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In order to save energy consumption, improve network performance and prolong the life cycle of communication network, a reasonable relay selection algorithm for energy collection wireless sensor networks is proposed. Firstly, taking solar wireless sensor network as an example, the energy consumption and solar energy state of sensor nodes are mathematically analyzed. Then, the cooperation probability is optimized with the interruption probability threshold as the constraint, and the relay nodes participating in the cooperative transmission are controlled to save the energy of cooperative transmission in the system. According to the solar energy status, network energy balance, signal-to-noise ratio and outage probability of the relay node, a multi criteria relay selection strategy is adopted to select the optimal node. Compared with the comparison algorithm, this algorithm can save at least 47.1% power consumption and prolong the network lifetime by 25.9%.

The potential advantage of laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) compared with open gastrectomy (OG) for serosa-invasive (pT4a) Siewert type II and III adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction (AEG) remains uncertain. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the short- and long-term outcomes of LG compared to OG for pT4a Siewert type II/III AEG cancers. We retrospectively evaluated 283 patients with pathological confirmed T4a Siewert type II and type III AEG who underwent LG or OG in our center between January 2004 and September 2015. The short- and long-term outcomes were compared between the groups using a 1:1 matched propensity score matching method (PSM). The LG group had a longer operation time, less estimated blood loss, less time to first flatus, less time to start liquid diet, less time to first ambulation, and shorter length of incision than the OG group. The conversion rates were 5.4% in the LG groups. There was no significant difference in the overall complication rate between the LG and OG groups. The 5-year overall survival (OS) and the 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) were comparable between the LG and OG groups (35.4% vs 32.1%, p = 0.541; 34.1% vs 31.0%, p = 0.523, respectively). There was no significant difference in the recurrence rate and pattern between the LG and OG groups. Laparoscopic gastrectomy is associated with better short-term outcomes and similar long-term outcomes for pT4a Siewert type II/III AEG. This study reveals that LG could be a safe and feasible option for pT4a Siewert type II/III AEG compared to OG.

Comorbid chronic pain and depression are increasingly becoming a concerning public problem, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that pain-related depression-like behaviors are induced in a rat model of chronic constriction injury (CCI). Using this model, we found that chronic neuropathic pain decreased the activity and expression of sirtuin 1 (SIRT1, an NAD+-dependent deacetylase) in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA). In addition, the pharmacologic activation of SIRT1 in the CeA could alleviate the depression-like behaviors associated with chronic pain while relieving sensory pain. Accordingly, adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated SIRT1 overexpression in the CeA produced a positive effect on the easement of chronic pain and comorbid depression. Taken together, these findings highlight the role of SIRT1 in the CeA in chronic pain and depression states and reveal that the upregulation of SIRT1 may be a potential therapy for the treatment of pain-depression comorbidities.

The presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) remains a challenge in the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) diseases, as it hinders the infiltration of many therapeutic drugs into the brain parenchyma. Therefore, developing efficacious pharmacological agents that can traverse the BBB is crucial for optimal treatment of diseases of the CNS such as neurodegenerative conditions and brain tumors. Adeno-associated virus (AAV), one of the most promising gene therapy vectors, has been shown to cross the BBB safely and is non-pathogenic in nature and therefore has been utilized for numerous diseases of the CNS. Along with the development of protein engineering techniques such as directed evolution including DNA shuffling, a great number of BBB-crossing AAVs have been developed, that could be systemically injected for therapeutic benefit. In this review, we discuss several feasible approaches to improve transportation of therapeutic agents to the CNS. We also discuss the advantages of using BBB-crossing AAVs, their role as a gene delivery agent and highlight the different types of BBB-AAV vectors that have been developed in order to provide a greater insight into how they can be used in diseases of the CNS.

Anesthesia of neonates with propofol induces persistent behavioral abnormalities in adulthood. Although propofol-triggered apoptosis of neurons in the developing brain may contribute to the development of cognitive deficits, the mechanism of neurotoxicity induced by neonatal exposure to propofol remains unclear. In this study, the effects of neonatal propofol anesthesia on synaptic plasticity and neurocognitive function were investigated. Postnatal day 7 (PND-7) Sprague-Dawley rats were intraperitoneally injected with fat emulsion or 20, 40 or 60 mg/kg propofol for three consecutive days. The expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), tropomyosin-related kinase B (TrkB) and postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) in the rat hippocampus at PND-10 and PND-12 was measured by Western blotting. The number of dendritic branches, total dendritic length and dendritic spine density were observed by Golgi-Cox staining 24 h and 72 h after the last propofol administration. Long-term potentiation (LTP) was measured electrophysiologically in hippocampus of PND-60 rats to evaluate the synaptic function. The learning and memory abilities of rats were evaluated by Morris water maze (MWM) experiments, Novel object recognition test (NORT) and Object location test (OLT) at PND-60. Our results showed that neonatal exposure to propofol significantly inhibited the expression of BDNF, TrkB and PSD-95 in the rat hippocampus. The number of dendritic branches, total dendritic length and dendritic spine density of neurons in the rat hippocampus were markedly reduced after neonatal propofol anesthesia. LTP was significantly diminished in hippocampus of PND-60 rats after repeated exposure to propofol in the neonatal period. Morris water maze experiments showed that repeated neonatal exposure to propofol significantly prolonged the escape latency and decreased the time spent in the target quadrant and the number of platform crossings. NORT and OLT showed that repeated neonatal exposure to propofol markedly reduced the Investigation Time for novel object or location. All of the results above indicate that repeated exposure to propofol in the neonatal period can impair hippocampal synaptic plasticity and the recognition function of rats in adulthood.

Robust activity recognition in near real-time is a prerequisite for delivering the smartness intrinsic to the pragmatic realisation of smart homes, environments and so forth. Many of the physical devices necessary for equipping a smart home are already available as consumer electronic devices and certified for use by the public. Yet activity recognition remains the preserve of the research community, despite the array of machine learning and other AI techniques currently available. To-date, research has been dominated by the use of pre-segmented data, resulting in the recognition of an arbitrary activity subsequent to its completion. For assistive paradigms dependent on smart technologies, for example Ambient Assisted Living, such approaches are insufficient. The overall objective must be the identification of an activity within an appropriative confidence level as soon as possible after activity commencement. This paper presents a novel approach, Cumulatively Overlapping windowing approach for AmBient Recognition of Activities (COBRA), for near real-time activity recognition, specifically within 10, 30, 60 or 120 seconds of the commencement of an activity. COBRA utilizes an innovative combination of sliding windows augmented with a logistic regression model. The approach is evaluated using the well-established, open, CASAS dataset.

