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Epidural labor analgesia aims to provide effective medical services to alleviate labor pain in parturients, while adhering to the principles of voluntary participation and clinical safety. In 2018, Peking Union Medical College Hospital(PUMCH)became one of the first pilot units for labor analgesia in China, and has achieved satisfactory results in high-quality development of labor analgesia. This article mainly introduces the achievements and experience of labor analgesia at PUMCH, including: (1) prioritizing maternal and infant safety, arranging personnel rationally, and developing standardized treatment processes through multidisciplinary collaboration to ensure safe and comfortable childbirth; (2) leveraging the hospital's comprehensive capabilities in emergency treatment, and improving collaborative rescue plans for critically ill parturients and newborns; (3) implementing advanced teaching methods to effectively train and conduct simulated drills for labor analgesia and rescue of critically ill parturients; (4) conducting patient education and informative lectures to help parturients acquire a scientific understanding of labor analgesia. We hope that this experience can provide reference and inspiration for other hospitals.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) offer a potential solution to the antibiotic crisis owing to their antimicrobial properties, and the human gut biome may be a source of these peptides. However, the potential AMPs and AMP resistance genes (AMPRGs) of gut microbes in different age groups have not been thoroughly assessed. Here, we investigated the potential development of AMPs and the distribution pattern of AMPRGs in the gut microbiome at different ages by analyzing the intestinal metagenomic data of healthy individuals at different life stages (CG: centenarians group n = 20; OAG: older adults group: n  = 15; YG: young group: n  = 15). Age-related increases were observed in the potential AMPs within the gut microbiome, with centenarians showing a greater diversity of these peptides. However, the gut microbiome of the CG group had a lower level of AMPRGs compared to that of the OAG group, and it was similar to the level found in the YG group. Additionally, conventional probiotic strains showed a significant positive correlation with certain potential AMPs and were associated with a lower detection of resistance genes. Furthermore, comparing potential AMPs with existing libraries revealed limited similarity, indicating that current machine learning models can identify novel peptides in the gut microbiota. These results indicate that longevity may benefit from the diversity of AMPs and lower resistance genes. Our findings help explain the age advantage of the centenarians and identify the potential for antimicrobial peptide biosynthesis in the human gut microbiome, offering insights into the development of antimicrobial peptide resistance and the screening of probiotic strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railway turnouts often develop defects such as chipping, cracks, and wear during use. If not detected and addressed promptly, these defects can pose significant risks to train operation safety and passenger security. Despite advances in defect detection technologies, research specifically targeting railway turnout defects remains limited. To address this gap, we collected images from railway inspectors and constructed a dataset of railway turnout defects in complex environments. To enhance detection accuracy, we propose an improved YOLOv8 model named YOLO-VSS-SOUP-Inner-CIoU (YOLO-VSI). The model employs a state-space model (SSM) to enhance the C2f module in the YOLOv8 backbone, proposed the C2f-VSS module to better capture long-range dependencies and contextual features, thus improving feature extraction in complex environments. In the network's neck layer, we integrate SPDConv and Omni-Kernel Network (OKM) modules to improve the original PAFPN (Path Aggregation Feature Pyramid Network) structure, and proposed the Small Object Upgrade Pyramid (SOUP) structure to enhance small object detection capabilities. Additionally, the Inner-CIoU loss function with a scale factor is applied to further enhance the model's detection capabilities. Compared to the baseline model, YOLO-VSI demonstrates a 3.5% improvement in average precision on our railway turnout dataset, showcasing increased accuracy and robustness. Experiments on the public NEU-DET dataset reveal a 2.3% increase in average precision over the baseline, indicating that YOLO-VSI has good generalization capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is important for anesthesiologists to leave good impressions and build rapport with patients during preoperative visits. However, patient preferences for anesthesiologist attire have not been well studied in China.Purpose: To characterize patient perceptions of anesthesiologist attire during preoperative visits.Patients and Methods: In this cross-sectional survey, we included adult patients who underwent elective operations in various surgical departments. We presented photographs