Thyroid-Associated Orbitopathy: Evaluating Microstructural Changes of Extraocular Muscles and Optic Nerves Using Readout-Segmented Echo-Planar Imaging-Based Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Huan-Huan Chen,Hao Hu,Wen Chen,Dai Cui,Xiao-Quan Xu,Fei-Yun Wu,Tao Yang 대한영상의학회 2020 Korean Journal of Radiology Vol.21 No.3

Objective: We aimed to investigate the ability of readout-segmented echo-planar imaging (rs-EPI)-based diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in assessing the microstructural change of extraocular muscles (EOMs) and optic nerves in patients with thyroidassociated orbitopathy (TAO) as well as in evaluating disease activity. Materials and Methods: We enrolled 35 TAO patients and 22 healthy controls (HCs) who underwent pre-treatment rs-EPIbased DTI. Mean, axial, and radial diffusivity (MD, AD, and RD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) of the medial and lateral EOMs and optic nerve for each orbit were calculated and compared between TAO and HC groups and between active and inactive TAO groups. Factors such as age, sex, disease duration, mediation, and smoking history between groups were also compared. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the predictive value of significant variables for disease activity. Results: Disease duration was significantly shorter in active TAOs than in inactive ones (p < 0.001). TAO patients showed significantly lower FA and higher MD, AD, and RD than HCs for both medial and lateral EOMs (p < 0.001), but not the AD value of lateral EOMs (p = 0.619). Active patients had significantly higher FA, MD, and AD than inactive patients for medial EOMs (p < 0.005), whereas only FA differed significantly in the lateral EOMs (p = 0.018). The MD, AD, and RD of optic nerves were significantly lower in TAO patients than HCs (p < 0.05), except for FA (p = 0.129). Multivariate analysis showed that the MD of medial EOMs and disease duration were significant predictors for disease activity. The combination of these two parameters showed optimal diagnostic efficiency for disease activity (area under the curve, 0.855; sensitivity, 68.4%; specificity, 96.9%). Conclusion: rs-EPI-based DTI is promising in assessing microstructural changes of EOMs and optic nerves and can help to indicate the disease activity of TAO, especially through the MD of medial EOMs.

Breathing-based Continuous Non-intrusive User Verification Leveraging Commodity WiFi

Huan Dai,Jingjing Jiang,Jiaju Ma,He Huang,Hongbo Liu 한국통신학회 2022 Journal of communications and networks Vol.24 No.2

This paper opens up a new pathway of the utilityof breathing pattern for user verification. We demonstrate thatit is possible to capture people’s breathing pattern leveragingcommodity WiFi devices. While prior solutions for biometricsbaseduser recognition usually require dedicated devices (e.g.,video cameras or IR sensors), this paper introduces the firstgeneral, low-cost breathing-based user verification system usingcommodity WiFi devices. The proposed system is based onthe fact that the breathing pattern always keeps consistentfor the same user but distinct among different people. Ourinnovative method successfully extracts the breathing patternof different people based on channel state information of WiFisignal to facilitate user verification. The prototype study usingtwo commodity WiFi devices can differentiate people with anaverage verification accuracy over 90%, suggesting that ourbreathing-based user verification system using commerical offthe-shelf (COTS) WiFi is promising to be one of the most criticalmethods in biometrics.

Autophagy plays a protective role against apoptosis induced by toxicarioside N via the Akt/mTOR pathway in human gastric cancer SGC-7901 cells

Huan-ge Zhao,Song-lin Zhou,Ying-ying Lin,Hua Wang,Hao Fu Dai,Feng-Ying Huang 대한약학회 2018 Archives of Pharmacal Research Vol.41 No.10

Toxicarioside N (Tox N), a natural product extract from Antiaris toxicaria, has been reported to induce apoptosis in human gastric cancer cells. However, the mechanism and actual role of autophagy in Tox N-induced apoptosis of human gastric cancer cells remains poorly understood. In the current study, we demonstrated that Tox N could induce autophagy by inhibiting the Akt/mTOR signaling pathway in SGC-7901 cells. Moreover, we found that the inhibition of autophagy by 3-methyladenine, an autophagy inhibitor, enhanced Tox N-induced apoptotic cell death. However, the stimulation of autophagy by rapamycin, an autophagy activator, remarkably suppressed Tox N-induced apoptosis, suggesting that autophagy plays a protective role in Tox N-induced apoptosis. Thus, the results from this study suggested that Tox N combination with an autophagy inhibitor might be a promising strategy to enhance the anticancer activity of Tox N for the treatment of human gastric cancer.

