Weihai Chest Hospital

To investigate the analgesic effects and mechanisms of BMSCs-IL-10+ administered via intrathecal injection in CCD rats. After CCD surgery, rats were administered intrathecal injections of PBS, BMSCs, BMSCs-IL-10+, BMSCs-IL-10++Anti-IL-10, LV-IRF-8, and LV-IRF-8+IL-10. Pain was assessed by measuring the mechanical withdrawal threshold (MWT) and thermal withdrawal latency (TWL). Glial cell activation and M2 microglial polarization were evaluated by immunofluorescence staining of Iba-1, GFAP, and Arg-1, and by WB for Iba-1 and Arg-1. Spinal cord inflammation was assessed by PCR analysis of TGF-β, TNF-α, and IL-1β expression. Compared with the CCD+PBS group, intrathecal injection of both BMSCs and BMSCs-IL-10+ significantly alleviated CCD-induced mechanical and thermal pain. However, the analgesic effect of the BMSCs group markedly decreased after 4 days, while the BMSCs-IL-10+ group lasted at least 14 days. The BMSCs-IL-10+ group significantly upregulated the expression of TGF-β while downregulating TNF-α and IL-1β, inhibiting glial cell activation and promoting M2 microglia polarization. These effects were superior to the BMSCs group and could be abolished by anti-IL-10 antibody. IRF-8 overexpression exacerbated pain and inflammation in CCD rats, but the combined application of IL-10 protein reversed this impact. IL-10 is a key cytokine mediating the analgesic effects of BMSCs. Transplantation of BMSCs-IL-10+ cells reduces glial activation, alleviates neuroinflammation, and relieves neuropathic pain by enhancing IL-10 expression and suppressing IRF-8.

Lateral ankle sprain (LAS) is the most common injury in basketball, and identifying at-risk players is of high importance. To evaluate the ability of the Ankle-GO score to identify elite basketball players who will suffer LAS during a competitive season as well as other potential predictive factors. Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 2. A total of 48 elite basketball players (22 male, 26 female; mean ± SD age, 17.9 ± 3.7 years) performed the Ankle-GO score on both limbs during a preseason session. This score is a cluster of functional tests and self-reported questionnaires evaluating ankle function. LAS incidence was recorded throughout the competitive season for each ankle of the players. Potential predictive variables (Ankle-GO, body mass index, history of previous LAS, and sex) associated with LAS were compared between injured and uninjured athletes. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) and multivariable logistic regression models with odds ratio (OR) and 95% CI were used to identify potential factors of LAS. A total of 17 occurrences of LAS occurred during the season. Ankle-GO score was lower among injured ankles (16.9 ± 3.6 points vs 19.6 ± 3.2; P = .004; d = 0.8) and was associated with probability to sustain an LAS (AUC, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.57-0.84; P = .008). Athletes with an Ankle-GO score <19 points and those who suffered an LAS during the previous years were more likely to experience a new LAS on the same ankle (OR, 5.5; 95% CI, 1.6-19.2; P = .007, and OR, 3.5; 95% CI, 1.1-10.9; P = .03, respectively). The Ankle-GO score can help to identify elite basketball players who will suffer LAS during a competitive season.

Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPSCC) is a highly aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis. This study elucidates the role of the E3 ubiquitin ligase Tripartite Motif Containing 15 (Trim15) and its substrate, mitochondrial voltage-dependent anion channel 3 (VDAC3), in regulating autophagy, mitophagy, and chemoresistance in HPSCC. We found that Trim15 is significantly downregulated in HPSCC tissues and inhibits cell proliferation and migration in FaDu and Detroit 562 cells. Trim15 stabilizes VDAC3 via K6-linked ubiquitination, thereby suppressing autophagy and mitophagy while elevating reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. VDAC3 knockdown enhances autophagy and mitophagy, concomitantly reducing ROS and promoting cancer cell survival. High-concentration ethanol suppresses Trim15 and VDAC3 expression, suggesting an adaptive response to oxidative stress. Notably, chloroquine (CQ), an autophagy inhibitor, enhances HPSCC sensitivity to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), with synergistic effects observed in xenograft models. These findings establish the Trim15-VDAC3-mitophagy axis as a critical regulator of HPSCC progression and chemoresistance, offering a novel therapeutic target for augmenting the efficacy of autophagy inhibitors in combination with standard chemotherapy.