of both male and female models wearing six combinations of attire (formal in a white coat buttoned, formal in a white coat unbuttoned, casual in a white coat buttoned, casual in a white coat unbuttoned, scrubs in a white coat buttoned, and scrubs in a coat of the same green color buttoned) in a randomized sequence. Participants were asked to rate each attire combination in five domains, including professionalism, experience, attitude, approachability, and caring.Results: Of the 541 surveys distributed, 516 (95.4%) were completed and included in the analysis. The majority of respondents were female [389 (75.4%)] and aged 31– 45 years [234 (45.3%)]. The combination of scrubs in a buttoned coat of the same color had the highest composite rating score [median (interquartile range): 50 (45, 50), adjusted P< 0.001 compared with the other five combinations]. There was no significant difference in preference for standardized disposable or personalized cloth operating caps. Respondents' age was independently associated with the perceived importance of anesthesiologist attire (46– 60 years vs 18– 35 years: odds ratio 2.17, 95% confidence interval 1.12– 4.18, P=0.021).Conclusion: Patients prefer anesthesiologists wearing scrubs in coats of the same color. Standardizing anesthesiologist attire based on these findings may improve patient satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most important industrial microorganism used to fuel ethanol production worldwide. Herein, we obtained a mutant S. cerevisiae strain with improved capacity for ethanol fermentation, from 13.72% (v/v for the wild-type strain) to 16.13% (v/v for the mutant strain), and analyzed its genomic structure and gene expression changes. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment revealed that the changed genes were mainly enriched in the pathways of carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, metabolism of cofactors and vitamins, and lipid metabolism. The gene expression trends of the two strains were recorded during fermentation to create a timeline. Venn diagram analysis revealed exclusive genes in the mutant strain. KEGG enrichment of these genes showed upregulation of genes involved in sugar metabolism, mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, fatty acid and amino acid degradation, and downregulation of genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation, ribosome, fatty acid and amino acid biogenesis. Protein interaction analysis of these genes showed that glucose-6-phosphate isomerase 1, signal peptidase complex subunit 3, 6-phosphofructokinase 2, and trifunctional aldehyde reductase were the major hub genes in the network, linking pathways together. These findings provide new insights into the adaptive metabolism of S. cerevisiae for ethanol production and a framework for the construction of engineered strains of S. cerevisiae with excellent ethanol fermentation capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanisms for high l-lactic acid production remain unclear in many bacteria. Lactobacillus rhamnosus SCT-10-10-60 was previously obtained from L. rhamnosus ATCC 11443 via mutagenesis and showed improved l-lactic acid production. In this study, the genomes of strains SCT-10-10-60 and ATCC 11443 were sequenced. Both genomes are a circular chromosome, 2.99 Mb in length with a GC content of approximately 46.8%. Eight split genes were identified in strain SCT-10-10-60, including two LytR family transcriptional regulators, two Rex redox-sensing transcriptional repressors, and four ABC transporters. In total, 60 significantly up-regulated genes (log2fold-change ≥ 2) and 39 significantly down-regulated genes (log2fold-change ≤ − 2) were identified by a transcriptome comparison between strains SCT-10-10-60 and ATCC 11443. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis revealed that “pyruvate metabolism” was significantly different (P < 0.05) between the two strains. The split genes and the differentially expressed genes involved in the “pyruvate metabolism” pathway are probably responsible for the increased l-lactic acid production by SCT-10-10-60. The genome and transcriptome sequencing information and comparison of SCT-10-10-60 with ATCC 11443 provide insights into the anabolism of l-lactic acid and a reference for improving l-lactic acid production using genetic engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural transitions during aluminum leaching of the NiAl3 phase in a Raney nickel–aluminum alloy have been investigated by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy. We observed that NiAl3 grains cracked into crystalline nano-fragments at the initial stage of leaching. A possible mechanism for the grain fragmentation was proposed based on the crystal structure of NiAl3. We discovered that fcc nickel, the known active phase, coexisted with another active nickel phase with an orthorhombic structure in the Raney-Ni catalyst. The orthorhombic nickel phase was generated directly from its source phase, NiAl3, and further transformed to the fcc nickel phase during aluminum leaching [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]