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Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) is a luminescence production technique triggered by electrochemistry, which has emerged as a powerful analytical technique in bioanalysis and clinical diagnosis. During ECL, charge transfer (CT) is an important process between electrochemical excitation and luminescent emission, and dramatically affects the efficiency of exciton generation, playing a pivotal role in the light-emitting properties of nanomaterials. Reticular framework materials with intramolecular/intermolecular interactions offer a promising platform for regulating CT pathways and enhancing luminescence efficiency. Deciphering the role of intramolecular/intermolecular CT processes in reticular framework materials allows for the targeted design and synthesis of emitters with precisely controlled CT properties. This sheds light on the microscopic mechanisms of electro-optical conversion in ECL, propelling advancements in their efficiency and breakthrough applications. This mini-review focuses on recent advancements in engineering CT within reticular frameworks to boost ECL efficiency. We summarized strategies including intra-reticular charge transfer, CT between the metal and ligands, and CT between guest molecules and frameworks within reticular frameworks, which holds promise for developing next-generation ECL devices with enhanced sensitivity and light emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Scarce research has reported the comparison between robotic and laparoscopic surgery in mid–low rectal cancer. Therefore, this meta-analysis is aimed to compare the safety and efficacy of the two surgical approaches. Methods: A comprehensive search of the databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, and Web of Science) was performed for studies comparing robotic and laparoscopic surgery. The outcomes of interest acquired from eight articles included three aspects: intraoperative conditions, postoperative status of patients, and complications. All data (robotic = 1350 patients, laparoscopic = 1330 patients) enrolled were analyzed using Rev Man 5.4. Results: Compared to the laparoscopic group, the robotic group indicated a noticeable superiority in estimated blood loss (P < 0.0001), number of lymph nodes dissected (P = 0.004), time to first flatus (P = 0.001), time to first fluid diet (P = 0.001), hospital stay (P < 0.0001), conversion (P = 0.009), and urinary retention (P = 0.0006), but devoted much more operation time (P = 0.0004). Conclusion: Robotic surgery was associated with superiority over laparoscopic surgery in increasing surgical safety, accelerating postoperative recovery, and reducing complications, which suggested that robotic surgery could be a safe and effective method for treating mid–low rectal cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel electromagnetic shocking treatment (EST) was put forward to selectively embellish interface microstructure of solid alloy and improve its performance in our previous work. However, considering the nonlinear response characteristic of phase evolution under EST, the effect of precipitates evolution on precipitate and microhardness distribution of Al7075-T73 alloy is worth of attention and still unknown. Herein, microhardness distribution test and TEM characterization of precipitates for Al7075-T73 alloy are carried out to explore the influence mechanism of EST on the precipitate and microhardness distribution. Compared with the received sample, the microhardness distribution turns more homogeneous, while the average microhardness remains basically constant for EST sample. Besides, for EST sample, grain boundary precipitates (GBPs) dissolve and coarsen obviously, while there also exists that the distribution of matrix intragranular precipitates remains basically constant with that of the received sample. Meanwhile, stripy grain boundaries (GBs) can be observed more commonly and GB wetting occurs for EST sample. It indicates that EST promotes nonlinear interface wetting and results in nonlinear phase transition, inducing significant GBPs transformation and then gradient phase transition of precipitates within grain size scale. The resultant gradient phase distribution combined with nonlinear interface bridging promotes a more homogeneous microhardness distribution without losing the mechanical properties of aluminum alloy. This work provides a new understanding about the effect of EST on the microstructure evolution process of solid alloy and is beneficial to the optimization of EST process to improve the service performance of alloys and even finished parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) model to automatically identify the manufacturer and model of hip internal fixation devices from anteroposterior (AP) radiographs. Materials and methods: In this retrospective study, 1721 hip AP radiographs, including six internal fixation devices from 1012 patients, were collected from an orthopedic center between June 2014 and June 2022 to establish a classification network. The images were divided into training set (1106 images), validation set (272 images), and test set (343 images). The model efficacy is evaluated by using the data on the test set. The overall TOP-1 accuracy, and the precision, sensitivity, specificity, and F1 score of each model are calculated, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are plotted to evaluate the model performance. Gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM) images are used to determine the image features that are most important for DCNN decisions. Results: A total of 1378 (80%) images were used for model development, and model efficacy was validated on a test set with 343 (20%) images. The overall TOP-1 accuracy was 98.5%. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values for each internal fixation model were 1.000, 1.000, 0.980, 1.000, 0.999, and 1.000, respectively. Gradient-weighted class activation mapping showed the unique design of the internal fixation device. Conclusion: We developed a deep convolutional neural network model that can identify the manufacturer and model of hip internal fixation devices from the hip AP radiographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing amount of experimental evidence has proven that the application of gold nanorods (AuNRs) in photodynamic therapy (PDT) can significantly enhance its therapeutic efficacy. The aim of this study was to establish a protocol for investigating the effect of gold nanorods loaded with the photosensitizer chlorin e6 (Ce6) on photodynamic therapy in the OVCAR3 human ovarian cancer cell line in vitro and to determine whether the PDT effect was different from that of Ce6 alone. OVCAR3 cells were randomly divided into three groups: the control group, Ce6-PDT group, and AuNRs@SiO2@Ce6-PDT group. Cell viability was measured by MTT assay. The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was measured by a fluorescence microplate reader. Cell apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry. The expression of apoptotic proteins was detected by immunofluorescence and western blotting. The results showed that compared with that of the Ce6-PDT group, the cell viability of the AuNRs@SiO2@Ce6-PDT group was significantly decreased (P < 0.05) in a dose-dependent manner, and ROS production increased significantly (P < 0.05). The flow cytometry results showed that the proportion of apoptotic cells in the AuNRs@SiO2@Ce6-PDT group was significantly higher than that in the Ce6-PDT group (P < 0.05). Immunofluorescence and western blot results showed that the protein expression levels of cleaved caspase-9, cleaved caspase-3, cleaved PARP, and Bax in the AuNRs@SiO2@Ce6-PDT-treated-OVCAR3 cells were higher than those in the Ce6-PDT-treated cells (P < 0.05), and the protein expression levels of caspase-3, caspase-9, PARP, and Bcl-2 were slightly lower than those in the Ce6-PDT group (P < 0.05). In summary, our results show that AuNRs@SiO2@Ce6-PDT has a significantly stronger effect on OVCAR3 cells than the effect of Ce6-PDT alone. The mechanism may be related to the expression of Bcl-2 family and caspase family in the mitochondrial pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust in automation plays a leading role in human-automation interaction. As there lack of scales measuring trust in automation in China, the purpose of this study was to adapt the trust between People and Automation Scale (TPAS) into Chinese and to demonstrate its psychometric properties among Chinese adults. A total of 310 Chinese adults were randomly selected as sample 1, and 508 Chinese adults as sample 2. Results of the item analysis revealed that each item had a good quality, and the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggested that the two-factor model with 12 items was the best fitting model. In addition, the TPAS was positively correlated with Interpersonal