This study presents a modified latissimus dorsi detrusor myoplasty (LDDM) technique using the hemi-obturator nerve for neurogenic underactive bladder (NUAB) reconstruction. Anatomical studies (n=22 hemipelves) revealed that the diameters of the anterior (mean: 0.209 cm) and posterior branches (mean: 0.199 cm) matched the thoracodorsal nerve's diameter (one-way ANOVA, p = 0.557), confirming their ideal donor potential. LDDM by using posterior branch of intrapelvic obturator nerve as the donor nerve was performed in five patients with NUAB. 4/5 (80%) patients restored voluntary voiding postoperatively, with post-void residual volume (PVR) decreasing significantly from 308.5(187.5) mL to 62.0 (58.8) mL (P=0.042) and bladder contractility index (BCI) improving significantly from 12.8(5.7) to 151.9(46.5) (P=0.007). These results demonstrate that LDDM using the hemi-obturator nerve is an effective surgical approach for functional detrusor reconstruction in NUAB patients.

Cross-domain image retrieval faces significant challenges due to domain shifts, where variations in style, illumination, and viewpoint degrade retrieval accuracy. To address this, we introduce the Adaptive Graph Retrieval Network (AGRN), a novel end-to-end framework that combines graph neural network propagation with adversarial domain adaptation. AGRN constructs a dynamic similarity graph over instance embeddings and refines node features via multi-layer graph convolutions, while a gradient reversal-based adversarial module encourages domain-invariant representations. By jointly optimizing a retrieval loss and adversarial loss, AGRN learns embeddings that are both discriminative and robust to distribution discrepancies. Extensive evaluations on Caltech-Office and DomainNet benchmarks demonstrate that AGRN outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving up to 5% higher mAP and 6 percentage points improvement in Recall@1. AGRN’s flexibility allows seamless integration with various backbone architectures, making it suitable for diverse retrieval applications, including product search, medical image databases, and remote sensing tasks.

Reliable image classification is essential for autonomous driving, yet single-model approaches often struggle with challenges such as occlusion, illumination variation, and intra-class similarity. This study proposes a stacking ensemble framework that integrates seven ResNet-family variants, including ResNet50, ResNeXt50, Inception-ResNet, InceptionNext, ConvNeXt, TResNet, and PiXResNet, through a convolutional meta-model (MetaCNN). Each base model was trained under unified settings, and their outputs were concatenated as input to the MetaCNN, enabling the ensemble to exploit complementary strengths beyond simple averaging. Experiments on the Kaggle Vehicle Classification dataset show that MetaCNN achieved 99.28% accuracy, outperforming the best base model, Inception-ResNet, at 94.63%, with consistent gains in precision, recall, and F1-score. Grad-CAM visualizations further revealed that the ensemble integrates diverse attention patterns, improving both accuracy and interpretability. These results demonstrate that stacking offers a powerful and explainable strategy for vehicle recognition in autonomous driving, with future work directed toward larger datasets and transformer-based architectures.

Abstract Transition metal sulfides are promising candidates for energy storage applications due to their rich Faradaic activity and high theoretical specific capacities. However, their practical performance is often hindered by intrinsically low electrical conductivity and degradation from prolonged cycling. In this study, a binder‐free composite electrode was fabricated by directly growing NiS/Ni 3 S 4 nanosheet arrays onto thermally activated carbon cloth through a facile one‐step hydrothermal method. The conductive and robust substrate facilitates efficient charge transport while maintaining structural integrity during operation. The optimized NiS/Ni 3 S 4 @TACC‐10 electrode delivers a high specific capacity of 285 mAh g −1 at 2 A g −1 and retains 63.1% of its capacity at 10 A g −1 . The corresponding hybrid supercapacitor exhibits an impressive energy density of 97.4 Wh kg −1 and maintains 102.6% of its initial capacitance after 3000 cycles at 20 A g −1 . Moreover, three such devices connected in series successfully powered red LEDs for over 20 min, highlighting their potential for real‐world energy storage applications. These results offer a scalable and effective strategy for the development of high‐performance electrochemical energy storage systems.

As an innovative underwater propulsion technology, the rim-driven thruster (RDT) has garnered increasing attention due to its advantages over conventional diesel or gas turbine propulsion systems, including reduced noise, higher efficiency, and a compact structure. However, traditional hull–engine–propeller matching theories are not directly applicable to RDTs because of their unique shaftless and ducted characteristics. Based on conventional hull–engine–propeller matching theory and propeller design methodology, this study proposes a novel hull–engine–propeller matching approach tailored specifically to RDTs. The method enables rapid matching by using open-water characteristics for hull–engine–propeller matching. In the absence of open-water test data for shaftless propellers, key parameters derived from ducted propeller tests are used for matching based on open-water characteristics to design the shaftless propeller. The propeller is then optimized through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to achieve the required thrust performance, effectively enabling an equivalent replacement. The proposed method provides a practical framework for selecting and designing RDTs, improves overall propulsion efficiency, and offers specific guidelines for determining optimal motor design parameters.