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Objective To form a maternal and infant nursing teaching plan based on" high-level, innovative and challenging" and improve overall teaching quality of obstetrics and gynecology nursing. Methods Taking the curriculum of Puerperium Management as an example, guided by the core competence of midwives and " high-level, innovative and challenging", the research group analyzed the nursing teaching documents and collected postpartum maternal-infants nursing-related literature, guidelines and evidence-based recommendations issued by authoritative organizations at home and abroad. After two rounds discussion, a teaching design was established. Results The teaching content of puerperium management is divided into 2 modules. The first teaching content is postpartum women's care, including the physical and mental changes of puerperium women and related nursing management. The length of time in teaching a theoretical class is 2 hours, and learning objectives are nursing in different periods of postpartum, the identification and assessment of abnormal problems and the multiple attributes of confinement nursing. The second teaching content is breastfeeding, including breastfeeding preparation and consultation, early promotion of breastfeeding strategies, nursing of common breastfeeding problems. The length of time in teaching a practice class is 4 hours, and learning objectives focus on breastfeeding problem assessment and resolution, non-violent communication skills and evidence-based thinking training. The learning process includes self-directed learning, case discussions, and flipped classrooms. The evaluation methods include knowledge assessment, oral presentation, breastfeeding simulation consultation and guidance, and review assignments. Conclusion Fully excavate non-high-risk maternal and infant nursing teaching advanced, high-level and challenging degree, highlight thinking and ability training, which has reference significance for obstetrics and gynecology nursing teaching. (目的 形成基于“两性一度”的母婴护理特色教学方案, 为提升妇产科护理课程整体教学质量提供基础。方法 组建课题研究小组, 以“产褥期管理”为例, 以助产士核心胜任力为指引, 以“两性一度”为指引, 在分析解读行业文件和教材内容的基础上, 收集国内外产后母婴护理相关文献, 权威机构发布的指南及循证建议, 经课题组两轮讨论, 形成教学设计方案。结果 产褥期管理教学内容分2个模块: 一为产后妇女护理, 包括产褥期妇女身心变化及产褥期妇女护理, 理论课2个学时, 学习目标突出产后不同时段护理重点、异常问题识别与评估及月子护理多重属性; 二为母乳喂养, 包括母乳喂养准备与咨询, 早期促进母乳喂养策略、常见母乳喂养问题护理, 实验课4个学时, 学习目标注重母乳喂养问题评估与解决、非暴力沟通技巧及循证思维培养。学习过程与方式包括自主学习、案例讨论、翻转课堂, 评价方式包括知识测评、口头汇报、母乳喂养模拟咨询与指导、综述作业等。结论 充分挖掘母婴护理教学的先进性、高阶性和挑战度, 突出思维和能力培养, 对妇产科护理教学有借鉴意义。)

The block structure of olefin block copolymer (OBC) elastomer gives it good elasticity and heat resistance relative to other polyolefin elastomers. However, the non‐polar nature of OBC chains limits its comprehensive properties like dyeing and toughening for polar engineering plastics. In this work, maleic anhydride (MA) and dicumyl peroxide (DCP) were selected as a typical polar monomer and a radical initiator to modify the polarity of OBC elastomer. During the melt‐grafting process, the DCP content was tuned to optimize the grafting efficiency while the MA‐to‐OBC ratio was fixed at 5 wt%. It was found that all the melt‐grafting reactions show high efficiency and can be finished in 3 min at 170 °C. With the increase of DCP content, the estimated grafting degree of OBC‐g‐MA elastomer increases from 0.40% to 1.16% along with increased gel content from 4.27% to 22.44%. A suitable grafting process was obtained with a DCP content of 3.0 wt% by balancing grafting efficiency and final mechanical properties. The optimized OBC‐g‐MA elastomer with a grafting degree of 0.92% has a mechanical strength of 17.15 MPa, a Young's modulus of 26.35 MPa, elongation of 1564% and strain recovery of 59.73%. Additionally, the contact angle test shows that polar grafting can increase surface hydrophilicity while excessive crosslinking promotes hydrophobicity. Therefore, our work has demonstrated the feasibility of the reactive melt‐grafting method to prepare OBC‐g‐MA elastomer and can also provide a processing reference for other chemical functionalization of polyolefin thermoplastic elastomers. © 2024 Society of Industrial Chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dongba manuscripts are a unique primitive pictographic writing system that originated among the Naxi people of Lijiang, China, boasting over a thousand years of history. The uniqueness of the Dongba manuscripts stems from their pronounced pictorial and ideographic characteristics. However, the digital preservation and inheritance of Dongba manu manuscripts face multiple challenges, including extracting its rich semantic information, recognizing individual characters, retrieving Dongba manuscripts, and automatically