Increasing penetration of wind power has a negative effect on system frequency deviation due to the fast variability and uncertainty characteristics of wind. In this study, a wind power variation prediction-based automatic generation control (AGC) feedforward control method is applied within the conventional AGC framework to minimise system frequency and tie-line deviations. Firstly, the variogram function is introduced for analysing the characteristics of wind power variations. A relationship between the variogram of wind power and the trend component of wind power is found and then a three-parameter power-law model is established. Then, the generation rate constrains of AGC generators is considered as the main constraint factor that influences wind power smoothing. By predicting the wind power variations in AGC control time-scale, a coordination AGC feedforward control strategy is proposed. The control strategy makes different types of AGC generators act in advance to improve the ability of the power system, corresponding to the forecasted ramp variations in wind power generation. Finally, the performance of the proposed coordination control strategy is verified and tested using the actual data from China. Simulation results show that with this new strategy, frequency deviation under wind power variations can be effectively decreased.

BackgroundMacrophages are heterogenous phagocytic cells with an important role in the innate immunity. They are, also, significant contributors in the adaptive immune system. Macrophages are the most abundant immune cells in the lung during allergic asthma, which is the most common chronic respiratory disease of both adults and children. Macrophages activated by Th1 cells are known as M1 macrophages while those activated by IL-4 and IL-13 are called alternatively activated macrophages (AAM) or M2 cells. AAM are subdivided into four distinct subtypes (M2a, M2b, M2c and M2d), depending on the nature of inducing agent and the expressed markers.BodyIL-4 is the major effector cytokine in both alternative activation of macrophages and pathogenesis of asthma. Thus, the role of M2a macrophages in asthma is a major concern. However, this is controversial. Therefore, further studies are required to improve our knowledge about the role of IL-4-induced macrophages in allergic asthma, through precisive elucidation of the roles of specific M2a proteins in the pathogenesis of asthma. In the current review, we try to illustrate the different functions of M2a macrophages (protective and pathogenic roles) in the pathogenesis of asthma, including explanation of how different M2a proteins and markers act during the pathogenesis of allergic asthma. These include surface markers, enzymes, secreted proteins, chemokines, cytokines, signal transduction proteins and transcription factors.ConclusionsAAM is considered a double-edged sword in allergic asthma. Finally, we recommend further studies that focus on increased selective expression or suppression of protective and pathogenic M2a markers.

Understanding the intrinsic characteristics of wind power is important for the safe and efficient parallel function of wind turbines in large-scale wind farms. Current research on the spectrum characteristics of wind power focuses on estimation of power spectral density, particularly the structural characteristics of Kolmogorov’s scaling law. In this study, the wavelet Mallat algorithm, which is different from the conventional Fourier transform, with compactly supported characteristics is used to extract the envelope of the signal and analyze the instantaneous spectral characteristics of wind power signals. Then, the theory for the change in the center frequency of the wind power is obtained. The results showed that within a certain range, the center frequency decreases as the wind power increases by using enough wind farm data. In addition, the center frequency remains unchanged when the wind power is sufficiently large. Together with the time domain characteristics of wind power fluctuation, we put forward the time-frequency separation characteristics of wind power and the corresponding physical parameter expressions, which corresponds to wind speed’s amplitude and frequency modulation characteristics. Lastly, the physical connotation of the time-frequency separation characteristics of wind power from the perspective of atmospheric turbulent energy transport mechanism and wind turbine energy transfer mechanism is established.

IL-10-producing B Cells (B10) is a functionally defined regulatory B-cell subset. It plays an important role in the control of inflammation and autoimmune diseases, although it is present at low numbers in peripheral blood. Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease characterized by the production of autoantibodies such as TRAb. ILC2s maintains Th2 polarization state by producing type-II cytokines. It is not clear whether the level of autoantibody is related to ILC2s and B10 cells in Graves' disease. In this study, we analyzed the frequencies of B10, Treg cells and ILC2s, as well as the expression of related cytokines in peripheral blood from patients with Graves' disease and evaluated the correlation between B10 cell numbers and autoantibodies level. Our data showed that the frequency of B10 or Treg cells was significantly decreased in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from Graves' disease patients, while the percentage of ILC2s cells was increased; the levels of cytokine IL-5, IL-13 and related transcription factor RORα were up-regulated. Autoantibodies analysis also showed that high level of TRAb was accompanied by low rates of B10 cells in patients, there was a negative correlation trend. In addition, the analytical data from mouse disease models also showed similar results. It indicates that B10 cells may affect the production of TRAb by negative regulation of Th2 cells, while ILC2s can promote the production of autoantibodies such as TRAb by maintaining the dominant response state of Th2 cells.

Local features play an important role in remote sensing image matching, and handcrafted features have been excessively used in this area for a long time. This article proposes a pyramid convolutional neural triplet network that extracts a 128-dimensional deep descriptor that significantly improves the matching performance. The proposed approach first extracts deep descriptors of the anchor patches and corresponding positive patches in a batch using the proposed pyramid convolutional neural network. Following this step, the approaches chooses the closest negative patch for each anchor patch and corresponding positive patch pair to form the triplet sample based on the descriptor distances among all other image patches in the batch. These triplets are used to optimize the parameters of the network using a new loss function. We evaluated the proposed deep descriptors on two benchmark data sets (Brown and HPatches) as well as real image data sets. The results reveal that the proposed descriptor achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the Brown data set and a comparatively very high performance on the HPatches data set. The proposed approach finds more correct matches than the classical handcrafted feature descriptors on aerial image pairs and is observed to be robust to variations in the viewpoint and illumination.

Feature extraction on point clouds is an essential task when analyzing and processing point clouds of 3D scenes. However, there still remains a challenge to adequately exploit local fine-grained features on point cloud data due to its irregular and unordered structure in a 3D space. To alleviate this problem, a Dilated Graph Attention-based Network (DGANet) with a certain feature for learning ability is proposed. Specifically, we first build a local dilated graph-like region for each input point to establish the long-range spatial correlation towards its corresponding neighbors, which allows the proposed network to access a wider range of geometric information of local points with their long-range dependencies. Moreover, by integrating the dilated graph attention module (DGAM) implemented by a novel offset–attention mechanism, the proposed network promises to highlight the differing importance on each edge of the constructed local graph to uniquely learn the discrepancy feature of geometric attributes between the connected point pairs. Finally, all the learned edge attention features are further aggregated, allowing the most significant geometric feature representation of local regions by the graph–attention pooling to fully extract local detailed features for each point. The validation experiments using two challenging benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and powerful generation ability of our proposed DGANet in both 3D object classification and segmentation tasks.

