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BACKGROUND: Exercise training after lumbar fusion surgery (LFS) is important for regaining the strength in the spinal muscles, pain management, and minimizing dysfunction. It may be prudent to evaluate technologies such as web-based chat and social media apps for increasing the efficacy of post-surgery interventions in LFS patients. OBJECTIVE: To explore the effectiveness of a WeChat-based individualized post-discharge rehabilitation program in patients with LFS. METHODS: Seventy-two eligible discharged LFS patients were enrolled from October 2018 to February 2019. The experimental group (36 cases) received a 10-week WeChat-based individualized rehabilitation program, while the control group (36 cases) received routine follow-up guidance. The outcomes were measured using the Exercise Compliance Questionnaire, Numerical Rating Scale, Oswestry Disability Index and Chinese version of the self-efficacy for exercise scale. RESULTS: The analysis using generalized estimation equations method shows significant differences in the interaction effect of group*time in exercise compliance (Wald c2= 7.459, P< 0.05), group effect in pain (Wald c2= 5.811, P< 0.05) and self-efficacy (Wald c2= 16.383, P< 0.05). However, there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the group effect in dysfunction improvement (Wald c2= 2.289, P> 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The WeChat-based rehabilitation intervention can improve exercise compliance and self-efficacy, and help achieve greater pain relief compared to the routine intervention. However, the WeChat-based intervention did not offer better improvement in the self-dysfunction in the post-discharge LFS patients.

Quantitative oxygen detection is of great importance in biological fields, complex environments, and chemical process engineering. Due to the high sensitivity and rapid response of long-lived phosp...

Summary Background & aims Body weight changes reflect and impact several health conditions in older age, but little is known about its relationship with multimorbidity. We aimed to study the association of long-terms trajectories of body mass index (BMI) with contemporaneous changes in multimorbidity −and multimorbidity type− development in a population-based cohort of older adults. Methods Twelve-year BMI trajectories (2001–2013) were identified in subjects aged 60+ years from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K) using growth mixture models (N = 2189). Information on 60 chronic diseases and multimorbidity was ascertained based on clinical examinations, lab tests, medications, and inpatient and outpatient medical records. Linear mixed models were used to study the association between BMI trajectories and the speed of chronic disease accumulation, in general and by groups of cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases. Results Eighty percent of the study population was included in what we defined a stable BMI trajectory, 18% in a slow-decline trajectory with an accelerated BMI decline from age 78 onwards, and 2% in a fast-decline trajectory that reached underweight values before age 85. A significantly higher yearly rate of chronic disease accumulation was observed in the fast-decline versus stable trajectory (β = 0.221, 95% CI 0.090–0.352) after adjusting the model for age cohort, sex, education and time to death. Subjects in the slow-decline trajectory showed a significantly higher yearly rate of cardiovascular disease accumulation (β = 0.016, 95% CI 0.000–0.031); those in the fast-decline trajectory showed a faster accumulation of both cardiovascular (β = 0.020, 95% CI -0.025, 0.064) and neuropsychiatric diseases (β = 0.102, 95% CI 0.064–0.139), even if the former association did not reach statistical significance. Conclusion Our results provide further evidence of the importance of carefully monitoring older adults with sustained weight loss, which is an early indicator of accelerated health deterioration, reflected in our study by a faster accumulation of chronic −especially neuropsychiatric− diseases.

Objectives The aim of the study was to assess the diagnostic performance and clinical utility of the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in patients with suspected aortic dissection (AD) and investigate its role in predicting in-hospital mortality in AD. Methods NLR values were calculated and compared in 467 consecutive patients with initially suspected AD. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis with the area under the curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the discriminative accuracy and predictive capability of the NLR for AD. Clinical utility was determined by decision curve analysis (DCA). The association between NLR and in-hospital mortality was investigated by logistic regression analyses in patients diagnosed with AD. Results The NLR was significantly elevated in patients with AD, and the optimal cut-off point for the NLR to distinguish AD from other acute chest pain diseases was 5.67 [AUC (95% CI): 0.877 (0.844–0.905)]. We recommended an NLR of 2.43 as the appropriate cut-off point with 96.9% sensitivity and a negative likelihood ratio (LR) of 0.09 to satisfy clinical requirements for diagnosis. DCA showed that the use of NLR had a positive net benefit. The deceased patients with AD had a higher NLR than the discharged patients. Moreover, the NLR was an independent predictor of in-hospital mortality for AD [adjusted odds ratio (OR): 1.084 (1.029–1.142)], and patients with higher NLR values tended to have a higher risk of in-hospital mortality. The optimal cut-off point for the NLR to predict in-hospital mortality was 9.20 [AUC (95% CI): 0.695 (0.619–0.765)]. Conclusions As an easily available and inexpensive parameter, the NLR could serve as a valuable clinical biomarker for early differential diagnosis and prognosis assessment of AD.

