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To evaluate the clinical efficacy of etonogestrel subcutaneous implant (ENG-SCI) with that of the levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUD) for adenomyosis treatment. A prospective randomized cohort study was conducted including 108 patients (50 patients in ENG-SCI group and 58 in the LNG-IUD group) with adenomyosis from January 2019 to July 2021. After 3 months of treatment, both ENG-SCI group and LNG-IUD group showed significant improvement in patients’ visual analog scale, pictorial blood loss assessment chart (PBAC), and uterine volume (P ＜ 0.05). The uterine volume of patients in LNG-IUD group decreased more significantly than that in the ENG-SCI group since 3 months of treatment. The PBAC score in the LNG-IUD group improved better than that in the ENG-SCI group since 6 months of treatment (P ＜ 0.05). No significant difference in the occurrence rate of ideal vaginal bleeding patterns and the hemoglobin levels between the two groups was observed. The ENG-SCI group had a higher probability of weight gain and progesterone-related side effects (P ＜ 0.05). Both ENG-SCI and LNG-IUD were effective in treatment of adenomyosis. However, LNG-IUD had a more significant effect in treating adenomyosis-related dysmenorrhea, excessive menstrual flow, anemia, and uterine enlargement, with relatively fewer side effects.

Objective To investigate whether pemetrexed can regulate the proliferation of lung adenocarcinoma cells. Methods Human lung adenocarcinoma cell line A549 was selected for cell resuscitation, culture and passage, and was divided into control group, low-dose and high-dose pemetrexed intervention group. CCK-8 assay was used to detect proliferation inhibition rate of A549 cells. Flow cytometry was used to detect cell cycle and apoptosis; Western blot was used to detect the difference between proteins related to apoptosis and to PI3K/AKT signal pathway function. Results With the increase of drug dose and treatment time, both inhibition rate to A549 cells proliferation and apoptosis were significantly increased.The expression of cleaved caspase-3 and Bad protein was also significantly increased while the expression of Bcl-2 protein was significantly decreased (P＜0.05 or P＜0.01). At 48 h of culture, with the increase of pemetrexed concentration, the proportion of G0/G1 phase of A549 cells increased significantly, while the proportion of S phase and G2/M phase decreased significantly (P＜0.05 or P＜0.01);The expression of PI3K, AKT and p-AKT wassignificantly decreased (P＜0.05 or P＜0.01). Conclusions Pemetrexed can inhibit the proliferation and promote apoptosis of lung adenocarcinoma cell line A549, potentially through a mechanism of inhibiting PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.

Although information systems (IS) are increasingly used to provide sustainable solutions for tourism, our understanding of the social mechanisms whereby IS contribute to a sustainable visitor economy is limited. This paper fills the gap by investigating how organisations enact the affordances of IS in preserving intangible cultural heritage (ICH) to contribute to a sustainable visitor economy. Using an organisational aesthetics perspective, we explore the mechanisms through an in‐depth case study of an ICH‐based company in Jingdezhen, a famous historical porcelain city in China. Through the effective use of IS tools, the case organisation has successfully transformed from a ceramic manufacturing plant to a popular tourist attraction. Our study unveils six sustainable affordances of IS in three dimensions, wherein ICH aesthetics act as direct stimuli, knowledge tools and experiences. Affordances emerge from the processes of both creating and managing aesthetics. By enacting these affordances, the case organisation builds a more profound engagement with online audiences, attracts more ICH visitors and transfers ICH knowledge to potential inheritors of the tradition, creating a sustainable visitor economy. Our findings, summarised into a sustainable affordances model, contribute to the IS for sustainable tourism literature by shedding light on the black box of the social mechanisms of IS‐enabled ICH preservation. The sustainable affordances model can also help ICH‐based organisations reflect on how to build a sustainable visitor economy using IS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information systems (IS) play an important role in helping organisations attain environmental sustainability targets, and how to use IS for sustainability transformation is attracting research attention. However, extant studies have mainly focused on such transformation of business enterprises, overlooking it of communities. Our study intends to fill this gap by conducting an in‐depth case study at Feldheim, a small village in Germany that has successfully built a renewable energy system using IS and achieved energy self‐sufficiency. Guided by the belief‐action‐outcome (BAO) framework, our study unveiled a process model of antecedents, belief and action formation, and outcomes specific to community‐based sustainability transformation. The model also reveals three roles that IS assume in such transformation: participation objects, connectivity enablement, and fluctuation mitigation. Our study contributes to the literature on IS‐enabled sustainability transformation by extending it from the business enterprise context to the community context. It also provides communities with guidelines for conducting IS‐enabled sustainability transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the patient safety culture regarding intravenous therapy in parts of tertiary hospitals in Guangzhou, China.

The emergence of Fintech platforms has revolutionized the way financial services are provided. And yet, in spite of their growing prominence in the global financial sector, there remains a lack of understanding of the competitive strategies that are appropriate for these platform‐based businesses, and the implications of those strategies for their performance. Examining four case studies of some of the most successful Fintech platforms in China from the theoretical perspective of the core logics of strategy, we develop a theoretical framework that suggests that the nature of the competitive strategies deployed by a Fintech platform should be contingent on (1) the extent to which their services can be differentiated, as well as (2) the tangibility and physical presence of the platform's service offerings. More specifically, our framework presents four different combinations of competitive strategies that Fintech platforms can adopt contingent on the nature of their services along these two dimensions. In addition, beyond the two dimensions, our framework suggests that all Fintech platforms should be underpinned by a common strategic core consisting of strategies that align the platform with social pressures. These pressures include those exerted by the government, the market, and society in general. With its findings, it is hoped that our study will provide specific guidance for Fintech practitioners on the appropriate competitive strategies to adopt in order to set their platforms on the path of commercial success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to earthquakes and volcanoes, drought is one of the most damaging natural disasters and is mainly affected by rainfall losses, especially by the runoff regulation ability of the underlying watershed surface. Based on monthly rainfall runoff data recorded from 1980 to 2020, in this study, the distributed lag regression model is used to simulate the rainfall-runoff process in the karst distribution region of South China, and a time series of watershed lagged-flow volumes is calculated. The watershed lagged effect is analyzed by four distribution models, and the joint probability between the lagged intensity and frequency is simulated by the copula function family. The results show that (1) the watershed lagged effects simulated by the normal, log-normal, P-III and log-logistic distribution models in the karst drainage basin are particularly significant, with small mean square errors (MSEs) and significant time-scale characteristics. (2) Affected by spatiotemporal distribution differences in rainfall and the impacts of different basin media and structures, the lag response of runoff to rainfall differs significantly among different time scales. Especially at the 1-, 3- and 12-month scales, the coefficient of variation (Cv) of the watershed lagged intensity is greater than 1, while it is less than 1 at the 6- and 9-month scales. (3) The lagged frequencies simulated by the log-normal, P-III and log-logistic distribution models are relatively high (with medium, medium–high and high frequencies, respectively), while that simulated by the normal distribution is relatively low (medium–low and low frequencies). (4) There is a significant negative correlation (R < − 0.8, Sig. < 0.01) between the watershed lagged intensity and frequency. For the joint probability simulation, the fitting effect of the gumbel Copula is the best, followed by the Clayton and Frank-1 copulas, and while that of the Frank-2 copula is relatively weak. Consequently, the propagation mechanism from meteorological drought to agricultural or hydrological drought and the conversion mechanism between agricultural and hydrological drought are effectively revealed in this study, thereby providing a scientific basis for the rational utilization of water resources and drought resistance and disaster relief in karst areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]