Bronchial asthma is one of the most chronic pulmonary diseases and major public health problems. In general, asthma prevails in developed countries than developing countries, and its prevalence is increasing in the latter. For instance, the hygiene hypothesis demonstrated that this phenomenon resulted from higher household hygienic standards that decreased the chances of infections, which would subsequently increase the occurrence of allergy. In this review, we attempted to integrate our knowledge with the hygiene hypothesis into beneficial preventive approaches for allergic asthma. Therefore, we highlighted the studies that investigated the correlation between allergic asthma and the two different types of infections that induce the two major antagonizing arms of T cells. This elucidation reflects the association between various types of natural infections and the immune system, which is predicted to support the main objective of the current research on investigating of the benefits of natural infections, regardless their immune pathways for the prevention of allergic asthma. We demonstrated that natural infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) prevents the development of allergic asthma, thus Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is suggested at early age to mediate the same prevention particularly with increasing its efficiency through genetic engineering-based modifications. Likewise, natural helminth infections might inhabit the allergic asthma development. Therefore, helminth-derived proteins at early age are good candidates for designing vaccines for allergic asthma and it requires further investigation. Finally, we recommend imitation of natural infections as a general strategy for preventing allergic asthma that increased dramatically over the past decades.

IntroductionChronic heart failure (CHF) is a common disease worldwide, and imposes a substantial burden to the healthcare system. In CHF, limited exercise capacity and affected mental well-being leads to a reduced quality of life (QOL). How to improve the QOL and exercise endurance is critical for patients with CHF. Exercise therapy, such as some traditional Asian exercises (TAEs) including Taichi, Baduanjin and Yoga, plays an important role in the rehabilitation of patients with CHF. TAE is suitable for the rehabilitation of patients with CHF because of its soft movements and can relax the body and mind. Studies have shown that TAE can regulate the overall health status of the body and exercise tolerance, improve QOL and reduce rehospitalisation rate in patients with CHF. However, the difference in efficacy of TAE in patients with CHF is not yet clear. The main purpose of this study is to conduct a network meta-analysis (NMA) of randomised trials to determine the impact of TAE on patients with CHF of different types, different causes and different New York Heart Association (NYHA) heart function classifications and to provide references for different types of patients with CHF to choose appropriate exercise rehabilitation therapy.Methods and analysisThe literature search will be retrieved from PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang database, Chinese biomedical literature service system (SinoMed) and Chinese Scientific Journals Database (VIP) from the date of their inception until 1 August 2021. All randomised controlled trials that evaluated the effects of three different TAE therapies (Taichi, Baduanjin and Yoga) on patients with CHF will be included. The primary outcomes are peak oxygen uptake (peak VO2), exercise capacity (6-min walking distance) and QOL tested with the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire. Secondary outcomes include the levels of N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide, left ventricular ejection fraction, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure. For included articles, two reviewers will independently extract the data, and Cochrane Collaboration’s tool will be used to assess risk of bias. We will perform the Bayesian NMA to pool all treatment effects. The ranking probabilities for the optimal intervention of various treatments (Taichi, Baduanjin or Yoga) will be estimated by the mean ranks and surface under the cumulative ranking curve. Subgroup analysis for different types, different causes and different NYHA heart function classifications of CHF will be performed. We will use the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation system to assess the quality of evidence contributing to each network estimate.Ethics and disseminationThe results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications. They will provide useful information to inform clinicians on the potential functions of TAE in CHF, and to provide consolidated evidence for clinical practice and further research of TAE.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42020179304.

Background/purpose: Gold metal technology improves flexibility and the resistance to cyclic fatigue of the endodontic mechanical files. This study compared the performance of ProTaper Gold (PTG) multiple file system and WaveOne Gold (WOG) single file system in simulated S-shaped root canals, which represents one of the most challenging root canal morphology. Materials and methods: Forty S-shaped canals (n = 20 canals/per group) in resin blocks were instrumented to an apical size of 0.25 mm using PTG and WOG Primary, respectively. The total amount of resin removal, canal transportation, centering ratio, and the degree of canal straightening were measured in Photoshop CS6 software. Statistical analysis was performed by using Mann–Whitney U-test (α = .05). Results: None of the files fractured during the instrumentation. The WOG group removed significantly less amount of resin at 0, 3, 6, 7 and 9 mm from the apex (P .05). Conclusion: The WOG Primary file has a less aggressive dentin cutting and more centered apical preparation. The PTG system is more advantageous in shaping the coronal curvature of S-shaped canal.

Background There is limited literature on conventional US to assess bone age. Purpose To determine the diagnostic performance of US in the assessment of abnormal bone age in Chinese children. Materials and Methods In this prospective study, children and young adults aged between birth and 19 years from a large provincial teaching hospital were enrolled from January to November 2020. Children without clinical diseases potentially affecting skeletal growth were included in the normal-value group. Children with clinically suspected growth disturbances who were undergoing bone age evaluation were included in the validation group. Ossification ratios (ie, the ratio of the height of the epiphyseal ossification center to the entire epiphysis, including the cartilaginous component) of the radius, ulna, and femur from all the children were measured using US. Ultrasonic skeletal maturity scores (ie, the summation of ossification ratios of the radius, ulna, and femur multiplied by 100) collected from children in the normal-value group were used for score-for-age curve fitting through Box-Cox power exponential distribution. Test performance characteristics for the ability of US to help diagnose abnormal bone age were determined using radiographic bone age as a reference standard. Statistically significant difference between groups was determined by using a paired-sample t test. Results A total of 1089 children (median age, 9 years [interquartile range, 3-14 years]; 578 boys) were enrolled, including 929 children (mean age, 8 years [interquartile range, 4-12 years]; 515 boys) in the normal-value group and 160 children (mean age, 9 years [interquartile range, 7-11 years]; 63 boys) in the validation group. Ultrasonic bone ages in the validation group were evaluated with use of the lists of normal score-for-age values. With radiographic bone age as a reference standard, US could help diagnose abnormal bone age with high sensitivity (93% [14 of 15 participants; 95% CI: 66, 100] for boys, 100% [14 of 14 participants; 95% CI: 73, 100] for girls) and specificity (98% [47 of 48 participants; 95% CI: 88, 100] for boys, 98% [81 of 83 participants; 95% CI: 91, 100] for girls). Conclusion The US scoring system established can be used to evaluate bone age with high sensitivity and specificity. Clinical trial registration no. ChiCTR1900027917 © RSNA, 2021 Online supplemental material is available for this article.

