Promise and challenges of traditional Chinese medicine,specifically Calculus bovis,in liver cancer treatment

Liver cancer,one of the most common malignancies worldwide,ranks sixth in incidence and third in mortality.Liver cancer treatment options are diverse,inclu-ding surgical resection,liver transplantation,percutaneous ablation,transarterial chemoembolization,radiotherapy,chemotherapy,targeted therapy,immuno-therapy,and traditional Chinese medicine(TCM).A multidisciplinary team(MDT)is essential to customize treatment plans based on tumor staging,liver function,and performance status(PS),ensuring individualized patient care.Treatment decisions require a MDT to tailor strategies based on tumor staging,liver function,and PS,ensuring personalized care.The approval of new first-line and second-line drugs and the establishment of standard treatments based on immune checkpoint inhibitors have significantly expanded treatment options for advanced liver cancer,improving overall prognosis.However,many patients do not respond effectively to these treatments and ultimately succumb to the disease.Modern oncology treatments,while extending patient survival,often come with severe side effects,resistance,and damage to the body,negatively impacting quality of life.Huang et al's study published at World Journal of Gastroenterology rigorously validates the anticancer properties of Calculus bovis,enhancing our understanding of TCM and contributing to new liver cancer treatment strategies.For over 5000 years,TCM has been used in East Asian countries like China to treat various diseases,including liver conditions.Analysis of real-world clinical data suggests that for patients with advanced-stage tumors lacking effective treatments,integrated TCM therapies could provide significant breakthroughs.

Hotspots and frontiers of the relationship between gastric cancer and depression:A bibliometric study

BACKGROUND A significant relationship between gastric cancer(GC)and depression has been found in the last 20 years.However,there is no comprehensive information that helps researchers find popular and potential research directions on GC and depression.AIM To determine the research status and hotspots by bibliometric analysis of relevant publications on the relationship between GC and depression.METHODS We used the Web of Science Core Collection to search and collate the literature on GC and depression from 2000 to 2022 on 31 May,2023.Then,visualization analysis was performed using VOSviewer software(version 1.6.19)and the Bibliometrix package in R software.RESULTS We retrieved 153 pertinent publications from 2000 to 2022.The annual publication count showed an overall upward trend.China had the most prominent publications and significant contributions to this field(n=64,41.83%).Before 2020,most studies focused on“the effect of GC on the development and progression of depression in patients.”The latest research trends indicate that“the effect of depression on the occurrence and development of GC and its mechanism”will receive more attention in the future.CONCLUSION The study of“the effect of depression on the occurrence and development of GC and its mechanism”has emerged as a novel research theme over the past two years,which may become a research hotspot in this field.This study provides new insights into the hotpots and frontiers of the relationship between GC and depression,potentially guiding researchers toward hot research topics in the future.

特发性肺纤维化患者血清热休克蛋白47和血管内皮生长因子的动态变化及其临床意义

目的探讨特发性肺纤维化(IPF)患者血清热休克蛋白47(HSP47)和血管内皮生长因子(VEGF)的动态变化及其临床意义。方法选取2017年1月-2019年8月天津市胸科医院收治的加重期IPF患者、稳定期IPF患者及同期该院体检的健康者共141例为研究对象,分别纳入加重期组、稳定期组及健康对照组,每组47例。采用酶联免疫吸附试验检测各组血清HSP47、VEGF水平及肺功能,采用高分辨率CT(HRCT)评分法评价各组肺纤维化程度,分析血清HSP47、VEGF、肺功能及HRCT评分之间的相关性。结果加重期组、稳定期组及健康对照组的血清HSP47、VEGF水平比较,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05),加重期组血清HSP47、VEGF水平高于稳定期组,稳定期组高于健康对照组;加重期组动脉血二氧化碳分压(PaCO_(2))、HRCT评分高于稳定期组(P<0.05);加重期组动脉血氧分压(PaO_(2))水平低于稳定期组(P<0.05)。加重期组第1秒用力呼气容积(FEV_(1))、用力肺活量(FVC)、第1秒用力呼气容积占用力肺活量比值(FEV_(1)%)、一氧化碳弥散量占预计值百分比(DLCO%pred)低于稳定期组。Pearson相关性分析显示,HSP47与FEV_(1)、FVC、FEV_(1)%、DLCO%pred、PaO_(2)呈负相关(r=-0.735、-0.579、-0.612、-0.642和-0.636,均P<0.05),与PaCO_(2)、HRCT评分呈正相关(r=0.683和0.517,均P<0.05);VEGF与FEV_(1)、FVC、FEV_(1)%、DLCO%pred、PaO_(2)呈负相关(r=-0.757、-0.583、-0.644、-0.656和-0.663,均P<0.05),与PaCO_(2)、HRCT评分呈正相关(r=0.597和0.525,均P<0.05);HSP47与VEGF呈正相关(r=0.685,P<0.05)。结论IPF患者血清HSP47、VEGF水平随着病情的加重而升高,检测血清HSP47、VEGF水平有利于辅助评估IPF患者的病情。

