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Anemia is a global public health problem, especially common among children in developing countries, which affects their physical and mental health development. However, there is currently a lack of research on the relationship between anemia and academic performance. The objective of this study was to explore the association between anemia and academic performance, and the possible factors mediating this association among Chinese children. The data for this study came from the baseline survey of the Chinese Education Panel Survey Elementary School Cohort. The cohort was conducted from September 2018 to June 2019 in 160 elementary schools, covering 20 provinces and 40 counties/districts throughout China. Paper-based questionnaires were used, completed by 4th grade students, parents, head teachers, main teachers, and principals. The data used included questionnaire responses, physical measurements, and academic performance of 17,695 students. Based on students' hemoglobin levels and school altitude data, we grouped them into anemia and nonanemia categories using WHO criteria. The anemia group had 1,154 individuals, while the nonanemia group had 16,541 individuals. An ordinary least squares regression and mediation effect analysis were conducted. Our findings found the prevalence of anemia was 6.52% among Chinese Grade 4 students. Students without anemia had a higher average test score for three academic subjects than students with anemia (P < 0.001); their test scores for Chinese, Mathematics, and English were also higher (P < 0.05). Multivariate regression analysis showed a negative association between anemia and average test scores as well as individual test scores for the three subjects. Mediation analysis found that anemia affected academic performance directly (P < 0.05), and indirectly by decreasing the cognition score (P < 0.05). The indirect effect was 19.9% of the total effect. Findings highlighted anemia affected academic performance both directly and indirectly. Nutrition-related interventions should be implemented to prevent a decrease in academic performance among students with anemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crack detection at the pixel level across complex scenarios (structural interference and adverse working conditions) is a critical consideration in the maintenance of ballastless track slab (BTS). Although existing deep learning models achieve acceptable accuracy on cracks with a monotonous background, the ground truth with high labor cost is inevitable and their performance in complex scenarios may fall far below their theoretical bounds or even cause "all-black images." A hybrid algorithm based on synthetic data from digital twin model and weakly supervised style transfer is proposed in this paper for addressing the above challenges. The algorithm uses a region-attention strategy to enable the uncontrolled generative adversarial network (GAN) focusing its attention on weak labels containing crack regions, directly obtaining segmentation results with the same style as the ground truth of the crack forest dataset. In addition, a digital twin model that can simulate the real inspection working conditions is established to generate a synthetic crack dataset, enabling the hybrid algorithm to extract the most discriminative features. The results show that the performance of the hybrid algorithm on inspection images across complex scenarios is nearly 25% higher than that of the DeepLabv3+ network, while the time cost consumed is only 0.5% of the latter. The deployment of the region attention strategy also enables the hybrid algorithm to achieve a mean intersection of union (MIoU) of 79.38%, which is nearly twice as much as that of GAN. It not only eliminates the oversegmentation caused by structures such as rails and fastener systems but also overcomes "all-black images." In addition, synthetic data can greatly enlarge the range, type, and number of discriminative crack features compared with data augmentation based on limited real data, thus enhancing the performance of the hybrid algorithm for uncertain inspection data. Particularly, the fully trained hybrid algorithm based on the synthetic dataset shows good adaptability and generalization to adverse working conditions such as uneven lighting, noise, and blur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to explore the effect of the Wuhan lockdown on body mass index (BMI) among Wuhan residents as well as factors including food habits affected and changes in physical activity mediating the association. As a survey of the Wuhan lockdown, a random digit dialing method was used to sample residents aged 18 years and older. A computer-aided telephone interview was applied to survey 11,223 residents in Wuhan City in July 2020. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and mediation analysis were used to analyze the influence of the Wuhan lockdown on BMI. Demographic characteristics, lifestyle characteristics, and health status differed statistically significantly between residents living in and those who left Wuhan during the lockdown (mean BMI, 23.05 ± 0.04 kg/m2 and 22.34 ± 0.06 kg/m2, respectively). The mean BMI among residents living in Wuhan was 0.42 kg/m2 higher (P < 0.001) than that of residents who left Wuhan during the lockdown, as determined by multivariate OLS regression analysis. Residents living in Wuhan during the lockdown had higher BMI among those aged 18–29 and 30–44 years (P < 0.001), with no difference among those aged 45+ years. The association between living in Wuhan and increased BMI was the strongest among residents who were overweight/obese. The mediation analysis results showed an indirect effect path with living in Wuhan (through decreased physical activity and increasing BMI) and the direct effect of living in Wuhan during the lockdown. The lack of association between living in Wuhan and increased BMI among residents aged 45+ years was due to the indirect influence of living in Wuhan affecting food habits. The findings indicated that the lockdown in Wuhan city increased residents' BMI, especially among those who were young or overweight/obese, partly because of decreased physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purpose of this study was to systematically evaluate the effect of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockers on the incidence of contrast-induced nephropathy in patients