Publications by authors named "Zhicai Liu"

Background: Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an uncommon but serious adverse reaction after vaccination. However, its association with vaccines other than the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine remains debatable. This study aimed to analyze ITP cases following influenza vaccination and assess any potential association.

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Referring image segmentation aims to accurately align image pixels and text features for object segmentation based on natural language descriptions. This paper proposes NSNPRIS (convolutional nonlinear spiking neural P systems for referring image segmentation), a novel model based on convolutional nonlinear spiking neural P systems. NSNPRIS features NSNPFusion and Language Gate modules to enhance feature interaction during encoding, along with an NSNPDecoder for feature alignment and decoding.

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Seizure is a common neurological disorder that usually manifests itself in recurring seizure, and these seizures can have a serious impact on a person's life and health. Therefore, early detection and diagnosis of seizure is crucial. In order to improve the efficiency of early detection and diagnosis of seizure, this paper proposes a new seizure detection method, which is based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and multi-channel long- and short-term memory-like spiking neural P (LSTM-SNP) model.

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Image super-resolution (ISR) is designed to recover lost detail information from low-resolution images, resulting in high-quality and high-definition high-resolution images. In the existing single ISR (SISR) methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNN), however, most of the models cannot effectively combine global and local information and are also easy to ignore the correlation between different hierarchical feature information. To address these problems, this study proposes a multi-level feature interactive image super-resolution network, which is constructed by the convolutional units inspired by nonlinear spiking mechanism in nonlinear spiking neural P systems, including shallow feature processing, deep feature extraction and fusion, and reconstruction modules.

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Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the predominant form of esophageal cancer and is characterized by an unfavorable prognosis. To elucidate the distinct molecular alterations in ESCC and investigate therapeutic targets, we performed a comprehensive analysis of transcriptomics, proteomics, and phosphoproteomics data derived from 60 paired treatment-naive ESCC and adjacent nontumor tissue samples. Additionally, we conducted a correlation analysis to describe the regulatory relationship between transcriptomic and proteomic processes, revealing alterations in key metabolic pathways.

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Deep learning technology has been successfully used in Chest X-ray (CXR) images of COVID-19 patients. However, due to the characteristics of COVID-19 pneumonia and X-ray imaging, the deep learning methods still face many challenges, such as lower imaging quality, fewer training samples, complex radiological features and irregular shapes. To address these challenges, this study first introduces an extensive NSNP-like neuron model, and then proposes a multitask adversarial network architecture based on ENSNP-like neurons for chest X-ray images of COVID-19, called MAE-Net.

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Most existing multi-scale object detectors depend on multi-level feature maps. The Feature Pyramid Networks (FPN) is a significant architecture for object detection that utilizes these multi-level feature maps. However, the use of FPN also increases the detector's complexity.

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Deep convolutional neural networks have shown advanced performance in accurately segmenting images. In this paper, an SNP-like convolutional neuron structure is introduced, abstracted from the nonlinear mechanism in nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems. Then, a U-shaped convolutional neural network named SNP-like parallel-convolutional network, or SPC-Net, is constructed for segmentation tasks.

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Nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems are one of neural-like membrane computing models, abstracted by nonlinear spiking mechanisms of biological neurons. NSNP systems have a nonlinear structure and can show rich nonlinear dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a variant of NSNP systems, called gated nonlinear spiking neural P systems or GNSNP systems.

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Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. It is urgent to develop new drugs to improve the prognosis of ESCC patients. Here, we found benzydamine, a locally acting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, had potent cytotoxic effect on ESCC cells.

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Subsequently to the publication of the above article, and a Corrigendum that has already been published with the intention of showing corrected versions of Figs. 3 and 6 (DOI: 10.3892/ijo.

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An interested reader drew to our attention that, in the above-mentioned article, there were two figures where identity in certain of the data was shared between panels within the same figure. First, in Fig. 3B, the data shown for the EC9706 cell line/negative control (NC) experiment were derived from the same original source as those for the EC-1/Blank control experiment.

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Due to their frequent use in unattended and hostile deployment environments, the security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has attracted much interest in the past two decades. However, it remains a challenge to design a lightweight authentication protocol for WSNs because the designers are confronted with a series of desirable security requirements, e.g.

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Objective: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of esophageal cancer endoscopic screening once-in-a-lifetime and to predict the optimal screening age for people in high-risk areas of rural China.

Methods: A Markov model was constructed to predict and compare the effect of four esophageal cancer endoscopic screening modalities which varied with different screening ages. Long-term epidemiological effectiveness and cost-effectiveness were predicted by simulation of the model.