Toxicarioside N induces apoptosis in human gastric cancer SGC- 7901 cell by activating the p38MAPK pathway

Huan-ge Zhao,Song-lin Zhou,Ying-ying Lin,Hao Fu Dai,Feng-Ying Huang 대한약학회 2018 Archives of Pharmacal Research Vol.41 No.1

Natural plant compounds with potent proliferationinhibition and apoptosis induction properties havebeen screened as novel anticancer drugs. Toxicarioside N(Tox N) was isolated from the seeds of the tropical plantAntiaris toxicaria in Hainan province, China. To ourknowledge, the effects that Tox N has on the apoptosis ofSGC-7901 cells and its potential mechanism have neverbeen investigated. In this study, we detected the anticanceractivities of Tox N and explored the potential mechanismin the human gastrointestinal cancer cell line SGC-7901. Here, we found that Tox N inhibited SGC-7901 cell growthin a dose- and time-dependent manner and induced apoptosisin cells based on cell morphology and flow cytometryanalyses. Additionally, the SGC-7901 cell treated with ToxN up-regulated the expression level of cleaved caspase-3/9and PARP, increased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, and led to therelease of cytochrome c into the cytoplasm. In addition,Tox N treatment led to the phosphorylation of p38MAPK. SB203580, a p38MAPK inhibitor, partially attenuated ToxN induced apoptosis by preventing the activation of caspase-3/9 and PARP. Our results indicated for the first timethat Tox N can induce SGC-7901 cells apoptosis by activatingthe p38MAPK pathway.

Nucleation and Growth of Bismuth Electrodeposition from Alkaline Electrolyte

Zhou, Longping,Dai, Yatang,Zhang, Huan,Jia, Yurong,Zhang, Jie,Li, Changxiong Korean Chemical Society 2012 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.33 No.5

The early stages of bismuth (Bi) electrodeposition on glass carbon electrode from alkaline electrolyte were studied by cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The CV analysis showed that the electrodeposition of Bi was determined to be quasireversible process with diffusion controlled. The current transients for Bi electrodeposition were analyzed according to the Scharifker-Hills model and the Heerman-Tarallo model. It can be concluded that the nucleation and growth mechanism was carried out under a 3D instantaneous nucleation, which was confirmed by SEM analysis. The kinetic growth parameters were obtained through a nonlinear fitting. In addition, the Bi film obtaining at -0.86 V for 1 hour was of compact and uniform surface with good smoothness, small roughness and a very high purity. The Bi film were indexed to rhombohedral crystal structure with preferred orientation of (0 1 2) planes to growth.

Facile Synthesis of Flower-like Superparamagnetic Fe₃O₄/BiOCl Nanocomposites as High Effective Magnetic Recyclable Photocatalyst under Visible Light

Wei Wang,Mingyi He,Huan Zhang,Yatang Dai 한국자기학회 2016 Journal of Magnetics Vol.21 No.2

In this paper, 10 nm Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles were modified on the surface of 2 μm flower-like bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) spheres by a facile co-precipitation method. The results showed that the Fe₃O₄/BiOCl nanocomposites exhibited excellent photocatalytic activity and superparamagnetic property (Ms = 3.22 emu/g) under visible light for Rhodamine B (RhB) degradation. Moreover, the Fe₃O₄-BiOCl photocatalyst possessed magnetic recyclable property, which could maintain high photocatalytic effective even after 20 cycle times. These characteristic indicates a promising application for wastewater treatment.

Nucleation and Growth of Bismuth Electrodeposition from Alkaline Electrolyte

Longping Zhou,Yatang Dai,Huan Zhang,Yurong Jia,Jie Zhang,Changxiong Li 대한화학회 2012 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.33 No.5

The early stages of bismuth (Bi) electrodeposition on glass carbon electrode from alkaline electrolyte were studied by cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The CV analysis showed that the electrodeposition of Bi was determined to be quasireversible process with diffusion controlled. The current transients for Bi electrodeposition were analyzed according to the Scharifker-Hills model and the Heerman-Tarallo model. It can be concluded that the nucleation and growth mechanism was carried out under a 3D instantaneous nucleation, which was confirmed by SEM analysis. The kinetic growth parameters were obtained through a nonlinear fitting. In addition, the Bi film obtaining at −0.86 V for 1 hour was of compact and uniform surface with good smoothness, small roughness and a very high purity. The Bi film were indexed to rhombohedral crystal structure with preferred orientation of (0 1 2) planes to growth.

