Search

Abstract Background The postponement of parenthood is a global public health issue that has received attention of many public health experts. However, few studies have investigated the postponement in marriage age, marriage and conception interval, and pregnancy age in terms of demographic and regional heterogenicities. Methods This is a cross-sectional, registry-based study, and a total of 13 894 601 nulliparous couples who participated in the National Free Pre-Pregnancy Check-ups Project and became pregnant during 2013–2019 were included. We calculated annual percentage change and forest plots for marriage age, marriage and conception interval, and pregnancy age. Results Late marriage (marriage age ≥ 35 years), long marriage and conception interval (marriage and conception interval ≥ 2 years), and advanced pregnancy (pregnancy age ≥ 35 years) increased from 1.20%, 22.01%, and 1.88% in 2013 to 1.69%, 32.75%, and 2.79% in 2019, respectively. The corresponding annual percentage changes were 6.55%, 8.44%, and 8.17%. Participants without higher education had a higher annual percentage change, but comparable prevalence for long marriage and conception interval with participants with higher education. Participants residing in second- or new first-tier cities, and the northeast of China who had a higher prevalence of parenthood postponement also had higher corresponding annual percentage changes. Conclusions Structural postponement of parenthood with demographic and regional heterogenicities was observed among Chinese nulliparous couples with planned pregnancies during 2013–2019. Inclusive and comprehensive parenting support should be developed and implemented in mainland China to minimize the negative health effects arising from the postponement, especially for couples without higher education and living in new first/second-tier cities or the northeast China.

BackgroundOmicron (B.1.1.529), a variant of SARS-CoV-2, has emerged as a dominant strain in COVID-19 pandemic. This development has raised concerns about the effectiveness of vaccination to Omicron, particularly in the context of children and adolescents. Our study evaluated the efficacy of different COVID-19 vaccination regimens in children and adolescents during the Omicron epidemic phase.MethodsWe searched PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, and Embase electronic databases for studies published through March 2023 on the association between COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine effectiveness (VE) against SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents at the Omicron variant period. The effectiveness outcomes included mild COVID-19 and severe COVID-19. This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and was prospectively registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023390481).ResultsA total of 33 studies involving 16,532,536 children were included in the analysis. First, in children and adolescents aged 0–19 years, the overall VE of the COVID-19 vaccine is 45% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 40 to 50%). Subgroup analysis of VE during Omicron epidemic phase for different dosage regimens demonstrated that the VE was 50% (95% CI: 44 to 55%) for the 2-dose vaccination and 61% (95% CI: 45 to 73%) for the booster vaccination. Upon further analysis of different effectiveness outcomes during the 2-dose vaccination showed that the VE was 41% (95% CI: 35 to 47%) against mild COVID-19 and 71% (95% CI: 60 to 79%) against severe COVID-19. In addition, VE exhibited a gradual decrease over time, with the significant decline in the efficacy of Omicron for infection before and after 90 days following the 2-dose vaccination, registering 54% (95% CI: 48 to 59%) and 34% (95% CI: 21 to 56%), respectively.ConclusionDuring the Omicron variant epidemic, the vaccine provided protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents aged 0–19 years. Two doses of vaccination can provide effective protection severe COVID-19, with booster vaccination additionally enhancing VE.

Introduction: Esophageal stenting is a widely used treatment for esophageal diseases, which can also be used for adjuvant therapy and feeding after chemotherapy for esophageal cancer. The structural parameters of the stent have a significant impact on its mechanical properties and patient comfort.Methods: In the present work, we reconstructed the esophagus model based on the patient’s computed tomography (CT) data, and designed stents with different structural parameters. We used 3D printing technology to achieve rapid production of the designed stents by using Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/Poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) blends as the materials. The mechanical properties and effects on the esophagus of polymer stents with four different structural parameters of diameter, wall thickness, length and flaring were investigated by in vitro tests of radial compression and migration of the stents, as well as by finite element simulations of the stent implantation process in the esophagus and of the stent migration process. An artificial neural network model was established to predict the radial force of the stent and the maximum equivalent stress of the esophagus during implantation based on these four structural parameters.Results: The results show that wall thickness was the structural parameter that had the greatest impact on the radial force of the stent (statistically significant, p < 0.01), and flaring was the structural parameter that had the greatest impact on the maximum equivalent stress of the esophageal wall after stent implantation (statistically significant, p < 0.01). No. 6 stent had a maximum radial force of 18.07 N, which exceeded that of commercial esophageal stents and had good mechanical properties. And the maximum equivalent force on the esophagus caused by its implantation was only 30.39 kPa, which can improve patient comfort. The predicted values of the constructed back propagation (BP) neural network model had an error of less than 10% from the true values, and the overall prediction accuracies were both above 97%, which can provide guidance for optimizing the design of the stent and for clinical research.Discussion: 3D printing technology presents a wide range of applications for the rapid fabrication of personalized TPU/PCL blend stents that are more suitable for individual patients.

