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The Zishen Yutai Pill increased the live birth rate after fresh embryo transfer when compared with placebo., OBJECTIVE: To assess the efficacy of the Zishen Yutai Pill compared with placebo on live birth rates among women after fresh embryo transfer cycles. METHODS: We conducted a double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled, randomized trial to investigate whether administration of the Zishen Yutai Pill would improve pregnancy outcomes among women undergoing fresh embryo transfer after in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injection. The primary outcome was live birth rate. Secondary outcomes were rates of implantation, biochemical pregnancy, clinical pregnancy, pregnancy loss, cycle cancellation, and maternal, fetal, and neonatal complications. A total sample size of 2,265 women (1:1 in two groups) was used to detect a live birth rate difference between the Zishen Yutai Pill and placebo. Participants were enrolled and randomized to receive 5 g of the Zishen Yutai Pill or placebo orally, three times per day during the study. RESULTS: Recruitment was completed between April 2014 and June 2017, with 2,580 patients screened. Two thousand two hundred sixty-five patients were randomized: 1,131 to the Zishen Yutai Pill and 1,134 to placebo. Characteristics were similar between groups. In intention-to-treat analysis, the rates of live birth in the Zishen Yutai Pill (ZYP) group and placebo group were 26.8% and 23.0% (rate ratio [RR], 1.16; 95% CI 1.01–1.34; P=.038), respectively. The implantation rates were 36.8% and 32.6% in the ZYP and placebo groups, respectively (RR 1.13; 95% CI 1.01–1.25; P=.027). The biochemical pregnancy rate for the ZYP group was 35.5% compared with 31.1% in the placebo group (RR 1.14; 95% CI 1.02–1.28; P=.026). The rates of clinical pregnancy in the ZYP and placebo groups were 31.2% compared with 27.3%, respectively (RR 1.14; 95% CI 1.00–1.30; P=.043). There were no significant between-group differences in the rates of pregnancy loss, maternal, or neonatal complications (all P>.05). CONCLUSION: The Zishen Yutai Pill increased the rate of live birth after fresh embryo transfer compared with placebo. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: Chictr.org.cn, Chictr-TRC-14004494.

Background To improve the environmental resistance of probiotics, particularly the survival rate in gastrointestinal environment, fish gelatin (FG)/sodium alginate (SA) double network gelation (FSDN) was developed to encapsulate them. Thermal treatment and calcium ion-inducement were consecutively adopted to fabricate fish gelatin and sodium alginate gels, which was a process feasible to be scaled-up. The effects of FG concentration (0-60 g/L) on FSDN properties, including morphology, water holding capacity, and encapsulation efficiency were evaluated. Results The results indicated that the addition of FG could improve the transparency, rehydration, and water holding capacity of FSDN. The scanning electronic microscope (SEM) images revealed that FSDN had denser and more complete structure than SA. The encapsulation efficiency was improved from 15.85% to 91.91% as FG concentration ranged from 0 to 50 g/L. Bifidobacterium longum embedded by FSDN showed better thermal stability than the free ones. Compared with bare probiotics (1.7%), the encapsulated ones exhibited higher viability (above 15%) in simulated gastric fluid. Conclusion In conclusion, the interpenetrating FSDN is an effective barrier constituent and could achieve the targeted delivery of probiotics. It is a potential new delivery carrier for oral administration of probiotic. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Prebiotics can play an important role in functional foods. In this paper, casein and five probiotics were selected to study the effects on ACE inhibitory peptides in fermented milk of L. bulgaricus LB6 through Plackett-Burman design, so as to improve the production of ACE inhibitory peptides. The results showed that xylooligosaccharides (XOS), fructosaccharide (FOS) and inulin had the most significant effect on the yield of ACE inhibitory peptides. Optimization added the amount of the three prebiotics added, that is, the amount of XOS added was 0.7%, the amount of FOS added was 1.1%, and the amount of inulin added was 0.7%. It provides a basis for subsequent optimization experiments.

