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BackgroundInflammation plays a crucial role in the pathophysiology of dry eye (DE). This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status, hotspots and trends in DE anti-inflammatory research through bibliometric analysis.MethodAll publications were searched using the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database from 2004 to 2024. Bibliometric analyses were performed using VOSviewer, R-bibliometrix, and CiteSpace, and data were managed using Microsoft Office Excel 2019.ResultsThere were 603 papers published between 2004 and 2024 included in this study, with the number of papers increasing each year. The United States was the major contributor, with the largest number of publications and the greatest impact. Baylor College of Medicine was the most influential research institution. Pflugfelder, Stephen C. and Tsubota, Kazuo were the most prolific authors in this area of research, while Dana, Reza was the most cited author in the field with the highest impact. The Journal with the highest number of publications was Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, while the highest impact journal was Ocular Surface. Research hotspots were focused on the mechanisms of inflammation in DE and interventions for anti-inflammatory therapy. Future studies would favor more inflammation-related targeted therapies and physical therapies.ConclusionThis study is the first bibliometric analysis to comprehensively summarize research trends and developments in DE anti-inflammatory treatments, pointing out recent research frontiers and hot directions for scholars studying DE anti-inflammatory treatments.

Objective This review aims to provide an estimate of sarcopenia prevalence and its impact on clinical characteristics in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc).Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.Data sources Embase, Medline, Web of Science and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were systemically searched from inception to 24 May 2023.Eligibility criteria for selecting studies We included observational studies that reported the prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with SSc.Data extraction and synthesis Two reviewers independently performed study selection and data extraction using standardised methods. Risk of bias was assessed using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Scale and the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. Meta-analysis was conducted using random effects models.Results A total of 4583 articles were screened and 9 studies with data from 815 patients were included in the analysis (8 cross-sectional studies and 1 retrospective cohort study). The overall prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with SSc was 22% (95% CI 17% to 28%). Patients with SSc with sarcopenia had a poorer quality of life (mean difference −12.02; 95% CI −19.11 to −4.93) and higher C reactive protein (CRP) levels (standardised mean difference 0.67; 95% CI 0.35 to 1.00).Conclusions Sarcopenia is common in patients with SSc. Patients with SSc with sarcopenia had a worse quality of life and higher CRP levels, based on our findings. Given the detrimental impact of sarcopenia on quality of life, future efforts aimed at early identification of sarcopenia in the clinical assessment of patients with SSc may have significance.PROSPERO registration number CRD42022368326.

Background: The utilization of antibiotic adjuvants presents a promising strategy for addressing bacterial resistance. Recently, the development of antibiotic adjuvants has attracted considerable attention from researchers in academia and industry. This study aimed to identify the most influential publications on antibiotic adjuvants and elucidate the hotspots and research trends in this field.Method: Original articles and reviews related to antibiotic adjuvants were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The top 100 highly cited publications were selected and the visual analyses of publication outputs, countries, institutions, authors, journals, and keywords were conducted using Excel, VOSviewer, or CtieSpace software tools.Results: The top 100 cited publications concerning antibiotic adjuvants spanned the years 1977–2020, with citation counts ranging from 174 to 2,735. These publications encompassed 49 original articles and 51 reviews. The journal “Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy” accounted for the highest number of publications (12%). The top 100 cited publications emanated from 39 countries, with the United States leading in production. Institutions in Canada and the United States exhibited the most substantial contributions to these highly cited publications. A total of 526 authors participated in these studies, with Robert E.W. Hancock, Laura J. V. Piddock, Xian-Zhi Li, Hiroshi Nikaido, and Olga Lomovskaya emerging as the most frequently nominated authors. The most common keywords included “E. coli”, “P. aeruginosa”, “S. aureus”, “in-vitro activity”, “antimicrobial peptide”, “efflux pump inhibitor” “efflux pump”, “MexAB-OprM” and “mechanism”. These keywords underscored the hotspots of bacterial resistance mechanisms and the development of novel antibiotic adjuvants.Conclusion: Through the bibliometric analysis, this study identified the top 100 highly cited publications on antibiotic adjuvants. Moreover, the findings offered a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics and frontiers in this field.

