Risk Factors for Poor Outcomes Following Minimally Invasive Discectomy: A Post Hoc Subgroup Analysis of 2-Year Follow-up Prospective Data

Zihao Chen,Lei He,Lijun Huang,Zhongyu Liu,Jianwen Dong,Bin Liu,Ruiqiang Chen,Liangming Zhang,Peigen Xie,Limin Rong 대한척추신경외과학회 2022 Neurospine Vol.19 No.1

Objective: A post hoc subgroup analysis of prospectively collected data from a randomized controlled trial was conducted to identify risk factors related to poor outcomes in patients who underwent minimally invasive discectomy. Methods: Patients were divided into satisfied and dissatisfied subgroups based on Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), visual analogue scale (VAS) back pain score (VAS-back) and leg pain score (VAS-leg) at short-term and midterm follow-up according to the patient acceptable symptom state threshold. Demographic characteristics, radiographic parameters, and clinical outcomes between the satisfied and dissatisfied subgroups were compared using univariate and multivariate analysis. Results: A total of 222 patients (92.1%) completed 2-year follow-up, and the postoperative ODI, VAS-back, and VAS-leg were significantly improved after surgery as compared to preoperatively. Multivariate analysis indicated older age (p = 0.026), lateral recess stenosis (p = 0.046), and lower baseline ODI (p = 0.027) were related to poor short-term functional improvement. Higher baseline VAS-back (p = 0.048) was associated with poor short-term relief of back pain, while absence of decreased sensation (p = 0.019) and far-lateral disc herniation (p = 0.004) were associated with poorer short-term relief of leg pain. Lumbar facet joint osteoarthritis was identified as a risk factor for poor functional improvement (p = 0.003) and relief of back pain (p = 0.031). Disc protrusion (p = 0.036) predicted poorer relief of back pain at midterm follow-up. Conclusion: In this study, several factors were identified to be predictive of poor surgical outcomes following minimally invasive discectomy. (ClinicalTrials.gov number: NCT01997086).

Numerical investigation of the critical heat fl ux in a 5 × 5 rod bundle with multi-grid

Wei Liu,Zemin Shang,Shihao Yang,Lixin Yang,Zihao Tian,Yu Liu,Xi Chen,Qian Peng 한국원자력학회 2022 Nuclear Engineering and Technology Vol.54 No.5

To improve the heat transfer efficiency of the reactor fuel assembly, it is necessary to accurately calculatethe two-phase flow boiling characteristics and the critical heat flux (CHF) in the fuel assembly. In thispaper, a Eulerian two-fluid model combined with the extended wall boiling model was used tonumerically simulate the 5 5 fuel rod bundle with spacer grids (four sets of mixing vane grids and foursets of simple support grids without mixing vanes). We calculated and analyzed 11 experimental conditions under different pressure, inlet temperature, and mass flux. After comparing the CHF and thelocation of departure from the nucleate boiling obtained by the numerical simulation with the experimental results, we confirmed the reliability of computational fluid dynamic analysis for the prediction ofthe CHF of the rod bundle and the boiling characteristics of the two-phase flow. Subsequently, weanalyzed the influence of the spacer grid and mixing vanes on the void fraction, liquid temperature, andsecondary flow distribution. The research in this article provides theoretical support for the design of fuelassemblies

D-Galactose Induces a Mitochondrial Complex I Deficiency in Mouse Skeletal Muscle: Potential Benefits of Nutrient Combination in Ameliorating Muscle Impairment

Liao Chang,Xin Liu,Jing Liu,Hua Li,Yanshen Yang,Jia Liu,Zihao Guo,Ke Xiao,Chen Zhang,Jiankang Liu,Xi Zhao-Wilson,Jiangang Long 한국식품영양과학회 2014 Journal of medicinal food Vol.17 No.3

Accumulating research has shown that chronic D-galactose (D-gal) exposure induces symptoms similar to natural aging in animals. Therefore, rodents chronically exposed to D-gal are increasingly used as a model for aging and delay-of-aging pharmacological research. Mitochondrial dysfunction is thought to play a vital role in aging and age-related diseases; however, whether mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role in mice exposed to D-gal remains unknown. In the present study, we investigated cognitive dysfunction, locomotor activity, and mitochondrial dysfunction involved in D-gal exposure in mice. We found that D-gal exposure (125 mg/kg/day, 8 weeks) resulted in a serious impairment in grip strength in mice, whereas spatial memory and locomotor coordination remained intact. Interestingly, muscular mitochondrial complex I deficiency occurred in the skeletal muscle of mice exposed to D-gal. Mitochondrial ultrastructure abnormality was implicated as a contributing factor in D-gal-induced muscular impairment. Moreover, three combinations (A, B, and C) of nutrients applied in this study effectively reversed D-gal-induced muscular impairment. Nutrient formulas B and C were especially effective in reversing complex I dysfunction in both skeletal muscle and heart muscle. These findings suggest the following: (1) chronic exposure to D-gal first results in specific muscular impairment in mice, rather than causing general, premature aging; (2) poor skeletal muscle strength induced by D-gal might be due to the mitochondrial dysfunction caused by complex I deficiency; and (3) the nutrient complexes applied in the study attenuated the skeletal muscle impairment, most likely by improving mitochondrial function.