Trust Scale (ITS), proving good evidence based on relations to other variables to support the TPAS. In sum, the study suggested that the Chinese version of the TPAS could be used as an effective tool to assess trust in automation in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Line drawing with colorization is a popular art format and tool for architectural illustration. The goal of this research is toward generating a high-quality and natural-looking colorization based on an architectural line drawing. This paper presents a new Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based method, named ArchGANs, including ArchColGAN and ArchShdGAN. ArchColGAN is a GAN-based line-feature-aware network for stylized colorization generation. ArchShdGAN is a lighting effects generation network, from which the building depiction in 3D can benefit. In particular, ArchColGAN is able to maintain the important line features and the correlation property of building parts as well as reduce the uneven colorization caused by sparse lines. Moreover, we proposed a color enhancement method to further improve ArchColGAN. Besides the single line drawing images, we also extend our method to handle line drawing image sequences and achieve rotation animation. Experiments and studies demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of our proposed method for colorization prototyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder with unclear etiology. Some genes may be pleiotropically or potentially causally associated with PCOS. In the present study, the summary data-based Mendelian randomization (SMR) method integrating genome-wide association study (GWAS) for PCOS and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data was applied to identify genes that were pleiotropically associated with PCOS. Separate SMR analysis was performed using eQTL data in the ovary and whole blood. Although no genes showed significant pleiotropic association with PCOS after correction for multiple testing, some of the genes exhibited suggestive significance. RPS26 showed the strongest suggestive pleiotropic association with PCOS in both SMR analyses (β[SE]=0.10[0.03], PSMR=1.72×10−4 for ovary; β[SE]=0.11[0.03], PSMR=1.40×10−4 for whole blood). PM20D1 showed the second strongest suggestive pleiotropic association with PCOS in the SMR analysis using eQTL data for the whole blood and was also among the top ten hit genes in the SMR analysis using eQTL data for the ovary. Two other genes, including CTC-457L16.2 and NEIL2, were among the top ten hit genes in both SMR analyses. In conclusion, this study revealed multiple genes that were potentially involved in the pathogenesis of PCOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To identify the optimal method for endometrial preparation in vitrified single-blastocyst transfer (VSBT) cycles. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study for non-PCOS patients who underwent VSBT cycles from March 2015 to November 2019 in an academic reproductive medical center. A total of 6840 VSBT cycles were enrolled and classified into two groups according to different endometrial preparation methods. Results: The non-PCOS patients who underwent VSBT showed a significantly higher clinical pregnancy rate (61.96% vs 56.85%, p < 0.001) and live birth rate (49.09% vs 39.86%, p < 0.001), as well as a statistically lower early miscarriage rate (12.02% vs 18.08%, p < 0.001) in the natural cycle (NC) group compared with the artificial cycle (AC) group. Multivariable analysis further confirmed that NC was associated with an increased likelihood of clinical pregnancy (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.852, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.765–0.949, p = 0.004) and live birth (aOR 0.746, 95% CI 0.669–0.832, p < 0.001), but decreased early miscarriage occurrence (aOR 1.447, 95% CI 1.215–1.724, p < 0.001) compared to AC. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that non-PCOS patients could benefit from NC in vitrified blastocyst transfer. Increased clinical pregnancy rate and decreased early miscarriage rate led to a significantly higher live birth rate in NC patients compared with AC with our present protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Loose Plant Architecture 1 (LPA1), an indeterminate domain (IDD) protein, exhibits almost no expression in the leaves, but the overexpression of LPA1 significantly increases the resistance of rice to sheath blight disease (ShB) via the activation of PIN-FORMED 1a (PIN1a). Results: In this study, we determined that Rhizoctonia solani infection significantly induced LPA1 expression in the leaves, and lpa1 was more susceptible to R. solani compared with the wild-type and revertant plants. In addition, infection with R. solani altered the expression of IDD3, IDD5, IDD10, and IDD13, and yeast two-hybrid, split-GFP, and coimmunoprecipitation assays showed that LPA1 interacts with IDD3 and IDD13. IDD13 RNAi plants were more susceptible, while IDD13 overexpressors were less susceptible to ShB compared with the wild-type. In parallel, idd3 exhibited no significant differences, while IDD3 overexpressors were more susceptible compared to the wild-type response to ShB. Additional chromatin-immunoprecipitation and electrophoretic mobility shift assay experiments indicated that IDD13 and IDD3 bound to the PIN1a promoter, and the transient assay indicated that IDD13 and IDD3 positively and negatively regulate PIN1a expression, respectively. Moreover, IDD13, IDD3, and LPA1 form a transcription factor complex that regulates PIN1a. A genetic study showed that the LPA1 repressor lines were similar to lpa1/IDD13 RNAi and were more susceptible than the lpa1 and IDD13 RNAi plants in response to ShB. The overexpression of IDD13 increased resistance to ShB in the lpa1 background. Conclusions: Taken together, our analyses established that IDD3, IDD13, and LPA1 form a transcription factor complex to regulate the defense of rice against ShB possibly via the regulation of PIN1a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which migrant families successfully navigate their settlement and heritage cultures has been associated with family members' well-being. Specifically, parent-offspring acculturation gaps are purportedly linked to negative outcomes. Inconsistences in prior research are discussed in light of possible concerns relating to conceptual clarity and methodological limitations. To examine these, a study of 153 youth-parent dyads (youth sample: 58% female, Mage = 19.64, range = 13–25) was conducted. Participants were asked to assess their acculturation and that of their relative. Using multilevel regression, individual acculturation, but not acculturation gaps, was associated with youth well-being. Heritage engagement of youth and settlement engagement of their parents was beneficial, whereas parent's heritage engagement was detrimental. Thus, integration at the family level is likely to maximize migrant youth well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen polysulfides (H2Sn, n > 1), as the oxidized forms of H2S, have attracted increasing attention these years due to their involvement in signaling transduction and cytoprotective processes. It is necessary to detect H2Sn in living systems for the study of their functions. In this work, we report a BODIPY-based near-infrared emitting fluorescence probe NIR-PHS1, with "turn-on" response, rapid response rate (within 10 min), outstanding selectivity and excellent sensitivity (detection limit = 12 nM) response towards H2Sn. The probe was successfully applied to the visualizing of endogenous H2Sn in living cells. Moreover, it can be used for near-infrared in vivo imaging of H2Sn in living mice. Therefore, NIR-PHS1 could be a potential imaging tool to study the biological roles of H2Sn in living systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To compare the safety and efficacy of thulium laser enucleation of the prostate (ThuLEP) versus thulium laser resection of the prostate (TmLRP) in small prostates (≤ 30 g) and to test the validity of ThuLEP for bladder neck contracture (BNC). Methods: A total of 115 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) (prostate size ≤ 30 g) were randomly assigned to ThuLEP (n = 56) or TmLRP (n = 59). All patients were evaluated preoperatively and at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery. Baseline characteristics of the patients, perioperative data, postoperative outcomes and complications were assessed. Results: Comparisons of the baseline and perioperative data demonstrated no significant differences between the ThuLEP and TmLRP groups. Significant improvement was noted in the International Prostate Symptom Score, quality of life, maximal urinary flow rate (Qmax) and post-void residual volume (PVR) in both groups at the 12-month follow-up, and assessment showed no differences in these parameters between the two groups. The