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Background: New clinically important postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) is the most common arrhythmia after thoracoscopic anatomical lung cancer surgery and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The full spectrum of predictors remains unclear, and effective assessment tools are lacking. This study aimed to develop and externally validate a novel model for predicting new clinically important POAF. Methods: This retrospective study included 14 074 consecutive patients who received thoracoscopic anatomical lung cancer surgery from January 2016 to December 2018 in Shanghai Chest Hospital. Based on the split date of 1 January 2018, we selected 8717 participants for the training cohort and 5357 participants for the testing cohort. For external validation, we pooled 2941 consecutive patients who received this surgical treatment from July 2016 to July 2021 in Shanghai Ruijin Hospital. Independent predictors were used to develop a model and internally validated using a bootstrap-resampling approach. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROCs) and Brier score were performed to assess the model discrimination and calibration. The decision curve analysis (DCA) was used to evaluate clinical validity and net benefit. New clinically important POAF was defined as a new-onset of POAF that causes symptoms or requires treatment. Results: Multivariate analysis suggested that age, hypertension, preoperative treatment, clinical tumor stage, intraoperative arrhythmia and transfusion, and operative time were independent predictors of new clinically important POAF. These seven candidate predictors were used to develop a nomogram, which showed a concordance statistic (C-statistic) value of 0.740 and good calibration (Brier score; 0.025). Internal validation revealed similarly good discrimination (C-statistic, 0.736; 95% CI: 0.705-0.768) and calibration. The decision curve analysis showed positive net benefits with the threshold risk range of 0-100%. C-statistic value and Brier score were 0.717 and 0.028 in the testing cohort, and 0.768 and 0.012 in the external validation cohort, respectively. Conclusions: This study identified seven predictors of new clinically important POAF, among which preoperative treatment, intraoperative arrhythmia, and operative time were rarely reported. The established and externally validated model has good performance and clinical usefulness, which may promote the application of prevention and treatment in high-risk patients, and reduce the development and related adverse outcomes of this event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between lateral lymph node yield (LLNY) and the ratio of lateral positive lymph nodes to lymph node yield (LPLR) from initial lateral neck dissection (LND) in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), as well as the risk of recurrence in patients undergoing LND reoperations. Methods: This retrospective cohort study enrolled patients with PTC who underwent revision LND between 1 January 2012, and 31 December 2021. The initial and revised clinical data were retrieved. Patient demographics, clinicopathological features, clinical records, and follow-up information were also reviewed. LLNY and LPLR were determined during the initial LND. Results: In total, 156 patients with PTC were included in this study, with a median follow-up of 36.5 months; 107 had recurrent lateral neck disease. The optimal LLNY and LPLR cutoff values for recurrent/persistent disease were 24.5 and 32.74%, respectively. The high-risk group (LLNY < 25) had the lowest recurrence-free survival rate compared with to moderate-risk group (LLNY ≥ 25, LPLR > 32.74%) and low-risk group (LLNY ≥ 25, LPLR < 32.74%) (P< 0.001). The moderate-risk group had lower recurrence-free survival than the low-risk group. Multivariate analysis revealed that an LLNY less than 25 in the initial LND was an independent risk factor for recurrence/persistence of lateral neck (P < 0.001). Conclusions: This study identified that LLNY and LPLR were associated with recurrence/persistence in PTC patients at the time of revision surgery was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social recommendation algorithm can alleviate data sparsity and cold start problems in recommendation system by integrated social information. Among them, matrix-based decomposition algorithms are the most widely used and studied. Such algorithms use dot product operations to calculate the similarity between users and items, which ignores user's potential preferences, reduces algorithms' recommendation accuracy. This deficiency can be avoided by a metric learning-based social recommendation algorithm, which learns the distance between user embedding vectors and item embedding vectors instead of vector dotproduct operations. However, previous works provide no theoretical explanation for its plausibility. Moreover, most works focus on the indirect impact of social friends on user's preferences, ignoring