Endometrial Cancer Detection by DNA Methylation Analysis in Cervical Papanicolaou Brush Samples.

Background: Endometrial cancer (EC) is the leading gynecological cancer worldwide, yet current EC screening approaches are not satisfying. The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the feasibility and capability of DNA methylation analysis in cervical Papanicolaou (Pap) brush samples for EC detection. Methods: We used quantitative methylation-sensitive PCR (qMS-PCR) to determine the methylation status of candidate genes in EC tissue samples, as well as cervical Pap brushes. The ability of RASSF1A and HIST1H4F to serve as diagnostic markers for EC was then examined in cervical Pap brush samples from women with endometrial lesions of varying degrees of severity. Results: Methylated RASSF1A and HIST1H4F were found in EC tissues. Further, methylation of the two genes was also observed in cervical Pap smear samples from EC patients. Methylation levels of RASSF1A and HIST1H4F increased as endometrial lesions progressed, and cervical Pap brush samples from women affected by EC exhibited significantly higher levels of methylated RASSF1A and HIST1H4F compared to noncancerous controls (P < .001). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and area under the curve (AUC) analyses revealed RASSF1A and HIST1H4F methylation with a combined AUC of 0.938 and 0.951 for EC/pre-EC detection in cervical Pap brush samples, respectively. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that DNA methylation analysis in cervical Pap brush samples may be helpful for EC detection, broadening the scope of the commonly used cytological screening. Our proof-of-concept study provides new insights into the field of clinical EC diagnosis.

Resilience patterns of urban road networks under the worst-case localized disruptions.

Recent events, including COVID-19, extreme floods, and explosion accidents, commonly induced localized closures and disruptions of urban road networks (URNs), resulting in significant impacts on human mobility and socio-economic activities. Existing studies on URN resilience to those events mainly took few cases for empirical studies, limiting our understanding on the URN resilience patterns across different cities. By conducting a large-scale nationwide resilience analysis of URNs in 363 cities in mainland China, this study attempts to uncover the resilience patterns of URNs against the worst-case single (SLDs) and multiple localized disruptions (MLDs). Results show that the distance from the worst-case SLD to the city center would be less than 5 km in 62.3% cities, as opposed to more than 15 km in 14.3% cities. Moreover, the average road network resilience of cities in western China could be 7% and 13% smaller than that of the eastern cities under the worst-case SLDs and MLDs, respectively. This inequality in the worst-case resilience is partly attributable to variations in urban socio-economic, infrastructure-related, and topographic factors. These findings could inspire nationwide pre-disaster mitigation strategies to cope with localized disruptions and help transfer insights for mitigation strategies against disruptive events across cities.

Boundary effects on topological characteristics of urban road networks.

Urban road networks (URNs), as simplified views and important components of cities, have different structures, resulting in varying levels of transport efficiency, accessibility, resilience, and many socio-economic indicators. Thus, topological characteristics of URNs have received great attention in the literature, while existing studies have used various boundaries to extract URNs for analysis. This naturally leads to the question of whether topological patterns concluded using small-size boundaries keep consistent with those uncovered using commonly adopted administrative boundaries or daily travel range-based boundaries. This paper conducts a large-scale empirical analysis to reveal the boundary effects on 22 topological metrics of URNs across 363 cities in mainland China. Statistical results show that boundaries have negligible effects on the average node degree, edge density, orientation entropy of road segments, and the eccentricity for the shortest or fastest routes, while other metrics including the clustering coefficient, proportion of high-level road segments, and average edge length together with route-related metrics such as average angular deviation show significant differences between road networks extracted using different boundaries. In addition, the high-centrality components identified using varied boundaries show significant differences in terms of their locations, with only 21%-28% of high-centrality nodes overlapping between the road networks extracted using administrative and daily travel range-based boundaries. These findings provide useful insights to assist urban planning and better predict the influence of a road network structure on the movement of people and the flow of socio-economic activities, particularly in the context of rapid urbanization and the ever-increasing sprawl of road networks.

First Report of Colletotrichum fructicola Causing Anthracnose on Rosa chinensis in China.