TmLRP group showed a significantly higher rate (13.6%) of BNC than the ThuLEP group (1.8%; P = 0.045). There were no significant differences in other complications between the two groups (P > 0.05). Conclusions: ThuLEP and TmLRP are both safe and efficient procedures for the treatment of patients with small prostate volume, while ThuLEP can significantly reduce the risk of BNC in patients with a small prostate because the procedure enucleates adenomas without thermal damage to the bladder neck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The feasibility and effectiveness of selecting an intracorporeal or extracorporeal technique in left hemicolectomy remain poorly understood. This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the difference between the two approaches regarding intraoperative and postoperative outcomes. Methods: A thorough exploration of online databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and Web of Science) was executed to identify randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, and case control studies. The outcomes contained four aspects: intraoperative outcomes, postoperative complications, postoperative patient conditions, and postoperative outcomes. All of these data were analyzed using RevMan 5.4. Seven retrospective control trials (intracorporeal, 396 patients; extracorporeal, 426 patients) were evaluated. Results: Compared to the extracorporeal group, the intracorporeal group demonstrated superiority in incision length (P = 0.005), overall complications (P = 0.01), time to first flatus (P < 0.001), time to first stool (P = 0.005), time to first diet (P < 0.001) and hospital stay duration (P = 0.001). Conclusions: The intracorporeal technique is associated with superiority over the extracorporeal technique in reducing postoperative complications, promoting postoperative recovery of gastrointestinal function, and reducing hospital stay duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are a class of emerging contaminants widely distributed in the wastewater treatment system. The simultaneous analysis of multiple PPCPs in the sludge, which is a complex matrix, is still not fully studied. In this study, a procedure based on matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) for the extraction of PPCPs from the sludge with determination by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was investigated. Forty-five PPCPs, including antibiotics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, β-blockers, antidepressants, antimicrobial agents, preservatives, UV filters, and so on, were studied. MSPD parameters, including the sorbent materials, the ratio of sample to sorbent, the eluent composition, and the elution volumes, were sequentially optimized. Best results were achieved by 0.1 g of sludge homogenized with 0.4 g of C18-bonded silica sorbent and elution by 6 mL methanol and 10 mL acetonitrile/5 % oxalic acid (8/2, v/ v). The method quantification limits for the 45 PPCPs ranged 0.117-5.55 μg/kg. The PPCP recoveries ranged from 50.3 to 107 % with relative standard deviation lower than 15 %. The proposed method was applied to analyze PPCPs in the sludge collected from a domestic wastewater treatment plant over 1 year. Thirteen PPCPs were detected, with the concentrations of ofloxacin and triclocarban more than 1000 μg/kg. Temporal variations of the PPCP levels were observed. Thus, MSPD-LC-MS/MS method could achieve good sensitivity and recovery for the target PPCP analysis in the sludge samples, while MSPD provided one-step sample preparation which was easier and faster to perform compared to the commonly used methods. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common skeletal disease, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients, particularly in the middle-aged and elderly individuals. We aimed to explore whether rs9340799 [estrogen receptor alpha (ER-α) XbaI A/G] polymorphism was associated with OA using a meta-analysis. A literature search for eligible studies published before March 28, 2014 was conducted in the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane database, Current Controlled Trials, Clinicaltrials.gov, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, CBMdisc, CNKI, Google Scholar and Baidu Library. The association between the rs9340799 polymorphism and OA risk was assessed by odds ratios (ORs) together with their 95 % confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 663 articles were found. After article review and quality assessment, 10 articles involving 2,924 OA cases and 5,868 controls were included in the final meta-analysis. The combined evidence suggested that rs9340799 polymorphism contributed significantly to an increased risk of OA (for G allele vs. A allele: OR = 1.21, 95 % CI 1.03-1.43, p = 0.02; for G/G vs. A/A: OR = 1.30, 95 % CI 1.07-1.57, p = 0.009). In the subgroup analyses, significant associations were found between the rs9340799 polymorphism and the OA risk in the European group, Asian group, and knee osteoarthritis group, respectively. These results suggested that the rs9340799 polymorphism might be associated with the risk of OA. However, the results should be interpreted with caution because of the publication bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alpha-linolenic acid (LIN) has been shown to provide neuroprotective effects against cerebral ischemia. LIN is a potent activator of TREK-1 channel and LIN-induced neuroprotection disappears in Trek1−/− mice, suggesting that this channel is directly related to the LIN-induced resistance of brain against ischemia. However, the cellular mechanism underlying LIN induced neuroprotective effects after ischemia remains unclear. In this study, using a rat photochemical brain ischemia model, we investigated the effects of LIN on the protein abundance of astrocytic glutamate transporter and AQP4, microglia activation, cell apoptosis and behavioral recovery following ischemia. Administration of LIN rescued the protein abundance of astrocytic glutamate transporter GLT-1, decreased the protein abundance of AQP4 and brain edema, inhibited microglia activation, attenuated cell apoptosis and improved behavioral function recovery. Meanwhile, TREK-1 was widely distributed in the cortex and hippocampus, primarily localized in astrocytes and neurons. LIN could potentiate the TREK-1 mediated astrocytic passive conductance and hyperpolarize the membrane potential. Our results suggest that LIN provides multiple cellular neuroprotective effects in cerebral ischemia. TREK-1 may serve as a promising multi-mechanism therapeutic target for the treatment of stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ischemia and reperfusion injury (IRI) is an ineluctable immune-related pathophysiological process during organ transplantation, which not only causes a shortage of donor organs, but also has long-term and short-term negative consequences on patients. Severe IRI-induced cell death leads to the release of endogenous substances, which bind specifically to receptors on immune cells to initiate an immune response. Although innate and adaptive immunity have been discovered to play essential roles in IRI in the context of organ transplantation, the pathway and precise involvement of the immune response at various stages has not yet to be elucidated. Methods: We combined "IRI" and "organ transplantation" with keywords, respectively such as immune cells, danger signal molecules, macrophages, neutrophils, natural killer cells, complement cascade, T cells or B cells in PubMed and the Web of Science to search for relevant literatures. Conclusion: Comprehension of the immune mechanisms involved in organ transplantation is promising for the treatment of IRI, this review summarizes the similarities and differences in both innate and adaptive immunity and advancements in the immune response associated with IRI during diverse organ transplantation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual sentiment analysis which intends to predict the sentiment orientation of images and videos mainly focuses on building a mapping between visual content and sentiment results. Instead of using visual analysis models to bridge the semantic gap directly, a novel method for image sentiment prediction is proposed to translate images into textual description, and analyze visual sentiment by means of textual sentiment analysis indirectly. First, a deep learning based image caption framework consisting of a deep residual network and a long and short-term memory network is utilized to generate the initial textual description of images. Considering the fact that the initial textual description lacks vocabulary to express sentiment, adjective–noun–pair description for images is introduced through SentiBank, which is an image sentiment analysis library containing a large number of adjective-noun-pair concept detectors. Four sets of adjective noun pairs with the largest response values