interpreting the meanings of Dongba manuscripts. Developing efficient Dongba character detection technology has become a key research focus, wherein establishing a standardized Dongba detection dataset is crucial for training and evaluating techniques. In this study, we have created a comprehensive Dongba manuscripts detection dataset covering various commonly used Dongba characters and vocabularies. Additionally, we propose a model named STEF. Firstly, the Swin Transformer extracts the complex structures and diverse shapes of Dongba manuscripts' features. Then, by introducing a Feature Pyramid Enhancement Module, features of different sizes are cascaded to preserve multi-scale information. Subsequently, all features are fused in a FUSION module, resulting in features of various Dongba manuscript styles. Each pixel's binarisation threshold is dynamically adjusted through a differentiable binarisation operation, accurately distinguishing between foreground Dongba manuscripts and background. Lastly, deformable convolution is introduced, allowing the model to dynamically adjust the convolution kernel's size and shape based on the Dongba manuscripts' size, thereby better capturing the detailed information of Dongba characters of different sizes. Experimental results show that STEF achieves a recall rate of 88.88%, a precision rate of 88.65%, and an F-measure of 88.76%, outperforming other text detection algorithms. Visualization experiments demonstrate that STEF performs well in detecting Dongba manuscripts of various sizes, shapes, and styles, especially in blurred handwriting and complex backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seedling is a crucial stage in the growth and development of plants, and the expansion and persistence of plant populations can be achieved through seed regeneration. Sheep grazing, fertilization, light, soil moisture, vegetation diversity and biomass, and litter all have potential impacts on species regeneration. We measured vegetation diversity, annual net primary productivity (ANPP), litter, ground photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and soil moisture of alpine meadows under sheep grazing and nitrogen addition treatments, and studied their effects on the dicotyledonous seedling abundance and diversity using linear regression models (LMs) and structural equation models (SEMs). We found that sheep grazing reduced ANPP, increased vegetation diversity and PAR, and decreased soil moisture. Fertilization increased ANPP and litter, decreased vegetation diversity and PAR, but had no effect on soil moisture. Sheep grazing and fertilization both reduced the abundance of dicotyledonous seedlings, and simultaneously fertilization can reduce the diversity of dicotyledonous seedlings, while sheep grazing had no effect on the diversity of dicotyledonous seedlings. LMs showed that vegetation diversity, ANPP, and litter, rather than light and soil moisture, affected dicotyledonous seedling abundance and diversity. SEMs revealed that sheep grazing and fertilization indirectly influenced seedling regeneration through vegetation diversity rather than ANPP and litter. Our research will increase our understanding of the dicotyledonous plant regeneration process in alpine grasslands and facilitate the development of strategies for management and protection of alpine grassland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the antioxidant activity of fermented tartaty buckwheat extract of Pleurotus eryngii in vitro as well as its protective effect on alcohol-induced liver and gastric mucosa injury in vivo. Methods: The study involved determining the contents of functional components in fermented tartary buckwheat extract and observing its antioxidant capacity. Mice models of chronic alcoholic liver and gastric mucosa injury were established using Lieber-DeCarli liquid feed. The protective effects of fermented tartary buckwheat extract at low and high doses (1.5 g/kg B.W., 3.0 g/kg B.W.) were investigated for both liver and gastric mucosa injury. Results: The extract of fermented buckwheat with Pleurotus eryngii contained more antioxidant components, the contents of polyphenols, flavonoids and triterpenes were 11.40±0.32 mg GAE/g DW, 17.19±0.30 mg RE/g DW and 7.59±0.24 mg/g, respectively. The contents of rutin and quercetin were as follows: 13.55±0.05 and 0.665±0.01 mg/g. The iron reducing antioxidant capacity and DPPH and ABTS+ free radical scavenging efficiency of Tartary buckwheat extract were 16.66±0.65, 33.49±1.26 and 15.68±1.17 µmol Trolox/g DW, respectively. Compared with the model group, both high-dose and low-dose groups significantly reduced malondialdehyde (P<0.05), aspartate