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Newly discovered intrinsic regulators, the miRNAs regulate gene expression by binding to the 3'-untranslated regions of the genome. Accumulating studies have indicated that miRNAs are aberrantly expressed in various human cancers. We found that miRNA-1207-5p (miR‑1207-5p) was markedly downregulated in esophageal carcinoma (EC) tissues, and was correlated with EC differentiation, pathological stage and lymph node metastasis.

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Background: Potential target genes of microRNA (miR)-494 have been reported in many types of cancers. However, the role of miR-494 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains unknown.

Aim: This study focused on the expression and biological function of miR-494 in ESCC.

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Soft set theory, proposed by Molodtsov, has been regarded as an effective mathematical tool to deal with uncertainties. Recently, uncertainty measures of soft sets and fuzzy soft sets have gained attentions from researchers. This paper is devoted to the study of uncertainty measures of fuzzy soft sets.

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Objective: To summarize the endoscopic screening findings in high-risk population of esophageal and gastric carcinoma and analyze influential factors related to screening.

Methods: In seven selected cities and counties with high incidences of esophageal carcinoma, people at age of 40-69 were set as the target population. Those with gastroscopy contradictions were excluded, and all who were voluntary and willing to comply with the medical requirements were subjected to endoscopic screening and histological examination for esophageal, gastric cardia and gastric carcinoma in accordance with national technical manual for early detection and treatment of cancer.

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Objective: To describe the temporal trends in the mortality rate of gastric cancer during the period of 1988 and 2010, and to predict the gastric cancer mortality between 2016 - 2020.

Methods: The data of gastric cancer mortality in Linzhou city between 1988 and 2010 was extracted from the cancer registry, including a total of 11 714 cases, covering 22 447 073 person-years. The mortality rate of gastric cancer of each 5-year period was calculated by sub-site and gender.

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Objective: To analyze the trends in mortality of esophageal cancer and explore the effects of age, period and cohort on esophageal cancer mortality rate in Linzhou city in 1986 - 2010, and predict the mortality of esophageal cancer in 2016 - 2020.

Methods: All of the esophageal cancer-attributed deaths in 1986 - 2010 were drawn from the database in Center of Cancer and Vita Statistics in Henan Province. The numbers of the death cases and population were tabulated into 5-year age groups and 5-year period groups for each sex and linked each other.

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In recent decades, decreasing trends in esophageal cancer mortality have been observed across China. We here describe esophageal cancer mortality trends in Linzhou city, a high-incidence region of esophageal cancer in China, during 1988-2010 and make a esophageal cancer mortality projection in the period 2011-2020 using a Bayesian approach. Age standardized mortality rates were estimated by direct standardization to the World population structure in 1985.

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Aim: To estimate the cost-benefit of endoscopic screening strategies of esophageal cancer (EC) in high-risk areas of China.

Methods: Markov model-based analyses were conducted to compare the net present values (NPVs) and the benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) of 12 EC endoscopic screening strategies. Strategies varied according to the targeted screening age, screening frequencies, and follow-up intervals.

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Genome-wide association studies have identified susceptibility loci for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). We conducted a meta-analysis of all single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that showed nominally significant P-values in two previously published genome-wide scans that included a total of 2961 ESCC cases and 3400 controls. The meta-analysis revealed five SNPs at 2q33 with P< 5 × 10(-8), and the strongest signal was rs13016963, with a combined odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of 1.

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Minichromosome maintenance proteins are novel proliferative markers that have been proposed as diagnostic markers in many cancers. We evaluated the potential role of minichromosome maintenance protein 2 as a screening biomarker and compared it with proliferating cell nuclear antigen and Ki67 in a population survey of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. A total of 299 esophageal samples from a high-risk region in China, including 171 from an endoscopy population survey, 30 from brushing cytology, and 98 from surgery and autopsy, underwent immunostaining with minichromosome maintenance protein 2, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, and Ki67 antibodies.

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Article Synopsis
  • A genome-wide association study was conducted on esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) involving 1,077 ESCC patients and 1,733 control subjects, focusing on the Chinese Han population.
  • The study successfully replicated findings in larger cohorts, identifying two new genetic risk factors for ESCC: PLCE1 and C20orf54, with strong statistical significance.
  • PLCE1 is linked to essential cellular functions like growth and apoptosis, while C20orf54 is involved in riboflavin transport, highlighting their potential roles in ESCC and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma (GCA) risk.
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