Decision tree algorithm predicts hepatocellular carcinoma among chronic hepatitis C patients following viral eradication.

Successful eradication of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) cannot eliminate the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Next-generation RNA sequencing provides comprehensive genomic insights into the pathogenesis of HCC. Artificial intelligence has opened a new era in precision medicine.

Adverse effect of lactobacilli-depauperate cervicovaginal microbiota on pregnancy outcomes in women undergoing frozen-thawed embryo transfer.

Purpose: The cervicovaginal microbiota is essential for maintaining the health of the female reproductive tract. However, whether cervicovaginal microbiota status prior to frozen embryo transfer (FET) associates with pregnancy outcomes is largely unexplored.

Methods: Cervical mucus from 29 women who had undergone FET was collected.

Artificial intelligence based on serum biomarkers predicts the efficacy of lenvatinib for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Lenvatinib has been effective not only as a first-line but also as a later-line systemic therapy for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC) in real-world clinical practice. How to predict the efficacy of lenvatinib and guide appropriate therapy selection in patients with uHCC have become important issues. This study aimed to investigate the impact of serum biomarkers on the treatment outcomes of patients with uHCC treated with lenvatinib in a real-world setting using an artificial intelligence algorithm.

Substituent engineering of the diboron molecular architecture for a nondoped and ultrathin emitting layer.

Owing to the high technology maturity of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter design with a specific molecular shape, extremely high-performance organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have recently been achieved various doping techniques. Recently, undoped OLEDs have drawn immense attention because of their manufacturing cost reduction and procedure simplification. However, capable materials as host emitters are rare and precious because general fluorophores in high-concentration states suffer from serious aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) and undergo exciton quenching.

Aqueous Suzuki couplings mediated by a hydrophobic catalyst.

The catalytic activity of [(PhP--CH)N]PdCl in aerobic aqueous Suzuki couplings is described. Though hydrophobic, this molecular catalyst is competent in cross-coupling reactions of arylboronic acids with a variety of electronically activated, unactivated, and deactivated aryl iodides, bromides, and chlorides upon heating in aqueous solutions under aerobic conditions to give biphenyl derivatives without the necessity of amphiphiles even in the presence of an excess amount of mercury.

Norsesquiterpenoids from the octocoral (Ehrenberg 1834).

Three norsesquiterpenoids, pathyspirolactones A (1) and B (2), and napalilactone (3), featuring a -spirolactone moiety, were isolated from the cultured octocoral . The structures of 1-3 were determined by analyzing spectroscopic data, DP4+ computation, specific optical rotation, and X-ray diffraction. In addition, we explored the absolute configurations of pathyspirolactone A (1) and its conformation of the cyclohexane ring to resolve the stereochemical confusion of those of norsesquiterpenoid compounds.

CHD4 plays a critical role in arsenite-induced oxidative damage in human urothelial carcinoma.

Inorganic arsenic (iAs), a known human carcinogen, induces oxidative DNA damage and epigenetic silencing of tumor suppressor genes related to tumor progression. Chromodomain-helicase-DNA-binding protein 4 (CHD4) is a chromatin remodeling protein that acts on DNA repair and DNA methylation under oxidative damage in malignancies, but the role of CHD4 in arsenical urothelial carcinoma (UC) is unidentified. Our purpose was to observe CHD4-related repair effects on As-stimulated oxidative damage in human UC.

Aliovalent Dilute Doping and Nano-Moiré Fringe Advance the Structural Stability and Thermoelectric Performance in -ZnSb.

Thermoelectric (TE) generators have come a long way since the first commercial apparatus launched in the 1950s. Since then, the -ZnSb has manifested its potential as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly TE generator compared with the tellurium-bearing TE materials. Although the -ZnSb features an intrinsically low thermal conductivity , it suffers from a long-lasting structural instability issue arising from the highly mobile zinc ions.

Improving stable isotope assessments of inter- and intra-species variation in coral reef fish trophic strategies.

Fish have one of the highest occurrences of individual specialization in trophic strategies among Eukaryotes. Yet, few studies characterize this variation during trophic niche analysis, limiting our understanding of aquatic food web dynamics. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) with advanced Bayesian statistics is one way to incorporate this individual trophic variation when quantifying niche size.

tunable circular dichroism of flexible chiral metasurfaces composed of plasmonic nanorod trimers.