the direct impact on user's rating preferences, which is the influence of user rating preferences. To solve these problems, this study proposes a user bias drift social recommendation algorithm based on metric learning (BDML). The main work of this paper is as follows: (1) the process of introducing metric learning in the social recommendation scenario is introduced in the form of equations, and explained the reason why metric learning can replace the click operation; (2) a new user bias is constructed to simultaneously model the impact of social relationships on user's ratings preferences and user's preferences; Experimental results on two datasets show that the BDML algorithm proposed in this study has better recommendation accuracy compared with other comparison algorithms, and will be able to guarantee the recommendation effect in a more sparse dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osa-miR439 is a rice-specific microRNA family. Here we showed that Osa-miR439 acted as a negative regulator in rice immunity against blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Osa-miR439 differentially responded to M. oryzae between susceptible and resistant rice accessions. The accumulation of Osa-miR439 was constitutively more in the susceptible accession than in the resistant one. Transgenic lines overexpressing Osa-miR439a (OX439a) showed higher susceptibility associating with lower induction of defense-related genes and less hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2) accumulation at the infection sites than the control plants. In contrast, transgenic lines expressing a target mimic of Osa-miR439 (MIM439) displayed compromised susceptibility associating with increased H 2 O 2 accumulation. Furthermore, we found that the expression of three predicted target genes was decreased in OX439a but increased in MIM439 in comparison to control plants, and this expression was differential in susceptible and resistant accessions upon M. oryzae infection, indicating that Osa-miR439a may regulate rice blast resistance via these genes. Our results unveiled the role of Osa-miR439a in rice blast resistance and provided the potentiality to improve the blast resistance via miRNA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address sluggish sulfur redox kinetic and the "shuttling behavior" of polysulfides in lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs), CoS2 hollow nanospheres tightly anchored on three-dimensional (3D) N-doped biological carbon nanofibers skeleton (CoS2/N-CNFs) are successfully designed as highly-efficient sulfur hosts. The carbon nanofibers obtained by carbonization of bacterial cellulose are interweaved with each other, and can provide a firm 3D conductive skeleton for the low-conductive sulfur cathode. And the Ndoping carbon nanofibers skeleton with polar CoS2 can achieve synergetic physical/chemical adsorption of polysulfides and effective catalytic conversion, which are contributed to enhance sulfur redox kinetic and effectively suppress the shuttling effect. Moreover, the skeleton with abundant -OH functional groups achieve strong chemisorption to CoS2, greatly maintaining structural stability during cycling process. Benefitting from the above-mentioned merits, CoS2/N-CNFs@S electrode with high sulfur loading of 74.4% exhibits superior reversible capacity of 497.3 mAh g-1 at 0.2 C after 100 cycles with an improved coulombic efficiency of approximately 100%, and the electrode has excellent cycle life with 73% capacity retention over 300 cycles at 0.5 C. This synthesis strategy makes a leading exploration for the application of biological carbon materials in advanced LSBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qizimei Mountain National Nature Reserve (QMNNR) is located in a hotspot for endemic species in China's subtropical zone and contains large patches of sub-alpine peat swamp. To compile a species inventory and illustrate the threats to biodiversity in QMNNR, we conducted field surveys for peat swamp flora and macro-fauna from June 2011 to July 2012. The resulting species list comprises 198 plant, eight amphibian, five reptile, 25 fish, 47 bird and eleven mammal taxa. Of these, nine species are regarded as globally threatened and three as invasive aquatic species. Due to sampling bias and incompleteness we may have under-estimated the number of species and, therefore, it is likely that further species will be added to the list in future surveys. Available evidence suggests that over-exploitation of moss, habitat destruction, and introduction of non-native species are the main threats to peatland biodiversity in the QMNNR. To protect native biodiversity and restore the sub-alpine peatland ecosystem in QMNNR and similar locations, we suggest that conservation effort should include restrictions on moss harvesting, prohibition of hunting, allowing vegetation to recover by restricting human disturbance, and monitoring and removal of non-native species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to find out why