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Background: The reasons for hospice underuse in China needs exploration from the perspective of patients with cancer and their families. Furthermore, existing literature about hospice decision-making among Chinese families with cancer patients is limited. This study aimed to investigate the awareness of hospice care among families with cancer patients, their preference of healthcare at the end-of-life stage of care, and the predictors of hospice preference.Methods: This was an exploratory study conducted between July 2021 and January 2022. Overall, 300 decision-makers of cancer patients were recruited from the oncology ward of seven hospitals in Shanghai, China. Of these, 285 valid responses were included in the data analysis. A self-developed questionnaire about their preference of healthcare when the patient was at the end-of-life stage was completed. Descriptive analysis, t-test, chi-square test, and logistic regression were conducted to analyze the data.Results: Only 29.7% of the participants had heard of hospice care. Most participants (78.2%) reported no introduction of hospice care from their doctors. More than half of the participants (58.2%) did not have a preference of healthcare at the end-of-life stage. Seventy-eight (65.5%) of the 119 participants who had a preference chose hospice care, and the other 41 participants (34.5%) refused hospice care. Having heard of hospice care had a significant impact on having a preference for healthcare at the end-of-life stage (OR=14.346, 95%CI 7.219-28.509, pOR=0.180, 95%CI 0.052-0.617, p=0.006). Another family member being cared for at home had a significant impact on the participants’ hospice preference (OR=2.739, 95%CI 1.159-6.470, p=0.022).Conclusion: The end-of-life communication between healthcare providers and the families of cancer patients is insufficient. More efforts should be made in increasing the awareness of hospice care among patients with cancer and their families. Further study is needed to explore the reasons for a lack of discussion on hospice options between healthcare providers and the families. Additionally, the impact of at-home care burden on the hospice choice of families with cancer patients requires further study.

Though nutritional, the remaining separated duck egg white in duck egg processing plants presents challenges for its transportation and use, as it spoils easily and has a strong odor. Uses for the excess egg white are of paramount concern for agricultural resource reuse. The purpose of this study was to increase its value and use efficiency. Duck egg white was mixed with sodium hydroxide to produce translucent alkali-induced egg white jelly similar to that in preserved egg whites. To develop a heatable translucent egg white jelly, their physiochemical properties and thermal stabilities were investigated. A gel prepared with 150 mM sodium hydroxide at 25°C had optimal bloom strength and the densest microstructure. Storing the jelly at 5°C helped maintain its disulfide bonds and delayed liquefaction. Although heating decreased its bloom strength and total disulfide bond content as temperature increased (P < 0.05), scanning electron microscopy of the heated jelly revealed that the protein network structure was denser than that of unheated jelly. Heating caused parts of the structure to shrink and even dehydrate, leading to a wrinkled surface. However, no signs of liquefaction or collapse were observed, and the free alkali released during heating was lower than that from the white of existing preserved eggs. These results confirmed the thermal stability of the jelly and its potential to be served hot or used in food processing. Furthermore, in addition to disguising the odor and special flavor attributable to the alkaline treatment, adding ginger juice or turmeric to the preparation yielded higher bloom strength, resulted in lower free alkalinity, and delayed liquefaction, thus improving the jelly's thermal stability. Like preserved eggs on the market that can be served in hot congee, the proposed egg white jelly is rich in proteins and suitable for hot or instant serving. These findings may help address the problem of excessive remaining duck egg white created during food processing by diversifying duck egg processing and boosting its value.

In this paper, we study a general dynamic contagion process that includes several standard point processes as special cases. We have developed (i) the corresponding large deviation principle; (ii) the corresponding law of large numbers; (iii) the corresponding central limit theorem, all of which are critical in describing the essential of this type of processes, and are not available in current literature. The proposed model provides a broader framework in the study of contagion processes in various applications. In particular, we obtain the finite-horizon and infinite-horizon ruin probability asymptotics for the risk model with marked dynamic contagion claim arrivals as an application.