aminotransferase (P<0.01), alanine aminotransferase (P<0.01), lactate dehydrogenase (P<0.05), and interleukin-1β (P<0.05) levels and significantly increased levels of superoxide dismutase (P<0.01) and glutathione peroxidase (P<0.01), downregulated protein expression levels of reactive oxygen species (P<0.01), rat sarcoma (P<0.01), rapidly accelerated fibrosarcoma (P<0.01), extracellular signal-regulated kinases (P<0.05), and mitogen activated protein kinase kinase (P<0.05). Conclusion: Fermented tartaty buckwheat extract of Pleurotus eryngii has good antioxidant activity, and has obvious protective effect on chronic alcoholic liver and gastric mucosa injury in mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese population ranks among the highest globally in terms of stroke prevalence. In the clinical diagnostic process, radiologists utilize computed tomography angiography (CTA) images for diagnosis, enabling a precise assessment of collateral circulation in the brains of stroke patients. Recent studies frequently combine imaging and machine learning methods to develop computer-aided diagnostic algorithms. However, in studies concerning collateral circulation assessment, the extracted imaging features are primarily composed of manually designed statistical features, which exhibit significant limitations in their representational capacity. Accurately assessing collateral circulation using image features in brain CTA images still presents challenges.To tackle this issue, considering the scarcity of publicly accessible medical datasets, we combined clinical data with imaging data to establish a dataset named RadiomicsClinicCTA. Moreover, we devised two collateral circulation assessment models to exploit the synergistic potential of patients’ clinical information and imaging data for a more accurate assessment of collateral circulation: data-level fusion and feature-level fusion. To remove redundant features from the dataset, we employed Levene’s test and T-test methods for feature pre-screening. Subsequently, we performed feature dimensionality reduction using the LASSO and random forest algorithms and trained classification models with various machine learning algorithms on the data-level fusion dataset after feature engineering.Experimental results on the RadiomicsClinicCTA dataset demonstrate that the optimized data-level fusion model achieves an accuracy and AUC value exceeding 86% . Subsequently, we trained and assessed the performance of the feature-level fusion classification model. The results indicate the feature-level fusion classification model outperforms the optimized data-level fusion model. Comparative experiments show that the fused dataset better differentiates between good and bad side branch features relative to the pure radiomics dataset.Our study underscores the efficacy of integrating clinical and imaging data through fusion models, significantly enhancing the accuracy of collateral circulation assessment in stroke patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the decorrelation calculation of diffusion ultrasound in time-frequency domain, this paper discusses the repeatability and potential significance of Disturbance Sensitive Zone (DSZ) in time-frequency domain. The experimental study of Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID) on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) is carried out. The decorrelation coefficients of time, frequency, and time-frequency domains and DSZ are calculated and compared. It has been observed that the sensitivity of the scattered wave disturbance caused by impact damage is non-uniformly distributed in both the time and frequency domains. This is evident from the non-uniform distribution of the decorrelation coefficient in time-domain and frequency-domain decorrelation calculations. Further, the decorrelation calculation in the time-frequency domain can show the distribution of the sensitivity of the scattered wave disturbance in the time domain and frequency domain. The decorrelation coefficients in time, frequency, and time-frequency domains increase monotonically with the number of impacts. In addition, in the time-frequency domain decorrelation calculation results, stable and repetitive DSZ are observed, which means that the specific frequency component of the scattered wave is extremely sensitive to the damage evolution of the impact region at a specific time. Finally, the DSZ obtained from the first 15 impacts is used to improve the decorrelation calculation in the 16-th to 20-th impact. The results show that the increment rate of the improved decorrelation coefficient is 10.22%. This study reveals that the diffusion ultrasonic decorrelation