Chinese companies boosted African economy through investment there while received negation evaluations generally. Different from the three existing views, "neocolonialism", "state capitalism" and "continuation of inefficient aiding policies", in this paper, a new explanation based on developmentalist strategy and group interaction was proposed: the developmentalist strategy formed domestically by Chinese companies effectively resolved the benefit disagreement in interaction with different social groups, however, it no longer applied in a cross-cultural context, and thus triggered complicated "economic-social" consequences and negative evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P 1B -type ATPase ion pumps that transport heavy metal ions across cellular membranes are essential for plant growth and development. To date, a genomic comparison overview of the family in rice, maize and sorghum is not yet available. In this study, a total of 31 heavy metal P 1B -type ATPase (HMA) genes were identified, including 9 in rice, 11 each from maize and sorghum. They were classified into two distinct subfamilies based on their sequence composition and phylogenetic relationship. Four pairs of HMA genes were expanded via gene duplication with tandemly duplicated. Comprehensive analyses were performed to investigate the expression profiles of HMA genes in various tissues by using quantitative real-time PCR. Some HMA members exhibited abundant and tissue-specific expression patterns. Moreover, most of the genes were found to be differentially expressed under the Cu/Cd treatment. This study will facilitate further studies on P 1B -type ATPase family and provide valuable hints for the functional validation in rice, maize and sorghum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at motion analysis and compensation, it is essential to conduct motion detection with images. However, motion detection and tracking from low-altitude images obtained from an unmanned aerial system may pose many challenges due to degraded image quality caused by platform motion, image instability and illumination fluctuation. This research tackles these challenges by proposing a modified joint transform correlation algorithm which includes two preprocessing strategies. In spatial domain, a modified fuzzy edge detection method is proposed for preprocessing the input images. In frequency domain, to eliminate the disturbance of self-correlation items, the cross-correlation items are extracted from joint power spectrum output plane. The effectiveness and accuracy of the algorithm has been tested and evaluated by both simulation and real datasets in this research. The simulation experiments show that the proposed approach can derive satisfactory peaks of cross-correlation and achieve detection accuracy of displacement vectors with no more than 0.03pixel for image pairs with displacement smaller than 20pixels, when addition of image motion blurring in the range of 0~10pixel and 0.002variance of additive Gaussian noise. Moreover,this paper proposes quantitative analysis approach using tri-image pairs from real datasets and the experimental results show that detection accuracy can be achieved with sub-pixel level even if the sampling frequency can only attain 50 frames per second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to observe the relevance of 24-hour intraocular pressure (IOP) monitoring and water drinking test (WDT) in patient with primary open angle glaucoma (POAG). 55 patients (90 eyes) with POAG was selected and randomly divided into operation group an drug group. Operation group, with 30 cases (48 eyes), were treat with trabeculectomy. And the other 25 cases (42 eyes) were treat with antiglaucoma medication. 24-hour intraocular pressure and WDT were measured before treatment and 6 months after treatment. The correlation between the peak value of 24-hour intraocular pressure (IOP) and intraocular pressure (IOP) fluctuation and the drinking water test were analyzed. Pearson correlation analysis showed a strong positive correlation between the peak value of diurnal IOP and the peak value of WDT IOP (r=0.758); and the Pearson correlation analysis also showed a strong positive correlation between the peak value of diurnal IOP and the peak value of WDT IOP after 6 months of POAG surgery or drug therapy (r=0.759,0.712). The peak value of IOP and IOP fluctuation in operation group were lower than those in the drug group at 6 months after operation, the difference was statistically significant. The peak value of WDT IOP can reflect the curve peak value of 24-hour IOP, which can be used to evaluate the current treatment. There were significant differences in IOP and IOP fluctuation between the drug group and the operation group at 6 months after treatment. Operation groups could achieve lower IOP and IOP fluctuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for physicians and technical consultants specialized in transfusion medicine is urgent in China, as there are 20 000 hospitals and 500 blood centers