| 31. |
- Haycock, Philip C., et al.
(author)
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Association Between Telomere Length and Risk of Cancer and Non-Neoplastic Diseases A Mendelian Randomization Study
- 2017
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In: JAMA Oncology. - : American Medical Association. - 2374-2437 .- 2374-2445. ; 3:5, s. 636-651
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- IMPORTANCE: The causal direction and magnitude of the association between telomere length and incidence of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases is uncertain owing to the susceptibility of observational studies to confounding and reverse causation. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a Mendelian randomization study, using germline genetic variants as instrumental variables, to appraise the causal relevance of telomere length for risk of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases. DATA SOURCES: Genomewide association studies (GWAS) published up to January 15, 2015. STUDY SELECTION: GWAS of noncommunicable diseases that assayed germline genetic variation and did not select cohort or control participants on the basis of preexisting diseases. Of 163 GWAS of noncommunicable diseases identified, summary data from 103 were available. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Summary association statistics for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are strongly associated with telomere length in the general population. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for disease per standard deviation (SD) higher telomere length due to germline genetic variation. RESULTS: Summary data were available for 35 cancers and 48 non-neoplastic diseases, corresponding to 420 081 cases (median cases, 2526 per disease) and 1 093 105 controls (median, 6789 per disease). Increased telomere length due to germline genetic variation was generally associated with increased risk for site-specific cancers. The strongest associations (ORs [ 95% CIs] per 1-SD change in genetically increased telomere length) were observed for glioma, 5.27 (3.15-8.81); serous low-malignant-potential ovarian cancer, 4.35 (2.39-7.94); lung adenocarcinoma, 3.19 (2.40-4.22); neuroblastoma, 2.98 (1.92-4.62); bladder cancer, 2.19 (1.32-3.66); melanoma, 1.87 (1.55-2.26); testicular cancer, 1.76 (1.02-3.04); kidney cancer, 1.55 (1.08-2.23); and endometrial cancer, 1.31 (1.07-1.61). Associations were stronger for rarer cancers and at tissue sites with lower rates of stem cell division. There was generally little evidence of association between genetically increased telomere length and risk of psychiatric, autoimmune, inflammatory, diabetic, and other non-neoplastic diseases, except for coronary heart disease (OR, 0.78 [ 95% CI, 0.67-0.90]), abdominal aortic aneurysm (OR, 0.63 [ 95% CI, 0.49-0.81]), celiac disease (OR, 0.42 [ 95% CI, 0.28-0.61]) and interstitial lung disease (OR, 0.09 [ 95% CI, 0.05-0.15]). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: It is likely that longer telomeres increase risk for several cancers but reduce risk for some non-neoplastic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases.
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| 32. |
- Hu, Zengyun, et al.
(author)
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“Dry gets drier, wet gets wetter”: A case study over the arid regions of central Asia
- 2019
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In: International Journal of Climatology. - : Wiley. - 0899-8418 .- 1097-0088. ; 39:2, s. 1072-1091
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- © 2018 Royal Meteorological Society The “dry gets drier, wet gets wetter” (DGDWGW) paradigm well describes the pattern of precipitation changes over the oceans. However, it has also been usually considered as a simplified pattern of regional changes in wet/dry under global warming, although GCMs mostly do not agree this pattern over land. To examine the validity of this paradigm over land and evaluate how usage of drought indices estimated from different hydrological variables affects detection of regional wet/dry trends, we take the arid regions of central Asia as a case study area and estimate the drying and wetting trends during the period of 1950–2015 based on multiple drought indices. These indices include the standardized precipitation index (SPI), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) and self-calibrating PDSI (sc_PDSI) with both the Thornthwaite (th) and Penman–Monteith (pm) equations in PDSI calculation (namely, PDSI_th, PDSI_pm, sc_PDSI_th and sc_PDSI_pm). The results show that there is an overall agreement among the indices in terms of inter-annual variation, especially for the PDSIs. All drought indices except SPI show a drying trend over the five states of central Asia (CAS5: including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). The four PDSIs and SPEI reveal a wetting tendency over the northwestern China (NW; including Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Hexi Corridor). The contrasting trends between CAS5 and NW can also be revealed in soil moisture (SM) variations. The nonlinear wet and dry variations are dominated by the 3–7 years oscillations for the indices. Relationships between the six indices and climate variables show the major drought drivers have regional features: with mean temperature (TMP), precipitation total (PRE) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) for CAS5, and PRE and PET for NW. Finally, our analyses indicate that the dry and wet variations are strongly correlated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
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| 33. |
- Jiang, Jin-gang, et al.