The circularly polarized light source is one of the keys to chiral photonic circuits and systems. However, it is difficult to integrate conventional light-emitting devices with circular polarization converters directly into compact chip-scale photonic systems partly because of their bulky structures. In this study, optical chirality tunable nanorod trimer metasurfaces consisting of two types of nanorod dimers are demonstrated and integrated with a flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate.

Population genetic diversity and structure of (Gobiidae) in Taiwan: Translocation and release.

is a freshwater goby distributed in north, northwest, west, and south Taiwan, but this species has been introduced to east Taiwan and became dominant. To investigate its native population genetic diversity and structure and evaluate the sources and diversity of translocated populations, the mitochondrial DNA control region and cytochrome gene (1981 bp) from 220 specimens were analyzed. These results indicated that (1) the east populations originated from two sources in west Taiwan; (2) translocated populations exist in east Taiwan and south Taiwan; (3) many populations have likely been moved secondarily by human intervention; (4) the effective size of the populations had declined greatly; (5) within the native populations, the ancestral populations colonized Taiwan during the land bridge phase in the Pleistocene through north Taiwan; (6) the landform changes in Taiwan shaped the population structure; and (7) the landforms of the coastline during glaciation also shaped the native range.

Risk stratification of hepatocellular carcinoma incidence using a fibrosis-4-based prediction model in patients with chronic hepatitis C receiving antiviral therapy: a nationwide real-world Taiwanese cohort study.

A total of 1,589 patients who had received interferon-based treatment were enrolled and analyzed for the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in a real-world nationwide Taiwanese chronic hepatitis C cohort (T-COACH). We aimed to stratify HCC risk by non-invasive fibrosis index-based risk model. Of 1589 patients, 1363 (85.

Inhibition of histone methyltransferase G9a effectively protected the kidney against ischemia-reperfusion injury.

This study examined whether BIX01294, a histone methyltransferase G9a inhibitor, effectively preserves the renal function following acute kidney ischemia-reperfusion (AKIR) injury. Adult-male-SD rats (n = 24) were equally categorized into Group 1 (sham-operated control), Group 2 (AKIR + 1.0 cc N/S I.

5-year recurrence prediction after hepatocellular carcinoma resection: deep learning vs. Cox regression models.

Deep learning algorithms have yet to be used for predicting clinical prognosis after cancer surgery. Therefore, this study compared performance indices and permutation importance of potential confounders in three models for predicting 5-year recurrence after hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) resection: a deep-learning deep neural network (DNN) model, a recurrent neural network (RNN) model, and a Cox proportional hazard (CPH) regression model. Data for 725 patients who had received HCC resection at three medical centers in southern Taiwan between April, 2011, and December, 2015, were randomly divided into three datasets: a training dataset containing data for 507 subjects was used for model development, a testing dataset containing data for 109 subjects was used for internal validation, and a validating dataset containing data for 109 subjects was used for external validation.

The Association Between Dissemination and Characteristics of Pro-/Anti-COVID-19 Vaccine Messages on Twitter: Application of the Elaboration Likelihood Model.

Background: Messages on one's stance toward vaccination on microblogging sites may affect the reader's decision on whether to receive a vaccine. Understanding the dissemination of provaccine and antivaccine messages relating to COVID-19 on social media is crucial; however, studies on this topic have remained limited.

Objective: This study applies the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to explore the characteristics of vaccine stance messages that may appeal to Twitter users.

A new species of anthothelid octocoral (Cnidaria, Alcyonacea) discovered on an algal reef of Taiwan.

A molecular phylogenetic analysis of 132 octocoral species reveals a close relationship between specimens collected from the intertidal pools of the Datan Algal Reef, Taoyuan, Taiwan, and (Duchassaing & Michelotti, 1860), but the two species have distinct morphological features. On the basis of morphological differences in polyps and sclerites, we identify and describe a new species: The distinct identifying features of include the upright contractile polyps from thin encrusting membranes and abundant 6-radiate sclerites. Using an integrative approach, we present the findings of morphological comparisons and molecular phylogenetic analyses to demonstrate that is distinct from other species.