Background The herbal pairing of Dangshen (DS) [Codonopsis pilosula (Franch.) Nannf.] and Huangqi (HQ) [Astragalus membranaceus (Fisch.) Bge.] (DHP) is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine that is frequently used to treat chronic heart failure (CHF) in China. However, the pharmacological mechanism of DHP has not been fully elucidated. This is the first study aimed to reveal the active mechanism of DHP in the treatment of CHF by using network pharmacology methods. Methods The active ingredients of DHP were obtained from the TCMSP database, and the potential targets of DHP were predicted using the SwissTargetPrediction database. CHF-related targets were searched by the DisGeNET and GeneCards databases. The common targets between the disease and herbs were obtained using a Venn diagram. The STRING database was utilized to obtain the protein-protein interaction data. Next, we used Cytoscape 3.7.2 software to construct and analyze the herb-ingredient-potential targets-disease network. Topology analysis was used to identify the key ingredients and hub genes. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses were performed using the Metascape database to reveal the mechanism. Furthermore, molecular docking simulation was performed using AutoDock Vina software to assess the affinity of the key ingredients and hub genes. Results Five key ingredients and six hub genes were screened. The six hub genes were closely related to PI3K /AKT or ERK1/2 pathways. The KEGG pathways mainly involved the TNF signaling pathway, calcium signaling pathway, and cancer-related pathways. The GO enrichment analysis results showed that DHP might act on biological processes including positive regulation of kinase activity and cellular response to nitrogen compound via the three above-mentioned pathways in the treatment of CHF. Finally, the molecular docking results showed that the five key ingredients exhibited strong affinities to the six hub genes. Conclusions This study revealed the molecular mechanism that the flavonoids in DHP may alleviate endothelial dysfunction and cardiac hypertrophy via regulation of the TNF pathway and its downstream PI3K/Akt or ERK1/2 signaling pathways, or improve excitation-contraction coupling by regulating calcium signaling pathway, thereby improving CHF. These results provide insights for further experimentation on its pharmacological effects.

Background/purpose: Calcium hydroxide [Ca(OH)2], a wildly used intracanal medicament, should be completely removed from the root canal before obturation to avoid negative effects on the treatment. This study evaluated the effectiveness of conventional needle irrigation (CNI), passive ultrasonic activation (PUI), photon-induced photoacoustic streaming (PIPS), XP-endo Finisher (XP) and EDDY for the removal of Ca(OH)2 from S-shaped root canal. Materials and methods: Eighty-four S-shaped root canals in resin blocks were prepared using Protaper Gold up to size #25/0.08 and filled with Ca(OH)2. Five groups were established according to the removal techniques (n = 16): CNI, PUI, PIPS, XP and EDDY group. The positive and negative control group (n = 2) were also established. Sodium hypochlorite 3% was used as the irrigant. Digital radiographs were used to measure the remaining Ca(OH)2. Statistical analysis of the data was performed by using the Kruskal–Wallis test, followed by Dunn's post hoc test with Bonferroni correction (α = 0.05). Results: All the tested techniques completely removed Ca(OH)2 from the straight portion and coronal curve of the S-shaped root canal in 100% of cases. Regarding the apical curve, PUI, EDDY, PIPS and XP removed significantly more Ca(OH)2 than CNI (P 0.05). The complete clearance of Ca(OH)2 from the apical curve was observed in 75%, 62.5%, 56.3%, 43.8% and 0% of cases of PUI, EDDY, PIPS, XP and CNI group, respectively. Conclusion: Irrigant activation enhanced Ca(OH)2 removal from the apical region of the S-shaped root canal. CNI was significantly less effective than all activation techniques.

Objective: Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is one of the causes of most cardiomyocyte injuries and deaths. Berberine (BBR) has been suggested a potential to exert protective effects against myocardial I/R injury. This systematic review aims to determine the intrinsic mechanisms of BBR's protective effects in myocardial I/R injury.Methods: Seven databases were searched for studies performed from inception to July 2020. Methodological quality was assessed by SYRCLE's-RoB tool.Results: Ten studies including a total of 270 animals were included in this study. The methodology quality scores of the included studies ranged from 5 to 7 points. The meta-analysis we conducted demonstrated that BBR significantly reduced myocardial infarct size and the incidence of ventricular arrhythmia, compared to control groups (P < 0.00001). Cardiac function of animals in the BBR treatment group was also markedly increased (P < 0.00001). The index of myocardial apoptosis and the levels of biomarkers of myocardial infarction (LDH and CK) were also decreased in the BBR treatment groups compared to the control groups (P < 0.00001).Conclusions: The pre-clinical evidence, according to our study, showed that BBR is a promising therapeutic agent for myocardial I/R injury. However, this conclusion should be further investigated in clinical studies.

For Vehicle Ad-Hoc Network (VANET), the accurate traffic flow information may offer useful guidance to drivers. In the past few years, applications of big data bring about opportunities for intelligent traffic control and management. This paper uses an optimization of support vector regression (SVM) as a way of traffic flow prediction. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is applied to the parameter optimization of support vector regression (SVR), which improves the performance of the prediction system. The experimental results show that the method has good prediction effect.

More wind and solar power will be integrated into future power systems in China. Assessing the complementarity of wind and solar resources helps to mitigate the fluctuation of renewable power output effectively. This study comprehensively assesses the complementarity of wind and solar resources over China based on MERRA-2 reanalysis dataset. The results show that the complementarity between two resources and that between different regions for a single resource are significantly affected by the time scales. The complementarity between wind and PV power plants is superior to that between wind or solar power plants in different regions. Furthermore, the complementarity between wind and PV power can be further improved by dispersing the locations of wind farms, especially when the PV power is significantly positively correlated with wind power at the same location. However, dispersing the locations of PV plants may not work since the diurnal and seasonal solar radiation are highly similar in different regions. Extreme value analysis is employed to assess the benefits obtained from the wind-solar complementarity. The duration of no power output and the hourly negative fluctuation in power output are significantly reduced due to the complementarity.