SVD-based watermarking algorithm is one of the most preferable algorithms for copyright protection due to its singular values (SVs) that have outstanding stability and represents intrinsic algebraic image properties. Hence, there is a good trade-off between robustness and imperceptibility. However, most SVD-based algorithms have been tested against conventional attacks, such as image manipulations, that do not fully exploit adversary’s knowledge. These algorithms are vulnerable to false-positive problem, where an adversary’s watermark can be detected in the watermarked image although it was never inserted. The underlying problem is due to the strong influence of $U$ and $V$ orthogonal vectors of SVD on an image. In order to solve false-positive problem, $UV$ can be used to embed the watermark together with SVs. However, this solution is not ideal as $U$ and $V$ hold important structural information of an image and is hypersensitivity to even a little change in $UV$ vectors. Therefore, this research has the objectives to analyse the robustness of existing SVD-based watermarking algorithms that are using orthogonal vectors and then propose a new robust algorithm that is able to solve false-positive problem and sensitivity issued caused by scaling factor. Hence, a new transform domain image watermarking scheme that utilized both $U$ and $V$ orthogonal vectors is proposed with the usage of Human Visual System (HVS), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and SVD. Experimental results showed that the proposed scheme is more robust against majority types of image processing and geometrical attacks compared to existing schemes while achieving good quality watermarked image level. The significance of new algorithm comes at the right time during the Covid-19 epidemic as organizations involving in business and financial services can be assured of the integrity of its downloadable/streamable/shareable digital files, which are copyrighted through the unique SVD and robustness features of the algorithm ensuring piracy prevention of their content.

ObjectivesThis research aims to investigate if cataract extraction lowers the risk of all-cause dementia.MethodsOriginal literature on cataract surgery associated with all-cause dementia as of November 27, 2022, was searched in several commonly used databases. Manual review was used to include eligible studies. Stata software (version 16) was used to perform statistical analysis on pertinent data. Publication bias can be precisely evaluated using funnel plots and Egger's test.ResultsIn the meta-analysis of 4 cohort studies with 245,299 participants. Pooled analysis indicated that cataract surgery was linked to a lower incidence of all-cause dementia (OR = 0.77, 95%CI: 0.66–0.89; I2= 54.7%; P < 0.001). Cataract surgery was linked to a lower risk of AD (OR = 0.60, 95%CI: 0.35–1.02; I2= 60.2%; P < 0.001).ConclusionsCataract surgery is linked to a lower incidence of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease. A cataract is a reversible visual impairment. Cataract surgery may be a protective factor against the onset of all-cause dementia and can reduce the economic and family burden caused by all-cause dementia worldwide. Given the restricted pool of included studies, our findings necessitate meticulous interpretation.Systematic review registrationhttp://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero retrieve registration details by searching CRD4202379371.

Background: Bacterial persisters are thought to be responsible for the recalcitrance and relapse of persistent infections, and they also lead to antibiotic treatment failure in clinics. In recent years, researches on bacterial persisters have attracted worldwide attention and the number of related publications is increasing. The purpose of this study was to better understand research trends on bacterial persisters by identifying and bibliometrics analyzing the top 100 cited publications in this field.Methods: The Web of Science Core Collection was utilized to retrieve the highly cited publications on bacterial persisters, and these publications were cross-matched with Google Scholar and Scopus. The top 100 cited publications were identified after reviewing the full texts. The main information of each publication was extracted and analyzed using Excel, SPSS, and VOSviewer.Results: The top 100 cited papers on bacterial persisters were published between 1997 and 2019. The citation frequency of each publication ranged from 147 to 1815 for the Web of Science Core Collection, 153 to 1883 for Scopus, and 207 to 2,986 for Google Scholar. Among the top 100 cited list, there were 64 original articles, 35 review articles, and 1 editorial material. These papers were published in 51 journals, and the Journal of Bacteriology was the most productive journal with 8 papers. A total of 14 countries made contributions to the top 100 cited publications, and 64 publications were from the United States. 15 institutions have published two or more papers and nearly 87% of them were from the United States. Kim Lewis from Northeastern University was the most influential author with 18 publications. Furthermore, keywords co-occurrence suggested that the main topics on bacterial persisters were mechanisms of persister formation or re-growth. Finally, “Microbiology” was the most frequent category in this field.Conclusion: This study identified and analyzed the top 100 cited publications related to bacterial persisters. The results provided a general overview of bacterial persisters and might help researchers to better understand the classic studies, historical developments, and new findings in this field, thus providing ideas for further research.

Antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern. Antibiotic combinations, offering better efficacy at lower doses, are a useful way to handle this problem. However, it is difficult for us to find effective antibiotic combinations in the vast chemical space. Herein, we propose a graph learning framework to predict synergistic antibiotic combinations. In this model, a network proximity method combined with network propagation was used to quantify the relationships of drug pairs, and we found that synergistic antibiotic combinations tend to have smaller network proximity. Therefore, network proximity can be used for building an affinity matrix. Subsequently, the affinity matrix was fed into a graph regularization model to predict potential synergistic antibiotic combinations. Compared with existing methods, our model shows a better performance in the prediction of synergistic antibiotic combinations and interpretability.

The aim of this study is to systematically review the published literature and pool the data to evaluate the effectiveness of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) replacement therapy in preventing women's recurrent urinary tract infections (rUTIs). A systematic search of PubMed was performed to identify comparative and randomized controlled trials that compared the efficacy of GAG replacement therapy with control groups (placebo/antibiotics/standard therapy) in preventing rUTI in women. The evaluated outcomes included risk of rUTI, rUTI episodes per patient-year, time to urinary tract infection recurrence, pelvic pain and urgency/frequency, and the quality of life (Short Form-36 questionnaire). The Cochrane Collaboration Review Manager software (RevMan, version 5.4) was used for statistical analysis. Seven trials, including 2 randomized control studies and 5 retrospective comparative trials, met the inclusion criteria and were enrolled into our meta-analysis. A total of 702 patients were included in the analysis. Five studies adopted intravesical instillations and 2 used oral-administered hyaluronic acid. The synthesized results revealed that GAG replacement therapy significantly reduced the risk of rUTI (odds ratio: 0.31), reduced urinary tract infection-associated symptoms on pelvic pain and urgency/frequency scores (WMD: -6.70), and contributed to nonsignificant influence in quality of life, prolongation of time to rUTI, and the risk of rUTI per patient-year. In conclusion, the current meta-analysis revealed that GAG replacement therapy might serve as an alternative treatment strategy for rUTI. Further studies should focus on the durability of the protective effect of hyaluronic acid and the optimal protocol for dosage and administration route for GAG replacement therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Grounded in social exchange theory, this research endeavors to elucidate the mediating effect of trust in teachers within the nexus of college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership and their creativity. Method: Survey data were gathered from 556 college students in Jiangxi Province, China, utilizing PROCESS for data analysis. Findings: The results showed that college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership and significantly and positively predicted trust in teachers (B = 1.068, p < 0.001); while trust in teachers significantly and positively predicted creativity (B = 0.204, p < 0.001). The results of the mediation test show that after including trust in teachers as a mediating variable, the direct relationship between college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership and creativity still exists and is significant (B = 0.254, p<0.001). However, the first step of the structural model analysis showed a significant positive effect of college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership on creativity (B = 0.471, p<0.001). It can be seen that B decreased from 0.471 to 0.254, that is, trust in teachers played a partial mediating role in the significant positive effect of college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership on creativity. Implication to Research and Practice: The study is unique in its scope and contribution, as it tries to develop an understanding of how college students’ perceptions of teachers’ humble leadership foster students’ creativity. Therefore, the findings provide theoretical and practical implications into fostering creativity among college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Near-infrared light (NIR) has the advantages of greater radiation depth, less tissue absorption and scattering, and lower risk, and the construction of a high-throughput NIR responsive membrane with ionic current rectification (ICR) characteristics in submicron or micron channels is of great significance for developing photoresponsive biosensors, and photoelectric and thermoelectric energy conversion in the future. In this paper, sulfhydryl- and carboxyl-terminated poly-N-isopropyl acrylamide with thermosensitivity is synthesized by a reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer polymerization and ammonolysis reaction; it is further grafted at the base end of a polydopamine/Au nanoparticle-modified photothermal responsive heterogeneous membrane via a Au–S bond to achieve the thermosensitive polymer modification. After the asymmetric 808 nm NIR irradiation, the "on" or "off" status of a submicron channel can be realized stably and reversibly for the reversible phase transition of thermosensitive poly-N-isopropyl acrylamide under the photothermal effect of three polydopamine-Au layers. The conductance of the submicro-channel heterogeneous membrane with ICR characteristics increases at the asymmetric pH gradient, the rectification ratio maximally decreases by 11.4, and the photoresponsive current reaches 26.6 μA (0.1 mM KCl). At the same time, the ICR effect is also achieved at a high salt concentration of 1 M KCl and the photoresponsive current can reach 183.7 μA; the intensity of ICR and photoresponsive current can be effectively regulated by the power density, salt concentration and pH, and then the temperature-sensing switch with a NIR response is successfully constructed. This work provides a new way to improve the photoresponsive current and shows great potential in the fields of solar desalination and power generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes of wind barrier angles exert significant effect on the occurrence of low oxygen gas in the upper corner. Taking the 100510 working face of a mine in Shanxi Province as example, this study uses Ansys Fluent software to build a gas migration model of the working face to simulate the occurrence patterns of low oxygen gas in the upper corner under different wind barrier angles, and verifies the model through field measurement. Results show that setting wind barrier could increase wind speed in the upper corner, which offers a solution to the low oxygen problem in upper corner. The optimal treatment of low oxygen in the upper corner is realized with wind barrier angle set at 60° at the position 5m away from the return air channeling. This study provides implications for solutions to the low oxygen issue in the upper corner and thereby ensure safety production.

The steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accident is one of the most serious design-basis accidents in a lead-bismuth cooled fast reactor (LFR). This results in the injection of high-pressure sub-cooled water from the second loop into the first loop of high-temperature liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) through the tube rupture at high velocity. The strong interphase heat and mass transfer may trigger a steam explosion, which seriously threatens the structural integrity of the core. In order to investigate the interaction mechanism between a high-pressure sub-cooled water jet and high-temperature LBE, a three-dimensional numerical computational model of the liquid LBE-water-steam multicomponent multiphase flow and the transient heat and mass transfer process of the high-pressure sub-cooled water jet impacting on the high-temperature LBE in a confined space was established. The VOF multiphase flow model, the LES turbulence model, and the Lee phase transition model were employed, considering the role of the covering gas layer in the vessel. The results show that a typical jet can be divided into four zones according to the phase state, i.e., the water-steam transition zone, the multiphase flow zone, the end-water phase zone, and the steam block zone. Jet boiling occurs mainly in the center region of the jet and on both sides of the phase interface. The steam generated by the phase change will entrain the residual water phase migrating along the interface from the end to the top of the jet. The maximum boiling rate under the calculated conditions is usually at the outlet of the nozzle, with a maximum value of 7 090 kg/(m3·s). The pressure of the covering gas layer and the LBE region are positively correlated with both the sub-cooled water temperature and the inlet pressure. The pressure in the LBE region increases gradually as the jet develops, while the migration of steam may cause fluctuations in the pressure of the LBE region. In the 4.4 ms time, the maximum pressures obtained in the covering gas layer and the LBE region are 0.157 MPa and 0.351 MPa, respectively. The results of this paper reveal the jet boiling mechanism and pressure evolution characteristics, providing theoretical support for the safety assessment of the SGTR accident system for LFRs.