1. |
- Li, Wei, et al.
(author)
-
Non-lab and semi-lab algorithms for screening undiagnosed diabetes : A cross-sectional study
- 2018
-
In: EBioMedicine. - : ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. - 2352-3964. ; 35, s. 307-316
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: The terrifying undiagnosed rate and high prevalence of diabetes have become a public emergency. A high efficiency and cost-effective early recognition method is urgently needed. We aimed to generate innovative, user-friendly nomograms that can be applied for diabetes screening in different ethnic groups in China using the non-lab or noninvasive semi-lab data. Methods: This multicenter, multi-ethnic, population-based, cross-sectional study was conducted in eight sites in China by enrolling subjects aged 20-70. Sociodemographic and anthropometric characteristics were collected. Blood and urine samples were obtained 2 h following a standard 75 g glucose solution. In the final analysis, 10,794 participants were included and randomized into model development (n - 8096) and model validation (n = 2698) group with a ratio of 3:1. Nomograms were developed by the stepwise binary logistic regression. The nomograms were validated internally by a bootstrap sampling method in the model development set and externally in the model validation set. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used to assess the screening performance of the nomograms. Decision curve analysis was applied to calculate the net benefit of the screening model. Results: The overall prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes was 9.8% (1059/10794) according to ADA criteria. The non-lab model revealed that gender, age, body mass index, waist circumference, hypertension, ethnicities, vegetable daily consumption and family history of diabetes were independent risk factors for diabetes. By adding 2 h post meal glycosuria qualitative to the non-lab model, the semi-lab model showed an improved Akaike information criterion (AIC: 4506 to 3580). The AUC of the semi-lab model was statistically larger than the non-lab model (0.868 vs 0.763, P < 0.001). The optimal cutoff probability in semi-lab and non-lab nomograms were 0.088 and 0.098, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity were 76.3% and 81.6%, respectively in semi-lab nomogram, and 72.1% and 673% in non-lab nomogram at the optimal cut off point. The decision curve analysis also revealed a bigger decrease of avoidable OGTT test (52 per 100 subjects) in the semi-lab model compared to the non-lab model (36 per 100 subjects) and the existed New Chinese Diabetes Risk Score (NCDRS, 35 per 100 subjects). Conclusion: The non-lab and semi-lab nomograms appear to be reliable tools for diabetes screening, especially in developing countries. However, the semi-lab model outperformed the non-lab model and NCDRS prediction systems and might be worth being adopted as decision support in diabetes screening in China.
|
|
2. |
- Feng, Tongbao, et al.
(author)
-
miR-124 downregulation leads to breast cancer progression via LncRNA-MALAT1 regulation and CDK4/E2F1 signal activation.
- 2016
-
In: Oncotarget. - : Impact Journals, LLC. - 1949-2553. ; 7:13, s. 16205-16216
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) has been recently shown to be dysregulated in several cancers. However, the mechanisms underlying the role of MALAT1 in breast cancer remain unclear. Herein, we showed that MALAT1 was aberrantly increased in breast cancer tissues and cells. MALAT1-siRNA inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation and cell cycle progression in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, MALAT1 acted as an endogenous potent regulator by directly binding to miR-124 and down-regulating miR-124 expression. In addition, MALAT1 reversed the inhibitory effect of miR-124 on breast cancer proliferation and was involved in the cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (CDK4) expression. Taken together, our data highlight the pivotal role of MALAT1 in breast cancer tumorigenesis. Moreover, the present study elucidated the MALAT1-miR-124-CDK4/E2F1 signaling pathway in breast cancer, which might provide a new approach for tackling breast cancer.
|
|
3. |
- Ning, Yongling, et al.
(author)
-
β-Glucan restores tumor-educated dendritic cell maturation to enhance antitumor immune responses.