calculation improved by DSZ makes it feasible to evaluate early-stage damage caused by BVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and allergic diseases possess similar genetic backgrounds and pathogenesis. Observational studies have shown a correlation, but the exact direction of cause and effect remains unclear. The aim of this Mendelian randomization (MR) study is to assess bidirectional causality between inflammatory bowel disease and allergic diseases. Method: We comprehensively analyzed the causal relationship between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and allergic disease (asthma, Hay fever, and eczema) as a whole, allergic conjunctivitis (AC), atopic dermatitis (AD), allergic asthma (AAS), and allergic rhinitis (AR) by performing a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study using summary‐level data from genome‐wide association studies. The analysis results mainly came from the random‐effects model of inverse variance weighted (IVW‐RE). In addition, multivariate Mendelian randomization (MVMR) analysis was conducted to adjust the effect of body mass index (BMI) on the instrumental variables. Results: The IVW‐RE method revealed that IBD genetically increased the risk of allergic disease as a whole (OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 1.01–1.04, fdr.p =.015), AC (OR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.01–1.06, fdr.p =.011), and AD (OR = 1.06, 95% CI = 1.02–1.09, fdr.p =.004). Subgroup analysis further confirmed that CD increased the risk of allergic disease as a whole (OR = 1.02, 95% CI = 1.00–1.03, fdr.p =.031), AC (OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 1.01–1.05, fdr.p =.012), AD (OR = 1.06, 95% CI = 1.02–1.09, fdr.p = 2E−05), AAS (OR = 1.05, 95% CI = 1.02–1.08, fdr.p =.002) and AR (OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 1.00–1.07, fdr.p =.025), UC increased the risk of AAS (OR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.98–1.07, fdr.p =.038). MVMR results showed that after taking BMI as secondary exposure, the causal effects of IBD on AC, IBD on AD, CD on allergic disease as a whole, CD on AC, CD on AD, CD on AAS, and CD on AR were still statistically significant. No significant association was observed in the reverse MR analysis. Conclusion: This Mendelian randomized study demonstrated that IBD is a risk factor for allergic diseases, which is largely attributed to its subtype CD increasing the risk of AC, AD, ASS, and AR. Further investigations are needed to explore the causal relationship between allergic diseases and IBD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Huangshui River Basin is one of the most important water sources in the Qinghai Province and is of great importance for ecological protection measures, agricultural irrigation and tourism. Based on previous studies and fieldwork related to plant species in China, this study presents comprehensive data on vascular plants distributed in the Huangshui River Basin of Qinghai Province. Ethical Compliance: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Data Access Statement: Research data supporting this publication are available from the repository at located at . Conflict of Interest declaration: The authors declare that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organisation or entity with any financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. New information: The checklist of plants includes ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms, covering three phyla, five classes, 49 orders, 139 families, 709 genera and 2,382 species. It includes numerous Asteraceae, Gramineae, Rosaceae and Fabaceae along with statistical data on the number of species distributed in different regions. The dataset presented in this article provides important background information on vascular plants in the Huangshui River Basin and, therefore, plays a crucial role in the protection and management of plant resources in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vigorous development of wearable and implantable electronics provides a series of new solutions for human health monitoring and disease diagnosis and treatment. Considering the particularity of the operating environment, this also puts forward higher requirements for energy storage devices (ESDs). Supercapacitors stand out from many ESDs due to their unique advantages, such as high power density, long life, and ease of fabrication. For different application requirements, supercapacitors are developing toward flexibility, multifunction, and integration. This review highlights the recent progress in developing supercapacitor‐integrated systems. Smart supercapacitors