bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Photodynamic therapy in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors plus chemotherapy for first-line treatment in advanced or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer: A phase 2–3 clinical trial protocol
Authors: Yu Yang , Yu Rong , Wang Na , Bai Yuping , Shi Qianling , Maswikiti Ewetse Paul , Chen Hao 
Published: January 2023

Introduction: The immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) has been approved as the first-line therapy for metastatic gastric cancer in China. The treatment response of immune checkpoint inhibitor is highly dependent on the immune condition within the tumor microenvironment. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has a long history in cancer treatment, and recent studies showed it had an immunomodulatory effect on the tumor. Here we will conduct a trial to assess whether or not a combination with Photodynamic therapy will improve the outcomes of immune checkpoint inhibitor-based treatment in patients with advanced or metastatic gastric cancer.Methods: This study is a single-center, open-label, randomized controlled, phase 2–3 trial. Patients (18–65 years old) with untreated gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma will be eligible for this trial. Sixty participants will be enrolled and randomly divided into the test group (n = 30) and control group (n = 30) to receive photodynamic therapy in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitor plus chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitor plus chemotherapy, respectively. The primary is progression-free survival (PFS). The secondary outcomes include objective response rates (ORRs) and the occurrence of adverse events. In addition, we will also assess the changes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and tumor microenvironment after photodynamic therapy treatment in the test group. Evaluation of the tumor response will be performed every two cycles for a maximum of eight cycles.Discussion: Photodynamic therapy has an immunomodulatory effect on the tumor microenvironment; however, this has not been demonstrated for gastric cancer in a clinical trial. Based on our experience of photodynamic therapy treatment in digestive tract tumors, we plan to conduct a randomized controlled trial on this topic. This will be the first study to evaluate the synergistic effect of photodynamic therapy with immunochemotherapy for patients with advanced gastric cancer.Ethics and dissemination: It was approved by the Institutional Research Ethics Committee of Lanzhou University Second Hospital (No. 2022A-491). When this trial is completed, it will be shared at conferences and submitted for a potential publication in a peer-reviewed journal.Clinical Trial Registration:http://www.chictr.org.cn/, identifier ChiCTR2200064280.
Fermented jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) collagen enhances antioxidant activity and cartilage protection on surgically induced osteoarthritis in obese rats
Authors: Sudirman Sabri , Chen Chun-Yu , Chen Chun-Kai , Felim Jerrell , Kuo Hsiang-Ping , Kong Zwe-Ling 
Published: January 2023

Collagen has been considered a key treatment option in preventing damage to the articular cartilage over time and supporting the healing process, following the onset of osteoarthritis (OA). This study aimed to investigate the effect of collagen fermented from jellyfish (FJC) by Bacillus subtilis natto on anterior cruciate ligament transection with medial meniscectomy (ACLT + MMx)-induced knee OA in high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity in rats. The male Sprague–Dawley rats were fed an HFD for 6 weeks before ACLT + MMx surgery, after which they were administered a daily oral gavage of saline (control, OA, and OBOA), either with FJC (20 mg/kg, 40 mg/kg, and 100 mg/kg body weight) or glucosamine sulfate as a positive control (GS; 200 mg/kg body weight) for 6 weeks. Treatment with FJC decreased the fat weight, triglyceride, and total cholesterol levels in obese rats. Additionally, FJC downregulated the expression of some proinflammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor-α, cyclooxygenase-2, and nitric oxide; suppressed leptin and adiponectin expression; and attenuated cartilage degradation. It also decreased the activities of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1 and MMP-3. These results demonstrated that FJC showed a protective effect on articular cartilage and also suppressed the degradation of cartilage in an animal OA model, suggesting its potential efficacy as a promising candidate for OA treatment.
Effects of physical properties on the compression wave speed of seafloor sediment in the South China Sea: Comparisons between theoretical models and measured data
Authors: Tian Yuhang , Chen Zhong , Mo Yaxiao , Xie Anyuan , Huang Weixia , Wang Shuhong , Yan Wen 
Published: January 2023

