Despite the enormous potential in bioinspired fabrication of high-strength structure by mimicking the spinning process of spider silk, currently accessible routes (e.g., microfluidic and electrospinning approaches) still have substantial function gaps in providing precision control over the nanofibrillar superstructure, crystalline morphology or molecular orientation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough a shear flow field and β-nucleating agents (β-NAs) can separately induce the formation of β-crystals in isotactic polypropylene (iPP) in an efficient manner, we previously encountered difficulty in obtaining abundant β-crystals when these two factors were applied due to the competitive growth of α- and β-crystals. In the current study, to induce the formation of a high fraction of β-crystals, a strategy that introduces a relaxation process after applying a shear flow field but before cooling to crystallize β-nucleated iPP was proposed. Depending on the relaxation state of the shear-induced oriented precursors, abundant β-crystals with a refined orientation morphology were indeed formed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe physical origin of graphene oxide nanosheet (GONS)-driven polymer crystallization was studied from the perspective of intrachain conformational ordering. Time-resolved Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy indicated that both conformational ordering and crystallization of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) were obviously accelerated by the presence of GONSs, indicating their efficient nucleation activity for iPP crystallization. Furthermore, the ordering of long helical segments occurred prior to the crystallization of iPP, as revealed by two-dimensional correlation infrared analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objective: Distant metastasis is a major cause of mortality for patients with lung adenocarcinoma. So far, the mechanism of tumor metastasis is unknown. This study was to screen the gene expression signature in relation to lymphatic metastasis of human lung adenocarcinoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To assess whether surgical manoeuvre or resection of lung cancer could lead to haematogenous dissemination of malignant cells. In the mean time, the relationship between the sequence of vessel ligation and the haematogenous dissemination of cancer cells during operation was determined.
Methods: Exploiting cytokeratin 19 (CK19)/carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) mRNA as markers, 69 peripheral blood samples were collected from 23 consecutive patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who underwent surgical resection with curative intention in preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative period, respectively.
Purpose: To set up a molecular method (i.e. RT-PCR) that can be used to detect disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in regional lymph nodes (LNs) in patients with lung cancer and to evaluate its clinical significance.
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