Feasibility of dose calculation for treatment plans using electron density maps from a novel dual-layer detector spectral CT simulator.

Background: Conventional single-energy CT can only provide a raw estimation of electron density (ED) for dose calculation by developing a calibration curve that simply maps the HU values to ED values through their correlations. Spectral CT, also known as dual-energy CT (DECT) or multi-energy CT, can generate a series of quantitative maps, such as ED maps. Using spectral CT for radiotherapy simulations can directly acquire ED information without developing specific calibration curves.

High-Verdet Constant and Low-Optical Loss Tb Doped Magnetite Nanoparticles.

Magneto-optical (MO) polymer nanocomposites have emerged as alternatives to conventional MO crystals, particularly in nanophotonics applications, thanks to their better processing flexibility and superior Verdet constants. However, a higher Verdet constant commonly comes with excessive optical loss due to increased absorption and scattering, resulting in a constant or reduced figure-of-merit (FOM) defined as the Verdet constant over optical loss. By doping magnetite (FeO) nanoparticles with Tb ions, we report a new strategy to enhance the Verdet constant without increasing the optical loss.

Broadband frequency comb generation through cascaded quadratic nonlinearity in thin-film lithium niobate microresonators.

Broadband frequency comb generation through cascaded quadratic nonlinearity remains experimentally untapped in free-space cavities with bulk χ materials mainly due to the high threshold power and restricted ability of dispersion engineering. Thin-film lithium niobate (LN) is a good platform for nonlinear optics due to the tight mode confinement in a nano-dimensional waveguide, the ease of dispersion engineering, large quadratic nonlinearities, and flexible phase matching via periodic poling. Here we demonstrate broadband frequency comb generation through dispersion engineering in a thin-film LN microresonator.

Co-targeting CD47 and VEGF elicited potent anti-tumor effects in gastric cancer.

Background: CD47, serving as an intrinsic immune checkpoint, has demonstrated efficacy as an anti-tumor target in hematologic malignancies. Nevertheless, the clinical relevance of CD47 in gastric cancer and its potential as a therapeutic target remains unclear.

Methods: The expression of CD47 in clinical gastric cancer tissues was assessed using immunohistochemistry and Western blot.

Turnkey photonic flywheel in a microresonator-filtered laser.

Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) microcomb has emerged as an enabling technology that revolutionizes a wide range of applications in both basic science and technological innovation. Reliable turnkey operation with sub-optical-cycle and sub-femtosecond timing jitter is key to the success of many intriguing microcomb applications at the intersection of ultrafast optics and microwave electronics. Here we propose an approach and demonstrate the first turnkey Brillouin-DKS frequency comb to the best of our knowledge.

The correlation between the margin of resection and prognosis in esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma.

Adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction (AEG) has become increasingly common in Western and Asian populations. Surgical resection is the mainstay of treatment for AEG; however, determining the distance from the upper edge of the tumor to the esophageal margin (PM) is essential for accurate prognosis. Despite the relevance of these studies, most have been retrospective and vary widely in their conclusions.

Anti-CD47 Antibody Enhances the Efficacy of Chemotherapy in Patients with Gastric Cancer Liver Metastasis.

Patients with gastric cancer liver metastasis (GCLM) are often treated with palliative care, and they show a poor prognosis. In gastric cancer, high CD47 expression has been shown to indicate a poor prognosis. CD47, expressed on the cell surface, prevents the cells from being phagocytosed by macrophages.

Turnkey photonic flywheel in a Chimera cavity.

Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) microcomb has emerged as an enabling technology that revolutionizes a wide range of applications in both basic science and technological innovation. Reliable turnkey operation with sub-optical-cycle and sub-femtosecond timing jitter is key to the success of many intriguing microcomb applications at the intersection of ultrafast optics and microwave electronics. Here we propose a novel approach to demonstrate the first turnkey Brillouin-DKS frequency comb.

Synthesized spatiotemporal mode-locking and photonic flywheel in multimode mesoresonators.

Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) frequency combs-also known as microcombs-have arguably created a new field in cavity nonlinear photonics, with a strong cross-fertilization between theoretical, experimental, and technological research. Spatiotemporal mode-locking (STML) not only adds new degrees of freedom to ultrafast laser technology, but also provides new insights for implementing analogue computers and heuristic optimizers with photonics. Here, we combine the principles of DKS and STML to demonstrate the STML DKS by developing an unexplored ultrahigh-quality-factor Fabry-Pérot (FP) mesoresonator based on graded index multimode fiber (GRIN-MMF).

Dissipative soliton generation and real-time dynamics in microresonator-filtered fiber lasers.

Optical frequency combs in microresonators (microcombs) have a wide range of applications in science and technology, due to its compact size and access to considerably larger comb spacing. Despite recent successes, the problems of self-starting, high mode efficiency as well as high output power have not been fully addressed for conventional soliton microcombs. Recent demonstration of laser cavity soliton microcombs by nesting a microresonator into a fiber cavity, shows great potential to solve the problems.

Monostable dissipative Kerr solitons.

Kerr microcombs hold the promise of bringing frequency combs onto the chip and into a variety of applications requiring low size, weight, power, and cost. However, reliable Kerr microcomb generation is hindered by the thermal effect and multistability of dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs). Past approaches toward Kerr microcomb reliability include either deterministic single-soliton generation or self-starting soliton behavior but not both.

Delayed bowel perforation after instilling over warmed peritoneal dialysate.

