and reduce this disease susceptibility. In this work, we employed transcriptome-based drug screening to identify compounds emulating transcriptional signatures of long-lived genetic interventions.

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Two-dimensional (2D) material-based nanoelectromechanical (NEM) resonators are expected to be enabling components in hybrid qubits that couple mechanical and electromagnetic degrees of freedom. However, challenges in their sensitivity and coherence time have to be overcome to realize such mechanohybrid quantum systems. We here demonstrate the potential of strain engineering to realize 2D material-based resonators with unprecedented performance.

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  • CP74 is a modified version of a protein from E. coli that untangles a complex knotted structure and forms a stable dimer through domain swapping, revealing a large interaction area between the two protein units.* -
  • To study how changes in tryptophan residues affect the protein's structure and stability, researchers replaced five tryptophans with phenylalanine and used various biophysical methods to assess the impact.* -
  • Findings showed that overall structure remained stable despite single substitutions, while detailed analysis indicated that specific tryptophan residues, especially W100, are crucial for CP74's proper folding and stability, highlighting the significance of the hinge region in maintaining its structure.*
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Maintaining mitochondrial function is critical to an improved healthspan and lifespan. Introducing mild stress by inhibiting mitochondrial translation invokes the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPR) and increases lifespan in several animal models. Notably, lower mitochondrial ribosomal protein (MRP) expression also correlates with increased lifespan in a reference population of mice.

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  • Virus evolution involves changes that help pathogens adapt to their hosts and surroundings, with certain mutations increasing the likelihood of infection.
  • These advantageous mutations can quickly dominate a population, as seen through a logistic growth pattern that is influenced by the rate of mutation and external factors affecting the virus.
  • The proposed model applies to COVID-19 data, specifically the B.1.1.7 variant in England, providing insight into how these mutations evolve and spread over time.
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Aquatic eddy covariance (AEC) is an in situ technique for measuring fluxes in marine and freshwater systems that is based on the covariance of velocity and concentration measurements. To date, AEC has mainly been applied to the measurement of benthic oxygen fluxes. Here, development of a fast multiple-channel sensor enables the use of AEC for measurement of benthic fluxes of fluorescent material, salt, and heat at three distinct sites in Massachusetts, USA, including the Connecticut River, the Concord River, and Upper Mystic Lake.

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  • - Researchers observed ferroelectric properties in a 2D phase of water ice, created by confining it between two graphene layers at room temperature, demonstrating a strong, permanent dipole influenced by external electric fields.
  • - They found that for ferroelectric ordering to occur, a monolayer of 2D ice is necessary, with findings supported by both simulations and tests on water's partial pressure and temperature.
  • - The unique properties of this 2D ice allow for the development of new nanoelectromechanical devices with memory capabilities, showing significant switching performance and durability without degradation over numerous cycles.
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Here, we report the effects of enhanced magnetic fields resulting from type-II superconducting NbTiN slabs adjacent to narrow Hall bar devices fabricated from epitaxial graphene. Observed changes in the magnetoresistances were found to have minimal contributions from device inhomogeneities, magnet hysteresis, electron density variations along the devices, and transient phenomena. We hypothesize that Abrikosov vortices, present in type-II superconductors, contribute to these observations.

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As first recognized in 2010, epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) provides a platform for quantized Hall resistance (QHR) metrology unmatched by other two-dimensional structures and materials. Here we report graphene parallel QHR arrays, with metrologically precise quantization near 1000 Ω. These arrays have tunable carrier densities, due to uniform epitaxial growth and chemical functionalization, allowing quantization at the robust = 2 filling factor in array devices at relative precision better than 10.

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Overexpression of a cytochrome P450 gene, CYP4G19, is known to associate with pyrethroid resistance in the German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.) (Blattodea: Ectobiidae). In this study, we investigated the CYP4G19 expression level in 20 field-collected strains of B.

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Objective: Prospective associations between n-3 fatty acid biomarkers and type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk are not consistent in individual studies. We aimed to summarize the prospective associations of biomarkers of α-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosapentaenoic acid (DPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) with T2D risk through an individual participant-level pooled analysis.

Research Design And Methods: For our analysis we incorporated data from a global consortium of 20 prospective studies from 14 countries.

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We report on nonreciprocity observations in several configurations of graphene-based quantum Hall devices. Two distinct measurement configurations were adopted to verify the universality of the observations (i.e.

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The Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Model Intercomparison Project (RCEMIP) is an intercomparison of multiple types of numerical models configured in radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE). RCE is an idealization of the tropical atmosphere that has long been used to study basic questions in climate science. Here, we employ RCE to investigate the role that clouds and convective activity play in determining cloud feedbacks, climate sensitivity, the state of convective aggregation, and the equilibrium climate.

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Acetyl coenzyme A (Ac-CoA)-dependent N-acetylation is performed by arylalkylamine N-acetyltransferase (AANAT) and is important in many biofunctions. AANAT catalyzes N-acetylation through an ordered sequential mechanism in which cofactor (Ac-CoA) binds first, with substrate binding afterward. No ternary structure containing AANAT, cofactor, and substrate was determined, meaning the details of substrate binding and product release remain unclear.

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Diverse microbial ecosystems underpin life in the sea. Among these microbes are many unicellular eukaryotes that span the diversity of the eukaryotic tree of life. However, genetic tractability has been limited to a few species, which do not represent eukaryotic diversity or environmentally relevant taxa.

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Insecticide resistance in the German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.), is a significant challenge to the pest management professionals worldwide. We collected 24 field populations of B.

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Eddy Correlation (EC) is a technique that can be used to measure transport of substances in aquatic ecosystems between bottom sediments and the overlying water (i.e. benthic fluxes).

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Plants can sense the gravitational force. When plants perceive a change in this natural force, they tend to reorient their organs with respect to the direction of the gravity vector, i.e.

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Dinoflagellates are known to possess a highly aberrant nucleus-the so-called dinokaryon-that exhibits a multitude of exceptional biological features. These include: (1) Permanently condensed chromosomes; (2) DNA in a cholesteric liquid crystalline state, (3) extremely large DNA content (up to 200 pg); and, perhaps most strikingly, (4) a deficit of histones-the canonical building blocks of all eukaryotic chromatin. Dinoflagellates belong to the Alveolata clade (dinoflagellates, apicomplexans, and ciliates) and, therefore, the biological oddities observed in dinoflagellate nuclei are derived character states.

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