are added to the textual description obtained by images caption model to generate the final textual description of images. Then, the text used to describe visual content is processed by means of deleting redundant symbols, retaining part of the vocabulary and embedding word vectors. Finally, the word vectors are fed into a time series network to train a sentiment prediction model. The experimental results on the Twitter dataset show that this method improves the performance of image sentiment prediction compared with other methods. The accuracy rate has been increased by 2% and the precision rate has been increased by 3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycrystalline magnetite hollow spheres with diameter of about 200 nm and shell thickness of 30-60 nm were prepared via a facile solution route. For the reaction, ethylene glycol (EG) served as the reducing agent and soldium acetate played the role of precipitator. In addition, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) served as a surface stabilizer. The morphologies and structures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The intermediate products at different stages were also studied to shed light on the evolution of phase formation. It revealed that the hollow structure formed via self-assembly of nanocrystallites (about 15 nm) using sodium acetate as mild precipitator. Evidences further pointed out that the Ostwald ripening process well explained the growth mechanism of the hollow structure. Magnetization measurements showed that the coercivity of magnetite hollow spheres at low temperature is about 200 Oe and the saturation magnetization is about 83 emu g, roughly 85% that of the bulk phase, close to the value of its solid counterpart. In addition, a freezing transition was observed at 25 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The property of the lowest excited triplet state of fluorenone (FL) in acetonitrile, ethyl acetate, toluene, cyclohexane has been investigated using time-resolved laser flash photolysis. The appearances of the corresponding cation radicals and anion radicals suggest that the electron transfer reaction occurs between ³FL# and amines. Experimental results show a decrease in the quenching rate constants along with reducing solvent polarity. The change of quenching rate constants of the FL excited triplet with the three N,N-dimethylaniline derivatives are explained using the Hammett constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to analyze the correlation between skeletal muscle mass and the distribution of peripheral blood lymphocytes and natural killer (NK) cells, as well as their impact on prognosis in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). A retrospective analysis was conducted on 211 newly diagnosed AML patients, evaluating skeletal muscle index (SMI), NK cell proportion, and absolute value, along with relevant clinical data. Linear regression and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used to assess the relationship between various indicators and SMI, followed by multiple linear regression for further modeling. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to identify independent predictors for overall survival (OS). Among the 211 AML patients, 38 cases (18.0%) were diagnosed with sarcopenia. Multiple linear regression analysis included weight, fat mass, ECOG score, body mass index, and peripheral blood NK cell proportion, constructing a correlation model for SMI (R2 = 0.745). Univariate analysis identified higher NK cell count (> 9.53 × 106/L) as a poor predictor for OS. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model indicated that age ≥ 60 years, PLT < 100 × 109/L, ELN high risk, sarcopenia, and B cell count > 94.6 × 106/L were independent adverse prognostic factors for AML patients. Low skeletal muscle mass may negatively impact the count and function of NK cells, thereby affecting the prognosis of AML. However, further basic and clinical research is needed to explore the specific mechanisms underlying the relationship between NK cells and SMI in AML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, although there are tumor markers for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), markers with better predictive efficiency are needed. SAA4 gene expression in liver tumor and paracancerous tissues was analyzed using The Cancer Genome Atlas database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed and visualized by heatmap and volcano plot. Survival analysis was performed based on SAA4 expression. SAA4 expression was compared in patients grouped based on clinicopathological features, and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was conducted. Immunohistochemical staining was used to verify the SAA4 protein staining intensity from The Human Protein Atlas database and our center’s samples. The diagnostic value of SAA4 for HCC was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curves. SAA4 was expressed at low levels in HCC tissues, and low SAA4 expression was associated with a poor prognosis in HCC. In addition, SAA4 expression decreased with HCC progression. There were 188 upregulated DEGs and 1551 downregulated DEGs between the high and low SAA4 expression groups. Complement and coagulation cascades, fatty acid metabolism, and ECM receptor interaction were significantly enriched in the GSEA. SAA4 had good predictive efficacy for HCC and even early HCC and was superior to AFP. In general, low SAA4 expression was associated with advanced HCC stage and a poor prognosis. In addition, SAA4 may be helpful for the diagnosis of early HCC and may become a novel tumor marker with good predictive power for HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new monocyclofarnesane-type sesquiterpenoid, hostasolide A ( 1), along with five known compounds, lyciumide A, feruloyltyramine, dimethyl 4,4'-dihydroxy-3,3'-dimethoxy-β-truxinate, 4-hydroxy3-methoxybenzaldehyde, and 3,4-dimethoxycinnamic acid, were isolated from the whole plant of Hosta ensata. The structure of compound 1 was determined on the basis of spectroscopic analysis. The inhibitory activities of compound 1 against acetylcholinesterase, human chronic myelogenous leukemia K562 cells, and human breast cancer MCF-7 cells were also evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further improve the thermal stability of capturing radioactive gaseous iodine in nuclear industrial waste gas, "Ionic liquids (ILs)" was introduced into the field of iodine adsorption. By regulating the aging temperature, aging time and molar ratio of reactants, the amine compound was prepared into ILs, and the micro structure and orthogonal test were studied to obtain the best quality response combination of ILs preparation. The physical properties, thermal stability and iodine adsorption properties of different ILs are tested. The results show that the iodine adsorption efficiency of amine compounds ILs is at the same level as that of activated carbon base composites under the same load conditions, while the thermal stability is improved by 113%, which has important theoretical guiding significance for the improvement of the adsorption properties of the iodine adsorbents under the high temperature conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To compare the clinical effectiveness and safety of novel biologics for the treatment of lupus nephritis based on a reticulated meta-analysis approach. Registered clinical trials in 4 major databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Register of Clinical Trials) and ClinicalTrials.gov were systematically searched with a search time frame of build to June 2022. And we screened registered randomized controlled clinical trials of biologics for the treatment of lupus nephritis according to the protocol's nadir criteria. Trials were evaluated for quality using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool, and data were statistically analyzed using Stata 16.0 and Review Manager 5.3 software to compare and rank differences in effectiveness and safety between the biologics. A total of 10 registered randomized controlled clinical trials involving 2148 subjects were included in this study. The interventions were ranked from best to worst in terms of the primary outcome indicator of effectiveness, renal complete remission: belimumab > anifrolumab (900 + 300) mg > obinutuzumab > ocrelizumab 400 mg > abatacept 30/10 mg/kg > belimumab + rituximab > abatacept 10/10 mg/kg > abatacept (30/10 + 10/10) mg/kg > placeo > ocrelizumab 1000 mg > rituximab > anifrolumab 300 mg, belimumab was superior to placebo [OR = 1.75, 95% CI (1.13, 2.70)] and anifrolumab 300 mg [OR = 3.27, 95% CI (1.05, 10.14)], anifrolumab (900 + 300) mg was superior to anifrolumab 300 mg [OR = 3.56, 95% CI (1.30, 9.76)], and all were statistically significant. The ranking of each intervention in terms of overall renal remission for secondary outcome indicators from best to worst was: obinutuzumab > belimumab + rituximab > anifrolumab (900 + 300) mg > ocrelizumab 1000 mg > ocrelizumab 400 mg > belimumab > rituximab 1000 mg > abatacept 30/10 mg/kg > abatacept (30/10 + 10/10) mg/kg > placeo > abatacept 10/10 mg/kg > anifrolumab 300 mg, obinutuzumab was superior to placebo [OR = 2.27, 95% CI (1.11, 4.67)] and belimumab was also superior to placebo [OR = 1.56, 95% CI (1.07, 2.27)], and all were statistically significant. In terms of safety, with a focus on serious adverse events and serious infections, the results were: Serious adverse events at 1 year of monitoring occurred better with ocrelizumab 1000 mg than ocrelizumab 400 mg [OR = 0.51, 95% CI (0.29, 0.89)] and were statistically different; serious adverse events at 2 years of monitoring infection adverse events occurred better with obinutuzumab than with abatacept (30/10 + 10/10) mg/kg [OR = 0.24, 95% CI (0.07, 0.81)] and were statistically different. The safety of the new biologics in combination with conventional standard therapies is generally good, but it is belimumab and obinutuzumab that are most effective in achieving complete and overall remission in the kidney. This study protocol has been registered with PROSPERO, with a registration number of CRD42021262498. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 catastrophic landslide in a 110-m-high waste dump in Shenzhen is recognized as one of the largest landfill failure worldwide. An earlier comprehensive field investigation revealed that the dominant component of the fill was completely decomposed granite (CDG), and the dumping operation was accompanied by a rise of the groundwater level. In this paper, the complex stress paths for the initially unsaturated fill materials being subjected to both rapid filling and wetting were investigated. A simplified method was proposed for estimating the gain of undrained shear strength under the complex stress paths. Soil samples were taken from the site to a laboratory to measure the undrained shear strength and validate the estimation method. Total stress-based stability analyses were carried out to calculate the factor of safety of the dump at failure. The triggering mechanism of the landslide is clarified as follows: The gain of shear strength with the surcharge loading for the wet layer in the lower part of the waste dump was limited by a build-up of excess pore-water pressure. The gain of shear strength for the relatively dry fill material was attenuated with the rise of groundwater level. When the shear strength was not enough to resist the increasing slip force with the surcharge loading, a deep-seated translational failure took place in the lower wet layer of the waste dump. The proposed method for analyses of undrained strength and slope stability are proven to be applicable to the waste-dumping operation with rapid filling and rising groundwater level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to analyze the effectiveness and safety of ablative fractional carbon dioxide laser systems (CO2 AFL) combined with autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in the treatment of acne scars through the retrieval and collection of related literature to further guide the treatment of acne scars. We searched Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Wanfang Data, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and VIP Database. All randomized and nonrandomized controlled trials on CO2 AFL combined with PRP in the treatment of acne scars were included, and Revman5.3 systematic review software was used in the meta-analysis. Nine studies were included in this meta-analysis. The data analysis results showed that the CO2 AFL combined with PRP treatment group showed significantly better results than the pure CO2 AFL control group in terms of clinical improvement score, clinical improvement rate, patient satisfaction, and crusting period. The results of this meta-analysis showed that CO2 AFL combined with PRP in the treatment of acne scars is more effective and safer than CO2 AFL alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an improved generative adversarial network (GAN) for image compression artifacts reduction task (artifacts reduction by GANs, ARGAN). The lossy compression leads to quite complicated compression artifacts, especially blocking artifacts and ringing effects. To handle this problem, we choose generative adversarial networks as an effective solution to reduce diverse compression artifacts. The structure of "U-NET" style is adopted as the generative network in the GAN. A discriminator network is designed in a convolutional manner to differentiate the restored images from the ground truth distribution. This approach can help improve the performance because the adversarial loss aggressively encourages the output image to be close to the distribution of the ground truth. Our method not only learns an end-to-end mapping from input degraded image to corresponding restored image, but also learns a loss function to train this mapping. Benefit from the improved GANs, we can achieve desired results without hand-engineering the loss functions. The experiments show that our method achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative multiple task assignment problem is an essential issue in the collaboration of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA) is a decentralized task assignment method that only considers homogeneous agents and independent tasks. Thus, we develop an extended CBBA with task coupling constraints (CBBA-TCC) in this paper to solve the multi-task assignment problem with task coupling constraints in the heterogeneous multi-UAV system. CBBA is a two-stage iteration algorithm with inner and outer consensus stages. The inner consensus stage is designed as a modified version of CBBA in this paper. A Can-do list is firstly raised at the beginning of bundle construction phase on each agent to record the tasks that can be performed by this agent without violating the task precedence constraints. Hence, at the inner consensus stage, each agent will only bid on the Can-do list. Then, we adopt a task performing time list for each agent to store the performing times of its assigned tasks. With associate consensus strategy of task performing time list at the conflict resolution phase, the precedence constraint of coupled tasks can be guaranteed. After reaching inner consensus, the outer consensus stage introduces an insert-position feasibility index to determine whether the assigned tasks satisfy the coupling constraints and resolve the constraint violation conflicts. Through the iterations of inner and outer consensus stages, CBBA will reach global consensus and obtain conflict-free task assignment results. Numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of CBBA in various search and rescue scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the limited resources of water quality sensor networks, how to design a routing protocol which can prolong the network life cycle is one of a research hotspots. In this paper, according to the event level and the node energy of the sensor networks, the nodes' types are defined, which can help to determine the cluster node. Then, an event driven routing protocol (EDRP) is proposed, which considers the event information and the remaining energy of the whole network. Simulation results show that, compared with distributed energy-efficient clustering algorithm, EDRP can reduce the overall energy consumption of the network by 138–172%, based on different kinds of events. Besides, EDRP can effectively prolong the life cycle and greatly increase the amount of data transmission of the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