with unique properties, their applications, and integrations with various sensors and/or energy‐harvesting devices are discussed and summarized thoroughly. Furthermore, the all‐in‐one device enabled by compatible materials and ingenious structure design is also described. From practical perspectives, the key challenges facing the development of supercapacitor‐integrated systems are presented, and the suggestions for future research directions are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Font classification of oracle bone inscriptions serves as a crucial basis for determining the historical period to which they belong and holds significant importance in reconstructing significant historical events. However, conventional methods for font classification in oracle bone inscriptions heavily rely on expert knowledge, resulting in low efficiency and time-consuming procedures. In this paper, we proposed a novel recurrent graph neural network (R-GNN) for the automatic recognition of oracle bone inscription fonts. The proposed method used convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to perform local feature extraction and downsampling on oracle bone inscriptions. Furthermore, it employed graph neural networks (GNNs) to model the complex topologiure and global contextual information of oracle bone inscriptions. Finally, we used recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to effectively combine the extracted local features and global contextual information, thereby enhancing the discriminative power of the R-GNN. Extensive experiments on our benchmark dataset demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a Top-1 accuracy of 88.2%, significantly outperforming the competing approaches. The method presented in this paper further advances the integration of oracle bone inscriptions research and artificial intelligence. The code is publicly available at: https://github.com/yj3214/oracle-font-classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To simply, quickly, and efficiently separate circulating tumor cells from blood has always been an enormous challenge. Leveraging the principle of inertial focusing, we here designed a simply structured microfluidic chip that maintained excellent CTC separation efficiency with high robustness and low velocity sensitivity across a broad velocity range. The parameter configuration of the chip was systematically examined, especially the most influential parameters such as the arc radius and arc angle. With optimal parameters, the designed chip achieved an outstanding particle separation efficiency of 99.8% and, more importantly, enabled the efficient separation and enrichment of CTCs in blood samples. This design can be readily integrated with other functional modules for further sample processing, serving as a promising tool for cancer diagnosis and therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hawthorn leaves are a kind of widely used medicinal plant in China. The major ingredient, hawthorn leaves flavonoids (HLF), have cardiotonic, cardioprotective, and vascular protective effects. The study evaluated the protective role of HLF in cardiac remodelling and the underlying mechanisms under simulated microgravity by hindlimb unloading rats. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into control, HLF, HU (hindlimb unloading) and HU + HLF groups (n = 8). After HU and daily intragastric administration at the dose of 100 mg/kg/d for 8 weeks, cardiac function and structure were evaluated by biochemical indices and histopathology. We identified the main active compounds and mechanisms involved in the cardioprotective effects of HLF via bioinformatics and molecular docking analysis, and relative signalling pathway activity was verified by Western blot. HLF treatment could reverse the HU-induced decline in LV-EF (HU, 55.13% ± 0.98% vs. HU + HLF, 71.16% ± 5.08%), LV-FS (HU, 29.44% ± 0.67% vs. HU + HLF, 41.62% ± 4.34%) and LV mass (HU, 667.99 ± 65.69 mg vs. HU + HLF, 840.02 ± 73.00 mg). Furthermore, HLF treatment significantly increased NPRA expression by 135.39%, PKG by 51.27%, decreased PDE5A by 20.03%, NFATc1 by 41.68% and Rcan1.4 by 54.22%. HLF plays a protective effect on HU-induced cardiac remodelling by enhancing NPRA-cGMP-PKG pathway and suppressing the calcineurin-NFAT pathway, which provides a theoretical basis for use in clinical therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluorinated amino acids and related peptides/proteins have been found widespread applications in pharmaceutical and agricultural compounds. However, strategies for introducing a C−F bond into amino acids in an enantioselective manner are still limited and no such