This paper proposes a hybrid combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) model for day-ahead market clearing, in order to enhance the operation flexibility of CCGTs in practice. The proposed hybrid model, by taking benefits of combined offers from market participants on both configurations and individual physical turbines, can more accurately reflect physical operation features of CCGTs than existing CCGT models. A comprehensive review on existing CCGT models in academia and industry practice with their advantages and shortcomings is conducted. By taking benefits of the two most investigated models, i.e., configuration-based model and component-based model, the mapping relationship between these two models is revealed for deriving the proposed hybrid model. Tight formulations are further discussed for achieving the better computational performance. The proposed hybrid model is tested and compared with other CCGT models via the modified IEEE 118-bus system and the midcontinent independent system operator system. Results show notable benefits in maintaining operation flexibility and enhancing social welfare.

The assessment of wind resource is the basis of wind power utilization. An accurate and comprehensive characterization of wind resource is of vital importance to site planning, wind turbine selecti ...

Studies on software risk response theories and methods play an important role in improving the success rate of software project. With the requirement of software risk management, the existing single-objective risk response strategies section model is difficult to manage software risks effectively. This paper regards software risk response cost and software risk exposure as optimization objectives and proposes a multiobjective risk response strategies optimization model for software project. Furthermore, it analyzes the risk correlation from the perspective of risk probability dependence and risk loss interaction and puts forward a multiobjective risk response strategies optimization model for software project from the perspective of risk correlation. Empirical analysis results show that there is a trade-off relationship between the software risk exposure and software risk response cost. The software manager can identify the corresponding optimal risk response strategies according to the actual risk response budget. The results also indicate that the consequence of the multiobjective risk response strategies optimization model for software project considering risk correlation can better describe the actual situation of risk management.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between early intervention timing and complications of acute Stanford type B aortic dissection. Methods: The clinical data of 146 patients with acute stanford type B aortic dissection treated with transseptal stent for aortic endovascular repair (TEVAR) from January 2012 to October 2017 in Xiaogan Central Hospital were analyzed. The time was divided into 3 groups, including the onset to TEVAR time ≤ 48 h group (41 cases in group A), the onset to TEVAR time 48 h - 7 d group (56 cases in group B), the onset to TEVAR time 7 d - 14 d group (49 cases in group C)). The clinical baseline data, the incidence of different complications during perioperative period, and the mortality rate at 30 days were compared between the three groups. Results: There were no significant differences in age, gender and comorbidities between the three groups (all P > 0.05). Group A had a clearer indication of immediate intervention compared with group B and group C (P 0.05). Conclusion: Early intervention of acute TBAD may increase the risk of serious complications after surgery, and the incidence of serious complications will gradually decrease over time; the reduction of severe complications after early grouping is not accompanied by Early mortality and reoperation rates were significantly reduced, and TEVAR treatment in some patients with dissection did not prevent dissection progression and rupture.

Matching a large number of images is quite time-consuming for structure from motion (SfM) due to the image matching by comparing features between all image pairs. In this letter, a bag of deep convolutional features (DCF-BoW) model is proposed to create match graph to reduce the number of matches. First, the convolutional feature map of an image is extracted using the VGG-16 convolutional neural network trained on ImageNet. Then, each local region in the original image can be represented by a feature vector in the feature map. The feature vectors are normalized and used to construct a bag of words model, which could convert each image into a DCF-BoW representation. Finally, the match graph is constructed by selecting the top 10 images with the highest similarities, which are calculated by computing the distances between those DCF-BoW representations. The experiment results show that the proposed DCF-BoW can create the match graph effectively in short time and find the potential overlapping image pairs. The match graph created by the proposed DCF-BoW is better than those built by DBoW3 and VocabTree, which is clearly showed in precision-recall curve on the Urban data set. The results of the SfM reconstruction based on the match graph created by the proposed DCF-BoW are slightly worse than those of the exhaustive matching, while the number of matches is reduced by 97.4% and 92.1%, respectively, on the Urban and South Building data sets.

Objective: To identify the high risk factors associated with postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) after selective cesarean delivery of twins. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all women with twin gestations who choosed an elective cesarean delivery after 28 weeks of gestation at Women's Hospital of Zhejiang University School of m from September 2014 to April 2019. The Women with an intrauterine fetal demise one or both of twins were excluded.A total of 532 wemen were analysed,they were classified as PPH group(n=70) and No PPH group(n=462). Estimated blood loss greater than or equal to 1000 ml was defined as Postpartum hemorrhage(PPH).Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the independent risk factors.Results: Of the 532 twin pregnant women, PPH occurred in 13.2% (n=70). There were statistically signifcant diferences in preeclampsia (P=0.005), premature rupture of membranes(Pp < 0.05), premature rupture of membranes (OR17.9, P < 0.05), placental adhesion (OR5.71, p < 0.05) and placenta previa (OR10, p < 0.05). Conclusions: preeclampsia , premature rupture of membranes , placental adhesion and placenta previa were risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage after elective cesarean section for twin pregnancy. Risk factor identification and prevention should be a priority.

As the age profile of many societies continues to increase, supporting health, both mental and physical, is of increasing importance if independent living is to be maintained. Sensing and, ultimately, recognising activities of daily living has been perceived as a prerequisite for detecting tasks that people avoid or find increasingly difficult to perform, as well as being indicators of certain illnesses. To date, extensive research efforts have been made in activity monitoring, recognition and assistance in indoor scenarios, frequently through smart home initiatives. Moreover, certain behaviours and activities may indicate certain disease especially for elderly people, such as sleep disorder. Thus this paper advocates a need for platforms that enable activity monitoring, in particularly, this sleep disorder, in home environment, thereby enabling the construction of more complex yet realistic activity models and behaviours patterns.

False information on the Internet is being heralded as serious social harm to our society. To recognize false text information, in this paper, an effective method for mining text features is proposed in the field of false drug advertisements. Firstly, the data of false drug advertisements and real drug advertisements were collected from the official websites to build a database of false and real drug advertisements. Secondly, by performing feature extraction on the text of drug advertisements, this work built a characteristic matrix based on the effective features and assigned positive or negative labels to the feature vector of the matrix according to whether it is a fake medical advertisement or not. Thirdly, this study trained and tested several different classifiers, selected the classification model with the best performance in identifying false drug advertisements, and found the key characteristics that can determine the classification. Finally, the model with the best performance was used to predict new false drug advertisements collected from Sina Weibo. In the case of identifying false drug advertisements, the classification effect of the support vector machine (SVM) classifier established on the feature set after feature selection was the most effective. The findings of this study can provide an effective method for the government to identify and combat false advertisements. This study has a certain reference significance in demonstrating the use of text data mining technology to identify and detect information fraud behavior.