Highlights • First reporting of the sedative quality of pethidine in combination with midazolam in healthy cat. • Intravenous injection of pethidine-midazolam was associated with transient elevation of plasma histamine concentration but self-limiting in healthy cat. • The pethidine-midazolam can provide short duration of sedation without obvious side effects in healthy cat., Pethidine is a synthetic opioid that is widely used in cats. However, the sedative, cardiorespiratory, and histaminic effects following administration of pethidine with midazolam in cats remain unclear. The objectives of this study were to evaluate and compare changes before and after intravenous (IV) and intramuscular (IM) administration of pethidine with midazolam in healthy cats. In this prospective randomized blind study, 12 cats were assigned equally to either the IV or IM treatment group. The IV group received pethidine 3 mg/kg and midazolam 0.1 mg/kg. The IM group received pethidine 6 mg/kg and midazolam 0.2 mg/kg. The sedative effects, heart rate, respiratory rate, non-invasive arterial blood pressures, and behavioral signs were recorded before and at 2, 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min after the injection. Blood samples were taken for an ELISA histamine assay at baseline and at 5 and 15 min after treatment. Cats that received IV treatment were rapidly induced a moderate degree of sedation but those received IM treatment were only mildly sedated. There was no significant difference in the cardiorespiratory values within and between the treatments over time. Plasma histamine concentrations increased by 3 and 5 times at 5 and 15 min after IV treatment, respectively, compared to baseline values. IM injections induced minimal changes in the plasma histamine concentration. In summary, intravenous pethidine with midazolam induced potentially superior sedative effects without serious side effects in clinically healthy cats. However, further studies with larger sample sizes are required to validate this finding.

Extensive studies have been performed to elucidate the role of brassinosteroids (BRs), an important class of phy-tohormone in plant growth, development, and photomorphogenesis. Different wavelengths of light recognized by photoreceptors play a crucial role in plant development. The role of different photoreceptors in BR signaling has not been analyzed. Here we used photoreceptor single mutants, double mutants and even a quadruple mutant to analyze BR-dependent hypocotyl growth and gene regulation. All the photoreceptor mutants differed from the controls in their response to BR, and hypocotyl elongation as well as BR marker gene regulation were inhibited by application of propiconazole (PCZ), a BR biosynthesis inhibitor. In addition, altered Phytochrome and Cryptochrome expression in brassinosteroid insensitive 1 mutant bri1-5 and brassinazole-resistant 1 dominant mutant bzr1-D indicated that BR negatively regulates photoreceptors in transcriptional levels. This is the first study to investigate the connections between BR and photoreceptors in Arabidopsis.

We study a supply chain with a manufacturer and two different suppliers. One supplier is a big company abroad, who is prime and offers high quality modules with long lead time. The other supplier is a small local company, taken as the urgent supplier by the manufacturer, who can produce modules in inferior quality but with flexible delivery time. Excess customers beyond the orders from the prime supplier, who are sensitive to the delivery time, may be satisfied by modules from the urgent supplier. As the urgent supplier owns private cost information (either low or high cost type) and the prime one is the wholesale price setter, the manufacturer should carefully design his sourcing strategy. In this paper, we show that the manufacturer may deny the urgent supplier, allow only the low cost type or permit both cost types of the urgent supplier, which follows a threshold type policy. When both cost types participate, whether the manufacturer differentiates the urgent supplier is also threshold type controlled. With fully characterizing the contracting issue with the urgent supplier, we derive the optimal wholesale price of the prime supplier and related order quantity from him. We further analyze how the delivery time guarantee elasticity affects the performance of each party in the supply chain through either analytical or numerical studies.