Advances in circulating microRNAs as diagnostic and prognostic markers for ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal malignant gynecological tumors. More than 70% of patients with ovarian cancer are diagnosed at advanced stage. The 5-year survival in patients with advanced ovarian cancer is less than 30% because of the lack of effective biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and personalized treatment. MicroRNA （miR） is a class of small noncoding RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression primarily through post-transcriptional repression. Many studies on tissue miR in ovarian cancer have been carried out and show great potential in clinical practice. However, tissue samples are not easily available because sampling causes injur）n Researchers have started to focus on plasma/serum miR, assuming that blood samples may replace tissue samples in miR research in the future. Plasma/serum miR research is still in its early stages. Studies on its function in the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer have achieved some progress, but plasma/serum miR profiling for prognosis and personalized treatment of ovarian cancer remains unknown. A thorough understanding of the function of plasma/serum miR in ovarian cancer will facilitate early diagnosis and improve treatment for ovarian cancer.

Tritium concentrations in precipitation in Shanghai

Tritium concentrations in precipitation can be used as a criterion to evaluate the tritium baseline of the environment. The tritium concentration in precipitation in Shanghai during 2014-2015 was determined. Values ranged from 0.68 ± 0.04 to 4.11 ± 0.39 Bq/L, and it showed a decreasing trend compared with historical data; however,the values were slightly higher than the natural background tritium level. Additionally, the tritium concentration shows a seasonal variation: It was higher in autumn and winter and lower in summer and spring. A comparison of concentrations in precipitation in Shanghai and around the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant reveals no correlation,implying that the nuclear power plant operations may not affect the environment of Shanghai. Thus, the raised tritium concentrations in Shanghai might be due to the effects of monsoons, spring leak, raindrop, or other activities that generate tritium there. Those activities may include chemistry research that uses tritium as a tracer.

A Probabilistic Framework for Temporal Cognitive Diagnosis in Online Learning Systems

Cognitive diagnosis is an important issue of intelligent education systems,which aims to estimate students'proficiency on specific knowledge concepts.Most existing studies rely on the assumption of static student states and ig-nore the dynamics of proficiency in the learning process,which makes them unsuitable for online learning scenarios.In this paper,we propose a unified temporal item response theory(UTIRT)framework,incorporating temporality and random-ness of proficiency evolving to get both accurate and interpretable diagnosis results.Specifically,we hypothesize that stu-dents'proficiency varies as a Wiener process and describe a probabilistic graphical model in UTIRT to consider temporali-ty and randomness factors.Furthermore,based on the relationship between student states and exercising answers,we hy-pothesize that the answering result at time k contributes most to inferring a student's proficiency at time k,which also re-flects the temporality aspect and enables us to get analytical maximization(M-step)in the expectation maximization(EM)algorithm when estimating model parameters.Our UTIRT is a framework containing unified training and inferenc-ing methods,and is general to cover several typical traditional models such as Item Response Theory(IRT),multidimen-sional IRT(MIRT),and temporal IRT(TIRT).Extensive experimental results on real-world datasets show the effective-ness of UTIRT and prove its superiority in leveraging temporality theoretically and practically over TIRT.

Clause-level Relationship-aware Math Word Problems Solver

Automatically solving math word problems,which involves comprehension,cognition,and reasoning,is a crucial issue in artificial intelligence research.Existing math word problem solvers mainly work on word-level relationship extraction and the generation of expression solutions while lacking consideration of the clause-level relationship.To this end,inspired by the theory of two levels of process in comprehension,we propose a novel clause-level relationship-aware math solver(CLRSolver)to mimic the process of human comprehension from lower level to higher level.Specifically,in the lower-level processes,we split problems into clauses according to their natural division and learn their semantics.In the higher-level processes,following human′s multi-view understanding of clause-level relationships,we first apply a CNN-based module to learn the dependency relationships between clauses from word relevance in a local view.Then,we propose two novel relationship-aware mechanisms to learn dependency relationships from the clause semantics in a global view.Next,we enhance the representation of clauses based on the learned clause-level dependency relationships.In expression generation,we develop a tree-based decoder to generate the mathematical expression.We conduct extensive experiments on two datasets,where the results demonstrate the superiority of our framework.

Flux-pinning-induced stress behaviors in a long superconducting slab with central cuboid hole

This paper investigates the flux-pinning-induced stress behaviors in a long superconducting slab with a central cuboid hole.The distribution of flux density is analytically derived for the critical current density of Kim model by considering the effects of the hole.The concentration of stress for both of the zero-field cooling(ZFC)and the field cooling(FC)magnetization processes are investigated through numerical simulation by using finite element method.The results indicate the potential failure mode varies with the height-width ratio and the dimensions of the hole.Different to the case of infinite hole height,the stress concentration behavior for the FC process is more critical when the dimensions of the hole are similar.The findings in this paper are useful for understanding of the degrade mechanism of superconductor in service and the design of new system.