China rose (Rosa chinensis Jacq.) is a popular ornamental plant grown widely in China. In September 2021, a serious leaf spot disease was observed on R. chinensis in Rose plantation of Nanyang Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Nanyang (112°25'41″N, 32°54'28″E), Henan Province, causing severe defoliation of infected plants with a foliar disease incidence of 50 to 70% (n = 100). The early symptoms were irregular brown specks on the leaves, mostly at the tip and margin of the leaves. Then the specks gradually expanded into round amorphous and became dark brown, eventually leading to large irregular or circular lesions. Twenty symptomatic samples were collected from several individual plants, and the junction areas between infected and healthy tissues were cut into 3×3 mm pieces. These tissues were sterilized in 75% ethanol for 30 seconds and 1% HgCl solution for 3 min, rinsed thrice in sterile water, and placed on potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates, incubated at 25°C for 3 days. The edges of the colony were cut and transferred to new PDA plates for purification. These isolates were isolated from the original diseased leaves and showed similar phenotypes in morphological characters. Three representative purified strains (YJY20, YJY21, and YJY30) were used for further study. Colonies were villiform, initially white, later turning gray and greyish-green. Conidia were unitunicate, clavate, and averaged 17.36 (11.61 to 22.12) - 5.29 (3.92 to 7.04) µm in diameter (n=100). The characteristics were close to those of Colletotrichum spp. (Weir et al. 2012). The genomic DNA was extracted, and the rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GADPH), calmodulin genes (CAL), actin genes (ACT), chitin synthase 1 genes (CHS-1), manganesesuperoxide dismutase (SOD2), and ß-tubulin 2 genes (TUB2) were amplified from genomic DNA by primers ITS1/ITS4, GDF/GDR, CL1C/CL2C, ACT-512F/ACT-783R, CHS-79F/CHS-345R, SODglo2-F/SODglo2-R, and Bt2a/Bt2b, respectively (Weir et al. 2012). Sequences were submitted to GenBank with accession numbers OP535983, OP535993, OP535994(ITS), OP554748, OP546349, OP546350(GAPDH), OP546351-OP546353(CAL), OP546354-OP546356(ACT), OP554742-OP554744(CHS-1), OP554745-OP554747(SOD2), and OP554749-OP554751(TUB2). BLASTn analyses of ITS, GAPDH, CAL, ACT, CHS-1, SDO2 and TUB2 sequences exhibited 99.62%, 98.40%, 99.72%-99.86%, 96.85%-96.86%, 99.26%-100%, 100% and 99.33% similarity to the sequences of Colletotrichum fructicola strain ICMP 18581, respectively in GenBank. These morphological features and molecular identification indicated that the pathogen possessed identical characteristics as C. fructicola (Weir et al. 2012). Pathogenicity was tested through in vivo experiments. Six 1-year-old intact plants were used per isolate. The test leaves of plants were gently scratched with a sterilized needle. Conidial suspension of the pathogen strains were inoculated on the wounded leaves at a concentration of 107 conidial/mL. The control leaves were inoculated with distilled water. The inoculated plants were placed in greenhouse at 28℃ and 90% humidity. After 3-6 days，anthracnose-like symptoms were observed on inoculated leaves of five plants while the control plants remained healthy. The strains of C. fructicola were reisolated from the symptomatic inoculated leaves, confirming Koch's postulates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of C. fructicola causing anthracnose on Rosa chinensis in China. C. fructicola has been reported to affect numerous plants worldwide, including grape, citrus, apple, cassava, mango （Qili Li et al. 2019）, and tea-oil tree (X. G. Chen et al. 2022), among others (Oliveira et al. 2018). This identification research will facilitate subsequent assistance with disease control and field management of plants.

High-Temperature Oxidation Behavior of Fe-10Cr Steel under Different Atmospheres.

Using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA), Fe-10Cr steel was oxidized in dry air and in a mixed atmosphere of air and water vapor at a relative humidity of 50% and a temperature of 800-1200 °C for 1 h. The oxidation weight gain curves under the two atmospheres were drawn, the oxidation activation energy was calculated, and the phase and cross-sectional morphology of the iron oxide scales were analyzed and observed by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and optical microscopy (OM). The results showed that when the oxidation temperature was 800 °C, the spheroidization of Fe-10Cr steel occurred, and the oxidation kinetics conformed to the linear law. At 900-1200 °C, the oxidation kinetics followed a linear law in the preliminary stage and a parabolic law in the middle and late stages. In an air atmosphere, when the oxidation temperature reached 1200 °C, Cr2O3 in the inner oxide layer was partially ruptured. In an atmosphere with a water vapor content of 50%, Cr2O3 at the interface reacted with H2O to generate volatile CrO2(OH)2, resulting in a large consumption of Cr at the interface. At the same time, a large number of voids and microcracks appeared in the iron oxide layer, which accelerated the entry of water molecules into the substrate, as well as the oxidation of Fe-10Cr steel, and caused the iron oxide scales to fall off. Due to the volatilization of Cr2O3 and the conversion from internal oxidation to external oxidation, the internal oxidation zone (IOZ) of Fe-10Cr steel under water vapor atmosphere decreased or even disappeared.

Theoretical investigation on the chemoselective N-heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed cross-benzoin reactions.

A density functional theory study was performed to understand the detailed mechanisms of the cross-benzoin reactions catalyzed by N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) species. Our theoretical study predicted that the first H-transfer operates with water in solution as a mediator, and the second H-transfer undergoes a concerted mechanism rather than a stepwise one. In addition, the chemoselectivity of the reactions studied in this work has been explored. P1 was obtained as a major product mainly due to the more stable intermediate formed by reaction of NHC with reactant R1. Different steric effects resulting from the fused six-membered ring in transition state TS7 and the fused five-membered ring in transition state TS13 are the origin leading to the chemoselectivity.