The applications of hybrid approach combining exact method and evolutionary algorithm in combinatorial optimization

Duan Suling,Jiang Shanlin,Dai Huan,Wang Luping,He Zhenan 한국CDE학회 2023 Journal of computational design and engineering Vol.10 No.3

Combinatorial optimization problems have very important applications in information technology, transportation, economics, management, network communication, and other fields. Since the problem size in real-scenario application is in large-scale, the demand for real-time and efficient solving approaches increases rapidly. The traditional exact methods guarantee the optimality of the final solution, but these methods can hardly solve the problem in acceptable time due to extremely high computational costs. Heuristic approaches can find feasible solutions in a limited time, while these approaches cannot meet the demand of solution quality. In recent years, hybrid algorithms based on exact methods and heuristic algorithms show outstanding performance in solving large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. The hybridization not only overcomes the shortcomings from single algorithm but also fully utilizes the search ability for population-based approaches as well as the interpretability in exact methods, which promotes the application of combinatorial optimization in real-world problems. This paper reviews existing studies on hybrid algorithms combining exact method and evolutionary computation, summarizes the characteristics of the existing algorithms, and directs the future research.

Annual Financial Impact of Thyroidectomies for Nodular Thyroid Disease in China

Liu, Xiao-Yun,Zhu, Li-Jun,Cui, Dai,Wang, Zhi-Xiao,Chen, Huan-Huan,Duan, Yu,Shen, Mei-Ping,Zhang, Zhi-Hong,Wang, Xiao-Dong,Chen, Jia-Wei,Alexander, Erik Karl,Yang, Tao Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.14

A large proportion of patients with thyroid nodules in China undergo thyroidectomy in order to get confirmatory histology diagnosis. The financial impact of this modality remains to be investigated. To evaluate rationality of performing thyroidectomy without a routine FNA preoperatively from the economic perspective, we conducted a retrospective, observational study of all archival thyroidectomies with records of cost per stay (CPS), cost per day (CPD) and length of stay (LOS) from 2008 to 2013 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University. We compared all the parameters between cancer and non-cancer thyroidectomies. We recruited 6, 140 thyroidectomies with valid records of CPS, CPD and LOS in this period. The CPS of cancer thyroidectomy was significantly higher than non-cancer thyroidectomy. The percentage of cancer thyroidectomy increased from 26.5% to 41.6%. The percentage of annual cost of cancer thyroidectomies rose from 30.2% to 45.2%. The LOS for cancer and non-cancer thyroidectomy decreased while the CPD increased in the past six years. The estimated national cost in 2012 for all thyroidectomies would be USD 1.86 billion with USD 1.09 billion for non-cancer thyroidectomies. We have witnessed great improvement in the healthcare for patients with thyroid nodules in China. However, given limited healthcare resources, currently thyroid FNA for more precise preoperative diagnosis may help to curb the rapidly increasing demand in healthcare costs in the future for nodular thyroid disease in China.

Kinetic Changes and Antihypertensive Effect of Aqueous Extract of Danggui (Angelica sinensis Radix) after Stir-fry Processing

Gui-Fen Zhou,Xiao-Yan Dai,Chen-Huan Yu,Jie Fang 한국식품과학회 2013 Food Science and Biotechnology Vol.22 No.3

Danggui (Angelica sinensis Radix) in East Asia for its unique pleasant flavor is usually cooked before utilizing to enhance its tonic effect. To evaluate the quality and bioactivity changes, heat treatments were carried out at 250oC for 0-45 min. 5-Hydroxymaltol, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural,Z-ligustilide, and ferulic acid in aqueous extract of processed danggui (APD) were determined by HPLC while antihypertensive effects were studied after oral administration of APD (50 and 100 mg/kg) for 3 days in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Compared with aqueous extract of danggui (AD), contents of ferulic acid and Z-ligustilide in APD were significantly decreased but 5-hydroxymaltol and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural were increased. APD could lower blood pressures, plasma renin activities, and angiotensin II levels of SHR, but AD failed to do those. APD exhibited hypotensive effects by regulating renin-angiotensin system and may warrant further evaluation as a potential antihypertensive agent.