Summary Background & aims The association between higher body mass index (BMI) and cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases) is not well understood. We aimed to examine the association of BMI and its long-term changes with cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) and explore the role of familial background and healthy lifestyle in this association. Methods Within the Swedish Twin Registry, 36 622 CMD-free individuals aged ≥40 were followed for up to 16 years. BMI data was collected at baseline and 25–35 years prior to baseline. Healthy lifestyle (non-smoking, no/mild alcohol consumption, and regular physical activity) was assessed as unfavourable (none or only one of these factors) vs. favourable (two or three). Incident CMDs were identified by linkage with the Swedish National Patient Registry. Two strategies were followed: 1) Cox models in all twin individuals; 2) stratified Cox models in CMD-discordant twin pairs. Results At baseline, 16 195 (44.2%) study participants had overweight/obesity (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) and 11 202 (30.6%) developed CMDs over follow-up. Among all participants, the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of developing any CMD was 1.52 (1.45–1.58) for people with overweight/obesity compared to normal BMI (20–25 kg/m2). Compared to stable normal BMI, HRs (95% CIs) of CMDs were 1.28 (1.02–1.59) and 1.33 (1.24–1.43) for only earlier life or only later life overweight/obesity, respectively, and 1.69 (1.55–1.85) for overweight/obesity both in earlier and later life. In stratified Cox analyses conducted among all CMD-discordant twin pairs, overweight/obesity was associated with greater risk of CMDs (1.37, 95% CI 1.18–1.61). In joint effect analysis, the risk of CMDs related to overweight/obesity was diminished 32% among people with a favourable lifestyle (1.51, 95% CI 1.44–1.58) compared to those with overweight/obesity and an unfavourable lifestyle (2.20, 95% CI 2.03–2.38). Conclusions Overweight/obesity is associated with an increased risk of CMDs, and shared genetic and early-life environmental factors might not account for this association. However, a favourable lifestyle could attenuate the risk of high BMI-related CMDs.

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a simple yet efficient population based evolutionary algorithm, which has been widely applied to solve global optimization problems. Similar to other evolutionary algorithms (EAs), PSO algorithm still suffers from loss of diversity and slow convergence caused by the contradiction between exploration and exploitation abilities. In order to address the drawbacks, we propose Self-Adaptive two roles hybrid learning strategies-based particle swarm optimization (SAHLPSO) to improve optimization performance by using exploration-role and exploitation-role learning strategies with self-adaptively updating parameters manner. The exploration-role learning strategies with external archive adopt comprehensive learning to generate the learning exemplars, which can effectively maintain population diversity and thus avoid premature. On the other hand, the exploitation-role learning strategies utilize elitism learning to generate the learning exemplars so as to improve convergence performance. Considering that the performance improvement of PSO depends on not only the adaptation of different learning strategies but also the reasonable parameter settings, we also develop a self-adaptive parameter updating manner based on success history information. This manner can automatically update the learning parameters to appropriate values and avoid a user’s prior knowledge about the relationship between the parameter settings and the characteristics of optimization problems. In addition, the usage of the linear population size reduction is also helpful to well balance the exploration and exploitation along with the process of evolution. Simulation results on some classical and CEC2013 benchmark functions show that LSAHLPSO is better than other PSO variants or at least comparable to other state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms.

The sixth-generation (6G) wireless technology contributes to the establishment of the Internet of Things (IoT). Recently, the IoT has become popular because of its smart architectures and various applications. Among these applications, intelligent urban surveillance systems for smart cities are becoming more and more important. Therefore, designing a robust visual tracking method has become an urgent task. Deep Siamese convolutional neural networks have been applied to visual tracking recently because of their advantageous abilities to learn a matching function between the template and the target candidate. Unlike traditional Siamese networks, which separately treat the two branches, we propose deep Siamese cross-residual learning to entangle the two branches from the beginning to the end of the Siamese network. This strategy can make the two branches exchange instance-specific information at different nodes of the network and learn a more compact representation of the target. In addition, we propose a combined loss function, which consists of two complementary tasks. One task is to learn a matching function directly and the other one is to learn a classification function. Moreover, our model does not need to load any pretrained weights and is trained with limited sequences from scratch. Plenty of experiments show that our tracker performs favorably against many state-of-the-art tracking methods.

BACKGROUND β-ketothiolase deficiency (β-KTD) is an inherited disease, and insufficient attention has been paid to imageology due to its lower morbidity. Therefore, few lesions outside the basal ganglia have been found before, and the persistent pathological changes have rarely been reported. CASE SUMMARY A 10-mo-old Chinese female patient with a free previous medical history but with poor physical and athletic development had received the haemophilus influenzae vaccine and then developed a low fever 2 d prior. She was initially diagnosed with severe brain injury, central respiratory failure, metabolic acidosis complicated with respiratory alkalosis, hyper-IgE, etc. With further examination, a definite diagnosis of β-KTD was made. Symptomatic treatment was adopted. Ten days later, the dyspnea was improved evidently and the ventilator was removed, but there were still obvious abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The lesions mainly invaded the corpus striatum but were not limited to the basal ganglia. Then, the patient’s disease improved and discharged approximately 1 mo later, and the abnormal lesions on MRI had partially improved. However, for about 1 year, the residual irreversible lesions were observed on MRI, the mental and physical development of the patient was obviously regressive, and extra rehabilitation training was needed. CONCLUSION The case highlights the critical importance of one view that the range of lesions in some patients may be more extensive than previously thought in some β-KTD patients. In addition to biochemical tests, genetic tests and magnetic resonance imaging are not only conducive to quickly diagnosing β-KTD but also to partially evaluating the short- and long-term outcomes. Moreover, more attention should be paid to the two mutations (c.478C>G; c.951C>T) that may be associated with severe β-KTD.