Sprouty4 (SPRY4) has been frequently reported as a tumor suppressor and is therefore downregulated in various cancers. For the first time, we report that SPRY4 is epigenetically upregulated in colorectal cancer (CRC). In this study, we explored DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation levels of SPRY4 in CRC cells and patient samples and correlated these findings with mRNA and protein expression levels. Three loci within the promoter region of SPRY4 were evaluated for 5mC levels in CRC using the combined bisulfite restriction analysis. In addition, hydroxymethylation levels within SPRY4 were measured in CRC patients. Lastly, DNA methylation and mRNA expression data were extracted from CRC patients in multiple high-throughput data repositories like Gene Expression Omnibus and The Cancer Genome Atlas. Combined in vitro and in silico analysis of promoter methylation levels of SPRY4 clearly demonstrates that the distal promoter region undergoes hypomethylation in CRC patients and is associated with increased expression. Moreover, a decrease in gene body hydroxymethylation and an increase in gene body methylation within the coding region of SPRY4 were found in CRC patients and correlated with increased expression. SPRY4 is epigenetically upregulated in CRC by promoter hypomethylation and hypermethylation within the gene body that warrants future investigation of atypical roles of this established tumor suppressor.

Abstract Background The advancement of sequencing technologies today has made a plethora of whole-genome re-sequenced (WGRS) data publicly available. However, research utilizing the WGRS data without further configuration is nearly impossible. To solve this problem, our research group has developed an interactive Allele Catalog Tool to enable researchers to explore the coding region allelic variation present in over 1,000 re-sequenced accessions each for soybean, Arabidopsis, and maize. Results The Allele Catalog Tool was designed originally with soybean genomic data and resources. The Allele Catalog datasets were generated using our variant calling pipeline (SnakyVC) and the Allele Catalog pipeline (AlleleCatalog). The variant calling pipeline is developed to parallelly process raw sequencing reads to generate the Variant Call Format (VCF) files, and the Allele Catalog pipeline takes VCF files to perform imputations, functional effect predictions, and assemble alleles for each gene to generate curated Allele Catalog datasets. Both pipelines were utilized to generate the data panels (VCF files and Allele Catalog files) in which the accessions of the WGRS datasets were collected from various sources, currently representing over 1,000 diverse accessions for soybean, Arabidopsis, and maize individually. The main features of the Allele Catalog Tool include data query, visualization of results, categorical filtering, and download functions. Queries are performed from user input, and results are a tabular format of summary results by categorical description and genotype results of the alleles for each gene. The categorical information is specific to each species; additionally, available detailed meta-information is provided in modal popups. The genotypic information contains the variant positions, reference or alternate genotypes, the functional effect classes, and the amino-acid changes of each accession. Besides that, the results can also be downloaded for other research purposes. Conclusions The Allele Catalog Tool is a web-based tool that currently supports three species: soybean, Arabidopsis, and maize. The Soybean Allele Catalog Tool is hosted on the SoyKB website ( https://soykb.org/SoybeanAlleleCatalogTool/ ), while the Allele Catalog Tool for Arabidopsis and maize is hosted on the KBCommons website ( https://kbcommons.org/system/tools/AlleleCatalogTool/Zmays and https://kbcommons.org/system/tools/AlleleCatalogTool/Athaliana ). Researchers can use this tool to connect variant alleles of genes with meta-information of species.

Abstract Certain cultivars of maize show increased tolerance to water deficit conditions by maintenance of root growth. To better understand the molecular mechanisms related to this adaptation, nodal root growth zone samples were collected from the reference inbred line B73 and inbred line FR697, which exhibits a relatively greater ability to maintain root elongation under water deficits. Plants were grown under various water stress levels in both field and controlled environment settings. FR697-specific RNA-Seq datasets were generated and used for a de novo transcriptome assembly to characterize any genotype-specific genetic features. The assembly was aided by an Iso-Seq library of transcripts generated from various FR697 plant tissue samples. The Necklace pipeline was used to combine a Trinity de novo assembly along with a reference guided assembly and the Viridiplantae proteome to generate an annotated consensus “SuperTranscriptome” assembly of 47,915 transcripts with a N50 of 3152 bp in length. The results were compared by Blastn to maize reference genes, a Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) genome completeness report and compared with three maize reference genomes. The resultant ‘SuperTranscriptome’ was demonstrated to be of high-quality and will serve as an important reference for analysis of the maize nodal root transcriptomic response to environmental perturbations.