With the recent technological advancements, The Internet of Things offers numerous and potentially revolutionary benefits to all aspects of today’s digital world. Personalised and connected healthcare is one of the most promising areas. IoT is multidiscipline research area, which envisages a number of technologies, such as sensing, networking, data management, artificial intelligence and so on. Sensors and smart devices are the fundamental elements for observing the participants and their surrounding environment. In terms of networking and communications, several techniques have been widely adopted, for example, NB-IoT, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G etc. In addition, Big Data, Cloud computing are often embedded for data storage and analysing. Here as, this paper surveys the emerging IoT technologies and typical applications in healthcare.

Mitophagy is one of the important targets for the prevention and treatment of myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (MIRI). Moderate mitophagy can remove damaged mitochondria, inhibit excessive reactive oxygen species accumulation, and protect mitochondria from damage. However, excessive enhancement of mitophagy greatly reduces adenosine triphosphate production and energy supply for cell survival, and aggravates cell death. How dysfunctional mitochondria are selectively recognized and engulfed is related to the interaction of adaptors on the mitochondrial membrane, which mainly include phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome ten (PTEN)-induced kinase 1/Parkin, hypoxia-inducible factor-1 α/Bcl-2 and adenovirus e1b19k Da interacting protein 3, FUN-14 domain containing protein 1 receptor-mediated mitophagy pathway and so on. In this review, the authors briefly summarize the main pathways currently studied on mitophagy and the relationship between mitophagy and MIRI, and incorporate and analyze research data on prevention and treatment of MIRI with Chinese medicine, thereby provide relevant theoretical basis and treatment ideas for clinical prevention of MIRI.

The wind power ramp event includes large fluctuations in wind power within a short period of time. To maintain grid stability, defining, identifying, and predicting the wind power ramp event is inevitable. Therefore, a comprehensive assessment method of wind power ramp events that combines the generalized information of the source, grid, and load sides is proposed. In this method, we put forward a channel self-selected multi-layer coefficient correction model (CSMCC) and wind power ramp threshold, according to the allowable value of a grid frequency change. Additionally, the availability of data-driven modeling methods is verified by performing autocorrelation analysis. Finally, the comprehensive evaluation method, which combines the back propagation (BP) neural network, supports the vector machine and CSMCC model is proved to be effective. This paper has a certain reference significance for basic research on large-scale wind power safety and efficient utilization.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector, an excellent gene therapy vector, has been widely used in the treatment of various central nervous system (CNS) diseases. Due to the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), early attempts at AAV-based CNS diseases treatment were mainly performed through intracranial injections. Subsequently, systemic injections of AAV9, the first AAV that was shown to have BBB-crossing ability in newborn and adult mice, were assessed in clinical trials for multiple CNS diseases. However, the development of systemic AAV injections to treat CNS diseases is still associated with many challenges, such as the efficiency of AAV in crossing the BBB, the peripheral toxicity caused by the expression of AAV-delivered genes, and the immune barrier against AAV in the blood. In this review, we will introduce the biology of the AAV vector and the advantages of systemic AAV injections to treat CNS diseases. Most importantly, we will introduce the challenges associated with systemic injection of therapeutic AAV in treating CNS diseases and suggest feasible solutions.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a brain tumor with a high mortality rate. Surgical resection combined with radiotherapy and chemotherapy is the standard treatment for GBM patients, but the 5-year survival rate of patients despite this treatment is low. Immunotherapy has attracted increasing attention in recent years. As the pioneer and the main effector cells of immunotherapy, T cells play a key role in tumor immunotherapy. However, the T cells in GBM microenvironment are inhibited by the highly immunosuppressive environment of GBM, posing huge challenges to T cell-based GBM immunotherapy. This review summarizes the effects of the GBM microenvironment on the infiltration and function of different T-cell subsets and the possible strategies to overcome immunosuppression, and thus enhance the effectiveness of GBM immunotherapy.

Background Whether AR-V7 expression can predict the response in patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC) who receive androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) remains to be explored. Objective To evaluate the predictive value of AR-V7 expression in the prognosis of mHSPC patients receiving ADT. Design, setting, and participants In this multicenter prospective cohort study, 310 mHSPC patients commencing ADT were enrolled. Standard immunohistochemical staining was used to assess AR-V7 protein expression in biopsy tissues collected before initiation of ADT. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis Kaplan-Meier survival estimates and Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate associations of AR-V7 status (positive vs negative) with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Results and limitations Sixty-four (21%) patients were AR-V7–positive and 246 (79%) patients were AR-V7–negative. The median follow-up for patients not confirmed dead was 25 mo (interquartile range 10–30). Compared to AR-V7-negative patients, AR-V7-positive patients had significantly shorter PFS (hazard ratio [HR] 47.39, 95% confidence interval [CI] 25.83–86.94) and OS (HR 3.57, 95% CI 1.46–8.72). In multivariable analysis, AR-V7 was an independent predictive factor (HR 7.61, 95% CI 5.24–11.06) for shorter PFS. Limitations include the sample size and follow-up period. Conclusions AR-V7 expression in primary cancer tissue is correlated with poor prognosis for mHSPC patients receiving ADT. Patient summary In this study of men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, AR-V7 protein expression in primary cancer tissue was associated with poor outcomes on androgen deprivation therapy.

Backgroud Xuezhitong (XZT) is an extract of Allium macrostemon Bunge that has lipid-lowering properties. Objective To evaluate the effects of XZT on lipids in subjects with hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) without severe dyslipidaemia. Methods A total of 358 subjects with HTG were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive XZT (2700 mg daily), xuezhikang (XZK) (1200 mg daily) or placebo. The primary endpoint was the reduction or percent reduction in the TG level over 12 weeks of treatment. Results At the 12-week follow-up, a reduction in the TG level from baseline was observed in both groups, but the XZT and XZK groups demonstrated a significantly greater reduction than the placebo group (30.77%, 24.02% vs 11.59%, P P P Conclusions XZT significantly reduced TG levels and was well tolerated. Longer-term studies in more diverse patient populations are needed to corroborate these findings. Clinical Trial Registration www.chictr.org.cn Identifier: ChiCTR1900025854.