asymmetric catalysis strategy has been reported. Herein, we have successfully developed a Pd/Cu/Li ternary system for stereodivergent synthesis of chiral fluorinated amino acids. This method involves a sequential desymmetrization of geminal difluoromethylenes and allylic substitution with amino acid Schiff bases via Pd/Li and Pd/Cu dual activation, respectively. A series of non‐natural amino acids bearing a chiral allylic/benzylic fluorine motif are easily synthesized in high yields with excellent regio‐, diastereo‐, and enantioselectivities (up to >20 : 1 dr and >99 % ee). A density functional theory (DFT) study revealed the F−Cu interaction of the allylic substrate and the Cu catalyst significantly influence the stereoselectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oxygen reduction reaction is crucial in the cathode of fuel cells and metal–air batteries. Consequently, designing robust and durable ORR catalysts is vital to developing metal–air batteries and fuel cells. Metal–organic frameworks feature an adjustable structure, a periodic porosity, and a large specific surface area, endowing their derivative materials with a unique structure. In this study, F and N co-doped on the carbon support surface (Co/FN-C) via the pyrolysis of ZIF-67 as a sacrificial template while using Co/FN-C as the non-noble metal catalysts. The Co/FN-C displays excellent long-term durability and electrochemical catalytic performance in acidic solutions. These performance improvements are achieved because the CQDs alleviate the structural collapse during the pyrolysis of ZIF-67, which increases the active sites in the Co nanoparticles. Moreover, F- and N-doping improves the catalytic activity of the carbon support by providing additional electrons and active sites. Furthermore, F anions are redox-stable ligands that exhibit long-term operational stability. Therefore, the well-dispersed Co NPs on the surface of the Co/FN-C are promising as the non-noble metal catalysts for ORR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their high theoretical density, Li-air batteries (LABs) are expected to be critical components of future energy storage devices. However, the commercial use of LABs is limited by their low charge-discharge efficiency, high overpotential, and low cyclic stability. Therefore, to improve the cyclic stability of LABs, we manufactured N- and F-co-doped carbon quantum dots (NF-CQDs), thinly coated them on the surface of a Ni foam current collector via ultrasonic spray coating, and used the as-fabricated NF-CQD/Ni as the current collector of an LAB cathode. The NF-CQD/Ni-based cathode maintained remarkable cycling stability over 42 cycles (with a limited capacity was 1000 mAh/g) and exhibited a superior specific discharge capacity of approximately 5121.91 mAh/g (at 100 mA/g). NF-CQD/Ni-based cathode exhibits superior electrochemical properties, including its high cycling stability and high discharge capacity, primarily contributed by the NF-CQD coating layer, which prevented the oxidation of the Ni foam substrate and increased the electrical conductivity and electrocatalytic activity of the cathode. Therefore, NF-CQD/Ni can serve as an excellent current collector for LAB cathodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visually impaired people face many inconveniences in daily life, and there are problems such as high prices and single functions in the market of assistance tools for visually impaired people. In this work, we designed and implemented a low-cost intelligent assistance cane, particularly for visually impaired individuals, based on computer vision, sensors, and an edge-cloud collaboration scheme. Obstacle detection, fall detection, and traffic light detection functions have been designed and integrated for the convenience of moving for visually impaired people. We have also designed an image captioning function and object detection function with high-speed processing capability based on an edge-cloud collaboration scheme to improve the user experience. Experiments show that the performance metrics have an aerial obstacle detection accuracy of 92.5%, fall detection accuracy of 90%, and average image retrieval period of 1.124 s. It proves the characteristics of low power consumption, strong real-time performance, adaptability to multiple scenarios, and convenience, which can ensure the safety of visually impaired people when moving and can help them better perceive and understand the surrounding environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weekly service frequency is often maintained in liner shipping. The previous studies present two kinds of the weekly service frequency constraints. For a single