In this paper, we proved a central limit theorem and established a moderate deviation principle for a perturbed stochastic wave equation defined on $[0,T]\times \rr^3$. This equation is driven by a Gaussian noise, white in time and correlated in space. The weak convergence approach plays an important role., 20 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1509.01757

The bacterial tobacco wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum is one of the most destructive soil-borne diseases worldwide. One strategy to improve the resistance to bacterial wilt is to make use of plant varieties expressing wilt resistance genes. To characterize the genetics of wilt resistance and to identify relevant molecular markers for use in plant breeding, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting tobacco bacterial wilt resistance were mapped in the F2:3 and F2:4 progeny produced from two crosses between the wilt-resistant breeding lines Enshu and Yanyan97 and the susceptible cultivar TI448A. A linkage map containing 118 loci in 24 linkage groups was constructed for 236 lines from the Enshu×TI448A cross, and a linkage map containing 96 loci in 24 linkage groups was constructed for 264 lines from the Yanyan97×TI448A cross. The wilt resistance of the progeny was examined in field trials conducted in Xuancheng, China, in 2010, 2011, and 2012. The disease severity was assessed on stems using separate rating scales. Mapmaker/EXP 3.0 and Mapmaker/QTL 1.1 were used to identify the qBWR-3a, qBWR-3b, qBWR-5a and qBWR-5b QTLs in linkage group 3 and 5; these four loci were strongly associated with resistance and explain 9.00, 19.70, 17.30, and 17.40 % of the variance in resistance, respectively. The close linkage of the markers PT20275 and PT30229 was detected in both the TI448A×Enshu and TI448A×Yanyan97 crosses, and this linkage group could be used to select individual resistant plants. These findings suggest that one strategy to combat bacterial wilt could be to exploit the resistance genes of the Enshu and Yanyan97 strains.

Mesoporous (N, S)-codoped TiO2 was simply prepared by a solvothermal method with thiourea as N and S source. The as-prepared products were characterized by XRD, SEM, XPS, BET and UV–vis. The results confirm that N and S have been incorporated into the lattice of anatase TiO2, which brings an obvious red-shift of the absorption edge into visible-light region. Moreover, the codoped products exhibit high photocatalytic activity under the visible-light irradiation.

Electronic and optical properties of pure, N-doped, Fe-doped and (N, Fe)-codoped anatase TiO2 were evaluated, respectively, by using the density functional theory. The results indicate that the elemental doping narrows the band gap of TiO2 and realize its visible-light response activity; and incorporation of Fe into N-doped TiO2 further increases the photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation compared with that of the N-doped TiO2.

Two hundred and seventy-three CIMMYT bread wheat cultivars and advanced lines grown under irrigated conditions in Mexico during the 2005-06 Yaqui crop cycle were characterized for quality-related genetic traits using gene-specific markers for some high- and low-molecular-weight glutenin subunit (HMW-GS and LMW-GS) genes, polyphenol oxidase (PPO), phytoene synthase (PSY), and waxy genes. Of them, 142 were analyzed for quality parameters including SDS sedimentation volume (SDS-SV), dough mixing time, and Alveograph parameters, and for HMW-GS and LMW-GS compositions using sodium-dodecyl-sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), and reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). For the Ppo-A1 locus tested with the marker PPO18, the frequencies of alleles Ppo-A1a and Ppo-A1b were 79.1 and 20.2%, respectively, and no PCR fragment was amplified in 2 lines (0.73%), whereas 227 lines (83.2%) contained the allele Ppo-D1a and 46 lines (16.8%) had Ppo-D1b detected by markers PPO16 and PPO29. For the marker YP7A, 142 lines (52.0%) were assumed to have the allele Psy-A1a and 131 lines (48.0%) contained the allele Psy-A1b. In the case of the marker YP7B for the gene Psy-B1, the alleles Psy-B1a and Psy-B1b were detected in 155 (56.8%) and 43 (15.8%) lines, respectively, and 75 (27.4%) lines possessed the allele Psy-B1d detected by the marker YP7B-3. All 273 lines contained the alleles Wx-A1a and Wx-D1a as determined by markers MAG264 and MAG269, respectively. Using the marker Wx-B1, 204 lines (74.7%) were presumed to have the Wx-B1a allele and 69 (25.3%) possessed Wx-B1b. The over-expressing allele of Bx7 OE and subunit By8*, not clearly seen with SDS-PAGE, were detected by RP-HPLC. The numbers of lines with subunits Ax2*, By8, By9, Bx17, Bx20, Dx5, and Glu-B3j were 90, 16, 57, 5, 46, 118, and 33, respectively, in the 142 lines analyzed with molecular markers, and were consistent with the results obtained by SDS-PAGE, except for one line with the 1A.1R translocation. Subunits Ax1 and Ax2* at the Glu-A1 locus showed significantly better effects on all quality parameters than subunit Null. Subunits 5 + 10 gave significantly better effects for all parameters. Subunit Glu-A3b showed more positive effects than its alternative alleles on SDS-SV and SDS-sedimentation volume/protein content index (SPI). The allele Glu-B3g showed the best effect on SDS-SV and Alveograph W, whereas Glu-B3j, associated with the 1B.1R translocation, exhibited a strongly negative effect on all quality parameters.