Enhancing Location Privacy through P2P Network and Caching in Anonymizer

Peiqian Liu,Shangchen Xie,Zihao Shen,Hui Wang 한국인터넷정보학회 2022 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.16 No.5

The fear that location privacy may be compromised greatly hinders the development of location-based service. Accordingly, some schemes based on the distributed architecture in peer-to-peer network for location privacy protection are proposed. Most of them assume that mobile terminals are mutually trusted, but this does not conform to realistic scenes, and they cannot make requirements for the level of location privacy protection. Therefore, this paper proposes a scheme for location attribute-based security authentication and private sharing data group, so that they trust each other in peer-to-peer network and the trusted but curious mobile terminal cannot access the initiator's query request. A new identifier is designed to allow mobile terminals to customize the protection strength. In addition, the caching mechanism is introduced considering the cache capacity, and a cache replacement policy based on deep reinforcement learning is proposed to reduce communications with location-based service server for achieving location privacy protection. Experiments show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme.

Circ_0001686 Promotes Prostate Cancer Progression by Up-Regulating SMAD3/TGFBR2 via miR-411-5p

Pan Jiancheng,Liu Zihao,Yang Zhizhao,Liang Enli,Fang Cheng,Zhang Dingrong,Zhou Xiaodong,Niu Yuanjie,Xin Zhongcheng,Chen Yegang,Cai Qiliang 대한남성과학회 2022 The World Journal of Men's Health Vol.40 No.1

Purpose: As the mechanism of interaction between circular RNAs (circRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) in regulating the development of prostate cancer (PCa) is not clear, this study focuses on investigating these effects. Materials and Methods: Sample tissues were collected from the PCa of patients, and microarray analysis of human circRNAs was conducted. The expression of circ_0001686, hsa_miR-411-5p (miR-411-5p) were also detected by qRT-PCR. Circ_0001686 and miR-411-5p mimics were transfected into the PCa cell lines (CWR22RV1and LNCaP) and MTT, colony formation, Transwell, and scratch wound assays were used to analyze the biological behaviors of PCa cells. Si-circ_0001686 and ASO-miR-411-5p were used as negative controls, and dual-luciferase reporter assays were performed to verify the interactions among circ_0001686, miR-411-5p, and SMAD3/TGFBR2. The levels of SMAD3 and TGFBR2 in different treated PCa cells were measured by western blot, and in vivo experiments in a nude mouse model were carried out to strengthen the in vitro findings of miR-411-5p. Results: The expression of circ_0001686 was up-regulated, while the expression of miR-411-5p was down-regulated in PCa cells. Moreover, circ_0001686 promoted cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Molecular mechanism exploration revealed that circ_0001686 could reduce miR-411-5p, affecting the downstream target genes of SMAD3 and TGFBR2. In vitro and in vivo studies verified that miR-411-5p inhibits PCa progression. Conclusions: Circ_0001686 can reduce miR-411-5p to increase the expression of SMAD3/TGFBR2, which consequently promotes the proliferation, invasion, and migration of PCa cells.

Character Identification for Integrated Circuit Components on Printed Circuit Boards Using Deep Learning

Jia Xiaojun,Liu Zihao 대한전기학회 2022 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.17 No.1

