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Background Stroke is highly prevalent in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) , a most common cardiac arrhythmia with high morbidity, and anticoagulation therapy is a key strategy to prevent AF-related stroke. However, there is short of research on the use of anticoagulation therapy in patients with AF in the community. Objective To explore the prevalence of use of anticoagulation therapy and influencing factors in elderly patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) in Shanghai's communities. Methods A cross-sectional survey design was used. Stratified sampling was used to select elderly patients with AF who received the 2018 annual physical examination at four community health centers in Shanghai during July to December 2019, and they were surveyed using a questionnaire (consisting of three parts: demographics, CHA2DS2-VASc score and ORBIT score) compiled by our research team for collecting information on their AF prevalence and associated medication use, awareness of AF, comorbidities, and complication, as well as risk for stroke and bleeding. Based on the results of the survey, we excluded those without previous AF-related medical experience and valvular AF, then analyzed the prevalence of anticoagulation therapy in those with NVAF. Anticoagulation therapy was recommended for patients at high risk for stroke in accordance with the CHA2DS2-VASc score. Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analyses were used to identify influencing factors of anticoagulation therapy in NVAF patients at high risk of stroke. Results Three hundred and two patients with NVAF were finally included, of whom the prevalence of current use of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs was 29.5% (89/302) , and 39.7% (120/302) , respectively, and that of non-use of anticoagulant or antiplatelet drugs was 30.8% (93/302) . By the CHA2DS2-VASc score, 279 of the 302 NVAF patients (92.4%) were assessed with high risk of stroke, among whom the prevalence of current use of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs was 30.5% (85/279) , 40.1% (112/279) , respectively, and the rest 29.4% (82/279) did not take anticoagulant or antiplatelet drugs. Univariate Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that age, marital status, type of AF, onset of AF symptoms, duration of AF, prescription of anticoagulants at the first visit for AF, knowledge of the harmfulness of AF, prevalence of hyperlipidemia, and risk of bleeding were associated with the use of anticoagulation therapy in NVAF patients at high risk of stroke (P

Plasma treatment of wood surfaces has shown significant effects, but different excitation methods used for different species of wood generally result in varied characteristics of wood surfaces. Secondly, plasma modification greatly enhances the absorption of liquids by wood, but the relationship between liquid absorption and surface wettability is rarely studied. Limited detailed investigation of the modification effects and mechanisms has hindered the large-scale applications of plasma treatment in the wood industry. In this study, two typical plasmas, radio frequency (RF) plasma and gliding arc discharge (GAD) plasma, were employed to treat three species of wood: poplar, black walnut, and sapele. By focusing on changes in the contact angle of the wood surface, an exponential equation fitting method is used to determine the measurement time for contact angles. The research identified that factors contributing to the decrease in contact angle after plasma modification include not only the increase in surface energy but also liquid absorption. SEM and XPS analyses demonstrate that plasma etching accelerated liquid absorption by modifying the surface topography, while the increase in surface energy was due to the addition of oxygen-containing groups. High-valence C=O and O-C=O groups serve as indicators of plasma-induced surface chemical reactions. RF modification primarily features surface etching, whereas GAD significantly increases the active surface groups. Thus, different plasmas, due to their distinct excitation modes, produce diverse modification effects on wood. Considering the various physical and chemical properties of plasma-modified wood surfaces, recommendations for adhesive use on plasma-modified wood are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PURPOSE: Compare the association of individual comorbidities, comorbidity indices, and survival in older adults with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including in specific NHL subtypes. METHODS: Data source was SEER-Medicare, a population-based registry of adults age 65 years and older with cancer. We included all incident cases of NHL diagnosed during 2008-2017 who met study inclusion criteria. Comorbidities were classified using the three-factor risk estimate scale (TRES), Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), and National Cancer Institute (NCI) comorbidity index categories and weights. Overall survival (OS) and lymphoma-specific survival, with death from other causes treated as a competing risk, were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method from time of diagnosis. Multivariable Cox models were constructed, and Harrel C-statistics were used to compare comorbidity models. A two-sided P value of <.