The compression wave speed and physical properties of seafloor sediments are significant in marine engineering and marine acoustics. Although most regression equations can be satisfactorily fitted to the data and provide a useful predictive method, there is little insight into the influence of physical properties on the compression wave speed of seafloor sediment in the South China Sea (SCS). To characterize the compression wave speed and physical properties of seafloor sediments, the compression wave speed, porosity, density, and mean grain size were measured and calculated for forty-two samples collected from the South China Sea. The results show that the RMS roughness of seafloor sediment in the South China Sea ranges from 0.2 to 15 μm, and the porosity and density are determined by the RMS roughness and mean grain size. The relationships between the compression wave speed and physical properties of seafloor sediments are consistent with the intergranular friction model. When we have the physical parameters but no compression wave speed, therefore, the intergranular friction model can be used to predict the compression wave speed of seafloor sediment. Compared with the Wood model curve, we also reveal that the intergranular friction of seafloor sediment is an important parameter in determining the compression wave speed.
All-fiber probing of aluminized RDX particle micro-explosion
Authors: Zhang Yu , Su Wenjie , Qin Yifan , Jin Wei , Zhang Yaxun , Liu Zhihai , Yuan Libo 
Published: January 2023

Investigating the thermal decomposition characteristics and mechanisms of nano- and submicron-aluminized 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) is essential to optimize the formulations and improve combustion/detonation efficiencies. However, no research has focused on the microscopic scale of a single aluminized RDX particle. We demonstrate an all-fiber probing method for the violent thermal decomposition of a single nano-aluminized micron-RDX particle, which we address as micro-explosion in this paper. We believe studying micro-explosion will be beneficial to the research of thermal decomposition. In experiments, we first characterize the micro-explosion as a three-step process, i.e., melting, first decomposition, and second decomposition. Then, we measure micro-explosion properties, i.e., shockwave-like flow velocity, initiation energy threshold, and shockwave-like flow pressure. Among the aluminized RDX particles with 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% surface coverage ratios (SCRs), the sample with 20% surface coverage ratio shows the highest flow velocity and force, which are about 69.9 mm/s and 39.4 μN, respectively. Moreover, the threshold decreases with rising surface coverage ratios, and the mean threshold of 30% surface coverage ratio is 75 μJ. The experimental results prove that the all-fiber micro-explosion probing method is feasible, safe, and robust.
Peripheral blood flow estimated by laser doppler flowmetry provides additional information about sleep state beyond that provided by pulse rate variability
Authors: Fan Zhiwei , Suzuki Yoko , Jiang Like , Okabe Satomi , Honda Shintaro , Endo Junki , Watanabe Takahiro , Abe Takashi 
Published: January 2023

Pulse rate variability (PRV), derived from Laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) or photoplethysmography, has recently become widely used for sleep state assessment, although it cannot identify all the sleep stages. Peripheral blood flow (BF), also estimated by LDF, may be modulated by sleep stages; however, few studies have explored its potential for assessing sleep state. Thus, we aimed to investigate whether peripheral BF could provide information about sleep stages, and thus improve sleep state assessment. We performed electrocardiography and simultaneously recorded BF signals by LDF from the right-index finger and ear concha of 45 healthy participants (13 women; mean age, 22.5 ± 3.4 years) during one night of polysomnographic recording. Time- and frequency-domain parameters of peripheral BF, and time-domain, frequency-domain, and non-linear indices of PRV and heart rate variability (HRV) were calculated. Finger-BF parameters in the time and frequency domains provided information about different sleep stages, some of which (such as the difference between N1 and rapid eye movement sleep) were not revealed by finger-PRV. In addition, finger-PRV patterns and HRV patterns were similar for most parameters. Further, both finger- and ear-BF results showed 0.2–0.3 Hz oscillations that varied with sleep stages, with a significant increase in N3, suggesting a modulation of respiration within this frequency band. These results showed that peripheral BF could provide information for different sleep stages, some of which was complementary to the information provided by PRV. Furthermore, the combination of peripheral BF and PRV may be more advantageous than HRV alone in assessing sleep states and related autonomic nervous activity.
Feeding Asian honeybee queens with European honeybee royal jelly alters body color and expression of related coding and non-coding RNAs
Authors: Abdelmawla Amal , Yang Chen , Li Xin , Li Mang , Li Chang Long , Liu Yi Bo , He Xu Jiang , Zeng Zhi Jiang 
Published: January 2023