In this paper, one investigates the transportation-information T c I inequalities: α(T c (ν, μ)) ≤ I (ν|μ) for all probability measures ν on a metric space $${(\mathcal{X}, d)}$$ , where μ is a given probability measure, T c (ν, μ) is the transportation cost from ν to μ with respect to the cost function c(x, y) on $${\mathcal{X}^2}$$ , I(ν|μ) is the Fisher–Donsker–Varadhan information of ν with respect to μ and α : [0, ∞) → [0, ∞] is a left continuous increasing function. Using large deviation techniques, it is shown that T c I is equivalent to some concentration inequality for the occupation measure of a μ-reversible ergodic Markov process related to I(·|μ). The tensorization property of T c I and comparisons of T c I with Poincare and log-Sobolev inequalities are investigated. Several easy-to-check sufficient conditions are provided for special important cases of T c I and several examples are worked out.

In this paper, we study the Moderate Deviation Principle for a perturbed stochastic heat equation in the whole space $\rr^d, d\ge1$. This equation is driven by a Gaussian noise, white in time and correlated in space, and the differential operator is a fractional derivative operator. The weak convergence method plays an important role., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1401.2798, arXiv:1505.04671, arXiv:math/0610769 by other authors

Background N-ethyl-maleimide sensitive factor adaptor protein receptor (SNAREs) domain-containing proteins were known as key players in vesicle-associated membrane fusion. Genetic screening has revealed the function of SNAREs in different aspects of plant biology, but the role of many SNAREs are still unknown. In this study, we have characterized the role of Arabidopsis Qc-SNARE protein AtBS14b in brassinosteroids (BRs) signaling pathway. Results AtBS14b overexpression (AtBS14b ox) plants exhibited short hypocotyl and petioles lengths as well as insensitivity to exogenously supplied BR, while AtBS14b mutants did not show any visible BR-dependent morphological differences. BR biosynthesis enzyme BR6OX2 expression was slightly lower in AtBS14b ox than in wild type plants. Further BR-mediated repression of BR6OX2, CPD and DWF4 was inhibited in AtBS14b ox plants. AtBS14b-mCherry fusion protein localized in vesicular compartments surrounding plasma membrane in N. benthamiana leaves. In addition, isolation of AtBS14b-interacting BR signaling protein, which localized in plasma membrane, showed that AtBS14b directly interacted with membrane steroid binding protein 1 (MSBP1), but did not interact with BAK1 or BRI1. Conclusion These data suggested that Qc-SNARE protein AtBS14b is the first SNARE protein identified that interacts with MSBP1, and the overexpression of AtBS14b modulates BR response in Arabidopsis.

Rhodamine B (RB) was used as a molecular probe to make a comparison of the photocatalytic properties between a P-25 coated film and a dip-coated anatase Ti02 film. It was found that RB on the two illuminated TiO2 surfaces underwent very different changes. The reduction of RB concentration on a P-25 film showed pseudo first-order kinetics during all the reaction time. In contrast, the concentration of the RB aqueous solution with an anatase Ti02 film did not show exponential decay through overall illumination time, but the kinetics of RB (or rhodamine) disappearance was apparently first order with respect to time before and after blue shift of the maximum absorbance (corresponding to N-de-ethylation) ended separately.