ObjectivesIn the process of the emergency deceleration and reversing operations of marine steam power systems, back-steam control technology is an effective means of alleviating the problem of boiler drum overpressure，so it is necessary to study its influence on the system. MethodsThis paper establishes a steam power system simulation model of a supercharged boiler, main steam turbine and propeller, and carries out the simulation and comparative analysis of the characteristics of back-steam control in the process of the emergency deceleration and reversing of large ships under the three working conditions of quick closing valve with/without back-steam and slow closing valve without back-steam. ResultsThe simulation results show that the steam return control technology can effectively prevent boiler drum overpressure in the process of emergency deceleration and reversing, and the system stability time is shortened by about 3 mins and 1 min respectively. ConclusionThe results of this study can provide references for ship maneuverability and safety design.

ObjectiveThis study aimed to summarize the effectiveness of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) for the treatment of gait and motor function in Parkinson's disease (PD) through a systematic review and meta-analysis.MethodsAll studies were retrieved from eight databases. The effects of RAS on PD were determined using the following indicators: gait parameters including step length, stride width, step cadence, velocity, stride length; motor function including 6 min walk test (6MWT) and timed up-and-go test (TUGT); the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS); and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS). The risk map of bias of the quality of the studies and the meta-analysis results of the indicators was prepared with RevMan 5.2 software.ResultsTwenty-one studies were included in the systematic review, and 14 studies were included in the meta-analysis. In the meta-analysis, the results of gait parameters, namely, velocity, step length, and stride length, were statistically significant (P < 0.05), whereas the results of cadence and stride width were not statistically significant (P ≧ 0.05). The results of 6MWT and TUGT for motor function as well as UPDRS-II, UPDRS-III, and BBS were statistically significant (P < 0.05).ConclusionsRAS could improve gait parameters, walking function, balance function, and daily living activities of individuals with PD. The application of RAS in conventional rehabilitation approaches can enhance motor performance in PD. Future studies should use a large sample size and a rigorous design to obtain strong conclusions about the advantages of RAS for the treatment of gait and motor function in PD.

Plant tissues are distinguished by their gene expression patterns, which can help identify tissue-specific highly expressed genes and their differential functional modules. For this purpose, large-scale soybean transcriptome samples were collected and processed starting from raw sequencing reads in a uniform analysis pipeline. To address the gene expression heterogeneity in different tissues, we utilized an adversarial deconfounding autoencoder (AD-AE) model to map gene expressions into a latent space and adapted a standard unsupervised autoencoder (AE) model to help effectively extract meaningful biological signals from the noisy data. As a result, four groups of 1,743, 914, 2,107, and 1,451 genes were found highly expressed specifically in leaf, root, seed and nodule tissues, respectively. To obtain key transcription factors (TFs), hub genes and their functional modules in each tissue, we constructed tissue-specific gene regulatory networks (GRNs), and differential correlation networks by using corrected and compressed gene expression data. We validated our results from the literature and gene enrichment analysis, which confirmed many identified tissue-specific genes. Our study represents the largest gene expression analysis in soybean tissues to date. It provides valuable targets for tissue-specific research and helps uncover broader biological patterns. Code is publicly available with open source at https://github.com/LingtaoSu/SoyMeta.

Accurate monitoring of emergent aquatic vegetation (EAV) and floating-leave aquatic vegetation (FAV), is vital because vegetation provides a critical habitat for aquatic animals and plays a critical role in protecting biodiversity. However, owing to the interference of water spectrum signals, it is difficult to extract the emerging aquatic vegetation information from remote sensing images, especially to distinguish between EAV and FAV. This study first proposed an enhanced aquatic vegetation index based on the difference in two short-wave infrared (SWIR) bands to extract the aquatic vegetation above the water surface, and then, the EAV and FAV were further distinguished coupled with the phenological characteristics, subsequently, a case study of Taihu Lake for accurately extracting seasonal and annual distributions. The results demonstrate that the proposed aquatic vegetation index is highly sensitive to EAV and FAV, and can further distinguish EAV from them coupled with phenological difference. Additionally, the dramatic changes in EAV and FAV in time and space indicated that human purse seine culture has had a great influence on the succession of aquatic vegetation, which may lead to the deterioration of the water ecology environment. Using the SWIR bands coupled with phenological difference is a promising method for recognizing aquatic vegetation above the water surface owing that it can weaken and eliminate the impact of algal bloom at the same time.