Background Virtual reality (VR) has become a powerful and promising tool for education, and numerous studies have investigated the application and effectiveness of VR education. However, few studies have focused on the expectations and concerns of teenagers regarding head-mounted displays (HMDs), which are used for this purpose. Methods In this paper, we aim to explore the current problems and necessary advancements required in VR education based on a survey of 163 senior high school students who experience VR educational content for 1h. The usability and comfort of the HMD system, the physical and psychological effects on the students, and their preferences and concerns are investigated. Results The results show that HMDs increase students' interest, concentration, and enthusiasm for learning. However, isolated virtual environments make students feel nervous and afraid. The immersive environment also makes them worry about VR addiction and confusing the physical world with the virtual one. Conclusions VR has great potential in the field of education, but the issue of safety needs to be considered in the future.

We aimed to investigate the performance of T1 mapping and its histological correlation with extraocular muscle fibrosis in thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO). We prospectively recruited 12 cases of active TAO, 12 cases of inactive TAO, and 15 cases of control subjects. All participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan with pre-/postcontrast T1 mapping and short-time inversion-recovery (STIR) sequence. The images were analyzed to obtain precontrast T1, extracellular-volume (ECV) fraction on T1 mapping, and signal-intensity ratio (SIR) on STIR for each rectus. Muscle biopsy was performed at lateral rectus to quantify-collagen volume fraction, glycosaminoglycan (GAG)-volume fraction, and extracellular space component. The relationship between MRI and histopathology was examined with Pearson correlation coefficient. The active TAO group was characterized with GAG accumulation, while the inactive TAO group presented with substantial fibrosis. The MRI parameters achieved acceptable interobserver and intraobserver agreement. The precontrast T1 and ECV remarkably increased in the TAO groups than the control group, and ECV positively correlated with collagen-volume fraction (r = 0.913) and extracellular-space component (r = 0.886) in the inactive TAO group. The SIR statistically increased in the active TAO group, and SIR positively correlated with GAG-volume fraction in all three groups. The performance of ECV (cutoff > 48.1%) to screen out extraocular muscle fibrosis in inactive TAO was 60.9% sensitivity and 93.3% specificity. The ECV parameter on T1 mapping MRI is a reliable tool to quantify extraocular muscle fibrosis, providing insights into noninvasive evaluation of pathological changes in TAO orbit. ChiCTR2000040394; Date of registration: 28 November 2020

Natural enemies that impact pest populations must be understood in order to build integrated pest control strategies and to understand the most important aspects affecting pest dynamics.Haloxylon ammodendron(C. A. Mey.) Bunge is an important perennial plant species extensively used in sand stabilization and wind prevention in arid areas. This study aimed to determine the main defoliators that damageH. ammodendronand the parasitoid complex associated with them. Twelve species of defoliators were found in Northern Xinjiang, andTeia dubia(Tauscher) (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae),Scrobipalpasp. (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), andEucharia festivaHüfnagel (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) were the dominant pests.T. dubiais the predominant defoliator with three generations a year. Northwest China, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean region are potentially suitable habitats forT. dubiain the world, while Xinjiang is the primary distribution area in China. Parasitoids belonging to seven species and four families were reared from the larvae ofT. dubia, they were all endoparasitoids and koinobiont.Cotesiasp. (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is the dominant parasitoid and prefer to parasitic in the 3rd–5thinstar larvae. The present study provides the basis for understanding the species composition and natural enemies of lepidopteran defoliators. It will be an effective tool for the integrated pest management programs ofH. ammodendronforest.

Deep convolutional neural networks have gained aggressive success in salient object detection. This paper uses the Multi-Scale Feature Extraction Module (MFEM) for each backbone level to get multi-scale contextual knowledge. We propose the Cross Feature Aggregation Modules(CFAM) to integrate the various features from adjacent levels, which comparatively propagate less noise due to small up-/down sampling rates. To further refine individual-level integrated features, we design Self Interactive Modules (SIRM) at each decoder stage. The SIRM utilizes the spatial- and channel-wise attention to suppress the non-salient regions while assigning more weights to the foreground salient object to visualize the submissive regions (i.e., some salient regions looking like non-salient regions) of the salient objects. Our network can enhance size-varying objects’ illustration proficiency by adopting the multi-scale feature extraction capability in each module. Besides, we develop the Global Context Flow Module (GCFM) to get the global context knowledge at different points in the decoder, which aims to acquire the association among different salient regions and mitigate the dilution of high-level features. Our proposed model (i.e., GCMANet) follows a supervised way to generate the saliency maps. The results produced over publicly available datasets verify that our model outperforms its counterparts in quantitative and qualitative measurements.

It has been a challenge to prepare perovskite violet light-emitting diodes due to the low luminous efficiency and poor stability of the relevant materials. In this work, the defect state density of CsPbCl3 NCs was reduced by Mg2+ doping, so the photoluminescence quantum efficiency (PLQY) was increased by 57 times (from 1.3% to 75.8%) compared with undoped CsPbCl3 NCs. The doped CsPbCl3 NCs had no phase change in the atmosphere over 180 days, and the PLQY was only dropped by 19%. Based on the highly efficient luminescence and high stability of Mg2+-doped CsPbCl3 NCs, violet-light-emitting diodes were fabricated. The maximum brightness of device was 135 cd/m2, and the peak EQE reached 0.1%.