For most of the time since the establishment of the Chinese-Russian strategic partnership, diplomatic interaction was the main area of strategic cooperation between the two parties. Diplomatic interaction manifested generally in two aspects: maintaining a favorable environment and conditions of international security and a commitment to establish a new international political and economic order; supporting each other’s efforts to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity. With start of “One Belt, One Union” project in 2015 and broadening of regional cooperation betweenChinaandRussia, the Chinese-Russian strategic partnership entered the stage of “common development”. Based on high-level diplomatic support,ChinaandRussiawill cooperate with each other in their respective economic and social development strategies and regional integration strategies in order to explore fully their potential for cooperation in order to achieve common development goals.

Additional file 1. Supplementary table. Functional categories of selected genes differentially expressed in the HTR8/Svneo cells AQP3-shRNA and CON-shRNA.

Urban surface soil has a unique set of structures and processes that affect surface soil organic carbon density (SOCdensity) and its spatial variations. Using Beijing as a case study, and assisted by field investigations and experiments, we analyzed the spatial distribution of SOCdensity in different land use types and functional regions, and assessed associated factors such as urbanization level, the physiochemical properties of soil and plant configurations. The present study aims to provide useful information about the mechanisms driving soil organic carbon and climate change in developing and developed areas in urbanized regions like Beijing. Results indicate that P is the main factor positively influencing SOCdensity in most regions. Because of the specific interference directly related to human beings in urban areas, with decreases in the urbanization level, more physiochemical factors of soil can influence SOCdensity. SOCdensity under grasses is not significantly different from that under other plant compositions. Urbanization processes decrease the heterogeneity of the spatial pattern of SOCdensity in most land use types, but increased its contents when the area reached a developed level in Beijing. More factors related to human interference and spatial variation of surface soil carbon storage, especially under impervious land in urban areas, should be considered in future studies.

In recent years, wireless power transfer (WPT) technology has developed rapidly. In order to control power transmission and optimize efficiency, a large number of control methods have been proposed. Due to the unique inherent characteristics of the WPT system, the various control methods are faced to three challenges. First, transmission efficiency is significantly affected by the change in output power. Secondly, the severe hard switching loss of the high frequency converters cannot be ignored. Finally, high-speed wireless communication is required between the primary and secondary sides of the WPT system. In this paper, a fixed-frequency phase-shift control strategy is proposed for dual active WPT system in order to realize the soft-switching of the converters in the full load range without high-speed wireless communication. At the same time, the dependency of efficiency on load is greatly reduced, which results in significant efficiency improvements over a wide range of output power. In addition, synchronous rectification and bidirectional energy transfer can be implemented because of the dual active structure.

In order to investigate transport stress on porcine peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets and Th cytokines, blood samples were collected from pigs before and after transport. Creatine kinase (CK), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), glucose, and cortisol in the serum were measured. The number of leukocytes and lymphocytes, percentages of lymphocyte subsets, as well as Th cell cytokines level and their mRNA expression were detected, respectively. After transport, the level of CK, glucose and interleukin (IL)-4 increased significantly (p

Visual sensors are used to measure the relative state of the chaser spacecraft to the target spacecraft during close range rendezvous phases. This article proposes a two-stage iterative algorithm based on an inverse projection ray approach to address the relative position and attitude estimation by using feature points and monocular vision. It consists of two stages: absolute orientation and depth recovery. In the first stage, Umeyama's algorithm is used to fit the three-dimensional (3D) model set and estimate the 3D point set while in the second stage, the depths of the observed feature points are estimated. This procedure is repeated until the result converges. Moreover, the effectiveness and convergence of the proposed algorithm are verified through theoretical analysis and mathematical simulation.

A pilot-scale experiment with a treating3capacity of 10 m per day was carried out for swine wastewater treatment by using of a moving bed biofilmreactor (MBBR). The reactor was start-up in 60 days period and run for a year, and an average removal rate of 82.9%for COD and 89.0% for ammonia were achieved, under a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 12h, with influent COD and ammonia of 1686 iA 497 mg/L and 582 iA 126 mg/L, respectively. The effluent met the national discharge standard of pollutants for livestock and poultry breeding(GB 18596-2001) of China. The kinetics of organic carbon and ammonia removals in the MBBR was studied based on the Stover-Kin cannon model and the 1/2 order substrate removal model, respectively. Temperature coefficient "¦E"was introduced into the COD and ammonia removal models to describe the effects of the temperature. The model simulated results showed good agreements with experimental results. The model could be employed for the design of a full-scale MBBR process for simultaneous removal of organic carbon and ammonia from swine wastewaters.