Nowadays text-based password has been widely used in our daily life. However, rather than choose a complex text password people prefer to use a brief password so that they can remember it easily. Moreover, with the rapid increasing use of mobile applications, people often input passwords in public. Attacker can perform shoulder surfing attack to observe the password directly with naked eyes or some video record devices. In order to resist the shoulder surfing attack, a number of authentication schemes based on graph have been proposed. However, graph-based password is totally different from text-based password. It's difficult for users to memorize two different kinds of passwords. In this paper, we propose a mixed login scheme called MixedKey which mixes graphic and traditional textual password. The login indicator in the scheme is randomly and safely generated for each login. MixedKey divides each password into characters, which connects graphic and text-based password. Users could login our system in both public and private situations with just one password. We also implemented MixedKey and conducted experiments to measure the memorability and usability. The results show MixedKey outperforms the existing schemes.

The sufficient actual big data analysis shows that wind speed has multi-scale amplitude & frequency modulation characteristics. There is an evident amplitude modulation effect between the average wind speed and the turbulence variance, and the modulation effect is also found with multi-scale characteristic. The turbulence intensity decreases with the wind speed in a certain range. However, when the wind speed is great in a certain degree, the turbulence intensity almost keeps stable. Simultaneously, both the average wind speed and the center frequency also have the multi-scale modulation effect. The center frequency increases with the wind speed in a certain range. However, when the wind speed is great in a certain degree, the center frequency almost keeps stable. The key discussion was given for this multi-scale amplitude and frequency modulation characteristic resulting from the cascade effect of turbulent energy transport. And the instantaneous model of wind speed and wind power is presented for its great significance of power system's real-time dispatch and optimization control.

Introduction The efficacy of ketorolac supplementation on pain control for knee arthroscopy remains controversial. We conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the impact of ketorolac supplementation on pain intensity after knee arthroscopy. Methods We search PubMed, EMbase, Web of science, EBSCO, and Cochrane library databases through September 2018 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the effect of ketorolac supplementation vs placebo on pain management after knee arthroscopy. This meta-analysis is performed using the random-effect model. Results Ten RCTs involving 402 patients are included in the meta-analysis. Overall, compared with control group for knee arthroscopy, ketorolac supplementation is associated with notably reduced pain scores at 1 h (MD = -0.66; 95% CI = -1.12 to -0.21; P = 0.004) and 2 h (MD = -0.90; 95% CI = -1.74 to -0.07; P = 0.03), prolonged time for first analgesic requirement (MD = 1.94; 95% CI = 0.33 to 3.55; P = 0.02) and decreased number of analgesic requirement (RR = 0.41; 95% CI = 0.23 to 0.75; P = 0.003), but has no obvious impact on analgesic consumption (MD = -0.56; 95% CI = -1.14 to 0.02; P = 0.06), as well as nausea and vomiting (RR = 0.44; 95% CI = 0.12 to 0.21; P = 0.21). Conclusions Ketorolac supplementation is effective to produce pain relief for knee arthroscopy.

Background Selenium(Se) is an element found in the soil, which is also an essential micronutrient for human body. In fact, Se content of most of foods is very low, the Se requirement of the body can be satisfied with dietary supplements, Se-enriched foods is a good choice to deliver Se. Scope and approach In modern society, the suitable agronomic-based and processing-based strategies can be utilized by farmers and producers to produce Se-enriched food products with high quality. We can also use some methods to optimize the Se content and bioaccessibility of Se-enriched foods. Key findings and conclusions Agricultural stragety biofortification is an efficient way to produce Se-enriched local original products. But some processing methods may decrease the Se content of processed food. In addition, different Se forms have different bioaccessibility to living organisms.

As wind power provides an increasingly larger share of electricity supply, the challenges caused by wind power intermittency have become more and more prominent. A better understanding of wind powe ...

The uncertainty is a significant characteristic of wind speed in wind engineering field. Especially, it has brought much more problems to the grid in safe and efficient utilization of large scale wind power. And there is urgent need of systematic and perfect models that can describe windspeed uncertainty in grid scheduling and controlling. In this paper, a universal power-law model is proposed for properly depicting the uncertainty of both wind speed and wind power. According to the turbulence nature of wind uncertainty, the uncertainty model of wind speed is firstly obtained by using wavelet multi-scale transform algorithm for its tight supporting characteristic, which is more reasonable than the traditional algorithm of getting the mean valve and the variance valve of the time series. And the turbulent intensity model is further improved by a power-law model, which is suitable for much more kinds of turbulence on complex geographical conditions than that proposed in current international IEC standard with the sufficient actual data. In physically speaking, the model improvement with three parameters is consistent with turbulence development mechanism. Moreover, the uncertainty modeling method of wind power is developed based on the universal power-law model, which is not only suitable for the power of single wind turbine, but also suitable for the power of whole wind farm. It’s very importance that the wind speed uncertainty model is extended to model the power uncertainty of wind turbine and farm, in especial its or their power output is usually limited for human adjustment control. It has a certain significance to the real-time dispatch and optimal control of the renewable energy power system.

Environmental issues and the prospect of an energy crisis inspire humans to exploit wind power. However, with the increase of wind power penetration level, operating power systems securely and reliably is a serious challenge due to the inherent nature of wind power intermittency. Wind power intermittency has been the major barrier for large scale wind power integration. This paper reviews past research on wind power intermittency, including its impacts on power system, how it is measured, and mitigation solutions. It has been found that as wind power integration increase, the system reverses and costs consequently increase, while the system reliability and CO2 reductions decrease. In order to mitigate wind power intermittency, studies on intermittency measurements and mitigation solutions are necessary. Existing measurements of wind power intermittency are summarized firstly. Considering the limitations of existing methods, new definitions and metrics are proposed based on our study. Then, various wind power intermittency mitigation solutions are comprehensively reviewed, including wind farms, generation-side, demand-side and energy storage. In the final part of this paper, the further work on wind power intermittency is discussed in detail. In summary, wind power intermittency can be effectively mitigated using various technological and managerial approaches based on an in-depth understanding of intermittency.