Depression is a common occurrence in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD); however, its pathophysiology is still unclear. This study assessed the association between the integrity of white matter and depressive symptoms in patients with PD. 67 patients with PD were divided into a non-depressed PD group (ndPD, n = 30) and a depressed PD group (dPD, n = 37). The dPD group was further subdivided into a mild-moderately depressed PD (mdPD, n = 22) and a severely depressed PD group (sdPD, n = 15). Tract-Based Spatial Statistics was used to compare fractional anisotropy (FA) between groups. Region-of-interest analysis was used to explore changes in diffusivity indices in the regions showing FA abnormalities. The sdPD patients exhibited significantly reduced FA in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, uncinate fasciculus, anterior corona radiata, corticospinal tract, and bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus when compared with the ndPD patients, but the decreased FA was within a smaller area when compared with the mdPD patients. No significant difference in FA was found between the mdPD and ndPD groups. Among the dPD patients, FA values in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus negatively correlated with BDI scores. Impaired white matter integrity in the prefronto-limbic/temporal circuitry, mainly in the left hemisphere, is associated with severe, but not mild-moderate depressive symptoms in patients with PD.

The red blood cell (RBC) lifespan is an important physiological indicator of clear significance in clinical research, used for the differential diagnosis of various diseases such as anemia, compensatory phase hemolysis, and polycythemia. The 15 N-glycine labeling technique is the gold standard method for determining RBC lifespans. However, the usefulness of this technique in clinical settings is seriously hindered by the several weeks required to complete the analyses. Levitt's CO breath test is another reliable technique for determining RBC lifespans, with a simpler protocol giving much faster results, making it more useful in clinical applications. To compare the CO breath test and 15 N-glycine labeling technique for measuring the human RBC lifespan. We investigated human RBC lifespans where each subject undertook both the 15 N-glycine labeling technique and the CO breath test. The correlation between the results from these two methods were analyzed. Eight of the ten subjects successfully completed the study. The RBC lifespan values obtained by Levitt's CO breath test were lower than those obtained by the 15 N-glycine labeling technique. The RBC lifespan values determined from the 15 N-glycine labeling technique and the CO breath test were significantly correlated, with a Pearson correlation coefficient of R=0.98 (p

This paper aims to efficiently construct the volume of heterogeneous single-scattering albedo for a given medium that would lead to desired color appearance. We achieve this goal by formulating it as a volumetric style transfer problem in which an input 3D density volume is stylized using color features extracted from a reference 2D image. Unlike existing algorithms that require cumbersome iterative optimizations, our method leverages a feed-forward deep neural network with multiple well-designed modules. At the core of our network is a stylizing kernel predictor (SKP) that extracts multi-scale feature maps from a 2D style image and predicts a handful of stylizing kernels as a highly non-linear combination of the feature maps. Each group of stylizing kernels represents a specific style. A volume autoencoder (VolAE) is designed and jointly learned with the SKP to transform a density volume to an albedo volume based on these stylizing kernels. Since the autoencoder does not encode any style information, it can generate different albedo volumes with a wide range of appearance once training is completed. Additionally, a hybrid multi-scale loss function is used to learn plausible color features and guarantee temporal coherence for time-evolving volumes. Through comprehensive experiments, we validate the effectiveness of our method and show its superiority by comparing against state-of-the-arts. We show that with our method a novice user can easily create a diverse set of realistic translucent effects for 3D models (either static or dynamic), neglecting any cumbersome process of parameter tuning.

Summary Background & aims Healthy diet has been associated with decreased mortality, but its impact on survival without disability is less clear. We aimed to investigate the association between the Nordic Prudent Diet Pattern (NPDP) and dementia- and disability-free survival, and to assess its interaction with other healthy lifestyle behaviors. Methods Within the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care-Kungsholmen, 2290 dementia- and disability-free adults aged ≥60 were followed up to 12 years to detect survival free from dementia (standard criteria) and disability (Katz's Activities of Daily Living). NPDP index was assessed at baseline with a 98-item food frequency questionnaire (characterized mainly by more frequent intakes of vegetable, fruit, cooking, cereals, whole grains, fish, and water) and was further categorized into tertiles (low, moderate, or high). Information on lifestyle factors was collected via baseline questionnaire. A favorable (vs unfavorable) lifestyle profile was determined based on smoking status, social network and physical activity. Data were analyzed using Cox proportional hazard regression models and Laplace regression. Results During the follow-up, 1074 participants survived without dementia and disability (614 died, 518 became disabled, and 84 developed dementia). Compared to low NPDP adherence, the hazard ratio (HR) of high NPDP adherence was 1.19 (95% CI 1.04–1.34) for dementia- and disability-free survival. High NPDP adherence prolonged lifespan without mental and physical disability by an average of 1.24 years (95% CI 0.11–2.37). Further, among participants with high NPDP adherence, a favorable lifestyle profile was associated with an even higher HR (1.96, 95% CI 1.52–2.42) of dementia- and disability-free survival, corresponding to an average of 3.80 (95% CI 2.25–5.35) years longer life compared to those with low NPDP adherence and an unfavorable lifestyle profile. Conclusion High adherence to NPDP prolongs survival with good mental and physical function for more than one year, and this could increase to almost four years with a favorable lifestyle.