- 2016
-
In: International Journal of Cancer. - : Wiley. - 0020-7136. ; 138:11, s. 2713-2723
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tumors can induce the generation and accumulation of immunosuppressive cells such as myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in a tumor microenvironment, contributing to tumor escape from immunological attack. Although dendritic cell-based cancer vaccines can initiate antitumor immune responses, tumor-educated dendritic cells (TEDCs) involved in the tolerance induction have attracted much attention recently. In this study, we investigated the effect of β-glucan on TEDCs and found that β-glucan treatment could promote the maturation and migration of TEDCs and that the suppressive function of TEDCs was significantly decreased. Treatment with β-glucan drastically decreased the levels of regulatory T (Treg) cells but increased the infiltration of macrophages, granulocytes and DCs in tumor masses, thus elicited Th1 differentiation and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses and led to a delay in tumor progression. These findings reveal that β-glucan can inhibit the regulatory function of TEDCs, therefore revealing a novel function for β-glucan in immunotherapy and suggesting its potential clinical benefit. β-Glucan directly abrogated tumor-educated dendritic cells-associated immune suppression, promoted Th1 differentiation and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte priming and improved antitumor responses. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
|
|
4. |
- Shi, Ruifeng, et al.
(author)
-
Protective effects of Clec11a in islets against lipotoxicity via modulation of proliferation and lipid metabolism in mice
- 2019
-
In: Experimental Cell Research. - : ELSEVIER INC. - 0014-4827 .- 1090-2422. ; 384:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The lipotoxicity is considered as one of the risk for diabetes. Here we report C-type lectin domain family 11, member A (Clec11a) as a new regulator in islet playing a protective role in lipotoxicity induced dysfunction. Islet transcriptome sequencing was performed using the high-fat diet induced obesity (DIO) mice model. We found a significant decrease of Clec11a expression in islets of DIO mice compared to normal control mice, which was further confirmed by real-time PCR. Immunostaining demonstrated the localization of the Clec11a protein in mouse islets. Administration of recombinant human Clec11a (rClec11a) protein promoted the proliferation of islet cells and rescued the inhibition of fatty acid on cell proliferation, which involved the activation of Erk signaling pathway. We also found that the rClec11a altered the expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism.
|
|
5. |
- Wang, Xiaohang, et al.
(author)
-
Fine-grained runtime power budgeting for networks-on-chip
- 2015
-
In: 0th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, ASP-DAC 2015. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 9781479977901 ; , s. 160-165
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Power budgeting for NoC needs to be performed to meet limited power budget while assuring the best possible overall system performance. For simplicity and ease of implementation, existing NoC power budgeting schemes, irrespective of the fact that the packet arrival rates of different NoC routers may vary significantly, treat all the individual routers indiscriminately when allocating power to them. However, such homogeneous power allocation may provide excess power to routers with low packet arrival rates whereas insufficient power to those with high arrival rates. In this paper, we formulate the NoC power budgeting problem as to optimize the network performance over a power budget through per-router frequency scaling, taking into account of heterogeneous packet arrival rates across different routers as imposed by run time traffic dynamics. Correspondingly, we propose a fine-grained solution using an agile dynamic programming network with a linear time complexity. In essence, frequency of a router is set individually according to its contribution to the average network latency while meeting the power budget. Experimental results have confirmed that with fairly low runtime and hardware overhead, the proposed scheme can help save up to 50% application execution time when compared with the best existing methods.
|
|
6. |
- Bai, Xiaohang, et al.