Background and aims: The Asian honeybee (Apis cerana) and the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) are reproductively isolated. Previous studies reported that exchanging the larval food between the two species, known as nutritional crossbreeding, resulted in obvious changes in morphology, physiology and behavior. This study explored the molecular mechanisms underlying the honeybee nutritional crossbreeding.Methods: This study used full nutritional crossbreeding technology to rear A. cerana queens by feeding them with an A. mellifera royal jelly-based diet in an incubator. The body color and the expression of certain genes, microRNA, lncRNA, and circRNA among nutritional crossbred A. cerana queens (NQ), and control A. cerana queens (CQ) were compared. The biological functions of two target genes, TPH1 and KMO, were verified using RNA interference.Results: Our results showed that the NQ’s body color turned yellow compared to the black control queens. Whole transcriptome sequencing results showed that a total of 1484, 311, 92, and 169 DEGs, DElncRNAs, DEmiRNAs, and DEcircRNAs, respectively, were identified in NQ and CQ, in which seven DEGs were enriched for three key pathways (tryptophan, tyrosine, and dopamine) involved in melanin synthesis. Interestingly, eight DElncRNAs and three DEmiRNAs were enriched into the key pathways regulating the above key DEGs. No circRNAs were enriched into these key pathways. Knocking down two key genes (KMO and TPH1) resulted in altered body color, suggesting that feeding NQ’s an RNAi-based diet significantly downregulated the expression of TPH1 and KMO in 4-day-old larvae, which confirmed the function of key DEGs in the regulation of honeybee body color.Conclusion: These findings reveal that the larval diets from A. mellifera could change the body color of A. cerana, perhaps by altering the expression of non-coding RNAs and related key genes. This study serves as a model of epigenetic regulation in insect body color induced by environmental factors.
C:N:P stoichiometric variations of herbs and its relationships with soil properties and species relative abundance along the Xiaokai River irrigation in the Yellow River Delta, China
Authors: Jiang Peipei , Han Xiaojun , Liu Ziyu , Fan Shoujin , Zhang Xuejie 
Published: January 2023

IntroductionSoil salinity is known to affect plant performance and nutrient stoichiometry by altering their ecophysiology, and thus playing a crucial role in determining plant distribution patterns and nutrient cycles in salinized ecosystems. However, there was little consensus on the effects of salinity stress on plant C, N, and P stoichiometries. Moreover, determining the relationships between species relative species abundance and plant C, N, and P stoichiometries can help to understand the different adaptive strategies between the common and rare species as well as the community assembly process.MethodsWe determined the plant C, N, P stoichiometries at the community and species levels and the relative abundance of species as well as the corresponding soil properties from five sampling sites along a soil salinity gradient in the Yellow River Delta, China.Results and DiscussionWe found that the C concentration of belowground part increased with soil salinity. Meanwhile, plant community N concentration and C:N ratio tended to decrease with soil salinity, whereas the P concentration, C:P, and N:P ratios exhibited the opposite trends. This indicated that N use efficiency increased, while P use efficiency decreased with soil salinity. Moreover, the decreased N:P ratio indicated that N limitation was gradually aggravated along the soil salinity gradient. The soil C:P ratio and P concentration were the major factors of plant C, N, and P stoichiometries in the early growth stage, whereas the soil pH and P concentration were the major factors of plant C, N, and P stoichiometries in the late growth stage. Compared with that of the rare species, the C:N:P stoichiometry of the most common species was medium. Moreover, the intraspecific variations in the aboveground part N:P ratio and belowground part C concentration showed a significant correlation with species’ relative abundance, which indicated that higher intraspecific trait variation might facilitate greater fitness and survival opportunities in environments with high heterogeneity.ConclusionOur results revealed that the plant community C:N:P stoichiometry and its determining soil properties varied with plant tissues as well as sampling seasons, and emphasized the importance of intraspecific variation in determining the functional response of plant communities to salinity stress.
Principal component analysis suggests multiple dimensions of memory inhibition that are differentially affected by age
Authors: Corlier Fabian W. , Eich Teal S. 
Published: January 2023

BackgroundCognitive inhibition is among the executive functions that decline early in the course of normal aging. Failures to be able to inhibit irrelevant information from memory may represent an essential factor of age-associated memory impairment. While a variety of elaborate behavioral tasks have been developed that presumably all index memory inhibition, the extent to which these different tasks measure the same underlying cognitive construct that declines with age has not been well explored.MethodsIn the current study, 100 and 75 cognitively healthy younger (n = 71; age = 30.7 ± 5.4 years, 56.7% female) and older (n = 104, age = 69.3 ± 5.9 years, 66.2% female) adults with equivalent educational attainment performed three computer-based memory inhibition tasks: the Retrieval Induced Forgetting task, the Suppress task, and the Directed Forgetting task. We conducted a principal component analysis using scores derived from different components of these tasks to explore whether and how the tasks relate to one another. We further investigated how age, sex and education, along with, in a subsample of the participants, a neuropsychological measure of episodic memory, impacted both the task scores individually, and the principal components derived from the exploratory analysis.ResultsWe identified 3 distinct sources of variability which represent potentially independent cognitive processes: memory retrieval facilitation, and two memory inhibition processes that distinguished themselves by the degree of volitional initiation of memory suppression. Only the memory retrieval component correlated with a neuropsychologically-derived episodic memory score, and both memory inhibition principal components were age dependent.ConclusionOur findings provide support for a distinction in memory suppression processes between those ‘instructed’ to be performed and those which happen without explicit instruction. This distinction adds nuance to the dichotomous classification of controlled vs. automatic inhibitory mechanisms, which have been shown in previous work to vary as a function of the degree of frontal involvement. Our findings further demonstrate that while both of these measures of inhibition were affected by age, the episodic memory component was not, suggesting that inhibitory impairments may precede memory deficits in healthy aging.
Neural correlates of overvaluation and the effort to save possessions in a novel decision task: An exploratory fMRI study
Authors: Liu Tingting , Vickers Brian D. , Seidler Rachael D. , Preston Stephanie D. 
Published: January 2023

