Well-controlled versus poorly controlled diabetes in patients with obesity: differences in MRI-evaluated pancreatic fat content.

Background: Patients with obesity and poorly controlled type 2 diabetes (T2D) are at high risk of diabetic complications. This study aimed to determine the associations of visceral adipose tissue (VAT), hepatic proton-density fat fraction (PDFF), and pancreatic PDFF with poor glycemic control in patients with obesity and T2D and to evaluate the metabolic effect of bariatric surgery in patients with obesity and poorly controlled diabetes.

Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, from July 2019 to March 2021, 151 consecutive obese patients with new-onset T2D (n=28), well-controlled T2D (n=17), poorly controlled T2D (n=32), prediabetes (n=20), or normal glucose tolerance (NGT; n=54) were included.

Insufficient epitope-specific T cell clones are responsible for impaired cellular immunity to inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in older adults.

Aging is a critical risk factor for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine efficacy. The immune responses to inactivated vaccine for older adults, and the underlying mechanisms of potential differences to young adults, are still unclear. Here we show that neutralizing antibody production by older adults took a longer time to reach similar levels in young adults after inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.

Association of Muscle Fat Content and Muscle Mass With Impaired Lung Function in Young Adults With Obesity: Evaluation With MRI.

Rationale And Objectives: Although low muscle mass is associated with decreased lung function, studies exploring the relationship between muscle fat content and lung function impairment are scarce. This study aimed to evaluate the association of muscle mass and fatty infiltration with lung function in young adults with obesity.

Materials And Methods: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study of patients aged 18-45 years with obesity who had impaired pulmonary function (case group, n = 66) and those with normal pulmonary function (control group, n = 198) by matching age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and height to assess whether muscle characteristics differed.

The explanation of abnormal thermal quenching of the charge transfer band based on thermally coupled levels and applications as temperature sensing probes.

Because of thermal quenching, conventional luminescent materials suffer from severe problems when employed at high temperatures. Based on the thermally coupled energy levels (TCLs) of rare-earth ions, we report and explain an abnormal thermal quenching phenomenon in the excited state of the charge transfer band (CTB), which is expected to bring out a solution to the problems of the low sensitivity of temperature-sensing materials and applications at high temperature. Temperature-dependent excitation spectra of Er or Eu-doped CaMoO, CaWO, and LuVO phosphors are recorded.

Epigenetic Application of ATAC-Seq Based on Tn5 Transposase Purification Technology.

Background: Assays of transposase accessible chromatin sequencing (ATAC-seq) is an efficient assay to investigate chromatin accessibility, which depends on the activity of a robust Tn5 transposase to fragment the genome while cutting in the sequencing adapters.

Methods: We propose reliable approaches for purifying hyperactive Tn5 transposase by chitin magnetic bead sorting. Double-stranded DNA of J76 cells and 293T cells were digested and subjected to tagmentation as test samples with Tn5 transposase, and libraries were established and sequenced.

[Measurement of Traffic Carbon Emissions and Pattern of Efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (1985-2016)].

The "top-down" method was used to measure the traffic carbon emissions from 1985 to 2016 in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and analyze its spatial pattern and temporal evolution characteristics. Considering the unexpected output, a three-stage DEA model was constructed to evaluate and compare the traffic carbon emission efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, excluding the influence of external environment variables and random errors. The study found that first, the total traffic carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt showed a rising trend, among which the carbon emissions from petroleum energy consumption accounted for the largest proportion.

Influence of Diameter on the Templated Crystallization of Polyethylene/Carbon Material Fiber Composites under Intense Shear Flow.

In this study, carbon fibers (CFs) and carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were introduced into polyethylene (PE) and intensive shear flow was imposed on the melt during the melt second flow caused by gas penetrating the melt during the gas-assisted injection molding (GAIM). The effect of fiber diameter on crystalline morphologies of obtained composites was deeply studied. The results revealed the fact that no matter whether CFs or CNFs were introduced into the PE matrix or not, the orientation degree of PE lamellae would increase during the melt second flow.