liner shipping service, the two kinds of the weekly service frequency constraints can be described by using an equation and inequality, respectively. In order to explore whether the weekly service frequency constraint is tight or not in different cases, this paper addresses the optimization of ship speeds and fleet size for a single liner shipping service. According to realistic ship speeds at different legs in practice, we introduce different minimum and maximum allowable sailing speeds at various legs into our studied problem. Our problem can be formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model. By using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, our analytical results show that, when considering the optimization of ship speeds, the weekly service frequency constraint is tight in most cases. Without considering the effect of the minimum and maximum allowable sailing speeds, we find that, the weekly service frequency constraint is always tight and ships would sail at the average speed. When considering the effect of the minimum and maximum allowable sailing speeds at various legs, the optimal ship speed at each leg should be selected from three options, based on which we further propose a ship speed choice problem. The proposed ship speed choice problem is also formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model, which can be efficiently solved by using the outer approximation method. Finally, a number of numerical experiments are carried out to account for the effectiveness of our analytical results, models and methods. [Display omitted] • Investigate the optimization of ship speeds and fleet size for a liner shipping service. • Explore the tightness problem for the weekly service frequency constraints. • Analytical results show that the weekly service frequency constraintsare tight in most cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lianhua Qingwen (LHQW) granule, a botanical drug preparation, is frequently utilized as an adjuvant treatment for mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP). Nevertheless, the clinical efficacy and safety of this treatment remain uncertain., Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of LHQW granule combined with azithromycin (AZM) in treating MPP in children., Method: To identify all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of LHQW granule plus AZM, a search was conducted in eight Chinese and English databases (CNKI, Wan Fang, VIP, Sinomed, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library) from their inception until 25 December 2023. Meta-regression and subgroup analysis were employed to investigate heterogeneity. Sensitivity analysis and trial sequential analysis (TSA) were conducted to assess the robustness of the findings. Additionally, the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system was utilized to evaluate the quality of evidence., Results: A total of 15 RCTs involving 1909 participants were included in this study. The meta-analysis results indicated combination therapy of LHQW granule and AZM is significant different from AZM alone in both efficacy and safety, which are specifically observed in the following outcomes: response rate (RR = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.12 to 1.22, p < 0.01), antipyretic time (MD = -1.32, 95% CI: -1.66 to -0.98, p < 0.01), cough disappearance time (MD = -1.76, 95% CI: -2.47 to -1.05, p < 0.01), pulmonary rale disappearance time (MD = -1.54, 95% CI: -2.06 to -1.02, p < 0.01), c-reactive protein (CRP) (MD = -5.50, 95% CI: -6.92 to -4.07, p < 0.01), procalcitonin (PCT) (MD = -0.31, 95% CI: -0.38 to -0.24, p < 0.01), interleukin 6 (IL-6) (MD = -5.97, 95% CI: -7.39 to -4.54, p <0.01), tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) (MD = -5.74, 95% CI: -7.44 to -4.04, p < 0.01), forced vital capacity (FVC) (SMD = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.34 to 0.62, p < 0.01), forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1) (SMD = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.44 to 0.67, p < 0.01), FEV1/FVC (SMD = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.32 to 0.67, p < 0.01), CD4 + T lymphocyte (CD4 + ) (MD = 4.04, 95% CI: 3.09 to 4.98, p < 0.01), CD8 + T lymphocyte (CD8 + ) (MD = -3.32, 95% CI: 4.27 to 2.38, p < 0.01) and adverse events (RR = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.43 to 0.96, p < 0.01)., Conclusion: The combination therapy of LHQW granule and AZM may be a better strategy to treat MPP in children. However, the clinical efficacy and safety of LHQW granule require further validation., Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Li, Ma, Qi, Hao, Wang and Wu.)