Background: Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a safe and home-based treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. The direct thermal damage of abdominal organs is very rare.

Case Presentation: We report a peritoneal dialysis patient presented abdominal pain and feculent effluent 3 weeks after he instilled hot dialysis solution.

Hedgehog signaling in gastrointestinal carcinogenesis and the gastrointestinal tumor microenvironment.

The Hedgehog (HH) signaling pathway plays important roles in gastrointestinal carcinogenesis and the gastrointestinal tumor microenvironment (TME). Aberrant HH signaling activation may accelerate the growth of gastrointestinal tumors and lead to tumor immune tolerance and drug resistance. The interaction between HH signaling and the TME is intimately involved in these processes, for example, tumor growth, tumor immune tolerance, inflammation, and drug resistance.

Targeting the autophagy promoted antitumor effect of T-DM1 on HER2-positive gastric cancer.

Trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), an antibody-drug conjugate consisted of the HER2-targeted monoclonal antibody trastuzumab and the tubulin inhibitor emtansine, has shown potent therapeutic value in HER2-positive breast cancer (BC). However, a clinical trial indicated that T-DM1 exerts a limited effect on HER2-positive gastric cancer (GC), but the underlying mechanism is inconclusive. Our research attempted to reveal the probable mechanism and role of autophagy in T-DM1-treated HER2-positive GC.

Analysis of risk factors and prevention strategies for functional delayed gastric emptying in 1243 patients with distal gastric cancer.

Background: Analysis of the risk factors associated with functional delayed gastric emptying after distal gastric cancer surgery to provide a basis for further reduction of the incidence of this complication.

Methods: Total of 1382 patients with distal gastric cancer from January 2016 to October 2018 were enrolled. Correlation analysis was performed in 53 patients with FDGE by logistic regression.

Symbiotic quadratic soliton mode-locked non-degenerate optical parametric oscillators.

We analytically and numerically unveil the existence condition of symbiotic solitons in doubly resonant non-degenerate optical parametric oscillators. Resonant signal and idler with terahertz comb bandwidth and femtosecond pulse duration in the mid-infrared are attainable through this symbiotic soliton mode-locking technique. The group velocity mismatches between the three interacting waves are the dominant cause of the symbiotic soliton perturbation, and their effects are numerically investigated in detail.

Quadratic soliton mode-locked degenerate optical parametric oscillator.

We examine the existence condition of the quadratic soliton mode-locked degenerate optical parametric oscillator in the previously unexplored parameter space. We study the nature of the quadratic solitons and divide their dynamics into two distinctive branches, depending on the system parameters. Origin of the quadratic soliton perturbation is identified, and strategy to mitigate its detrimental effect is developed.

Cancer-associated fibroblasts promote malignancy of gastric cancer cells via Nodal signalling.

The roles of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in progression of gastric cancer (GC) are far from well illustration. Here, we show that CAFs can trigger the proliferation and decrease the doxorubicin (Dox) sensitivity of GC cells via secretion of Nodal, one embryonic morphogen that can promote malignancy of various cancers. The neutralization antibody of Nodal can attenuate CAFs-induced cell proliferation.

Short pulse close to round-trip time generated by cavity-less high-gain Nd:GdVO bounce geometry.

In this paper, pulsed output with pulse-widths approaching the round-trip time were generated by utilizing a cavity-less high-gain Nd:GdVO bounce geometry. By adopting an EOQ (electro-optics Q-switch) device, pulse-widths of 1.36 ns, 1.

Mutational landscape of gastric cancer and clinical application of genomic profiling based on target next-generation sequencing.

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is a leading cause of cancer deaths, and an increased number of GC patients adopt to next-generation sequencing (NGS) to identify tumor genomic alterations for precision medicine.

Methods: In this study, we established a hybridization capture-based NGS panel including 612 cancer-associated genes, and collected sequencing data of tumors and matched bloods from 153 gastric cancer patients. We performed comprehensive analysis of these sequencing and clinical data.

Cytoreductive surgery for metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors followed by sunitinib compared to followed by imatinib-a multi-center cohort study.

Background: The progression-free survival (PFS) is not optimal when imatinib was recommended for treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) undergoing surgery after tumor local or multifocal progression.

Methods: We evaluate PFS of patients undergoing R0 resection or optimal cytoreductive surgery followed by sunitinib therapy compared with imatinib after tumor unifocal or multifocal progression.

Results: From January 2006 to June 2017, ninety-seven patients from thirteen medical centers were enrolled.

Pathway- and clinical-factor-based risk model predicts the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer.

Gastric cancer (GC) has a high incidence and mortality rate. If discovered late, GC tends to have a poor prognosis. Improvements in the prognostic accuracy of GC through combined analysis of multiple relevant genes and clinical factors may solve this problem.

Cr: CdSe passively Q-switched Ho: YAG laser.

We first demonstrate the laser performance of a Cr:CdSe passively Q-switched (PQS) 2.09 μm Ho: YAG laser resonantly pumped by a thulium-doped fiber laser. The maximum output pulse energy of 1.

High peak power hybrid MOPA laser with tunable pulse repetition frequency and pulse duration.

In this paper, we demonstrated a hybrid master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) laser with high peak power and widely tunable pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and pulse duration. The first-stage solid-state amplifier was carefully designed to keep good beam quality and supply high gain simultaneously. The maximum peak power of 760 kW was achieved with average power of 42 W, PRF of 50 kHz, pulse duration of 1.