Background: The world is transitioning to an obese future, but few studies have measured the burden of increased maternal body mass index (BMI) on pathological fetal overgrowth, especially the trends in this burden and its heterogeneity in populations with different characteristics. Methods: A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted with 7,998,620 Chinese females who had participated in the National Free Pre-Pregnancy Check-ups Project and became pregnant during 2013–2017. The proportions of macrosomic and LGA neonates attributable to high BMI (population attributable fraction, PAF) and annual percent change of yearly PAFs were estimated. Results: We found that the burden of macrosomic and LGA (large-for-gestational-age) neonates attributable to high pre-pregnancy BMI increased among Chinese females with planned pregnancies during 2013–2017. The PAF of macrosomia attributable to high BMI increased from 3.16% (95% confidence interval: 2.97–3.35%) to 7.11% (6.79–7.42%) by 23.60% (16.76–30.85%) annually, and the PAF of LGA increased from 2.35% (2.21–2.48%) to 5.00% (4.79–5.21%) by 21.98% (16.14–28.11%) annually. Our study identified that participants with disadvantaged socioeconomic status (including those without higher education, living in provinces with GDP per capita < 40,000 CNY, tier IV, and tier V cities) and residing in northern and southwestern China were at high risk of a rapidly expanding burden. Conclusions: Government authorities should control pre-pregnancy BMI through nationwide intervention programs and direct more resources to focus on the unfair burden on females with disadvantaged socioeconomic status.

In this study, a cooperative control method based on model predictive control and multiagent theory is proposed to control an interconnected air suspension system with three controllable structures of interconnection mode, damping, and vehicle height. The model predictive controller is constructed based on a discrete-time state-space model. The optimal interval for suspension force is obtained through solving cost functions while satisfying a set of constraints on controlled variables and thereby reducing the coupling complexity of a multivariable control system. Deliberative agents are involved in building cost functions of interconnection mode, vehicle height adjustment, and damping force, and the energy consumption control strategy is established to realize suspension force distribution with low energy consumption. Finally, the test results show that the proposed control method can significantly improve vehicle ride comfort and restrain rollover on the premise of ensuring energy efficiency. Compared with traditional control, the peak value of the sprung mass acceleration speed decreases by 70% and the peak value of the unsprung mass acceleration speed decreases by 75% under straight-driving condition. The roll angle decreases by 40% under the steering condition. As for the traditional control, they are skyhook, imitation skyhook, and PID-PWM control strategies.

Frequent geohazards have knock-on effects on ecological quality. Timely and dynamically monitoring the damage of geohazards to ecological quality is important to the geological hazards prevention, ecological restoration, and policy formulation. Existing studies mainly focused on the impacts of climate change, urbanization, and extreme weather on the ecological quality, largely ignoring the role of frequent geohazards in the highly susceptible area. At present, the impact mechanism of the high susceptibility of geohazards on ecological quality remains unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, we use the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI, a widely accepted ecological quality index) calculated on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, geohazard density data, and the Landsat series of surface reflectance datasets to explore the mechanism that drives spatial–temporal variations of ecological quality. Taking the Danba County as the study area, our results indicate that the total number of geohazards is 944 during 1995–2019, and the number of geohazards fluctuates and rises every year (10 in 1995 and 82 in 2019). A conceptual framework was proposed to quantify the impact of the high susceptibility of geohazards on ecological quality by separately exploring its impact on the 4 ecological components of RSEI (i.e., greenness, wetness, dryness, and heat). We found that the density of geohazards is significantly negatively correlated with greenness (R = 0.48, Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) = −0.528, p