Variability and intermittency are the intrinsic nature of wind and solar resources. Expanded wind and solar power development in China requires a deeper understanding of their differences in variability and intermittency, both spatially and temporally. To address this issue, this study provides a systematic quantitative comparison of the variability and intermittency between wind and solar resources across China. Compared with wind resources, solar resources show regular spatial patterns and highly similar temporal characteristics. Solar resources usually have larger daily variation amplitudes (1.0–3.5 times) and are more intermittent (1.0–10.0 times) than wind resources in most regions. Solar resources fluctuate 1.0–8.0 times faster than wind resources in western Xinjiang, most of central and southern China, and north and east of northeast China. However, the variation rate of solar resources is approximately 0.1–0.5 times the wind resources in the Qinghai–Tibet plateau and East China Sea. In general, wind and solar resources fluctuate faster and are more intermittent in spring and autumn. Onshore wind resources are more variable and intermittent in the periods of 6:00–12:00 and 16:00–22:00. However, the variability and intermittency of offshore wind resources are weak and have very small intra-day changes compared with onshore wind resources. Solar resources are usually more variable and intermittent during the periods of 2–4 h after sunrise and 2–4 h before sunset. Furthermore, the intra-day changes in the variability and intermittency of solar resources are significantly greater than the inter-month changes. Those quantitative insights contribute to better and more efficiently mitigate the variability and intermittency of wind and solar resources.

Introduction: The morbidity and mortality of acute myocardial infarction patients still remains high after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MIR) injury is one of the important reasons. Although the phenomenon of MIR injury can paradoxically reduce the beneficial effects of myocardial reperfusion, there currently remains no effective therapeutic agent for preventing MIR. Previous studies have shown that Yiqi Liangxue Shengji prescription (YLS) is effective in improving clinical symptoms and ameliorating the major adverse cardiovascular events of coronary heart disease patients undergoing PCI. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of YLS in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) after PCI. Methods: This study is a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, single-central clinical trial. A total of 140 participants are randomly allocated to 2 groups: the intervention group and the placebo group. Based on routine medications, the intervention group will be treated with YLS and the placebo group will be treated with YLS placebo. All participants will receive a 8-week treatment and then be followed up for another 12 months. The primary outcome measures are N terminal pro B type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and left ventricular ejection fraction. Secondary outcomes are plasma levels of microRNA-145, plasma cardiac enzyme, and Troponin I levels in blood samples, changes in ST-segment in ECG, Seattle Angina Questionnaire, the efficacy of angina symptoms, and occurrence of major adverse cardiac events. All the data will be recorded in case report forms and analyzed by SPSS V.17.0. Discussion: The trial will investigate whether the postoperative administration of YLS in patients with AMI after PCI will improve cardiac function. And it explores microRNAs (miRNA)-145 as detection of blood-based biomarkers for AMI by evaluating the relation between miRNAs in plasma and cardiac function. Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trials Registry identifier ChiCTR2000038816. Registered on October 10, 2020.

Background To explore the current situation, existing problems and possible causes of said problems with regards to physician-nurse communication under an environment of increasingly widespread usage of Hospital Information Systems and to seek out new potential strategies in information technology to improve physician-nurse communication. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 physicians and nurses in five leading tertiary grade A hospitals in Beijing, China (two physicians and two nurses in each hospital). The interviews primarily included three aspects comprising the current situation and problems of clinical physician-nurse communication, the application and problems of Hospital Information Systems, and assessments on the improvement of physician-nurse communication through the usage of information technology. The inductive conventional content analysis approach was employed. Results (1) Physicians and nurses are generally quite satisfied with the current situation of communication. However, the information needs of nurses are prone to being overlooked, and the communication methods are primarily synchronous communication such as face-to-face and phone communication. (2) Hospital Information Systems are gradually being used for physician-nurse communication; in the meantime, physicians and nurses face challenges with regards to the improvement of physician-nurse communication through the usage of information technology. Challenges differ based on the different stages of using the system and the different levels of understanding of physicians and nurses towards information technology. Their dissatisfaction mainly deals with system errors and the level of convenience in using the system. (3) In-depth interviews found that in general, physicians and nurses have a strong interest and trust in improving physician-nurse communication through appropriate information technology, e.g., communication methods such as information reminders for physicians and nurses through mobile devices and instant voice-to-text conversion methods. Conclusions There are objective risks in physician-nurse communication in Chinese hospitals, and clinical information systems lack solutions to the relevant problems. Developing a dedicated, mobile, quick and convenient module for physician-nurse communication within existing hospital information system with automatic reminders for important information that segregates between synchronous and asynchronous communication according to the different types of information could help improve physician-nurse communication.

To exam the effect and safety of conventional acupuncture (CA) on cardiac arrhythmia. Nine medical databases were searched until February 2016 for randomized controlled trials. Heterogeneity was measured by Cochran Q test. Meta-analysis was conducted if I2 was less than 85% and the characteristics of included trials were similar. Nine qualified studies involving 638 patients were included. Only 1 study had definitely low risk of bias, while 7 trials were rated as unclear and 1 as high. Meta-analysis of CA alone did not have a significant benefit on response rate compared to amiodarone in patients with atrial fibrillation (Af) and atrial flutter (AF) [relative risk (RR): 1.09; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.79–1.49; P=0.61; I2=61%, P=0.11]. However, 1 study with higher methodological quality detected a lower recurrence rate of Af in CA alone as compared with sham acupuncture plus no treatment, and benefits on ventricular rate and time of conversion to normal sinus rhythm were found in CA alone group by 1 study, as well as the response rate in CA plus deslanoside group by another study. Meta-analysis of CA plus anti-arrhythmia drug (AAD) was associated with a significant benefit on the response rate when compared with AAD alone in ventricular premature beat (VPB) patients (RR, 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05–1.34; P=0.005; I2=13%, P=0.32), and an improvement in quality-of-life score (QOLS) of VPB also showed in 1 individual study. Besides, a lower heart rate was detected in the CA alone group by 1 individual study when compared with no treatment in sinus tachycardia patients (MD–21.84 [–27.21,–16.47]) and lower adverse events of CA alone were reported than amiodarone. CA may be a useful and safe alternative or additive approach to AADs for cardiac arrhythmia, especially in VPB and Af patients, which mainly based on a pooled estimate and result from 1 study with higher methodological quality. However, we could not reach a robust conclusion due to low quality of overall evidence.

Global DNA methylation, possibly influenced by lifestyle and environmental factors, has been suggested to play an active role in carcinogenesis. However, its role in melanoma has rarely been explored. The aims of this study were to evaluate the relationship between melanoma risk and levels of 5-methylcytosine (5-mC), a marker for global DNA methylation, in blood leukocyte DNA, and to determine whether this 5-mC level is influenced by pigmentation and sun exposure. This case-control study included 540 melanoma cases and 540 healthy controls. Overall, melanoma cases had significantly lower levels of 5-mC% than healthy controls (median: 3.24 vs. 3.91, p