The causal effect of natural killer cells on COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and severity.

Background: Recent studies have suggested that alterations in natural killer (NK) cell function may contribute to the development of COVID-19. Additionally, dysregulated NK cells may increase susceptibility to COVID-19 and affect the severity of the infection.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the causal relationship between NK cell-related immune traits and the risk of COVID-19 infection.

Synovial Fluid-Derived Exosomes from Osteoarthritis Patients Modulate Cell Surface Phenotypes of Monocytes and Cytokine Secretions.

Background: Exosomes can be found in the synovial fluid of inflamed knee joints, which play a significant role in osteoarthritis (OA) progression. However, their role - in modulating the cellular environment within the body, particularly monocytes remain unexplored. This study aimed to evaluate the immunomodulatory effect of exosomes on monocytes.

A multimodal physiological and psychological dataset for human with mental stress induced myocardial ischemia.

Accurate differentiation between angina with no obstructive coronary arteries (ANOCA) and mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia (MSIMI) is crucial for tailored treatment strategies, yet public data scarcity hampers understanding. Given the higher incidence of both conditions in women, this study prospectively enrolled 80 female ANOCA and 39 age-matched female controls, subjecting them to three types of mental stress tasks. ECGs were continuously monitored across Rest, Stress, and Recover stages of the mental stress tasks, with PET/CT imaging during the Stress stage to evaluate myocardial perfusion.

The Hepatic Nerves Regulated Inflammatory Effect in the Process of Liver Injury: Is Nerve the Key Treating Target for Liver Inflammation?

Liver injury is a common pathological basis for various liver diseases. Chronic liver injury is often an important initiating factor in liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently, hepatitis A and E infections are the most common causes of acute liver injury worldwide, whereas drug toxicity (paracetamol overdose) in the USA and part of Western Europe.

Relation extraction: advancements through deep learning and entity-related features.

Capturing semantics and structure surrounding the target entity pair is crucial for relation extraction. The task is challenging due to the limited semantic elements and structural features of the target entity pair within a sentence. To tackle this problem, this paper introduces an approach that fuses entity-related features under convolutional neural networks and graph convolution neural networks.

Construction of a lipid metabolism-related and immune-associated prognostic score for gastric cancer.

Background: The interaction between tumor cells and immune or non-immune stromal cells creates a unique tumor microenvironment, which plays an important role in the growth, invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer (GC).

Methods: The candidate genes were selected to construct risk-score by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis. Nomograms were constructed by combining clinical pathological factors, and the model performance was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve, decision curve analysis, net reclassification improvement and integrated discrimination improvement.

Perylene-based molecular device: multifunctional spintronic and spin caloritronic applications.

Carbon-based magnetic molecular junctions are promising candidates for nanoscale spintronic applications because they are atomically thin and possess high stability and peculiar magnetism. Herein, based on first-principles and non-equilibrium Green's function, we designed a carbon-based molecular spintronic device composed of carbon atomic chains, zigzag-edged graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR), and a perylene molecule. Our results show that the device exhibits integrated spintronic and spin caloritronic functionalities, such as the bias-voltage driven spin filtering effect, negative differential resistance effect and giant magnetoresistance, temperature-gradient driven spin Seebeck effect, thermal spin filtering effect, high thermal magnetoresistance, and thermal colossal giant magnetoresistance.

Self-healing, injectable hydrogel based on dual dynamic covalent cross-linking against postoperative abdominal cavity adhesion.

Clinically, increasing the peritoneal barrier is an effective adjunct to reducing postoperative peritoneal adhesion. This study presents a facile template for preparing a supramolecular hybrid hydrogel through dynamic covalent cross-linking between carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS), 2-formylphenylboronic acid (2-FPBA), and quercetin (Que). The as-prepared complex CMCS/2-FPBA/Que (CFQ) hydrogel exhibited favorable antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects.

Metallothionein 2A (MT2A) controls cell proliferation and liver metastasis by controlling the MST1/LATS2/YAP1 signaling pathway in colorectal cancer.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the three major cancers in the world and is the cancer with the most liver metastasis. The present study aimed to investigate the role of metallothionein 2A (MT2A) in the modulation of CRC cell proliferation and liver metastasis, as well as its molecular mechanisms.

Methods: The expression profile of metallothionein 2A (MT2A) in colorectal cancer retrieved from TCGA, GEO and Oncomine database.

Development and Validation of a Novel Hypoxia Score for Predicting Prognosis and Immune Microenvironment in Rectal Cancer.

Hypoxia plays a major role in various tumor types. However, few studies have concentrated on the prognostic model of hypoxia-related genes in rectal cancer and the effect of hypoxia on neutrophil-mediated immunosuppression. We performed Kaplan-Meier analysis, random survival forest analysis, and Cox regression analysis on 342 hypoxia-related genes, constructed hypoxia score in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohort, and verified them in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort.

Establishment and validation of prognostic nomograms to predict the overall and cancer-specific survival in patients with hepatic malignant vascular tumors.

Objective: To characterize the clinicopathologic features and to investigate the prognostic nomograms for overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in patients with Hepatic malignant vascular tumors (HMVT).

