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As the most abundant class of transcription factors in eukaryotes, C2H2-type zinc finger proteins (C2H2-ZFPs) play critical roles in various biological processes. Despite being extensively studied in mammals, C2H2-ZFPs remain poorly characterized in birds. Recent accumulation of multi-omics data for chicken enables the genome-wide investigation of C2H2-ZFPs in birds. The purpose of this study is to reveal the genomic occurrence and evolutionary signature of chicken C2H2-ZFPs, and further depict their expression profiles across diverse chicken tissues. Here, we annotated 301 C2H2-ZFPs in chicken genome, which are associated with different effector domains, including KRAB, BTB, HOMEO, PHD, SCAN, and SET. Among them, most KRAB-ZFPs lack orthologues in mammals and tend to form clusters by duplication, supporting their fast evolution in chicken. We also annotated a unique and previously unidentified SCAN-ZFP, which is lineage-specific and highly expressed in ovary and testis. By integrating 101 RNA-seq datasets for 32 tissues, we found that most C2H2-ZFPs have tissue-specific expression. Particularly, 74 C2H2-ZFPs—including 27 KRAB-ZFPs—show blastoderm-enriched expression, indicating their association with early embryo development. Overall, this study performs comprehensive annotation and expression profiling of C2H2 ZFPs in diverse chicken tissues, which gives new insights into the evolution and potential function of C2H2-ZFPs in avian species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overall urea–water electrolysis has the potential to be employed in the purification of urea-containing wastewater and the production of hydrogen. However, the lack of cost-effective catalysts currently presents a significant obstacle to the further development of this technology. Through a simple template-directed selenium reaction in a novel type of highly active solution, an interface engineering strategy was designed to synthesize hollow CuSe nanocubes as an efficient bifunctional catalyst. The unique hollow CuSe nanocubes exhibit significant catalytic efficiency because of their larger electrolyte contact area and faster ion transport. In 1 M KOH with a 0.5 M urea electrolyte, CuSe/NF required an overpotential of 199 mV for HER and a potential of 1.38 V for UOR to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2. It can work stably for 24 h without significant degradation of activity at 10 mA cm−2, showing excellent durability and excellent stability. For overall urea–water electrolysis, it exhibits a remarkable activity with a low cell voltage of 1.61 V at 10 mA cm−2. Consequently, the design strategy of this unique hollow-structured CuSe provides a new insight to improve electrocatalytic performance and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A copper‐catalyzed, facile and efficient approach for the synthesis of 3‐arylquinolin‐2‐ones starting from (E)‐3‐(2‐bromophenyl)‐2‐arylacrylamides has been developed. Readily available starting materials, noble metal‐ and ligand‐free conditions, as well as good tolerability for phenolic groups make this protocol attractive and practicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this review is to identify and summarize factors that are associated with public attitudes towards people with various disabilities systematically.Methods: An electronic search of three databases was performed (Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane) covering the period from 1950 to present. A comprehensive search strategy was developed and the lists of citations were screened for potential eligible studies. Only quantitative studies using valid measurements were included, and the methodological quality of included studies was appraised based on three criteria (sample, measurement, analysis) by two independent reviewers.Results: The initial electronic search yielded 995 articles after duplicates removed, and 27 studies met the eligibility criteria were included in the study. Three categories of the factors were found to be associated with the public attitudes, which are related to the attitude provider, disabled people, and society respectively. Specifically, the more people know about disabilities, the more likely they were to have positive attitude; and the frequency and quality of the contact with the disabled are also proved to be influential to the attitudes. Meanwhile, the type of disability is also closely correlated to the public's attitude towards the disabilities.Conclusion: People's knowledge of the disability and their contact with individuals with disabilities are the main influential factors in public attitudes towards persons with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Surgery is usually recommended for thoracolumbar fracture with neurologic deficit. However, traditional open posterior approach requires massive paraspinal muscles stripping, and the canal decompression may be limited and incomplete. We aimed to investigate a new approach via the Wiltse approach and the Kambin's Triangle.Methods: Twenty-one consecutive patients with traumatic upper lumbar fracture who received this new approach surgery between January 2015 and January 2016 constituted the new approach group. Twenty-nine patients received the traditional open posterior surgery between January 2014 and January 2015 were classified as the traditional posterior surgery group. Surgical informations including operative time, blood loss, drainage volume, hospitalization days were collected and compared among the two groups. The American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) impairment scale and Visual Analog Score (VAS) were evaluated preoperatively, postoperatively and at 12 months follow-up.Results: Patients in the new approach group had fewer operation time (128.3 ± 25.1 vs 151 ± 32.2 min, P = 0.01), less blood loss (243.8 ± 135.5 vs 437.8 ± 224.9 ml, P = 0.001) and drainage volume (70.7 ± 57.2 vs 271.7 ± 95.5 ml, P < 0.001), as well as shorter hospitalization stay than the traditional posterior surgery group (6.6 ± 1.8 vs 8.5 ± 2.4 d, P = 0.004). Similar neurologic recovery according to ASIA grade was achieved in both groups (Recovery index: 0.90 ± 0.53 vs 0.86 ± 0.51, P = 0.778). While the pain level was significantly lower in the new approach group postoperatively (2.6 ± 0.7 vs 3.5 ± 0.9, P < 0.001) and at 12 months follow-up (1.4 ± 0.9 vs 2.4 ± 0.8, P < 0.001).Conclusion: The present new approach was successfully applied in the treatment of upper lumbar fracture with neurologic deficit. It can reduce iatrogenic trauma and achieve similar or better outcomes compared to the traditional posterior surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vessel-wall-volume (VWV) measured based on three-dimensional (3D) carotid artery (CA) ultrasound (US) images can help to assess carotid atherosclerosis and manage patients at risk for stroke. Manual involvement for measurement work is subjective and requires well-trained operators, and fully automatic measurement tools are not yet available. Thereby, we proposed a fully automatic VWV measurement framework (Auto-VWV) using a CA prior-knowledge embedded U-Net (CAP-UNet) to measure the VWV from 3D CA US images without manual intervention. The Auto-VWV framework is designed to improve the repeated VWV measuring consistency, which resulted in the first fully automatic framework for VWV measurement. CAP-UNet is developed to improve segmentation accuracy on the whole CA, which composed of a U-Net type backbone and three additional prior-knowledge learning modules. Specifically, a continuity learning module is used to learn the spatial continuity of the arteries in a sequence of image slices. A voxel evolution learning module was designed to learn the evolution of the artery in adjacent slices, and a topology learning module was used to learn the unique topology of the carotid artery. In two 3D CA US datasets, CAP-UNet architecture achieved state-of-the-art performance compared to eight competing models. Furthermore, CAP-UNet-based Auto-VWV achieved better accuracy and consistency than Auto-VWV based on competing models in the simulated repeated measurement. Finally, using 10 pairs of real repeatedly scanned samples, Auto-VWV achieved better VWV measurement reproducibility than intra- and inter-operator manual measurements.