N-(2-hydroxyethyl) nicotinamide nitrate (nicorandil), a nitrate that activates adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-sensitive potassium (KATP) channels, is generally used in the treatment of angina and offers long-term cardioprotective effects. It has been reported that several KATP channel openers can effectively alleviate the symptoms of seizure. The purpose of this study was to investigate the improvement in seizures induced by nicorandil. In this study, seizure tests were used to evaluate the effect of different doses of nicorandil by analysing seizure incidence, including minimal clonic seizure and generalised tonic–clonic seizure. We used a maximal electroshock seizure (MES) model, a metrazol maximal seizure (MMS) model and a chronic pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced seizure model to evaluate the effect of nicorandil in improving seizures. Each mouse in the MES model was given an electric shock, while those in the nicorandil group received 0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 6 mg/kg of nicorandil by intraperitoneal injection, respectively. In the MMS model, the mice in the PTZ group and the nicorandil group were injected subcutaneously with PTZ (90 mg/kg), and the mice in the nicorandil group were injected intraperitoneally with 1, 3 and 5 mg/kg nicorandil, respectively. In the chronic PTZ-induced seizure model, the mice in the PTZ group and the nicorandil group were injected intraperitoneally with PTZ (40 mg/kg), and the mice in the nicorandil group were each given 1 and 3 mg/kg of PTZ at a volume of 200 nL. Brain slices containing the hippocampus were prepared, and cell-attached recording was used to record the spontaneous firing of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampal CA1 region. Nicorandil (i.p.) significantly increased both the maximum electroconvulsive protection rate in the MES model and the seizure latency in the MMS model. Nicorandil infused directly onto the hippocampal CA1 region via an implanted cannula relieved symptoms in chronic PTZ-induced seizures. The excitability of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampal CA1 region of the mice was significantly increased after both the acute and chronic administration of PTZ. To a certain extent, nicorandil reversed the increase in both firing frequency and proportion of burst spikes caused by PTZ (P < 0.05). Our results suggest that nicorandil functions by downregulating the excitability of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampal CA1 region of mice and is a potential candidate for the treatment of seizures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique has been greatly improved in both scientific studies and engineering applications as more and more InSAR observations become available. However, the long-term and dynamic deformation analysis would be more challenging for ordinary users due to the so big volume of InSAR data. In this paper, we proposed a method, termed as SeaInSAR, which introduces the rationale of sequential adjustment (Sea) algorithm to dynamically estimate the surface deformations with wrapped interferometric phase. The proposed method focuses on the arcs of adjacent coherent points in the short-baseline interferograms to avoid the time-consuming and error-prone phase-unwrapping procedure. When dynamically monitoring the temporal deformations with respect to the area of interest, the Sea algorithm, based on the previous result together with newly observed data, can accelerate the procedure of estimating deformation parameters. Furthermore, by only involving the partial previous deformation time series result rather than all the result, the efficiency of the SeaInSAR method can be significantly improved without any compromise of the accuracy. The Sea algorithm is also used to realize the dynamic estimation of a fading signal in the multi-looked or filtered interferograms. This signal is induced by the temporally varying surface moisture and can bias the deformations when only short temporal-baseline interferograms are used. Its dynamic estimation benefits the high-accuracy and high-efficiency deformation monitoring in the era of big InSAR data. Simulated and real data experiments are conducted in this paper, demonstrating that the proposed SeaInSAR method can improve the computational efficiency by more than 20 times compared with the classical static method. With the availability of more and more SAR data as well as the increasing demand of InSAR engineering applications, the proposed SeaInSAR method has a great potential in the InSAR post-processing procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide an overview of the global, regional, and national incidence and mortality of neonatal sepsis and other neonatal infections (NS) and their change trends from 1990 to 2019, based on the data from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease study. This was a retrospective demographic analysis based on aggregated data. Annual incident cases, deaths, age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR), age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) and their percentage changes of NS during 1990–2019 were collected from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease study. Globally, the incident cases of NS increased by 12.79% (from 5.59 million in 1990 to 6.31 million in 2019), and the deaths decreased by 12.93% (from 0.26 million in 1990 to 0.23 million in 2019). In the globe, the ASIR of NS per 100,000 population increased by 14.35% (from 85.21 in 1990 to 97.43 in 2019), and the ASMR decreased by 11.91% (from 3.97 in 1990 to 3.5 in 2019). Conclusion: Increasing trends in incidence and decreasing trends in mortality of NS were observed worldwide from 1990 to 2019. More robust epidemiological research and effective health strategies are urgently needed to reduce the disease burden of neonatal sepsis worldwide. What is Known: • Neonatal sepsis has significant impacts on neonatal health, but estimates on the global burden and trends of neonatal sepsis are scarce and existing findings vary considerably. What is New: • Globally, there were 6.31 million incident cases of neonatal sepsis and 0.23 million deaths due to neonatal sepsis. • Increasing trends in incidence and decreasing trends in mortality of neonatal sepsis were observed worldwide from 1990 to 2019, with the highest absolute burden in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new lathyrane diterpenoid ester, euphordracunculin C ( 1), together with a phenolic amide, 4-hydroxy-N-[3-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-1-oxo-2-propen-1-yl]-3-methoxybenzamide ( 2), was isolated from the aerial parts of Euphorbia dracunculoides. The structure of the new compound was elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analysis including 1D and 2D NMR techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing vulnerability to natural hazards is at the heart of hazard risk reduction. However, many countries such as Australia lack measuring systems to quantity vulnerability for hazard risk evaluation. Drawing on 41 indicators from multiple data sources at the finest spatial unit of the Australian census, we re-forged the Cutter's classic vulnerability measuring framework by involving the '4D' quantification of built environment (diversity, design, density and distance), and constructed the first nationwide fine-grained measures of vulnerability for urban and rural locales, respectively. Our measures of vulnerability include five themes—(1) socioeconomic status; (2) demographics and disability; (3) minority and languages; (4) housing characteristics; and (5) built environment—that were further used to assess the inequality of vulnerability to three widely affected natural hazards in Australia (wildfires, floods, and earthquakes). We found the inequality of vulnerability in the affected areas of the three hazards in eight capital cities are more significant than that of their rural counterparts. The most vulnerable areas in capital cities were peri-urban locales which must be prioritised for hazard adaptation. Our findings contribute to the risk profiling and sustainable urban–rural development in Australia, and the broad understanding of place-based risk reduction in South Hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction is presented to the article "Clinical prognostic value of different NPM1 mutations in acute myeloid leukemia patients" published in a previous issue of the periodical.

Background: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with various nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1) mutations are controversial in the prognosis. This study aimed to investigate the prognosis of patients according to types of NPM1 mutations (NPM1mut). Methods: Bone marrow samples of 528 patients newly diagnosed with AML, were collected for morphology, immunology, cytogenetics, and molecular biology examinations. Gene mutations were detected by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Results: About 25.2% of cases exhibited NPM1mut. 83.5% of cases were type A, while type B and D were respectively account for 2.3% and 3.0%. Furthermore, 15 cases of rare types were identified, of which 2 cases have not been reported. Clinical characteristics were similar between patients with A-type NPM1 mutations (NPM1A − type mut) and non-A-type NPM1 mutations (NPM1non − A−type mut). Event-free survival (EFS) was significantly different between patients with low NPM1non − A−type mut variant allele frequency (VAF) and low NPM1A − type mut VAF (median EFS = 3.9 vs. 8.5 months, P = 0.020). The median overall survival (OS) of the NPM1non − A−type mutFLT3-ITDmut group, the NPM1A − type mutFLT3-ITDmut group, the NPM1non − A−type mutFLT3-ITDwt group, and the NPM1A − type mutFLT3-ITDwt group were 3.9, 10.7, 17.3 and 18.8 months, while the median EFS of the corresponding groups was 1.4, 5.0, 7.6 and 9.2 months (P < 0.0001 and P = 0.004, respectively). Conclusions: No significant difference was observed in OS and EFS between patients with NPM1A − type mut and NPM1non − A−type mut. However, types of NPM1 mutations and the status of