Influence of HMW tail chains on the structural evolution of HDPE induced by second melt penetration.

It is widely accepted that the role of the high molecular weight (HMW) component is cooperative in shear-induced crystallization, owing to entanglements among long chains. However, this paper demonstrates that the HMW component has a novel effect on structural evolution during the process of multi-melt multi-injection molding (MIM), organized as follows. First, the appropriate HDPE system with an incremental concentration of HMW tails was established.

Computerized breast mass detection using multi-scale Hessian-based analysis for dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI.

This study aimed to investigate a computer-aided system for detecting breast masses using dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging for clinical use. Detection performance of the system was analyzed on 61 biopsy-confirmed lesions (21 benign and 40 malignant lesions) in 34 women. The breast region was determined using the demons deformable algorithm.

Computerized breast lesions detection using kinetic and morphologic analysis for dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI.

To facilitate rapid and accurate assessment, this study proposed a novel fully automatic method to detect and identify focal tumor breast lesions using both kinetic and morphologic features from dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). After motion registration of all phases of the DCE-MRI study, three automatically generated lines were used to segment the whole breast region of each slice. The kinetic features extracted from the pixel-based time-signal intensity curve (TIC) by a two-stage detection algorithm was first used, and then three-dimensional (3-D) morphologic characteristics of the detected regions were applied to differentiate between tumor and non-tumor regions.

Computer-aided diagnosis of breast DCE-MRI using pharmacokinetic model and 3-D morphology analysis.

Three-dimensional (3-D) dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) consists of a large number of images in different enhancement phases which are used to identify and characterize breast lesions. The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-assisted algorithm for tumor segmentation and characterization using both kinetic information and morphological features of 3-D breast DCE-MRI. An integrated color map created by intersecting kinetic and area under the curve (AUC) color maps was used to detect potential breast lesions, followed by the application of a region growing algorithm to segment the tumor.

Computer-aided diagnosis of mass-like lesion in breast MRI: differential analysis of the 3-D morphology between benign and malignant tumors.

This study aimed to evaluate the value of using 3-D breast MRI morphologic features to differentiate benign and malignant breast lesions. The 3-D morphological features extracted from breast MRI were used to analyze the malignant likelihood of tumor from ninety-five solid breast masses (44 benign and 51 malignant) of 82 patients. Each mass-like lesion was examined with regards to three categories of morphologic features, including texture-based gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) feature, shape, and ellipsoid fitting features.

Diagnosis of solid breast tumors using vessel analysis in three-dimensional power Doppler ultrasound images.

This study aims to evaluate whether the distribution of vessels inside and adjacent to tumor region at three-dimensional (3-D) power Doppler ultrasonography (US) can be used for the differentiation of benign and malignant breast tumors. 3-D power Doppler US images of 113 solid breast masses (60 benign and 53 malignant) were used in this study. Blood vessels within and adjacent to tumor were estimated individually in 3-D power Doppler US images for differential diagnosis.

Vascular morphology and tortuosity analysis of breast tumor inside and outside contour by 3-D power Doppler ultrasound.

This study aimed to evaluate morphologic and tortuous features of vessels inside and outside the tumor region on three-dimensional power Doppler ultrasonography (PDUS) in 113 breast mass lesions, including 60 benign and 53 malignant tumors. Compared with benign lesions, malignant breast lesions had significantly larger values of vascular morphologic and tortuous features and larger tumor sizes. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and Student's t-test were used to estimate the performance of a proposed classification system using 13 vascular features and tumor size selected by the neural network.

Classification of breast mass lesions using model-based analysis of the characteristic kinetic curve derived from fuzzy c-means clustering.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of the representative characteristic kinetic curve of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) extracted by fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering for the discrimination of benign and malignant breast tumors using a novel computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system. About the research data set, DCE-MRIs of 132 solid breast masses with definite histopathologic diagnosis (63 benign and 69 malignant) were used in this study. At first, the tumor region was automatically segmented using the region growing method based on the integrated color map formed by the combination of kinetic and area under curve color map.