Background: White matter (WM) lesions can be classified into contrast enhancement lesions (CELs), iron rim lesions (IRLs), and non-iron rim lesions (NIRLs) based on different pathological mechanism in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). The application of radiomics established by T2-FLAIR to classify WM lesions in RRMS is limited, especially for 3-class classification among CELs, IRLs, and NIRLs., Methods: A total of 875 WM lesions (92 CELs, 367 IRLs, 416 NIRLs) were included in this study. The 2-class classification was only performed between IRLs and NIRLs. For the 2- and 3-class classification tasks, all the lesions were randomly divided into training and testing sets with a ratio of 8:2. We used least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), reliefF algorithm, and mutual information (MI) for feature selection, then eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM) were used to establish discrimination models. Finally, the area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision were used to evaluate the performance of the models., Results: For the 2-class classification model, LASSO classifier with RF model showed the best discrimination performance with the AUC of 0.893 (95% CI: 0.838-0.942), accuracy of 0.813, sensitivity of 0.833, specificity of 0.781, and precision of 0.851. However, the 3-class classification model of LASSO with XGBoost displayed the highest performance with the AUC of 0.920 (95% CI: 0.887-0.950), accuracy of 0.796, sensitivity of 0.839, specificity of 0.881, and precision of 0.846., Conclusions: Radiomics models based on T2-FLAIR images have the potential for discriminating among CELs, IRLs, and NIRLs in RRMS., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://qims.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/qims-23-1287/coif). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2024 Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery. All rights reserved.)

Objective. Stroke is a highly lethal condition, with intracranial vessel occlusion being one of its primary causes. Intracranial vessel occlusion can typically be categorized into four types, each requiring different intervention measures. Therefore, the automatic and accurate classification of intracranial vessel occlusions holds significant clinical importance for assessing vessel occlusion conditions. However, due to the visual similarities in shape and size among different vessels and variations in the degree of vessel occlusion, the automated classification of intracranial vessel occlusions remains a challenging task. Our study proposes an automatic classification model for large vessel occlusion (LVO) based on the difference information between the left and right hemispheres. Approach. Our approach is as follows. We first introduce a dual-branch attention module to learn long-range dependencies through spatial and channel attention, guiding the model to focus on vessel-specific features. Subsequently, based on the symmetry of vessel distribution, we design a differential information classification module to dynamically learn and fuse the differential information of vessel features between the two hemispheres, enhancing the sensitivity of the classification model to occluded vessels. To optimize the feature differential information among similar vessels, we further propose a novel cooperative learning loss function to minimize changes within classes and similarities between classes. Main results. We evaluate our proposed model on an intracranial LVO data set. Compared to state-of-the-art deep learning models, our model performs optimally, achieving a classification sensitivity of 93.73%, precision of 83.33%, accuracy of 89.91% and Macro-F1 score of 87.13%. Significance. This method can adaptively focus on occluded vessel regions and effectively train in scenarios with high inter-class similarity and intra-class variability, thereby improving the performance of LVO classification., (© 2024 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.)

The self-assembling behavior of peptides and derivatives is crucial in the natural process to construct various architectures and achieve specific functions. However, the surface or interfacial self-assembly, in particular, on the surface of micro- or nanoparticles is even less systematically investigated. Here, uniform porous CaCO 3 microparticles were prepared with different charged, hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces to assess the self-assembling behavior of dipeptides composed of various sequences. Experimental results indicate that dipeptides with a negative charge in an aqueous solution preferred to self-assemble on the hydrophobic and positively charged surface of CaCO 3 particles, which can be ascribed to the electrostatic and hydrophobic interaction between dipeptides and CaCO 3 particles. Meanwhile, the Log p (lipid-water partition coefficient) of dipeptides has a significant effect on the self-assembling behavior of dipeptides on the surface of porous CaCO 3 ; dipeptides with high Log p preferred to self-assemble on the surface of CaCO 3 particles, resulting in the improved cell internalization efficiency of particles with low cytotoxicity. After loading with a model drug (doxorubicin), the particles show obvious antitumor activity in animal experiments and can reduce Dox side effects effectively.