(author)
-
Precipitation drives the floristic composition and diversity of temperate grasslands in China
- 2021
-
In: Global Ecology and Conservation. - : Elsevier BV. - 2351-9894. ; 32
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Effects of environmental factors on plant diversity in temperate grasslands are of interest since experiments have found plant diversity is related to ecosystem function. Although previous studies have focused on the effects of environmental factors on plant diversity, the dominant environmental factors driving diversity differences among plant community types in temperate grasslands at regional scale remains unclear. We established 38 sampling sites (45 m x 45 m) in the main distribution areas of temperate grasslands to analyze the responses of plant community along different environmental gradients and identifies the dominant environmental factors driving the floristic composition and diversity in Inner Mongolia, China. In addition, environmental variables (annual mean temperature, annual precipitation, altitude, disturbance intensity, soil pH, soil density, soil water content, soil organic carbon, soil total nitrogen, soil total phosphorus, soil calcium carbonate), species diversity indices (richness, heterogeneity, evenness), functional diversity indices (abundance, evenness, divergence, dispersion) and plant biomass were analyzed. A total of 179 vascular plant species belonging to 43 families and 113 genera were recorded and classified into six plant community types (Stipa grandis community, Leymus chinensis community, Stipa capillata community, Artemisia frigida community, Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Artemisia halodendron community) based on Ward's agglomerative hierarchical clustering. According to canonical correspondence analysis and Monte Carlo permutation test, mean annual precipitation was the dominant environmental factor driving temperate grasslands, promoting species richness, heterogeneity, evenness, functional divergence and biomass. Soil organic carbon, water content and total nitrogen played positive effects on species diversity, meanwhile, mean annual temperature, altitude, grazing intensity and soil pH inhibited species diversity, functional abundance, dispersion and biomass. Furthermore, the presence of these plant communities dominated by Cleistogenes squarrosa and Artemisia halodendron indicate that grassland degradation is imminent or has already begun. In summary, our results provide evidence on the responses of composition, functional traits and biomass among different plant community types to environmental factors and demonstrate that precipitation is the dominant factors driving the floristic composition and diversity in temperate grasslands.
|
|
7. |
- Bai, Xiaohang, et al.
(author)
-
Reducing plant community variability and improving resilience for sustainable restoration of temperate grassland
- 2022
-
In: Environmental Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0013-9351 .- 1096-0953. ; 207
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Grassland ecosystem is important for the realization of the global sustainable development goals (e.g. Goal 15) since it provides irreplaceable services for human beings, supporting human health and sustainable development. Most studies have focused on improving grassland restoration techniques, but less attention has been paid to grassland ecosystem stability in succession. Plant community stability of temperate grassland in arid and semi-arid regions is analyzed through 38 sampling sites in Inner Mongolia, China. The degradation succession sequence of grassland is established by principal component analysis, and the species diversity and functional diversity along degradation gradient analyzed by multivariate statistical analysis. The results show that (1) functional diversity has higher explanatory power for community stability than species diversity due to the functional dispersion of plant traits; (2) climate factors rather than grazing or soil control plant community diversity and stability at regional scale; (3) the resistance of plant community does not change in degradation succession, but the trade-off effect of stability components in different plant communities differ, such as the order of trade-off effects (e.g. community resilience (ET)>community resistance (RT)>structural variability (St)>functional variability (Fu) in the community dominated by Stipa grandis, RT>ET>St>Fu in Leymus chinensis community, St>ET>Fu>RT in Stipa capillata community, RT>St>Fu>ET in Artemisia frigida community, St>Fu>ET>RT in Cleistogenes squarrosa community, and Fu>St>RT>ET in Artemisia halodendron community); (4) grassland ecosystem with higher diversity shows greater resilience and lower variability than those with single species, which supports the established diversity hypothesis. Furthermore, sustainable grassland restoration should reduce community variability and improve resilience. These findings highlight the response of diversity to stability in temperate grassland and provide scientific support for grassland ecosystem protection and restoration.
|
|
8. |
- Li, Wei, et al.
