The influence of epicardial adipose tissue on the prognosis of atrial fibrillation patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation combined with left atrial appendage occlusion.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia in adults. The interplay between epicardial adipose tissue and atrial fibrillation has garnered significant scientific interest. Recently, the combined approach of radiofrequency ablation and left atrial appendage occlusion has become a widely adopted strategy for managing non-valvular atrial fibrillation patients at high risk of thrombus formation.

Apatinib monotherapy for early non-small cell lung cancer: a case report.

Stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for about 15% of incident cancer cases. Prognosis is poor, with a metastasis and recurrence rate of 38% within 2 years of surgery and an overall 5-year survival rate of 54-60%. Here, we report successful apatinib monotherapy of early NSCLC in a patient who had declined surgery, radiofrequency ablation, and immunotherapy.

Distilling knowledge from multiple foundation models for zero-shot image classification.

Zero-shot image classification enables the recognition of new categories without requiring additional training data, thereby enhancing the model's generalization capability when specific training are unavailable. This paper introduces a zero-shot image classification framework to recognize new categories that are unseen during training by distilling knowledge from foundation models. Specifically, we first employ ChatGPT and DALL-E to synthesize reference images of unseen categories from text prompts.

A Structure-Aware Framework of Unsupervised Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation via Frequency and Spatial Knowledge Distillation.

Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) aims to train a model on a labeled source domain and adapt it to an unlabeled target domain. In medical image segmentation field, most existing UDA methods rely on adversarial learning to address the domain gap between different image modalities. However, this process is complicated and inefficient.

Proteomic Atlas of Atherosclerosis: The Contribution of Proteoglycans to Sex Differences, Plaque Phenotypes, and Outcomes.

Background: Using proteomics, we aimed to reveal molecular types of human atherosclerotic lesions and study their associations with histology, imaging, and cardiovascular outcomes.

Methods: Two hundred nineteen carotid endarterectomy samples were procured from 120 patients. A sequential protein extraction protocol was employed in conjunction with multiplexed, discovery proteomics.

Engineered Exosomes for Drug Delivery in Cancer Therapy: A Promising Approach and Application.

A significant amount of research effort is currently focused on investigating the role of exosomes in various cancers. These tiny vesicles, apart from acting as biomarkers, also play a crucial role in tumor formation and development. Several studies have demonstrated that exosomes can be a drug delivery vehicle for cancer therapy.

Roles of extracellular vesicles in ageing-related chronic kidney disease: Demon or angel.

Ageing is a universal and unavoidable phenomenon that significantly increases the risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD). It has been reported that ageing is associated with functional disruption and structural damage to the kidneys. Extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are nanoscale membranous vesicles containing lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids, are secreted by cells into the extracellular spaces.

A starch-based controlled-release targeted nutrient agent to stimulate the activity of volatile chlorinated hydrocarbon-degrading indigenous microflora present in groundwater.

Volatile chlorinated hydrocarbons (VCHs) contaminated groundwater has a low indigenous microorganism population, and lack of nutrient substrates involved in degradation reactions, resulting in a weak natural remediation ability of groundwater ecosystems. In this study, based on the principle of degradation of VCHs by indigenous microorganisms in groundwater, and combined with biostimulation and controlled-release technology, we developed a starch-based encapsulated targeted bionutrient (YH-1) with easy uptake, good stability, controllable slow-release migration, and long timeliness for the remediation of groundwater contaminated by VCHs by indigenous microorganisms. The results showed that YH-1 is easily absorbed by microorganisms and can rapidly initiate itself to stimulate the microbial degradation of VCHs, and the degradation rate of various VCH components within 7 days was 82.

Facilitating room-temperature oxygen ion migration Co-O bond activation in cobaltite films.

Oxygen ion migration in strongly correlated oxides can cause dramatic changes in the crystal structure, chemical and magnetoelectric properties, which holds promising for a wide variety of applications in catalysis, energy conversion, and electronics. However, the high strength and stability of metal-oxygen (M-O) bonds cause a large thermodynamic barrier for oxygen migration. Here, we designed Co-O bond activation in cobaltite (SrCoO) films by Au-nanodot-decoration.

Observation of negative capacitance in antiferroelectric PbZrO Films.

Negative capacitance effect in ferroelectric materials provides a solution to the energy dissipation problem induced by Boltzmann distribution of electrons in conventional electronics. Here, we discover that besides ferroelectrics, the antiferroelectrics based on Landau switches also have intrinsic negative capacitance effect. We report both the static and transient negative capacitance effect in antiferroelectric PbZrO films and reveal its possible physical origin.

Analysis of microbial community structure and degradation of ammonia nitrogen in groundwater in cold regions.