FLT3-ITD mutations may jointly have an impact on the prognosis of AML patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the chemo-mechanical influence of injected CO2 on the Morrow B sandstone reservoir and the upper Morrow shale caprock utilizing data from the inverted 5-spot pattern centered on Well 13-10A within the Farnsworth unit (FWU). This study also seeks to evaluate the integrity of the caprock and the long-term CO2 storage capability of the FWU. The inverted 5-spot pattern was extracted from the field-scale model and tuned with the available field observed data before the modeling work. Two coupled numerical simulation models were utilized to continue the study. First, a coupled hydro-geochemical model was constructed to simulate the dissolution and precipitation of formation minerals by modeling three intra-aqueous and six mineral reactions. In addition, a coupled hydro-geomechanical model was constructed and employed to study the effects of stress changes on the caprock's porosity, permeability, and ground displacement. The Mohr–Coulomb circle and failure envelope were used to determine caprock failure. In this work, the CO2-WAG injection is followed by the historical field-observed strategy. During the forecasting period, a Water Alternating Gas (WAG) injection ratio of 1:3 was utilized with a baseline bottom-hole pressure constraint of 5500 psi for 20 years. A post-injection period of 1000 years was simulated to monitor the CO2 plume and its effects on the CO2 storage reservoir and caprock integrity. The simulation results indicated that the impacts of the geochemical reactions on the porosity of the caprock were insignificant as it experienced a decrease of about 0.0003% at the end of the 1000-year post-injection monitoring. On the other hand, the maximum stress-induced porosity change was about a 1.4% increase, resulting in about 4% in permeability change. It was estimated that about 3.3% of the sequestered CO2 in the formation interacted with the caprock. Despite these petrophysical property alterations and CO2 interactions in the caprock, the caprock still maintained its elastic properties and was determined to be far from its failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Music therapy can improve mood in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). However, live music (LM) delivered by professional music therapists is not common in developing countries owing to the shortage of professional music therapists. Thus, in this study, we explored the effects of a multidisciplinary collaborative intervention based on LM on physical and psychological well-being of adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients undergoing HSCT with a quasi-experimental design.Methods: A total of 62 AYA patients agreed to participate and were randomly assigned to the intervention group receiving 4-week LM therapy (n = 31) or control group receiving usual care (n = 31). Depression, salivary cortisol, fatigue, and quality of life were the main outcome indicators measured at baseline, immediately after the intervention, 1 month, and 3 months follow-up. The intervention effects were analyzed by generalized estimating equations.Results: Significant decrease in HADS-D scores occurred in the intervention group compared with wait-list controls at immediately after intervention (p < 0.05). Participants in the LM group had greater improvement in quality of life and lower salivary cortisol level than those in the wait-list control group at immediately, 1 month, and 3 months after intervention (p < 0.05). However, the interaction effects of the BFI scores were not significant.Conclusions: LM therapy significantly alleviated depression and salivary cortisol levels as well as improved quality of life of AYA patients undergoing HSCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Serum creatinine concentration is a primary component of Bedside Schwartz equation for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) in children. To standardize creatinine measurement, most manufacturers have adopted calibration procedures traceable to isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS) using National Institute of Standards and Technology reference material. However, reference material representing much lower creatinine concentrations seen in children is not available and it is unclear how well commercial assays perform at pediatric levels. Methods: One thousand nine hundred seventy-one specimens from consecutive children <19 years, with creatinine ≤0.8 mg/dL by Abbott Jaffe method were included. Creatinine measurements were compared between Abbott-Jaffe and Abbott-enzymatic methods. Furthermore, we evaluated performance of six commercial creatinine assays at concentrations seen in pediatric patients utilizing IDMS traceable serum samples. Results: Median difference (enzymatic-Jaffe) for prepubertal females was –0.18 mg/dL (2.5%tile, 97.5%tile: –0.30, –0.06), –0.12 mg/dL (–0.25, –0.00) for pubertal females, –0.17 mg/dL (–0.30, –0.04) for prepubertal males, –0.11 mg/dL (–0.24, 0.01) for pubertal males. Bias appeared proportional for each subgroup and decreased as creatinine concentrations increased. Using IDMS traceable samples, the greatest inter-assay variability was seen with the lowest creatinine levels (target 0.273 mg/dL), where 67% (4/6) of methods failed to reach minimal bias specification of 8% (range –7.5 to 86%). For samples with higher creatinine targets (0.440–0.634 mg/dL), two methods failed to meet minimal bias specification, whereas four showed bias <8%. Conclusion: Many commonly used creatinine assays remain inaccurate for pediatric populations after over a decade of nationwide efforts to standardize measurements. When creatinine-based eGFR is used for chronic kidney disease (CKD) staging in children, large inter-assay variability can lead to disease misclassification, inappropriate diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. A higher resolution version of the Graphical abstract is available as Supplementary information [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA) is a decentralized task allocation algorithm that can produce feasible and conflict-free task assignment solution for multi-UAV system in the search and rescue scenarios. Further considering the new emerging tasks, this paper studies how to realize task reasssignment in the time-sensitive and dynamic environment. Effective task replanning algorithm aims to maximize the score value of task replanning solution when ensuring the timely allocation of the new task. Thus, an extension of CBBA called CBBA with local replanning (CBBA-LR) is proposed to produce reliable task replanning solution with quick response to the new task. Firstly, the capable matrix is adopted in CBBA-LR to denote the capable relationship between UAVs and tasks. Only capable UAVs for the new task are included in the task replanning. Then, the performing time list is introduced to the bid lists. For each UAV, CBBA-LR selects the assigned tasks whose performing times overlap the time window of the new task as the potential reset tasks. The setting of potential reset tasks effectively reduces the number of tasks included in the replanning process. After that, each UAV selects the nearest task to the new task from the potential reset task set as the reset task. Hence, CBBA-LR resets the most likely insert position of the new task from each UAV's path. Finally, CBBA runs based on the reset task schedules to get the task replanning solution. Numerical simulations demonstrate the solution quality and convergence time of CBBA-LR from four perspectives: different time windows of the new task, different locations of the new task, continuous appearance of new tasks and different scales of search and rescue scenarios. The simulation results verify the feasibility and superiority of CBBA-LR compared with other replanning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lutein-b-methoxy polyethylene glycol (Lutein-b-mPEG) encapsulated lutein nanoemulsion was prepared. First, mercapto-terminated mPEG (mPEG-SH) was prepared. Then, vinyl-terminated lutein was prepared by the esterification reaction of lutein and allyl chloroformate. Finally, Lutein-b-mPEG was synthesized by the thiol-ene reaction of the vinyl-terminated intermediate and mPEG-SH. Lutein-b-mPEG was self-assembled in water to form spherical micelles, and the unreacted lutein was directly loaded in the micelles. The synthesis of the block copolymer and loading of unreacted lutein are completed in one pot. The results of IR, 1H NMR, GPC, and surface tension showed that the Lutein-b-mPEG was prepared. The TEM results showed that Lutein-b-mPEG loaded lutein self-assembled in water to form spherical micelles, and the average size is larger than that of Lutein-b-mPEG micelles. The chemical stability of lutein loaded by Lutein-b-mPEG micelles is greatly enhanced. Moreover, due to the water solubility and micellization