This paper addresses the task of estimating spatially-varying reflectance (i.e., SVBRDF) from a single, casually captured image. Central to our method is a highlight-aware (HA) convolution operation and a two-stream neural network equipped with proper training losses. Our HA convolution, as a novel variant of standard (ST) convolution, directly modulates convolution kernels under the guidance of automatically learned masks representing potentially overexposed highlight regions. It helps to reduce the impact of strong specular highlights on diffuse components and at the same time, hallucinates plausible contents in saturated regions. Considering that variation of saturated pixels also contains important cues for inferring surface bumpiness and specular components, we design a two-stream network to extract features from two different branches stacked by HA convolutions and ST convolutions, respectively. These two groups of features are further fused in an attention-based manner to facilitate feature selection of each SVBRDF map. The whole network is trained end to end with a new perceptual adversarial loss which is particularly useful for enhancing the texture details. Such a design also allows the recovered material maps to be disentangled. We demonstrate through quantitative analysis and qualitative visualization that the proposed method is effective to recover clear SVBRDFs from a single casually captured image, and performs favorably against state-of-the-arts. Since we impose very few constraints on the capture process, even a non-expert user can create high-quality SVBRDFs that cater to many graphical applications.

Objective: With the increasing incidence and earlier onset of cancer, more and more cancer patients are facing the problems of return-to-work. This review is to explore the types, contents, and results of return-to-work interventions for cancer patients. Methods: This scoping review followed Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and PRISMA-ScR List. Three Chinese databases and five English databases were searched from the establishment of databases to 31 March, 2021. Article selection and data extraction were conducted by two researchers. Results: Thirty-two studies and 1916 cancer patients with mainly breast and gastrointestinal cancer were included. According to the contents, interventions could be divided into four types: (1) physical interventions ( n = 6), including high-intensity exercise, low-to-moderate intensity exercise, yoga, and upper limb functional training, (2) psychological interventions ( n = 2), including early active individualized psychosocial support and mindfulness-based recovery, (3) vocational interventions ( n = 14), including making work plans, educational leaflets, vocational consultations, electronic health intervention, and interventions targeting at employers, (4) multidisciplinary interventions ( n = 10), including any combination of above interventions. Physical exercises, making working plans, vocational consultations, educational leaflets, two combinations of vocational and physical interventions were validated to have positive results in enhancing cancer patients’ return-to-work. Conclusions: Return-to-work interventions for cancer patients are diversified and can be divided into physical, psychological, vocational, and multidisciplinary interventions. Medical staffs can utilize physical exercises, making working plans, vocational consultation, educational leaflets, combinations of vocational and physical interventions to enhance cancer patients’ return-to-work. Other interventions still need to be developed and validated.

Background and aims Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is a major complication of liver surgery and transplantation, especially in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The mechanism of NASH susceptibility to I/R injury has not been fully clarified. We investigated the role of liver-produced histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG) in NASH I/R injury. Approach and results A NASH mouse model was established using C57Bl/6j mice fed a methionine- and choline-deficient diet (MCD) for 6 weeks. The MCD and standard diet (SD) groups were exposed to 60 min of partial hepatic ischemia with reperfusion. We further evaluated the impact of HRG in this context using HRG knockdown (KD) mice. I/R injury increased HRG expression in the SD group but not in the MCD group after I/R. HRG expression was inversely correlated with neutrophil infiltration and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) formation. HRG KD mice showed severe liver injury with neutrophil infiltration and NETs formation. Pre-treatment with supplementary HRG protected against I/R with inhibition of neutrophil infiltration and NETs formation. In vitro, hepatocytes showed that the expression of HRG was upregulated under hypoxia/re-oxygenation conditions, but not in response to oleic acid treated hepatocytes. The decrease in HRG expression in fatty hepatocytes was accompanied by decreased Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) and Hypoxia-inducible factor-2α (HIF-2α) expression. Conclusions HRG is a hepatoprotective factor during hepatic I/R injury by decreasing neutrophil infiltration and NETs formation. The decrease in HRG is a cause of susceptibility to I/R injury in steatotic livers. Therefore, HRG is a new therapeutic target for minimizing liver damage in NASH patients.

Background weight loss is commonly observed with ageing. We explored the trajectory of body mass index (BMI) and two proxies of muscle mass—calf circumference (CC) and mid-arm circumference (MAC)—and identified their determinants. Methods within the SNAC-K cohort, 2,155 dementia-free participants aged ≥60 years were followed over 15 years. BMI, CC and MAC were measured at baseline and follow-ups. Baseline sociodemographic and lifestyle factors were collected through interviews. Diabetes and vascular disorders were diagnosed by physicians through clinical examination and medical records. Data were analysed using linear mixed-effect models stratified by age (younger-old [ Results over the 15-year follow-up, BMI remained stable among participants aged 60 years at baseline (βslope = 0.009 [95% confidence interval −0.006 to 0.024], P = 0.234) and declined significantly among those aged ≥66 years, while CC and MAC declined significantly across all age groups. The decline over 15 years in BMI, CC and MAC separately was 0.435 kg/m2, 1.110 cm and 1.455 cm in the younger-old and was 3.480 kg/m2, 3.405 cm and 3.390 cm in the older-old. In younger-old adults, higher education was associated with slower declines in all three measures, while vascular disorders and diabetes were associated with faster declines. In older-old adults, vigorous physical activity slowed declines in BMI and CC, while vascular disorders accelerated declines in BMI and MAC. Conclusions CC and MAC declined earlier and more steeply than BMI. Cardiometabolic disorders accelerated such declines, while higher education and physical activity could counteract those declines.