(author)
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Medical robotics
- 2015
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In: Advances in Mechanical Engineering. - : SAGE Publications. - 1687-8132 .- 1687-8140. ; 7:7
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 34. |
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| 35. |
- Li, Gang, et al.
(author)
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All-cause mortality in patients with treatment-resistant depression : a cohort study in the US population
- 2019
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In: Annals of General Psychiatry. - : BMC. - 1744-859X. ; 18:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) may represent a substantial proportion of major depressive disorder (MDD); however, the risk of mortality in TRD is still incompletely assessed. Methods Data were obtained from Optum Clinformatics (TM) Extended, a US claims database. Date of the first antidepressant (AD) dispensing was designated as the index date for study entry and 6 months prior to that was considered the baseline period. Patients with MDD aged >= 18 years, index date between January 1, 2008 and September 30, 2015, no AD claims during baseline, and continuous enrollment in the database during baseline were included. Patients who started a third AD regimen after two regimens of appropriate duration were included in the TRD cohort. All-cause mortality was compared between patients with TRD and non-TRD MDD using a proportional hazards model and Kaplan-Meier estimate with TRD status being treated as a time-varying covariate. The model was adjusted for study year, age, gender, depression diagnosis, substance use disorder, psychiatric comorbidities, and Charlson comorbidity index. Results Out of 355,942 patients with MDD, 34,176 (9.6%) met the criterion for TRD. TRD was associated with a significantly higher mortality compared with non-TRD MDD (adjusted HR: 1.29; 95% CI 1.22-1.38; p < 0.0001). Survival time was significantly shorter in the TRD cohort compared with the non-TRD MDD cohort (p < 0.0001). Conclusions Patients with TRD had a higher all-cause mortality compared with non-TRD MDD patients.
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| 36. |
- Li, Gang, et al.
(author)
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Quantum Spin Hall States in 2D Bismuth-Based Materials
- 2019
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In: Springer Series in Materials Science. - Singapore : Springer Singapore. - 2196-2812 .- 0933-033X. ; 285, s. 351-379
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Berrys phase, an inherent constituent of the electronic wave functions, has revolutionarily enriched our understanding of the fundamental states of matter and has triggered the discovery of many interesting phenomena in condensed matter physics, such as quantum charge/spin pumping, polarization, topological insulating phase, etc. Among them, the discovery of the two-dimensional (2D) quantum spin Hall (QSH) states protected by time-reversal symmetry (TRS) boosts the wide interest in the study of topological materials in the past decade. These include the 2D quantum anomalous Hall states (QAH), three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs), Dirac semimetals (SM), and topological nodal-line SMs as well as Weyl SMs. This article by no means can cover everything of this rapidly developing field, we rather focus on the bismuth-based honeycomb materials hosting large-gap QSH/QAH states, which promise applications for room-temperature spintronic. We will explain their topological mechanisms in terms of Berrys phase and topological invariant. After introducing a concrete material example which has been successfully grown in experiment, e.g., Bi/SiC(0001), various theoretical proposals on atom substitution and functionalization based on bismuth honeycomb lattice will then be discussed, from which a general designing principle for achieving large topological gaps can be summarized. This article hopes to stimulate more experimental activities toward the examination of large-gap QSH/QAH theoretical proposals and the potential applications in spintronic devices.
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| 37. |
- Liu, Di, et al.
(author)
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EDF-VD scheduling of mixed-criticality systems with degraded quality guarantees
- 2016
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In: Proc. 37th Real-Time Systems Symposium. - : IEEE Computer Society. - 9781509053032 ; , s. 35-46
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper studies real-time scheduling of mixed-criticality systems where low-criticality tasks are still guaranteed some service in the high-criticality mode, with reduced execution budgets. First, we present a utilization-based schedulability test for such systems under EDF-VD scheduling. Second, we quantify the suboptimality of EDF-VD (with our test condition) in terms of speedup factors. In general, the speedup factor is a function with respect to the ratio between the amount of resource required by different types of tasks in different criticality modes, and reaches 4/3 in the worst case. Furthermore, we show that the proposed utilization-based schedulability test and speedup factor results apply to the elastic mixed-criticality model as well. Experiments show effectiveness of our proposed method and confirm the theoretical suboptimality results.