undergoing coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention.Methods: A systematic literature search of several databases was conducted to identify studies that met the inclusion criteria. A total of 12 studies with 14 trials that performed studies on a total of 4864 patients (2484 treated with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockers and 2380 in the control group) were included. The primary endpoint was the overall incidence of contrast-induced nephropathy. Analyses were performed with STATA version 12.0.Results: The overall contrast-induced nephropathy incidence in renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blocker and control groups was 10.43% and 6.81%, respectively. The pooled relative risk of contrast-induced nephropathy incidence was 1.22 (95% confidence interval: 0.81-1.84) in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blocker group. An increased risk of developing contrast-induced nephropathy in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blocker group was observed among older people, non-Asians, chronic users, and studies with larger sample size, and the pooled RRs and 95% confidence intervals were 2.02 (1.21-3.36), 2.30 (1.41-3.76), 1.69 (1.10-2.59) and 1.83 (1.28-2.63), respectively.Conclusions: Intervention with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockers was associated with an increased risk of contrast-induced nephropathy among non-Asians, chronic users, older people, and studies with larger sample size. Large clinical trials with strict inclusion criteria are needed to confirm our results and to evaluate the effect further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five novel H5N6 influenza viruses, including four highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses and one low pathogenic avian influenza virus, were isolated from migratory birds in Ningxia, China, in November 2017. To understand the genetic origination of the novel H5N6 virus, and the infectivity and pathogenicity of the four highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses in mammals, phylogeographic analyses and infection studies in mice were performed. The phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses showed that the H5N6 isolates, which are closely related to the viruses from Korea, Japan and the Netherlands, originated from reassortant virus between H5N8 and HxN6 viruses from western Russia. The animal study revealed that the SBD‐87 isolate presented moderate virulence in mice, suggesting a potential public risk to humans and a potential threat to public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Background/Aims: Oxidative stress injury is believed to be important in diabetic cardiomyopathy. Recent evidence indicates that miR‐22 plays an important role in various cardiovascular diseases, but the protective role of miR‐22 in diabetic cardiomyopathy remains undetermined. Methods: Diabetes was induced in male C57BL/6 mice by intraperitoneal injection with streptozotocin combined with a high‐fat diet, and miR‐22 was overexpressed following transfection with adeno‐associated virus. Cardiac function was assessed by echocardiography and a cardiac catheter system. In vitro study, H9c2 cells were treated with normal or high glucose (HG), and cell viability or apoptosis was detected using the Cell Counting Kit‐8 (CCK‐8) assay and flow cytometry, respectively. Reactive oxygen species, malondialdehyde, and superoxide dismutase were also detected in diabetic mice and H9c2 cells. The expression level of miR‐22 was detected by real‐time PCR. The protein expression of Sirt 1, oxidative stress injury‐related proteins (GRP78, CHOP, ATF 3), and apoptosis‐related proteins Bax/Bcl‐2, cl‐casp‐9/casp‐9, and cl‐casp‐3/casp‐3 were determined by Western blotting analysis. Results: HG‐induced oxidative stress injury and apoptosis were observed in H9c2 cells, which were ameliorated by miR‐22. Cardiac dysfunction and severely altered heart structure were also observed in diabetic mice and were dramatically reversed by overexpression of miR‐22. The expression of Sirt 1 decreased significantly in diabetic mice and HG‐treated H9c2 cells. Overexpression of miR‐22 restored the level of Sirt 1. Bioinformatics analysis predicted that Sirt 1 was a potential target gene of miR‐22. Luciferase reporter assay verified that miR‐22 promoted Sirt 1 expression by direct binding to the Sirt 1 3′untranslated repeats. Upregulation of Sirt 1 could improve cell viability and attenuate oxidative stress injury and apoptosis in the HG‐treated H9c2 cells, similar to the effect of miR‐22. However, the protective effects of miR‐22 against HG‐induced oxidative stress injury and apoptosis were abrogated by knockdown of Sirt 1. Conclusions: Overexpression of miR‐22 can attenuate oxidative stress injury in diabetic cardiomyopathy by upregulation of Sirt 1 in vivo and in vitro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Long Term Evolution Advanced networks with Type I in-band half-duplex decode-and-forward relay nodes, proportional fair (PF) resource allocation is aiming at guaranteeing two-hop match and optimising global proportional fairness. The two-hop match is defined as equal data rates in the access links and the corresponding backhaul links. The global proportional fairness is between all the user equipments served by the evolved nodes B and the relay nodes. Existing centralised schemes achieve these targets at the cost of enormous channel state information (CSI) exchange. Existing distributed schemes focus on resource partitioning and employ a traditional single-hop PF scheduling algorithm in access links, with less CSI exchange. The traditional PF scheduling algorithm maximises single-hop proportional fairness between the data rates in the access links rather than two-hop proportional fairness between the end-to-end data rates in the two hops. In order to reduce CSI exchange and at the same time to maximise the two-hop proportional fairness, a distributed two-hop PF resource allocation scheme is proposed. The proposed scheme includes two-hop PF resource scheduling algorithms and adaptive resource partitioning algorithms, applied in different two-hop transmission protocols. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed scheme is better than the existing distributed schemes in obtaining better proportional fairness and larger cell-edge user equipment throughputs. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]