Conventional defect detection and recognition algorithms for integrated circuit (IC) components, used in printed circuit boards (PCBs), are primarily based on automated optical inspection (AOI). These techniques typically extract image features using image processing models, which are heavily dependent on visual cues and can thus be inaccurate. To address these issues, we propose the use of a deep convolutional neural network, an improved LeNet-5 structure called ICChaNet with a deeper structure and more complex parameters. First, the algorithm for character extraction is implemented and used to generate character samples from IC component images. This process includes grayscaling, binarization, and contour extraction, applied to a set of IC component images to establish 53 categories of characters (letters and number with similar symbols removed). Three critical hyperparameters, including learning rate, pooling strategy, and optimization strategy, are then optimized through a comparative analysis. The eff ect of diff erent network architectures on model effi ciency is also investigated by varying the layer depth. A combination classifi er strategy is subsequently added to the fully connected layers to strengthen the feature expression in the corresponding classes. Finally, the performance of the proposed ICChaNet model is verifi ed through a comparison with popular CNNs. Experimental results demonstrate that ICChaNet has achieved a classifi cation accuracy of 98.5% and a test average accuracy precision of 97.73%. These results suggest the proposed ICChaNet model is a promising approach for automated character identifi cation

A drug delivery system constructed by a fusion peptide capturing exosomes targets to titanium implants accurately resulting the enhancement of osseointegration peri-implant

Li Xuewen,Liu Zihao,Xu Shendan,Ma Xinying,Zhao Zhezhe,Hu Han,Deng Jiayin,Peng Cheng,Wang Yonglan,Ma Shiqing 한국생체재료학회 2023 생체재료학회지 Vol.27 No.00

Exosomes derived from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSC-exos) have been shown triggering osteogenic differentiation and mineralization of MSCs, but exosomes administered via bolus injections are rapidly sequestered and cleared. Therefore, we considered the implant as a new organ of patient’s body and expected to find a method to treat implant with BMSC-exos in vivo directly.A fusion peptide (PEP), as a drug delivery system (DDS) which contained a titanium-binding peptide (TBP) possessing the ability to selectively bind to the titanium surface and another peptide CP05 being able to capture exosomes expertly, is constructed to modify the titanium surface.Both in vitro and in vivo experiments prove PEP retains the ability to bind titanium and exosome simultaneously, and the DDS gain the ability to target exosomes to titanium implants surface following enhancing osseointegration post-implantation. Moreover, the DDS constructed by exosomes of diverse origins shows the similar combination rate and efficiency of therapy.This drug delivery system demonstrates the concept that EXO-PEP system can offer an accurate and efficient therapy for treating implants with long-term effect.

Theoretical and practical models for shear strength of corroded reinforced concrete columns

Bo Yu,Zihao Ding,Shengbin Liu,Bing Li 국제구조공학회 2021 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.79 No.5

In order to predict the shear strength of corroded reinforced concrete column (CRCC) accurately and efficiently, both theoretical and practical models for shear strength of the CRCC were established through theoretical derivation and experimental validation. The deterioration mechanism for shear strength of the CRCC due to the steel reinforcement corrosion was explored first based on the shear mechanism analysis of the truss-arch model. Then a theoretical model for shear strength of the CRCC was developed by taking into account the influences of steel reinforcement corrosion on the effective yield strength of transverse reinforcement, the effective cross-sectional area of both corroded transverse and longitudinal reinforcements as well as the effective concrete shear area. Meanwhile, three practical models to evaluate the shear strength of the CRCC were proposed based on 54 sets of experimental data by determining the approximate values of three important parameters, including the contribution coefficient of shear strength for concrete, the ratio of shear stiffness between the truss model and the arch model, as well as the tangent value of the critical crack angle. Finally, the accuracy and applicability of both theoretical and practical models for shear strength of the CRCC were validated by comparing with five existing empirical shear strength models.

TM-doped ZnO DMS synthesized by hydrothermal method under high magnetic field

Min Zhong,Muhammad Tariq,Zihao Zhang,Chunli Liu,Yemin Hu,Wenxian Li,Ying Li 한국자기학회 2015 한국자기학회 학술연구발표회 논문개요집 Vol.2015 No.11

Modeling and vibration characteristics analysis of a DMF rotor system

Liping Zeng,Jieliang Liu,Zihao Wan,Liquan Song,Xingxing Yuan 대한기계학회 2022 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.36 No.6

To analyze the vibration response of a rotor system with circumferential short spring dual mass flywheel (DMF) when the primary flywheel speed changes, the interactions (forces and torques) between the primary flywheel, spring seat, spring, and secondary flywheel are analyzed in detail, and the dynamic analysis model of the DMF rotor system is established considering the influence of clearance and friction between parts in the DMF in this study. The vibration response of the DMF is investigated by numerical method. By analyzing the bifurcation diagram, time history, phase trajectories, Poincaré section, and frequency domain of the relative angular displacement, the variation of vibration form of the system under different excitation frequencies are discussed. Besides, the effects of load, primary flywheel speed amplitude, and spring stiffness on system vibration are also analyzed. Finally, some of the results from the analytical study are verified through the DMF rotor system experiments.