Method: Patients diagnosed with HMVT between 1973 and 2015 were screened from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The Kaplan-Meier (KM) was used for survival analysis.

Facile Preparation of Drug-Releasing Supramolecular Hydrogel for Preventing Postoperative Peritoneal Adhesion.

Hydrogels have attracted widespread attention for breaking the bottlenecks faced during facile drug delivery. To date, the preparation of jelly carriers for hydrophobic drugs remains challenging. In this study, by evaporating ethanol to drive the formation of hydrogen bonds, hydrophilic poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and certain hydrophobic compounds [luteolin (LUT), quercetin (QUE), and myricetin (MYR)] were rapidly prepared into supramolecular hydrogel within 10 min.

Endostatin in fibrosis and as a potential candidate of anti-fibrotic therapy.

Fibrotic diseases pose significant clinical challenges due to their broadness and complexity. Thus, a better understanding of fibrogenesis and the development of more effective treatments is imperative. Recent evidence suggests a significant antifibrotic potential of an endogenous glycoprotein, endostatin.

Intraband hot-electron photoluminescence of a silver nanowire-coupled gold film high-order gap plasmons.

We report a strong one-photon photoluminescence (PL) behavior of a silver nanowire directly coupled gold film. The PL peak position of the silver nanowire-coupled gold film deviates from the intrinsic interband transition of gold materials and is not sensitive to the diameter change of the silver nanowire. We attribute this strong PL behavior to the intraband transition of hot electrons dominated by high-order gap plasmons, which are excited in the ultra-small gap formed by an ultra-thin polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) layer coated on the silver nanowire.

Optical Properties of Artemisinin and Its Derivatives.

Artemisinin and its derivatives are of great research value in biology. In this work, we study their chiral and optical properties. The multidimensional multifunction analysis method is used to analyze the linear and nonlinear optical processes (one-photon and two-photon absorption: OPA and TPA), electronic circular dichroism (ECD), and Raman optical activity (ROA) mechanisms under light excitation.

HMGB1 as a potential biomarker and therapeutic target for severe COVID-19.

COVID-19 has attracted global attention due to its rapid spread around the world with substantial morbidity and associated mortality. Severe COVID-19 can be complicated by the acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis and septic shock leading to death. These complications are thought to result from an overactivation of the immune system, leading to a cytokine storm syndrome associated with multiple organ failure.

Efficacy and Safety of All-oral Emitasvir and Sofosbuvir in Patients with Genotype 1b HCV Infections without Cirrhosis.

Emitasvir is a new type of hepatitis C virus (HCV) nonstructural protein 5A (NS5A) inhibitor, and the data of phase 2 trial has shown emitasvir-sofosbuvir to have good safety and tolerance. We conducted this phase 3 trial to further verify the efficacy and safety. We evaluated the antiviral activity and safety of a 12-week regimen of emitasvir phosphate (100 mg) combined with sofosbuvir (400 mg) once daily in non-cirrhotic patients with genotype 1 HCV infection.

Exosomal miR-223 derived from natural killer cells inhibits hepatic stellate cell activation by suppressing autophagy.

Background: Activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is a prominent driver of liver fibrosis. We previously demonstrated that exosomes derived from natural killer (NK) cells (NK-Exo) attenuated TGF-β1-induced HSC activation. Herein, this study was designed to investigate the mechanism underlying the action of NK-Exo.

Optical physics on chiral brominated azapirones: Bromophilone A and B.

In this work, we use the visualization method to study their intramolecular electric-magnetic interactions and reveal the physical mechanism of their electronic transition to explain the cause of the opposite ECD spectrum orientations. Azaphilone A and B are two chiral molecules, due to their differing chirality, the electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra of bromophilone A and B are very different at 431 nm. Based on the two-step transition process, the charge-transfer characteristics of the corresponding two-photon excited states of the two chiral molecules are analysed in detail by calculating the photoinduced charge transfer and electron-hole coherence in the two-photon absorption (TPA) process.

Exosomes derived from natural killer cells inhibit hepatic stellate cell activation and liver fibrosis.

Activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is a prominent driver of liver fibrosis. This study was designed to investigate the effect of exosomes derived from natural killer (NK) cells on HSC activation and liver fibrosis. The exosomes were isolated from NK-92MI cells (NK-Exo) and identified by transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis, and western blot.

Huge field enhancement and high transmittance enabled by terahertz bow-tie aperture arrays: a simulation study.

Sub-wavelength aperture arrays featuring small gaps have an extraordinary significance in enhancing the interactions of terahertz (THz) waves with matters. But it is difficult to obtain large light-substance interaction enhancement and high optical response signal detection capabilities at the same time. Here, we propose a simple terahertz bow-tie aperture arrays structure with a large electric field enhancement factor and high transmittance at the same time.

Donor-length dependent photoninduced charge transfer in two-photon absorption.

In this paper, we study the donor-length dependent photoinduced charge transfer in two-photon absorption (TPA). In the donor-acceptor (D-A) system of oligo-thiophene-fullerene, two kind of lengths of oligo-thiophene are chosen to study the donor-length dependent photoinduced charge transfer in TPA. It is found that donor length can significantly influence the rate of charge transfer.