(author)
-
A modified in vitro tool for isolation and characterization of rat quiescent islet stellate cells
- 2019
-
In: Experimental Cell Research. - : ELSEVIER INC. - 0014-4827 .- 1090-2422. ; 384:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Islet stellate cells (ISCs) play a critical role in islet fibrosis, contributing to the progression of pancreatic diseases. Previous studies have focused on fibrosis-associated activated ISCs obtained by standard islet explant techniques. However, in vitro models of quiescent ISCs (qISCs) are lacking. This study aims to develop a method to isolate qISCs and analyze their phenotype during activation.Methods: Immunofluorescence staining was applied to localize ISCs in normal human, rat, and mouse islets. qISCs were isolated from rat islets using density gradient centrifugation (DGC) method. qRT-PCR, immunoblotting, proliferation, and migration assays were employed for their characterization.Results: Desmin-positive ISCs were detected in normal human, rat, and mouse islets. Freshly isolated qISCs, obtained by density gradient centrifugation, displayed a polygonal appearance with refringent cytoplasmic lipid droplets and expressed transcriptional markers indicating a low activation/quiescent state. With increasing culture time, the marker expression pattern changed, reflecting ISC activation. qISCs contained more lipid droplets and exhibited lower proliferation and migration abilities compared to spindle-shaped ISCs obtained by traditional explant techniques.Conclusions: This study describes a new method for efficient isolation of qISCs from rat islets, representing a useful in vitro tool to study the biology of ISCs in more physiological conditions.
|
|
9. |
- Song, Meiqi, et al.
(author)
-
Effects of Tool Tooth Number and Cutting Parameters on Milling Performance for Bamboo–Plastic Composite
- 2023
-
In: Forests. - : MDPI. - 1999-4907. ; 14:2
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Cutting force and temperature are critical indicators for improving cutting performance and productivity. This study used an up-milling experiment to ascertain the effect of tool tooth number, cutting speed, and depth on the machinability of bamboo–plastic composite. We focused on the changes in the resultant force and cutting temperature under different milling conditions. A response surface methodology was used to build prediction models for the resultant force and temperature. A verification test was conducted to prove the model’s reliability. The empirical findings suggested that the number of tool teeth had the most significant impacts on both the resultant force and the cutting temperature, followed by the depth of cut and the cutting speed. Moreover, the resultant force and cutting temperature showed increasing trends with decreasing numbers of tool teeth and increasing cut depths. However, cutting speed had a negative relationship with the resultant force and a positive relationship with temperature. We also determined the optimal milling conditions with the lowest force and temperature: four tool teeth, 300 m/min cutting speed, and 0.5 mm depth. This parameter combination can be used in the industrial manufacture of bamboo–plastic composite to improve tool life and manufacturing productivity.
|
|
10. |
- Wang, Xiaohang, et al.
(author)
-
An efficient runtime power allocation scheme for many-core systems inspired from auction theory
- 2015
-
In: Integration. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-9260 .- 1872-7522. ; 50, s. 147-157
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Design of future many-core chips is experiencing a paradigm shift to the so-called power-budgeting design, due to the widening gap between instantaneous power consumption and the allowed maximum power, referred as the power budget. Critical to these many-core chips is the runtime power allocation mechanism which can help optimizing the overall system performance under a limited power budget constraint. In this paper, the power allocation problem (i.e., maximizing the system performance under a power budget) is modeled by a combinatorial auction. The problem can be transformed to a knapsack problem and the optimal solution reaches a Walrasian equilibrium. To solve the problem efficiently in a decentralized way, a Hierarchal MultiAgent based Power allocation (HiMAP) method is proposed with an optimal bound. In HiMAP, tiles bid for the opportunity to become active based on the chip's total power budget. Upon finishing an auction process, certain tiles will be power gated and/or frequency scaled according to the power allocation decision. Experimental results have confirmed that HiMAP can reduce the execution time by as much as 45% compared to four competing methods. The runtime overhead and cost of HiMAP are also small, which makes it scale well with many-core systems.
|
|
11. |
- Wang, Xiaohang, et al.