of lutein, it is possible to greatly increase its bioavailability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the water quality of lakes has been deteriorating, and the water eutrophication phenomenon is particularly serious. Therefore, it is of great significance to evaluate the water eutrophication of lakes accurately to achieve water protection management. Numerous mechanistic or data-driven methods have been proposed to perform evaluations of the water eutrophication status. However, issues with these methods must still be solved, such as the use of unreasonable thresholds for the water eutrophication levels based on arbitrary numerical values and inaccurate threshold intervals in the water eutrophication evaluation criteria. To solve these problems, an integrated water eutrophication evaluation algorithm is proposed in this study. An evaluation model based on a multidimensional trapezoidal cloud model is first established, where numerical intervals are employed to characterize the thresholds of different water eutrophication levels instead of arbitrary numerical values. The Atanassov's interval-value intuition language numbers are introduced to identify the model parameters, which are calculated based on the data of a specific lake rather than relying on inaccurate classification threshold intervals. Finally, the water quality data of Qionghai were used to validate the proposed method. Experimental results showed that this method can provide a more accurate and reasonable evaluation of water eutrophication compared with other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheath blight disease (ShB) severely affects rice production; however, the details of defense against ShB remain unclear. To understand the rice defense mechanism against ShB, an RNA sequencing analysis was performed using Rhizoctonia solani inoculated rice leaves after 48 h of inoculation. Among them, 3417 genes were upregulated and 2532 were downregulated when compared with the control group (> twofold or < 1/2). In addition, the differentially expressed genes were classified via Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and MapMan analyses. Fifty-nine GO terms and seven KEGG pathways were significantly enriched. A MapMan analysis demonstrated that the phytohormone and metabolic pathways were significantly altered. Interestingly, the expression levels of 359 transcription factors, including WRKY, MYB, and NAC family members, as well as 239 transporter genes, including ABC, MFS, and SWEET, were significantly changed in response to R. solani AG1-IA inoculation. Additionally, OsWRKY53 and OsAKT1 negatively regulate the defense response in rice against R. solani via gain of function study for OsWRKY53 and loss of function study for OsAKT1, respectively. Furthermore, several differentially expressed genes contain R. solani-responsive cis acting regulatory elements in their promoter regions. Taken together, our analyses provide valuable information for the additional study of the defense mechanisms against ShB, and the candidate genes identified in this study will be useful resource for future breeding to enhance resistance against ShB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mineral oil (MO) in conjunction with paper is the main insulation components in oil-immersed transformers; their insulation properties play a significant role in the safe and stable operation of power transformers. To strengthen the insulation level of ultra-high voltage transformer and to reduce its size and weight, it is imminent to enhance the insulating performance of transformer oil and oil-impregnated cellulose. Recently, a unique novel effort of suspension of nanorods (NRs) into MO has been carried out and the results have exhibited improved insulation characteristics of transformer oil. The Al2O3 NRs with favorable features were prepared in our laboratory to develop transformer oil/paper insulation system with better insulation performance. The transformer oil-based nanofluids (NFs) were prepared with nanorod shape, oleic acid surface modification and 0.8 g/L concentration of NRs. The impregnated pressboards were prepared by impregnating them into dried oil and NF under vacuum beneath 1 kPa at 80 °C for almost 48 h to obtain the oil-impregnated pressboard (OIP) and nanofluid-impregnated pressboard (NIP), respectively. The interface at solid/liquid is considered weak link and is the main reason of oil-filled transformer collapse. The effect of Al2O3 NRs on creeping discharge and flashover traits of oil/pressboard (OP) interface under AC and impulse voltages were studied. Partial discharge and creeping flashover test of OIPs and NIPs were conducted. TSDC and PEA tests were applied to examine the space charge properties of OP interface before and after suspension of Al2O3 NRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyanobacteria bloom, mainly caused by chemical factors such as nitrogen and phosphorus, can produce toxic substances in water or even reduce biodiversity. It is urgent to curb the cyanobacteria bloom and early warn their outbreak. This paper proposes a nonlinear mathematical model of cyanobacteria growth based on stoichiometric analysis. Parameters in the cyanobacteria growth nonlinear mathematical model are estimated and optimized by the cuckoo search intelligent algorithm to improve the estimation accuracy. Time of cyanobacteria blooms outbreak is forecasted by bifurcation sets of the nonlinear mathematical model based on cusp catastrophe theory. Certain natural lake monitoring data is processed with the proposed method for illustration. The results show that time of cyanobacteria blooms outbreak is forecasted accurately by the bifurcation sets of the nonlinear model. Hence, cyanobacteria blooms outbreak can be early warned effectively by the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drug resistance remains as one of the major challenges in melanoma therapy. It is well known that tumour cells undergo phenotypic switching during melanoma progression, increasing melanoma plasticity and resistance to mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors (MAPKi).Methods: We investigated the melanoma phenotype switching using a partial reprogramming model to de-differentiate murine melanoma cells and target melanoma therapy adaptation against MAPKi.Results: Here, we show that partially reprogrammed cells are a less proliferative and more de-differentiated cell population, expressing a gene signature for stemness and suppressing melanocyte-specific markers. To investigate adaptation to MAPKi, cells were exposed to B-Raf Proto-Oncogene (BRAF) and mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) inhibitors. De-differentiated cells became less sensitive to MAPKi, showed increased cell viability and decreased apoptosis. Furthermore, T-type calcium channels expression increased in adaptive murine cells and in human adaptive melanoma cells. Treatment with the calcium channel blocker mibefradil induced cell death, differentiation and susceptibility to MAPKi in vitro and in vivo.Conclusion: In summary, we show that partial reprogramming of melanoma cells induces de-differentiation and adaptation to MAPKi. Moreover, we postulated a calcium channel blocker such as mibefradil, as a potential candidate to restore sensitivity to MAPKi in adaptive melanoma cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forecasting methods of water bloom in existence are hard to reflect nonlinear dynamic change in algal bloom formation mechanism, leading to poor forecasting accuracy of bloom. To solve this problem, this paper deeply analyzes the generation process of algal bloom, introduces the recursive time series algorithm into the deep belief network model and improves the model structure and training algorithm, and proposes a forecasting method based on the recursive timed deep belief network model. The model introduces the current moments and historical time values of the characterization factors and influencing factors at the input layer, and increases the connection between the input layer and the hidden layer of the deep belief network. A recursive algorithm is used to establish the relationship between the current time value of the characterization factor and the historical time value of the characterization factor, and the connection between the current time value of the hidden layer and the influencing factor is increased. By re-extracting the characteristics of the hidden layer at each moment, and then fine tuning the network parameters by the BP neural network, a recursive timing deep belief network model is finally constructed. The results show that compared with the existing forecasting methods, this method can extract the characteristics of time series data more accurately and completely to deal with the dynamic nonlinear process and can further improve the forecast accuracy of algal blooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]