in need of staff with this expertise. The progress made in transfusion medicine as a specialty has been relatively slow in China. Current Chinese medical education and service systems have not developed transfusion medicine as a stand-alone medical specialty. Most physicians receive only minimal training in transfusion medicine in medical school. This training is usually integrated into surgical training and addresses the most common technologies. In 2008, a 5-year bachelor's diploma program in transfusion medicine was established as an undergraduate specialty in Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China. This article intends to summarize the 8 years of experience educating undergraduates in the specialty of transfusion medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is associated with lower prevalence of hyperlipidemia (HLP). However, occult HBV infection (OBI) in HLP patients has not yet been explored. OBI is defined as the presence of detectable HBV DNA in serum or liver tissue but undetectable HBV surface antigen in serum. In this study, 1,036 HLP patients and 1,134 replacement blood donor controls were recruited. Among them, 252 HLP patients and 255 blood donors with antibody to HBV core positive were selected and analyzed. HBV DNA was confirmed by nucleic acid testing assays, and nucleotide mutations were analyzed. OBI was detected in 9.5% (24/252) of HLP patients and 2.4% (6/255) of blood donors, respectively (P < 0.001). In HLP population, 41.7% of OBI and 13.6% of non-OBI carriers were associated with daily alcohol consuming > 30 g/day (P < 0.01), while in control population those rates were not statistically different between OBI and non-OBI carriers (P > 0.05). Viral load of OBI in HLP patients was higher than that of OBI in blood donors (P < 0.05), which was a positive correlation between total cholesterol and HBV viral load levels (r = 0.474 P = 0.019). HBV vaccination rate was found significantly lower in OBI HLP patients than that in non-OBI HLP patients (P < 0.01). Importantly, mutations were found in basic core promoter region of HBV among OBI HLP patients. In conclusion, the frequency of OBI is significantly higher in HLP patients, especially those patients with heavy daily alcohol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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To deal with the drawbacks of tubular electrochemical reactors, a novel tubular electrochemical reactor with meshed plate electrodes is developed, wherein the electrolyte (wastewater) flows horizontally through the meshed plate electrodes, instead of parallel to the surface of electrodes. Computational fluid dynamics simulation is employed to visualize the hydrodynamics of the reactor. The simulation result is consistent with the particle image velocity observe. According to the simulation results, the meshed plate electrodes make a positive contribution to uniform the distribution of the liquid flow, and consequently enhance the mass transfer. About 30.27% of the back-mixing area forms in the reaction region. The effects of the inlet design on the liquid hydrodynamics, especially the distribution of the flow field along the reactor are considered. The best flow field distribution in the inlet region is obtained in the case of the tangential inlet, and the back-mixing area in the reaction region is reduced by 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During hot extrusion process, die wear shortens markedly the service life of extrusion dies under the high-pressure, high-temperature conditions. In this paper, based on modified Archard's wear model, a user-defined subroutine for calculating die wear depth was developed and implanted into DEFORM-3D. On the basis of the numerical model, the die wear behavior during aluminum alloy 7075 tube extrusion has been investigated. The numerical results show that process variables have multiple effects on die wear behavior. With the increasing ram speed, wear depth of die bearing rises and then tends to decline gradually. From the ram speed of 15 mm/s, die wear depth begins to increase again. Wear depth rises suddenly with the increase of friction coefficient, then gradually reduces. When friction coefficient is greater than 0.8, wear depth tends to be a constant. A maximum wear depth occurs at 430 °C of billet temperature, and a minimum wear depth occurs at certain die temperature in the range of 400-425 &#176C. In addition, the required extrusion force has strong dependence on process variables. The extrusion force rises clearly with the increase of ram speed and friction coefficient and with the decrease of initial temperatures of billet and die. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probucol, a lipid-lowering agent with anti-oxidant properties, has been implicated in protection against atherogenesis, whereas its effect on plaques stability remains to be fully elucidated. The present study was aimed to test the hypothesis that probucol may attenuate inflammation and increase stability of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques using a rabbit model. After abdominal aortic balloon injury, 45 rabbits were fed a 1% cholesterol diet for 24 weeks. From week 12 to week 24, the animals were treated with probucol (1% by weight in the diet), simvastatin (5 mg⋅kg-1, positive control) or no drugs (control), respectively. At the end of week 22, recombinant-p53 adenovirus was injected into the abdominal aortic plaques. Two weeks later, plaque disruption was induced by injection of Chinese Russell's viper venom and histamine. The results showed that the incidence of plaque disruption in probucol or simvastatin groups was significantly lower than that in the control group (7.15% or 14.29% vs. 71.43% respectively, both P < 0.01). Probucol significantly increased the thickness of fibrous caps and decreased plaque vulnerability index. Serum concentrations of inflammatory cytokines and matrix metalloproteinases, and expression levels of Toll-like receptor (TLR)-2, TLR-4, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, intercellular adhesion molecule 1, scavenger receptor A, CD36 and oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor 1 within the lesions were markedly lower in both treatment groups than in the control group. We conclude that probucol increases the stability of vulnerable plaques, possibly through its lipid lowering, anti-inflammation and scavenger receptors suppression effects, suggesting probucol as a promising pharmacologic approach to stabilize vulnerable plaques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Industrial interconnection promotes cross-border integration of business resources. • Industrial interconnection promotes the information flow of dynamic multi-service resources. • Improved the overall resource collaborative recommendation efficiency of the industrial chain. With the rise of industrial interconnections, deep cross-border integration between different medical industries has begun. In the context of industrial convergence, the users' medical business needs also show a trend of diversification and personalization. The phenomenon of multi-service resource crossing and multi-organization information barriers in the traditional medical supply chain lead to a lag in the medical resource recommendation time, which makes medical enterprises face the problem of reducing the efficiency of information resource flow in industrial interconnection businesses. This study thus constructed a collaborative recommendation model of medical services based on a cloud platform by mining the characteristics of dynamic medical service resources and user demand, and used a singular value decomposition algorithm based on time context to solve the model so as to achieve reasonable recommendation of dynamic multi-service resources in the medical supply chain. The results showed that the proposed collaborative recommendation model of dynamic medical business resources based on the cloud platform can effectively achieve medical business recommendations and provide ideas for reducing the operating costs of medical enterprise alliances under the condition of industrial interconnection and improving the efficiency of industrial resource interconnection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grafting of hyperbranched cyclotriphosphazene polymer (HBP) onto reduced graphene oxide (HBP-RGO) surface was achieved by the repeated reactions between the chlorine groups of hexachlorocyclotriphosphazene and the amino groups of hexamethylenediamine. FTIR and XPS analyses showed that hyperbranched cyclophosphazene-grafted graphene had been successfully prepared. AFM results showed that HBP-RGO had a dendritic structure as designed. TGA analysis indicated that HBP-RGO had good thermal stability. The dispersion showed that HBP-RGO is amphiphilic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the particle morphology of beryllium (Be) powders produced by impact attrition, a physics model has been established for describing the particle size distribution, which has only one parameter with the definite physical meaning. Two important internal mechanisms are considered: firstly, the distribution of existing state of particles with different original kinetic energy should obey the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution after impacting, which means that big particles are unstable for their being at higher energy level, therefore they are easy to be fractured into smaller pieces in impact attrition process, and this influencing factor can be described as the negative exponential function of particles size; secondly, the tendency to remain low surface energy requires that Be powders should keep big volume as much as possible, and this influencing factor is defined as the cube function of particles size. The actual size distribution of Be particles is resulted from the competition between these two factors. Calculating result from the model is in good agreement with data from measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]