This study aimed to investigate the relative efficacy of maxillary protraction combined with a modified alternate rapid maxillary expansion and constriction (Alt-RAMEC) protocol compared with conventional protocols in the early orthopedic treatment of skeletal Class III malocclusion.A sample of 39 patients was divided into 3 groups on the basis of different interventions. Conventional facemask (FM) with splint-type intraoral devices was performed in the FM group (7 males and 5 females; mean age, 9.53 ± 1.37 years). Maxillary expansion with an activation rate of 0.5 mm/d (twice a day) followed by FM therapy was applied in the rapid maxillary expansion group (RME/FM) (6 males and 6 females; mean age, 9.31 ± 1.60 years). In the Alt-RAMEC/FM group (7 males and 8 females; mean age, 10.01 ± 1.31 years), Alt-RAMEC was started simultaneously and throughout the entire course of maxillary protraction, with repetitive alternations between activation and deactivation of expanders (0.5 mm/d for 7 days). The patients in all groups were instructed to wear FMs for a minimum of 12 h/d. Pretreatment and posttreatment lateral cephalograms were all traced and measured.The Alt-RAMEC group showed statistically more significant maxillary advancement than other groups (A-VRP, 3.87 mm vs 3.04 mm [RME/FM], vs 2.04 mm [FM]; P 0.05). Analysis of variance did not reveal significant intergroup differences in palatal plane angulation changes (P 0.05). No pronounced mandibular clockwise rotations were noted in the Alt-RAMEC/FM group with distinct intergroup differences (P 0.05). There were more skeletal effects (88.7%) during overjet correction in the Alt-RAMEC/FM protocol.A combination of the modified Alt-RAMEC protocol with FM revealed more favorable skeletal effects compared with FM and RME/FM protocols in treating prepubertal patients with maxillary deficiency.

Background Postoperative ocular imbalance is an important problem for orbital decompression surgery in thyroid eye disease (TED). The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in unilateral ocular deviation and duction following orbital decompression and discuss the biomechanics of ocular imbalance. Methods Fifty-four TED patients who underwent unilateral orbital decompression were included. Fifteen patients underwent 1-wall (deep lateral wall) decompression, 18 patients underwent 2-wall (deep lateral and medial wall) decompression and 21 patients underwent 3-wall (deep lateral, medial and inferior wall) decompression. Objective and subjective deviation of the operated eyes were evaluated using the prism test and synoptophore, respectively. Ocular ductions were measured using Hirschberg’s method. The diameters of the extraocular rectus were measured by computed tomography. Results Ocular deviation and duction showed no significant difference after 1-wall decompression (p = 0.25–0.89). Esotropia increased after 2-wall decompression (p = 0.001–0.02), and hypotropia increased after 3-wall decompression (p = 0.02). Adduction increased but abduction decreased following 2-wall and 3-wall decompression (p p r = 0.37–0.63, p r = 0.35–0.48, p Conclusions The changes in ocular deviation and duction were different after 1-wall, 2-wall and 3-wall orbital decompression. The increased contractile force of the rectus may be an important reason for strabismus changes after orbital decompression surgery.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the changes of retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) and ganglion cell layer/inner plexiform layer (GCL/IPL) with the severity of thyroid eye disease (TED). METHODS: One hundred and forty-five eyes of 75 patients with TED and 70 eyes of 35 healthy controls were included. The eyes with TED were divided into mild group (35 eyes), moderate-to-severe group (42 eyes) and DON group (68 eyes). The thickness of RNFL and GCL/IPL were measured by optic coherence tomography (OCT). Clinical activity score (CAS), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), intraocular pressure (IOP), proptosis and mean deviation (MD) by Humphrey perimetry were assessed. RESULTS: The CAS had significant difference between the three groups (p

Objective To investigate the method of CT‐guided beacon transponder implantation and precautions after implantation for liver malignant tumor. Methods CT‐guided beacon transponder implantation in three patients with liver malignancies was the first time in China. The operations were performed using Siemens's 16‐row large‐aperture spiral CT and 17‐G guide needles were using for percutaneous liver puncture. Results All three operations were successfully completed. During the operations, the beacon transponders were successfully implanted at predetermined targets next to the lesion in the liver parenchyma, and there was no obvious bleeding, pain or discomfort. All patients underwent localized CT examination on the fifth day after operations. Only one beacon transponder moved slightly, the remaining eight beacon transponders did not move, and the CT images did not have obvious metal artifacts. After the completion of radiotherapy in three patients, the follow‐up CT examination showed no movement of the beacon transponders, and the liver lesions shrank well. However, 3.0 T MRI of the liver showed that the magnetic sensitive artifacts at beacon transponders were more obvious, which affected the observation of local liver tissue. Conclusion CT‐guided liver beacon transponder implantation is safe and feasible. Beacon transponders may move in the liver parenchyma within a short period of time after implantation. Therefore, localized CT examination is recommended to be performed 4 days after the implantation. CT scans after beacon transponder implantation have no obvious metal artifacts. So CT is recommended for follow‐up. However, magnetic resonance sensitive artifacts are more obvious when MRI is performed, which will affect the evaluation of local efficacy and detect new small lesions.

Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a symptomatic allergic disease that leads to severe inflammation. Astragaloside IV (AS-IV) is a primary active component of Astragalus membranaceus and exerts immune-regulation and anti-inflammatory effects. However, the pharmacological effect of AS-IV in the nasal epithelial cells (NECs) has not been reported. The present study aimed to assess the effect of AS-IV on inflammatory cytokines and mucin 5 subtype AC (MUC5AC) overproduction in histamine (His)-stimulated NECs and its underlying mechanism. NECs were stimulated with or without His for 24 h in the absence or presence of AS-IV. The levels of inflammatory cytokines including IL-6, IL-8, MCP-1, IL-1β, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), eotaxin, and MUC5AC were assayed. Our findings indicated that AS-IV inhibited His-evoked release and expression of inflammatory cytokines and MUC5AC in NECs. RNA-seq analyses indicated the significant changes in expression levels involved in inflammation genes upon treatment of His-induced NECs with AS-IV. Our findings indicated that AS-IV inhibited His-evoked inflammatory cytokines secretion and MUC5AC overproduction in NECs, which were partly mediated by regulation of inflammation-related genes. Therefore, our findings provided a scientific basis for the development of AS-IV as an effective agent for clinical therapeutic strategy in the treatment of AR.

Micro-videos are one of the most popular multimedia forms in mobile internet domain, and scene recognition is important for micro-video semantic analyses and understanding. Compared with traditional videos, scene recognition in micro-videos is subject to content inconsistency for the same scene owing to the subjectivity of photographers. Moreover, the importance of frames for semantic representation differs in the same micro-video. These phenomenons limit micro-video scene recognition. To address these issues, in this paper, attention-based consistent semantic learning (ACSL) is proposed for micro-video scene recognition; this consists of a two-branch framework combined with an attention mechanism for the maintenance of the semantic consistency within classes. The experiments conducted in this study on multiple datasets revealed that the proposed ACSL achieves a better performance than other video scene recognition methods.

Image stitching for two images without a global transformation between them is notoriously difficult. In this paper, noticing the importance of semantic planar structures under perspective geometry, we propose a new image stitching method which stitches images by allowing for the alignment of a set of matched dominant semantic planar regions. Clearly different from previous methods resorting to plane segmentation, the key to our approach is to utilize rich semantic information directly from RGB images to extract semantic planar image regions with a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). We specifically design a module implementing our newly proposed clustering loss to make full use of existing semantic segmentation networks to accommodate region segmentation. To train the network, a dataset for semantic planar region segmentation is constructed. With the prior of semantic planar region, a set of local transformation models can be obtained by constraining matched regions, enabling more precise alignment in the overlapping area. We also use this prior to estimate a transformation field over the whole image. The final mosaic is obtained by mesh-based optimization which maintains high alignment accuracy and relaxes similarity transformation at the same time. Extensive experiments with both qualitative and quantitative comparisons show that our method can deal with different situations and outperforms the state-of-the-arts on challenging scenes.

Severe pneumonia is a high-mortality disorder in children. The expression and underlying effects of lncRNA maternally expressed 3 (MEG3) were detected. The relationships between MEG3 and other parameters were reported by Pearson correlation. The prognostic importance of MEG3 was assessed by Kaplan-Meier (K-M) curve and COX analysis and its diagnostic potential was uncovered by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Luciferase activity assay was performed to demonstrate the target gene of MEG3. Elevated expression of MEG3 and reduced microRNA-29 c (miR-29 c) were evaluated in severe pneumonia children, and a negative relationship between MEG3 and miR-29 c was propounded. MEG3 might function as an independent prognostic indicator. The diagnostic efficiency of MEG3 was also indicated for severe pneumonia children. In MRC-5 cell models and MH-S cell models, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contributed to the increased expression of MEG3. Interference of MEG3 restricted the upregulation of MEG3 triggered by LPS. Silenced MEG3 protected MRC-5 and MH-S cells against damages managed by LPS on cell apoptosis, viability, and inflammation. MiR-29 c was a ceRNA of MEG3 and the absence of MEG3 abrogated the decreased expression of miR-29 c caused by LPS. Overall, the increased expression of MEG3 and the reduced levels of miR-29 c were identified in severe pneumonia. Prognostic and diagnostic significances of MEG3 provided a novel perspective for severe pneumonia. Disruption of MEG3 alleviated cell injury and inflammation as characterized by high LPS by binding miR-29 c.