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| 38. |
- Liu, Xiaotu, et al.
(author)
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Potential sources of unintentionally produced PCB, HCB, and PeCBz in China : A preliminary overview
- 2018
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In: Frontiers of Environmental Science and Engineering. - : Higher Education Press. - 2095-2201 .- 2095-221X. ; 12:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), China is required not only to reduce polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) but also unintentionally produced polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and pentachlorobenzene (PeCBz). A baseline of the sources in China that generate these unintentional POPs is needed for both research and regulation purposes. In this paper, we have compiled production data of potential sources in China and assessed them in five-year intervals from 2000 to 2015. Most of these activities experienced changes from rapid growth to slow growth. Measured data for PCB, HCB and PeCBz in samples collected from potential sources in China were reviewed. Most information was associated to thermal processes with high potential of emission, including waste incineration and ferrous and non-ferrous metal production. In addition, high levels of PCB, HCB and PeCBz were found as impurities in a few chlorinated products or as by-products in solvent production, which suggested organochlorine industry might be important sources. Finally, based on the studies reviewed, recommendations for future actions in research and policy as well as a few regulatory issues in China are discussed.
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| 39. |
- Nan, Beiya, et al.
(author)
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Microstructure and Properties of Porous SiC Ceramics Modified by CVI-SiC Nanowires
- 2019
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In: Advanced Engineering Materials. - : Wiley. - 1438-1656 .- 1527-2648. ; 21:5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sintered porous SiC ceramics are modified with SiC nanowires prepared via chemical vapor infiltration (CVI). SiC nanowires are successfully grown within sintered porous SiC ceramics following vapor-liquid-solid growth. The diameter of the SiC nanowires is in the range of 200 nm-1 mu m, and first decreases with increasing input gas ratio (alpha = 50, 60, 70, and 80) and increases thereafter. The diameter of the nanowires decreases from the surface to the interior areas of the porous SiC ceramics. SiC nanowires effectively improve the mechanical properties of the porous SiC ceramics, and sample Ni-50 has the highest flexural strength of 33.91 MPa and fracture toughness of 0.79 MPa center dot m(1/2), which increases by 90.4% and 49.1% compared to an unmodified sample, respectively. Additionally, the presence of SiC nanowires leads to porous SiC ceramics with altered porosity and microstructure, and higher thermal conductivity. The porous SiC ceramics modified by CVI SiC nanowires satisfy the requirements of gas filtration applications and the pressure drop increases with decreasing apparent porosity. The porous SiC ceramics modified with CVI SiC nanowire has higher permeability than those resulting from the introduction of CVI-SiC matrix or CVD-SiC coating into porous SiC ceramics.
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| 40. |
- Ning, Weihua, et al.
(author)
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Thermochromic Lead-Free Halide Double Perovskites
- 2019
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In: Advanced Functional Materials. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 1616-301X .- 1616-3028. ; 29:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Lead-free halide double perovskites with diverse electronic structures and optical responses, as well as superior material stability show great promise for a range of optoelectronic applications. However, their large bandgaps limit their applications in the visible light range such as solar cells. In this work, an efficient temperature-derived bandgap modulation, that is, an exotic fully reversible thermochromism in both single crystals and thin films of Cs2AgBiBr6 double perovskites is demonstrated. Along with the thermochromism, temperature-dependent changes in the bond lengths of Ag Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br (R-Ag Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br) and Bi Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br (R-Bi Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br) are observed. The first-principle molecular dynamics simulations reveal substantial anharmonic fluctuations of the R-Ag Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br and R-Bi Symbol of the Klingon Empire Br at high temperatures. The synergy of anharmonic fluctuations and associated electron-phonon coupling, and the peculiar spin-orbit coupling effect, is responsible for the thermochromism. In addition, the intrinsic bandgap of Cs2AgBiBr6 shows negligible changes after repeated heating/cooling cycles under ambient conditions, indicating excellent thermal and environmental stability. This work demonstrates a stable thermochromic lead-free double perovskite that has great potential in the applications of smart windows and temperature sensors. Moreover, the findings on the structure modulation-induced bandgap narrowing of Cs2AgBiBr6 provide new insights for the further development of optoelectronic devices based on the lead-free halide double perovskites.
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