(author)
-
On Fine-Grained Runtime Power Budgeting for Networks-on-Chip Systems
- 2016
-
In: IEEE Transactions on Computers. - : IEEE Computer Society. - 0018-9340 .- 1557-9956. ; 65:9, s. 2780-2793
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Power budgeting is an essential aspect of networks-on-chip (NoC) to meet the power constraint for on-chip communications while assuring the best possible overall system performance. For simplicity and ease of implementation, existing NoC power budgeting schemes treat all the individual routers uniformly when allocating power to them. However, such homogeneous power budgeting schemes ignore the fact that the workloads of different NoC routers may vary significantly, and thus may provide excess power to routers with low workloads, whereas insufficient power to those with high workloads. In this paper, we formulate the NoC power budgeting problem in order to optimize the network performance over a power budget through per-router frequency scaling. We take into account of heterogeneous workloads across different routers as imposed by variations in traffic. Correspondingly, we propose a fine-grained solution using an agile algorithm with low time complexity. Frequency of each router is set individually according to its contribution to the average network latency while meeting the power budget. Experimental results have confirmed that with fairly low runtime and hardware overhead, the proposed scheme can help save up to 50 percent application execution time when compared with the latest proposed methods.
|
|
12. |
- Yu, Yingyue, et al.
(author)
-
Cutting Power, Temperature, and Surface Roughness: A Multiple Target Assessment of Beech during Diamond Milling
- 2023
-
In: Forests. - : MDPI. - 1999-4907. ; 14:6
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Beech wood is a material commonly used for furniture, and cutting performance is the key to improving product quality and enterprise benefits. In this work, beech milling experiments using diamond cutters were carried out, and the changes in cutting power, temperature, and surface roughness were examined using the factor analysis method. The main results of this work are listed as follows: Firstly, a higher cutting speed and depth led to higher cutting power, temperature, and surface roughness. Meanwhile, cutting power and surface roughness were negatively related to the rake angle; however, cutting temperature first increased and then decreased with the increase in rake angle. Furthermore, cutting depth had greatest impact on the cutting power and surface roughness, followed by rake angle and cutting speed. Cutting speed had the greatest contribution to the cutting temperature, followed by cutting depth and rake angle. Only the cutting depth had a significant contribution to both cutting power, temperature, and surface roughness. Finally, optimal cutting parameters were determined to be a rake angle of 15°, cutting speed of 54 m/s, and depth of 0.5 mm. These values best meet the multiple objectives of lower cutting power, temperature, and surface roughness, which relate to superior product quality and enterprise benefits.
|
|
13. |
- Zhou, Yunting, et al.
(author)
-
Lipotoxicity reduces beta cell survival through islet stellate cell activation regulated by lipid metabolism-related molecules
- 2019
-
In: Experimental Cell Research. - : ELSEVIER INC. - 0014-4827 .- 1090-2422. ; 380:1, s. 1-8
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Islet stellate cells (ISCs) activation is mainly associated with islet fibrosis, which contributes to the progression of type 2 diabetes. However, the molecular mechanism underlying this process is not fully understood.Methods: In order to investigate this process the current study examined ectopic fat accumulation in rats with high-fat diet (HFD) induced obesity. Levels of lipotoxicity-induced ISC activation and islet function were assessed via intraperitoneal glucose and insulin tolerance tests, and immunohistochemistry. The expression of lipid metabolism- and ISC activation-related markers was evaluated in cultured ISCs treated with palmitic acid (PA) using quantitative PCR and western blotting. We also overexpressed sterol regulatory element-binding protein (SREBP)-1c in ISCs by lentiviral transduction, and assessed the effects on insulin release in co-cultures with isolated rat islets.Results: HFD increased body weight and ectopic fat accumulation in pancreatic islets. Lipotoxicity caused progressive glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, upregulated a-smooth muscle actin, and stimulated the secretion of extracellular matrix. Lipotoxicity reduced the expression of lipid metabolism-related molecules in ISCs treated with PA, especially SREBP-1c. Overexpression of SREBP-1c in ISCs improved islet viability and insulin secretion in co-cultures.Conclucions: These results indicate that lipotoxicity-induced ISC activation alters islet function via regulation of lipid metabolism, suggesting that therapeutic strategies targeting activated ISC may be an effective treatment for prevention of ISC activation-associated islet dysfunction.
|
|