Transparent TiO2 thin films were prepared on glass substrates by a sol-gel method. They were confirmed to be anatase crystallites by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectra analyses. The photocatalytic properties of the sol-gel derived films were assessed by measuring the photodegradative oxidation of Rhodamine A in aqueous solution and compared with Degussa P-25 coated films. These SG-TiO2 films showed much higher photoactivity than P-25 coated films at the initial time of the reaction. Results of this study also indicate that the photodegradative mechanisms assisted by the two kinds of films are obviously different: highly efficient and fast N-de-ethylation accompanied the degradation of Rhodamine B catalyzed by a SG-TiO2 thin film, whereas only degradative reaction took place when P-25 coated film existed.

The fractal dimensions of aggregates of latex particles coated by poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) have been measured in worse-than-θ-solvents for different electrolyte concentrations and temperatures. For the lowest molecular weight PEG studied (2 × 10 4 ), the measured fractal dimension of 2.1 was almost independent of temperature over the range studied. The value corresponds to partially reversible cluster aggregation, which leads to relatively compact aggregates. For the highest molecular weight PEG studied (6 × 10 5 ), the fractal dimension decreased significantly (from 2.4 to 1.7) with temperature, signifying the generation of more ramified aggregates. The results obtained for this hydrophilic polymer contrast markedly with those previously published for the aggregation or latexes coated by the hydrophobic polymer poly( N -isopropylacrylamide), which becomes hydrophobic as a result of a coil-to-globule transition.

Fulan Xie1,*, Nian Yao1,*, Yao Qin1, Qianyu Zhang1, Huali Chen1, Mingqing Yuan1, Jie Tang1, Xiankun Li1, Wei Fan1, Qiang Zhang2, Yong Wu1, Li Hai1, Qin He11Key Laboratory of Drug Targeting and Drug Delivery Systems, West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People's Republic of China; 2State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this workBackground: An intimidating challenge to transporting drugs into the brain parenchyma is the presence of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). Glucose is an essential nutritional substance for brain function sustenance, which cannot be synthesized by the brain. Its transport primarily depends on the glucose transporters on the brain capillary endothelial cells. In this paper, the brain-targeted properties of glucose-modified liposomes using polyethylene glycols with different chain lengths as the linkers were compared and evaluated to establish an optimized drug-delivery system.Methods: Coumarin 6-loaded liposomes (GLU200-LIP, GLU400-LIP, GLU1000-LIP, and GLU2000-LIP) composed of phospholipids and glucose-derived cholesterols were prepared by thin-film dispersion-ultrasound method. The BBB model in vitro was developed to evaluate the transendothelial ability of the different liposomes crossing the BBB. The biodistribution of liposomes in the mice brains was identified by in vivo and ex vivo nearinfrared fluorescence imaging and confocal laser scanning microscopy and further analyzed quantitatively by high-performance liquid chromatography.Results: Glucose-derived cholesterols were synthesized and identified, and coumarin 6-loaded liposomes were prepared successfully. The particle sizes of the four types of glucose-modified liposomes were around or smaller than 100 nm with a polydispersity index less than 0.300. GLU400-LIP, GLU1000-LIP, and GLU2000-LIP achieved higher cumulative cleared volumes on BBB model in vitro after 6 hours compared with GLU200-LIP (P < 0.05) and were significantly higher than that of the conventional liposome (P < 0.001). The qualitative and quantitative biodistribution results in the mice showed that the accumulation of GLU1000-LIP in the brain was the highest among all the groups (P < 0.01 versus LIP).Conclusion: The data indicated that GLU400-LIP, GLU1000-LIP, and GLU2000-LIP all possess the potential of brain targeting, among which GLU1000-LIP, as a promising drug-delivery system, exhibited the strongest brain delivery capacity.Keywords: glucose, polyethylene glycols, liposome, BBB, brain-targeted

Via Phi-Sobolev inequalities, we give some sharp integrability conditions on $F$ for the large deviation principle of the empirical mean $\frac{1}{T}{\int_{0}^{T}{F(X_{s})}ds}$ for large time $T$, where $F$ is unbounded with values in some separable Banach space. Several examples are provided.