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: A total of 40,486 patients with newly diagnosed NHL were included. Patients with aggressive NHL had higher rates of baseline comorbidity. Despite differences in baseline comorbidity between NHL subtypes, cardiovascular, pulmonary, diabetes, and renal comorbidities were frequent and consistently associated with OS in most NHL subtypes. These categories were used to construct a candidate comorbidity score, the non-Hodgkin lymphoma 5 (NHL-5). Comparing three validated comorbidity scores, TRES, CCI, NCI, and the novel NHL-5 score, we found similar associations with OS and lymphoma-specific survival, which was confirmed in sensitivity analyses by NHL subtypes. CONCLUSION: The optimal measure of comorbidity in NHL is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that the three-category TRES and five-category NHL-5 scores perform as well as the 14-16 category CCI and NCI scores in terms of association with OS and lymphoma-specific survival. These simple scores could be more easily used in clinical practice without prognostic loss. The largest study to compare lymphoma-specific comorbidity prognostic models' association with survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A blind super-resolution network with dual-channel attention is proposed for images captured by the 0.37 mm diameter sub-millimeter fiberscope. The fiberscope can used in scenarios where other image acquisition devices cannot be applied based on its flexible, soft, and minimally invasive characteristics. However, the images have black reticulated noise and only 3000 pixels. To improve image quality, the Butterworth band-stop filter is used to reduce the frequency of the reticulated noise. By optimizing the blind super-resolution model, high-quality images can be reconstructed that do not require a lot of synthetic paired fiberscope image data. Perceptual loss is utilized as a loss function, and channel and spatial attention mechanisms are introduced to the model to enhance the high-frequency detail information of the reconstructed image. In the comparative experiment with other methods, our method showed improvements of 2.25 in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 0.09 in structural similarity (SSIM) based on objective evaluation metrics. The learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS) based on learning was reduced by 0.6. Furthermore, four different methods were used to enhance the resolution of the fiberscope images by a factor of four. The results of this paper improve the information entropy and Laplace clarity by 0.44 and 2.54, respectively, compared to the average of other methods. Validation results show that the approach in this paper is more applicable to sub-millimeter-diameter fiberscopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-molar ratio UF resin was used in bonding veneers of five wood species. Significantly different bonding strengths were observed among the used wood species. Much higher bonding strengths were found for cherry, sapele mahogany and black walnut, which would be attributed to their natural roughness that allows formation of more mechanical interlockings. After 60s Gliding Arc Discharge (GAD) plasma treatment of wood surface, the wet bonding performance was significantly improved for most of the wood species. The SEM images of wood surface indicated that the roughening, micrometer-scale peeling or etching effects of GAD plasma treatment would be related to the improved bonding performance. XPS characterizations showed that plasma treatment resulted in remarkable increase of O/C ratio for all wood species. Detailed analysis of C1s spectra revealed that drastic oxidation induced by plasma generated high content of oxygen-containing groups, while degradation led to exposure of more oxygen-containing components like cellulose and hemicellulose. In contrast to untreated surface, stronger interactions can be formed between highly polar wood surface and UF resin. GAD plasma appeared to be an efficient tool in both physical and chemical modifications of wood surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjuvant chemotherapy of leucovorin‐modulated 5‐fluorouracil (5‐FU/LV), capecitabine, and adding oxaliplatin to 5‐FU/LV or capecitabine (FLOX/OX) have been standard regimens for high‐risk stage II or III colon cancer (CC). We aimed to evaluate their patterns of use, association with survival, and rate of emergency room visit (ER) or hospitalization during the treatment period. High‐risk stage II or III patients aged >65 years diagnosed between 2007 and 2015, underwent colectomy, and received any of these three regimens were selected from SEER and Texas Cancer Registry (TC) linked with Medicare data. Chi‐square test, Kaplan–Meier survival curves, Cox regression, and logistic regression were used in data analysis. A total of 5621 (1080 stage II and 4541 stage III) patients with median age of 72 years were included in this study. For stage II, 24.4% used 5‐FU/LV, 31.2% used capecitabine, and 44.4% used FLOX/OX; the respective numbers for stage III were 13.8%, 17.9%, and 68.3%. Patients aged <70 years, not in the West region, not in Medicare state‐buy‐in program, and with no comorbidity were more likely to use FLOX/OX. FLOX/OX was associated with improved overall survival (OS) in stage II and III patients and improved cancer‐specific survival in stage III patients compared with 5‐FU/LV. The survival benefit of FLOX/OX was sustained in stage III patients aged ≥70 years. Capecitabine had the lowest ER/hospitalization rate with 19.2% in stage II and 28.9% in III. The use of FLOX/OX was associated with improved survival compared with 5‐FU/LV among CC patients. Capecitabine was associated with the lowest ER/hospitalization rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]