Nitrogen pollution exceeding the standard because of intensive farming and cropping systems has been a widespread problem in Northeast China. This study investigated the characteristics of functional microorganisms in groundwater in the Bang River farming area. Metagenomic sequencing was used to analyze microbial community structures and Canoco was applied to reveal the response relationship between the microbial community and water environmental factors and to identify changes in the microbial population in response to the addition of electronic donors NH-N, NO-N, and NO-N.

Cluster-Type Filaments Induced by Doping in Low-Operation-Current Conductive Bridge Random Access Memory.

Conductive bridge random access memory (CBRAM) is one of the most representative emerging nonvolatile memories in virtue of its excellent performance on speed, high-density integration, and power efficiency. Resistive switching behaviors in CBRAM involving the formation/rupture of metallic conductive filaments are dominated by cation migration and redox processes. It is all in the pursuit to decrease the operation current for low-power consumption and to enhance the current compliance-dependent reliability.

Exosomes derived from hucMSC attenuate renal fibrosis through CK1δ/β-TRCP-mediated YAP degradation.

Exosomes from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hucMSC-Ex) have been suggested as novel nanomaterials for regenerative medicine. Here we explored the roles of hucMSC-Ex through regulating Yes-associated protein (YAP) in renal injury repair by using rat unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) models. Our study identified mechanical stress induced YAP nucleus expression and stimulated collagen deposition and interstitial fibrosis in the kidney.

Realization of Isolated and High-Density Skyrmions at Room Temperature in Uncompensated Synthetic Antiferromagnets.

Magnetic skyrmions are vortex-like spin textures with nontrivial spin topology and novel physical properties that show promise as an essential building block for novel spintronic applications. Skyrmions in synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) have been proposed long-term to have many advantages than those in ferromagnetic materials, which suffer from fundamental limits for size and efficient manipulation. Thus, experimental realization of skyrmions in SAF is intensely pursued.

Electric control of magnetization in an amorphous Co-Fe-Ta-B-O film by resistive switching.

Electric control of magnetism by resistive switching is a simple and efficient approach to manipulate magnetism. However, the mechanism of magnetism manipulation by resistive switching is not well understood. Detailed characterization was performed to investigate the mechanism of magnetization changes with resistance state.

Electric and Light Dual-Gate Tunable MoS Memtransistor.

Memtransistor is a multiterminal device combining the concepts of memristor and field-effect transistor with two-dimensional (2D) materials. The gate tunability of resistive switching in 2D memtransistor enables the multifunctional modulation and promising applications in neuromorphic network. However, the tunability of switching ratio in 2D memtransistor remains small and seriously limits its practical application.

Removal characteristics of a composite active medium for remediation of nitrogen-contaminated groundwater and metagenomic analysis of degrading bacteria.

To investigate the removal characteristics of ammonium-nitrogen (NH-N), nitrite-nitrogen (NO-N), nitrate-nitrogen (NO-N), and total nitrogen from groundwater by a degradable composite active medium, kinetics, thermodynamics, and equilibrium adsorption, experiments were performed using scoria and degrading bacteria immobilized on scoria. Removal of NH-N, NO-N, and NO-N was conducted in adsorption experiments using different times, initial concentrations, pH values, and groundwater chemical compositions (Ca, Mg, HCO, CO, Fe, Mn, and SO). The results showed that the removal of nitrogen by the composite active medium was obviously better than that of scoria alone.

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells and exosomes: bioactive ways of tissue injury repair.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be recruited to damaged tissues directly for regeneration. Exosomes, acting as an important ingredient of MSCs-involved intercellular communication through paracrine actions, also play significant roles in tissue damage repair and have a prospect of potential clinical application. It is generally recognized that MSC-derived exosomes (MSC-exosomes) enhance tissue regeneration and repair through reducing inflammatory responses, promoting proliferation, inhibiting apoptosis and facilitating angiogenesis.

Achieving excellent superplasticity of Mg-7Zn-5Gd-0.6Zr alloy at low temperature regime.

Mg-7Zn-5Gd-0.6Zr (wt%) alloy strengthened with quasicrystal phase (I-MgZnGd phase) is prepared through hot extrusion and subsequent heat treatments. The low temperature (range from 25 °C to 250 °C) superplastic deformation behavior of the as-extruded, aging treated (T5) and solution and aging treated (T6) alloys are investigated.

Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Derived Exosomes Alleviate Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus by Reversing Peripheral Insulin Resistance and Relieving β-Cell Destruction.

Exosomes are nanosized extracellular vesicles (EVs) that show great promise in tissue regeneration and injury repair as mesenchymal stem cell (MSC). MSC has been shown to alleviate diabetes mellitus (DM) in both animal models and clinical trials. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether exosomes from human umbilical cord MSC (hucMSC-ex) have a therapeutic effect on type 2 DM (T2DM).