IntroductionPeople exhibit a strong attachment to possessions, observed in behavioral economics through loss aversion using new items in the Endowment or IKEA effects and in clinical psychology through pathological trouble discarding domestic items in Hoarding Disorder. These fields rarely intersect, but both document a reticence to relinquish a possessed item, even at a cost, which is associated with feelings of loss but can include enhanced positive states as well.MethodsTo demonstrate the shared properties of these loss-related ownership effects, we developed the Pretzel Decorating Task (PDT), which concurrently measures overvaluation of one’s own over others’ items and feelings of loss associated with losing a possession, alongside enhanced positive appraisals of one’s items and an effort to save them. The PDT was piloted with 31 participants who decorated pretzels and responded to their own or others’ items during functional neuroimaging (fMRI). Participants observed one item per trial (self or other) and could work to save it (high or low probability loss) before learning the fate of the item (trashed or saved). Finally, participants rated items and completed hoarding tendency scales.ResultsThe hypotheses were supported, as even non-clinical participants overvalued, viewed as nicer, feared losing, and worked harder to save their items over others’—a response that correlated with hoarding tendencies and motor-motivational brain activation. Our region of interest in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) was engaged when viewing one’s own items to the extent that people worked harder to save them and was more active when their items were saved when they felt emotionally attached to possessions in real life. When their items were trashed, NAcc activity negatively correlated with trouble discarding and emotional attachments to possessions. Right anterior insula was more active when working to save one’s own over others’ items. Extensive motor-motivational areas were engaged when working to save one’s own over others’ items, including cerebellum, primary motor and somatosensory regions, and retrosplenial/parahippocampal regions—even after controlling for tapping.DiscussionOur attachments to items are emotional, continuous across typical and pathological populations, and drive us to save possessions that we value.
Management equity incentives and corporate tax avoidance: Moderating role of the internal control
Authors: Wenwu Xie , Khurram Muhammad Usman , Qing Lian , Rafiq Asia 
Published: January 2023

IntroductionUnder the modern enterprise system, the principal-agent relationship can cause a conflict of interest between the two power counterparts, thus affecting the degree of corporate tax avoidance. As a tool to align the interests of management and owners, management equity incentives can alleviate the conflict of interests brought about by the separation of powers and, therefore, may influence corporate tax avoidance.Objectives and methodsWe examine the relationship between management equity incentives and corporate tax avoidance from both theoretical and empirical perspectives by using data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2020. Firstly, the effect of management equity incentives on tax avoidance is theoretically and normatively analyzed. Secondly, examine the effectiveness of moderating the effect of internal control and distinguishing the ownership of enterprises’ nature through regression analysis.Results(1) There is a positive relationship between management equity incentives and corporate tax avoidance which means, more the stock incentive offered to executives, the more likely corporations are to pursue tax avoidance strategies aggressively. (2) Internal control deficiencies enhance the positive relationship between equity incentives and enterprise tax avoidance behavior. Therefore, in Chinese enterprises, the lack of an internal control system and the failure of internal control measures are prevalent, and such loopholes can intensify the tax avoidance behavior that arises when executives are subject to equity incentives. (3) The influence of management equity incentives on enterprise tax avoidance behavior is greater in state-owned (SOE) than private enterprises. State-owned enterprises are more likely to increase enterprise tax avoidance behavior when management is subject to equity incentives for reasons such as strict performance requirements, lower regulatory oversight, and less interference from negative information. Finally, our findings have significant implications for policymakers/regulators, public companies, investors, standard setters, managerial labor markets, and the welfare of the overall economy.