Voice emotion recognition by Mandarin-speaking pediatric cochlear implant users in Taiwan.

Objectives: To explore the effects of obligatory lexical tone learning on speech emotion recognition and the cross-culture differences between United States and Taiwan for speech emotion understanding in children with cochlear implant.

Methods: This cohort study enrolled 60 cochlear-implanted (cCI) Mandarin-speaking, school-aged children who underwent cochlear implantation before 5 years of age and 53 normal-hearing children (cNH) in Taiwan. The emotion recognition and the sensitivity of fundamental frequency (0) changes for those school-aged cNH and cCI (6-17 years old) were examined in a tertiary referred center.

Manifold dynamic non-covalent interactions for steering molecular assembly and cyclization.

Deciphering rich non-covalent interactions that govern many chemical and biological processes is crucial for the design of drugs and controlling molecular assemblies and their chemical transformations. However, real-space characterization of these weak interactions in complex molecular architectures at the single bond level has been a longstanding challenge. Here, we employed bond-resolved scanning probe microscopy combined with an exhaustive structural search algorithm and quantum chemistry calculations to elucidate multiple non-covalent interactions that control the cohesive molecular clustering of well-designed precursor molecules and their chemical reactions.

IGFBP-3 and TGF-β inhibit growth in epithelial cells by stimulating type V TGF-β receptor (TβR-V)-mediated tumor suppressor signaling.

The TGF-β type V receptor (TβR-V) mediates growth inhibition by IGFBP-3 and TGF-β in epithelial cells and loss of TβR-V expression in these cells leads to development of carcinoma. The mechanisms by which TβR-V mediates growth inhibition (tumor suppressor) signaling remain elusive. Previous studies revealed that IGFBP-3 and TGF-β inhibit growth in epithelial cells by stimulating TβR-V-mediated IRS-1/2-dependent activation and cytoplasm-to-nucleus translocation of IGFBP-3- or TGF-β-stimulated protein phosphatase (PPase), resulting in dephosphorylation of pRb-related proteins (p107, p130) or pRb, and growth arrest.

Fish taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity and their vulnerabilities in the largest river in southeastern China.

Freshwater biodiversity is currently under multiple threats. Conservation of freshwater fish biodiversity needs to be prioritized because natural conservation resources are always limited.Samples were collected at 24 sites in the Min River, the largest basin in southeastern China.

Correction: Development of a structure-based computational simulation to optimize the blocking efficacy of pro-antibodies.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1039/D1SC01748A.].

Development of a structure-based computational simulation to optimize the blocking efficacy of pro-antibodies.

The on-target toxicity of monoclonal antibodies (Abs) is mainly due to the fact that Abs cannot distinguish target antigens (Ags) expressed in disease regions from those in normal tissues during systemic administration. In order to overcome this issue, we "copied" an autologous Ab hinge as an "Ab lock" and "pasted" it on the binding site of the Ab by connecting a protease substrate and linker in between to generate a pro-Ab, which can be specifically activated in the disease region to enhance Ab selectivity and reduce side effects. Previously, we reported that 70% of pro-Abs can achieve more than 100-fold blocking ability compared to the parental Abs.

A novel corpus-based computing method for handling critical word-ranking issues: An example of COVID-19 research articles.

A corpus is a massive body of structured textual data that are stored and operated electronically. It usually combines with statistics, machine learning algorithms, or artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to explore the semantic relationship between lexical units, and beneficial when applied to language learning, information processing, translation, and so forth. In the face of a novel disease, like, COVID-19, establishing medical-specific corpus will enhance frontline medical personnel's information acquisition efficiency, guiding them on the right approaches to respond to and prevent the novel disease.

A Highly Reproducible Micro U-Well Array Plate Facilitating High-Throughput Tumor Spheroid Culture and Drug Assessment.

3D multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTSs) have recently emerged as a landmark for cancer research due to their inherent traits that are physiologically relevant to primary tumor microenvironments. A facile approach-laser-ablated micro U-wells-has been widely adopted in the past decade. However, the differentiation of microwell uniformities and the construction of arrays have all remained elusive.