Abstract Platelets possess cancer-induced reprogramming properties, thereby contributing to RNA profile alterations and further cancer progression, while the former is considered a promising biosource for cancer detection. Hence, tumor-educated platelets (TEP) are considered a prospective novel method for early breast cancer (BC) screening. Our study integrated the data from 276 patients with untreated BC, 95 with benign disease controls, 214 healthy controls, and 2 who underwent mastectomy in Chinese and European cohorts to develop a 10-biomarker diagnostic model. The model demonstrated high diagnostic performance for BC in an independent test set (n = 177) with an area under the curve of 0.957. The sensitivity for BC diagnosis was 89.2%, with 100% specificity in asymptomatic controls, while that for the symptomatic group, including benign tumors and inflammatory diseases, was 62.1%. The model demonstrated substantial accuracy for stages 0–III BC (80% for stage 0 [n = 5], 83.3% for stage I [n = 12], 94.6% for stage II [n = 37], and 88.9% for stage III [n = 9]) and precisely helped determine residual cancer in two patients who underwent mastectomy. Moreover, our developed classifiers distinguish different BC subtypes properly. In summary, we created and tested a new TEP-RNA-based BC diagnostic model that was confirmed valid and demonstrated high efficiency in detecting early-stage BC and heterogeneous subtypes, including recurrent tumors. However, these results warrant more validation in larger population-based prospective studies before clinical implementation.
The adhesion between the carbon fibre reinforced copper matrix composite material and the coating is of particular importance for the mechanical and functional properties of the resulting system, and also for its handling and for the lifetime of the final product. To have a better understanding of the microstructure at the interface region, three different coating processes, i.e. electroplated Nickel coating, alkyd resin coating and polyolefin coating have been carried out and compared using SEM/EDX techniques. The experimental results indicate that the electroplated Nickel coating gives the best adhesion strength at the interface, suggesting this method the most promising approach and can be further investigated for electrical and electronic engineering applications in power industry.
The bay area is a crucial land–sea junction zone containing essential urban clusters while receiving extremely complex internal and external disturbances that challenge more on its resilience management. However, a sound management tool based on the bay area’s resilience is widely lacking due to the difficulty of unifying resilience indicators and quantifying resilience relationships between regions. This paper tries to establish a comprehensive resilience index for coastal bays from four major resilience-related dimensions, namely, physical structure, social development, ecological environment, and hazards, and applies it into the three major developed bay areas in China. A coupling coordination degree model was used to further reveal the resilience development and its internal coordination by temporal and spatial differences. The results show that the index could clearly reveal the resilience changes from the year 2000 to 2020 of the three bays with the common key drivers of socioeconomic development. It also explains the resilience changes among three bay areas through analyzing synergistic and conflict relationships between the four sub-resilience systems.
Bone metastasis, a clinical complication of patients with advanced breast cancer, seriously reduces the quality of life. To avoid destruction of the bone matrix, current treatments focus on inhibiting the cancer cell growth and the osteoclast activity through combination therapy. Therefore, it could be beneficial to develop a bone-targeted drug delivery system to treat bone metastasis. Here, a bone-targeted nanoplatform was developed using gold nanorods enclosed inside mesoporous silica nanoparticles (Au@MSNs) which were then conjugated with zoledronic acid (ZOL). The nanoparticles (Au@MSNs-ZOL) not only showed bone-targeting ability in vivo but also inhibited the formation of osteoclast-like cells and promoted osteoblast differentiation in vitro. The combination of Au@MSNs-ZOL and photothermal therapy (PTT), triggered by near-infrared irradiation, inhibited tumor growth both in vitro and in vivo and relieved pain and bone resorption in vivo by inducing apoptosis in cancer cells and improving the bone microenvironment. This single nanoplatform combines ZOL and PTT to provide an exciting strategy for treating breast cancer bone metastasis.
Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes with intense rainfall and storm surges, are posing increasing challenges to local communities worldwide. These hazards not only result in substantial property damage but also lead to significant population displacement. Federal disaster assistance programs are crucial for providing financial support for disaster response and recovery, but the allocation of these resources often unequal due to the complex interplay of environmental, social, and institutional factors. Relying on datasets collected from diverse sources, this study employs a structural equation model to explore the complex relationships between disaster damage (DD), social vulnerability (SV), public disaster assistance (PDA), the national flood insurance (NFI), and population migration (PM) across counties in the contiguous US. Our findings reveal that communities with lower SV tend to experience higher levels of DD across US counties. SV is negatively associated with PM, PDA, and NFI, both directly and indirectly. Furthermore, PDA is positively linked to PM, whereas DD has a direct negative effect on PM but an indirect positive effect through PDA.
Hydropower is the most widely used renewable energy for electricity generation in China, and small hydro power plant (SHPP) is a flexible way of electricity generation in water-rich remote area. Voltage at the end of distribution network may be increased over the acceptable range due to the connection of SHPPs. Magnetic control reactor (MCR) is usually used to reduce the voltage by consuming reactive power. A mathematical model for calculation of the optimal capacity of MCR is proposed in this paper, and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is adopted to solve the optimization problem. Two cases based on the IEEE 33-bus test system are used to validate the proposed method. In the given cases, system voltage is adjusted to the acceptable range.
Abstract This article deals with household‐level flood risk mitigation. We present an agent‐based modeling framework to simulate the mechanism of natural hazard and human interactions, to allow evaluation of community flood risk, and to predict various adaptation outcomes. The framework considers each household as an autonomous, yet socially connected, agent. A Beta–Bernoulli Bayesian learning model is first applied to measure changes of agents’ risk perceptions in response to stochastic storm surges. Then the risk appraisal behaviors of agents, as a function of willingness‐to‐pay for flood insurance, are measured. Using Miami‐Dade County, Florida as a case study, we simulated four scenarios to evaluate the outcomes of alternative adaptation strategies. Results show that community damage decreases significantly after a few years when agents become cognizant of flood risks. Compared to insurance policies with pre‐Flood Insurance Rate Maps subsidies, risk‐based insurance policies are more effective in promoting community resilience, but it will decrease motivations to purchase flood insurance, especially for households outside of high‐risk areas. We evaluated vital model parameters using a local sensitivity analysis. Simulation results demonstrate the importance of an integrated adaptation strategy in community flood risk management.
'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(23.036 .093 25.536)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(45.87 1.273 16.18)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(69.945 .996 12.078)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(20.66 -19.689 31.932)'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)
