Ultrasound imaging of chitosan nerve conduits that bridge sciatic nerve defects in rats

The repair of peripheral nerve injuries with autologous nerve remains the gold standard （Wang et al., 2005; Yao et al., 2010; Deal et al., 2012; Kriebel et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2014; Tamaki et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2014; Zhu and Lou, 2014）. With advances in tissue engineering and biomaterials, tissue-engineered nerve conduits with various biomaterials and structures, such as collagen and chitosan nerve conduits, have already been used in the clinic as alternatives to autologous nerve in the repair of peripheral nerve injury （Wang et al., 2012; Svizenska et al., 2013; Eppenberger et al., 2014; Gu et al., 2014; Koudehi et al., 2014; MoyaDiaz et al., 2014; Novajra et al., 2014; Okamoto et al., 2014; Shea et al., 2014; Singh et al., 2014; Tamaki et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2014）. Therefore, new simple and effective methods

Experimental Investigation of the Creep Behaviour of Glulam Compression-Bending Members

Creep test results of glulam members under compression and bending were studied in this paper.The creep tests were conducted to investigate the influence of the stress level and relative eccentricity on the creep deformation of glulam members.The test results showed that the creep deformation trends of glulam members under long-term compression and bending loading were similar;the creep deformation increased with increases in both the stress level and relative eccentricity.However,the relative creep deformation decreased with the increase in both the stress level and relative eccentricity under long-term loading,and a five-parameter creep model was proposed to analyse the creep mechanism of glulam members under compression and bending.The good fitness of the test results indicated that the five-parameter model was able to accurately simulate the creep deformation of glulam compression-bending members.Moreover,a numerical model was developed using the creep equation,which was related to the parameter a and b.The simulation results were in good agreement with the test results,and the parameters a and b were correlated to the relative eccentricity and stress level,respectively.Based on the corrected parameters a and b,the relative creep deformation of glulam compression-bending members was predicted over 50 years.

Blocking the JAK2/STAT3 and ERK pathways suppresses the proliferation of gastrointestinal cancers by inducing apoptosis

Dysregulated crosstalk between different signaling pathways contributes to tumor development,including resistance to cancer therapy.In the present study,we found that the mitogen-activated extracellular signal-regulated kinase(MEK)inhibitor trametinib failed to suppress the proliferation of PANC-1 and MGC803 cells by activating the Janus kinase 2(JAK2)/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3(STAT3)signaling pathway,while the JAK2 inhibitor fedratinib failed to inhibit the growth of the PANC-1 cells upon stimulation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase(ERK)signaling.In particular,the most prominent enhancement of the anti-proliferative effect resulted from the concurrent blockage of the JAK2/STAT3 and ERK signaling pathways.Furthermore,the combination of the two inhibitors resulted in a reduced tumor burden in mice.Our evidence suggests novel crosstalk between JAK2/STAT3 and ERK signaling in gastric cancer(GC)and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC)cells and provides a therapeutic strategy to overcome potential resistance in gastrointestinal cancer.