Conventional wisdom is that Sprouty2 (SPRY2), a suppressor of Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) signaling, functions as a tumor suppressor and is downregulated in many solid tumors. We reported, for the first time, that increased expression of SPRY2 augments cancer phenotype and Epithelial-Mesenchymal-Transition (EMT) in colorectal cancer (CRC). In this report, we assessed epigenetic DNA modifications that regulate SPRY2 expression in CRC. A total of 4 loci within SPRY2 were evaluated for 5mC using Combined Bisulfite Restriction Analysis (COBRA). Previously sequenced 5hmC nano-hmC seal data within SPRY2 promoter and gene body were evaluated in CRC. Combined bioinformatics analyses of SPRY2 CRC transcripts by RNA-seq/microarray and 450K methyl-array data archived in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and GEO database were performed. SPRY2 protein in CRC tumors and cells was measured by Western blotting. Increased SPRY2 mRNA was observed across several CRC datasets and increased protein expression was observed among CRC patient samples. For the first time, SPRY2 hypomethylation was identified in adenocarcinomas in the promoter and gene body. We also revealed, for the first time, increases of 5hmC deposition in the promoter region of SPRY2 in CRC. SPRY2 promoter hypomethylation and increased 5hmC may play an influential role in upregulating SPRY2 in CRC.

With the acceleration of urbanization, increasing water pollution means that monitoring and evaluating urban water quality are of great importance. Although highly accurate, traditional evaluation methods are time consuming, laborious, and vastly insufficient in terms of the continuity of spatiotemporal coverage. In this study, a water quality assessment method based on remote sensing reflectance optical classification and the traditional grading principle is proposed. In this method, an optical water type (OWT) library was first constructed using the measured in situ remote sensing reflectance dataset based on fuzzy clustering technology. Then, comprehensive scoring rules were established by combining OWTs and 12 water quality parameters, and water quality was graded into different urban water quality levels (UWQLs) based on the scoring results. Using the proposed method, the relative water quality of urban waterbodies was qualitatively evaluated at the macro level based on images from the multispectral imager of Sentinel-2. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between the UWQLs and the water quality index (WQI). These results indicate the potential of this method for quantitative assessment of urban water quality, providing a new way to evaluate water quality using remote sensing algorithms in the future.

Aiming at the solution to the time-consuming and low-precision disadvantage of present methodologies,the light field depth estimation method combining context information of the scene is proposed.This method is based on an end-to-end convolutional neural network,with the advantage of obtaining depth map from a single light field image.On merit of the reduced computational cost from this method,the time consumption is consequently decreased.For improvement in calculation accuracy,multi orientation epipolar plane image volumes of the light field images are input to network,from which feature can be extracted by the multi-stream encoding module,and then aggregated by the encoding-decoding architecture with skip connection,resulting in fuse the context information of the neighborhood of the target pixel in the process of per-pixel disparity estimation.Furthermore,the model uses convolutional blocks of different depths to extract the structural features of the scene from the central viewpoint image,by introducing these structural features into the corresponding skip connection,additional references for edge features are obtained and the calculation accuracy is further improved.Experiments in the HCI 4D Light Field Benchmark show that the BadPix index and MSE index of the proposed method are respectively 31.2% and 54.6% lower than those of the comparison me-thod,and the average calculation time of depth estimation is 1.2 seconds,which is much faster than comparison method.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are crucial for the pathogenesis of human diseases, including osteoarthritis (OA). Here, we set to elucidate the biological action of circ-LRP1B in OA pathogenesis. Human C28/I2 chondrocytes were stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Circ-LRP1B, nuclear factor, erythroid 2 like 1 (NRF1) and microRNA (miR)-34a-5p were quantified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) or immunoblotting. Cell viability, proliferation, and apoptosis abilities were gauged by MTT, 5-Ethynyl-2'-Deoxyuridine (EdU) staining, and flow cytometry assays, respectively. Direct relationship between miR-34a-5p and circ-LRP1B or NRF1 was validated by RNA pull-down and dual-luciferase reporter assays. Circ-LRP1B was found to be underexpressed in OA cartilage and LPS-stimulated C28/I2 chondrocytes. Enforced expression of circ-LRP1B promoted cell proliferation, and repressed apoptosis and oxidative stress, as well as impacted OA-specific hallmarks expression of LPS-stimulated C28/I2 cells. NRF1 was identified as a downstream effector of circ-LRP1B function. Moreover, NRF1 was identified as a miR-34a-5p target in LPS-stimulated C28/I2 cells. Circ-LRP1B acted as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for miR-34a-5p to involve the post-transcriptional regulation of NRF1 expression. Furthermore, the effects of circ-LRP1B overexpression partly depended on the reduction of available miR-34a-5p. These findings demonstrate that circ-LRP1B functions as a ceRNA to regulate the proliferation, apoptosis and oxidative stress of LPS-stimulated human C28/I2 chondrocytes by miR-34a-5p/NRF1 network., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)