Background Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has been advocated by digestive endoscopists because of its comparable therapeutic effect to surgery, reduced trauma, faster recovery, and fewer complications. However, ESD for lesions of the duodenum is more challenging than those occurring at other levels of the gastrointestinal tract due to the thin intestinal wall of the duodenum, narrow intestinal space, rich peripheral blood flow, proximity to vital organs, and high risks of critical adverse events including intraoperative and delayed bleeding and perforation. Because of the low prevalence of the disease and the high risks of severe adverse events, successful ESD for lesions of the duodenum has rarely been reported in recent years. Aim To investigate the efficacy and safety of ESD in the treatment of duodenal space-occupying lesions. Methods Clinical data of 24 cases of duodenal lesions treated by ESD at the Digestive Endoscopy Center of the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University from January 2016 to December 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. Results All of the 24 cases from 23 patients underwent ESD treatment for duodenal space-occupying lesions under general anesthesia, including 15 male and 8 female patients, with a mean age of 58.5 (32.0-74.0) years. There were 12 lesions (50%) in the duodenal bulb, 9 (37.5%) in the descending part, and 3 (12.5%) in the ball-descending junction. The mean diameter of the lesion was 12.75 (range, 11-22) mm. Thirteen lesions originated from the mucosa, of which 4 were low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia, 3 were hyperplastic polyps, 2 were chronic mucositis, 2 were adenomatous hyperplasia, 1 was high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia, and 1 was tubular adenoma. Eleven lesions were in the submucosa, including 5 neuroendocrine neoplasms, 2 cases of ectopic pancreas, 1 stromal tumor, 1 leiomyoma, 1 submucosal duodenal adenoma, and 1 case of submucosal lymph follicular hyperplasia. The intraoperative perforation rate was 20.8% (5/24), including 4 submucosal protuberant lesions and 1 depressed lesion. The mean length of hospital stay was 5.7 (range, 3-10) d, and the average follow-up time was 25.8 (range, 3.0-50.0) mo. No residual disease or recurrence was found in all patients, and no complications, such as infection and stenosis, were found during the follow-up period. Conclusion ESD is safe and effective in the treatment of duodenal lesions; however, the endoscopists should pay more attention to the preoperative preparation, intraoperative skills, and postoperative treatment.

Aiming at the low detection rate and high false alarm in small ship detection in SAR images, we propose a small-scale ship detection algorithm based on convolutional neural network in this paper. F...

Vascular remodelling refers to abnormal changes in the structure and function of blood vessel walls caused by injury, and is the main pathological basis of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, and pulmonary hypertension. Among them, the neointimal hyperplasia caused by abnormal proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) plays a key role in the pathogenesis of vascular remodelling. Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) can release vasoactive substances to target VSMCs and regulate the pathological process of vascular remodelling. Specifically, PVAT can promote the conversion of VSMCs phenotype from contraction to synthesis by secreting visfatin, leptin, and resistin, and participate in the development of vascular remodelling-related diseases. Conversely, it can also inhibit the growth of VSMCs by secreting adiponectin and omentin to prevent neointimal hyperplasia and alleviate vascular remodelling. Therefore, exploring and developing new drugs or other treatments that facilitate the beneficial effects of PVAT on VSMCs is a potential strategy for prevention or treatment of vascular remodelling-related cardiovascular diseases.

Improved device performance of perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is demonstrated through the synergistic effect of the optimized CsPbI3 nanocrystals (NCs) as the emissive layer (EML) and ZnO/...

Background Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), including adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADSCs), have been shown to attenuate organ damage in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis; however, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, we aimed to explore the potential roles and molecular mechanisms of action of ADSCs in histone-induced endothelial damage. Methods Male C57BL/6 N mice were intravenously injected with ADSCs, followed by histones or a vehicle. The mice in each group were assessed for survival, pulmonary vascular permeability, and histological changes. A co-culture model with primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) exposed to histones was used to clarify the paracrine effect of ADSCs. Overexpression and inhibition of miR-126 ADSCs were also examined as causative factors for endothelial protection. Results The administration of ADSCs markedly improved survival, inhibited histone-mediated lung hemorrhage and edema, and attenuated vascular hyper-permeability in mice. ADSCs were engrafted in the injured lung and attenuated histone-induced endothelial cell apoptosis. ADSCs showed endothelial protection (via a paracrine effect) and Akt phosphorylation in the histone-exposed HUVECs. Notably, increased Akt phosphorylation by ADSCs was mostly mediated by exosomes in histone-induced cytotoxicity and lung damage. Moreover, the expression of miR-126 was increased in exosomes from histone-exposed ADSCs. Remarkably, the inhibition of miR-126 in ADSCs failed to increase Akt phosphorylation in histone-exposed HUVECs. Conclusion ADSC-derived exosomes may exert protective effects on endothelial cells via activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway.

Accumulating evidence suggests that chronic metformin posttreatment offers potent neuroreparative effects against acute brain injury. However, in previous studies, metformin was not initially administered beyond 24 h postinjury, and the effects of delayed metformin treatment in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other types of acute brain injury and the related mechanisms are unclear. To test this, male C57BL/6 mice received once daily metformin treatment (20, 50 or 100 mg/kg/d, i.p.) at day 1–14, day 1–2, day 1–10, day 3–10, day 5–12 or day 5–28 after cryogenic TBI (cTBI). The results showed that 100 mg/kg/d metformin administered at day 1–14 postinjury significantly promoted motor functional recovery in the beam walking and gait tests and reduced the infarct volume. Metformin (100 mg/kg/d) administered at day 1–10 or day 3–10 but not day 1–2 or day 5–12 after cTBI significantly improved motor functional outcomes at day 7 and 14, and reduced the infarct volume at day 14. Interestingly, the therapeutic time window was further expanded when the duration of metformin treatment starting at day 5 postinjury was extended to 2 weeks. Furthermore, compared with cTBI, the administration of metformin at day 3–10 or day 5–28 after cTBI significantly elevated the expression of phosphorylated adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and growth associated protein 43 (an axonal regeneration marker) and the number of vascular branch points and decreased the area of glial scar and the number of amoeboid microglia in the peri-infarct area at day 14 or 28 postinjury. The above beneficial effects of metformin were blocked by the intracerebroventricular injection of the AMPK inhibitor compound C (40 μg/mouse/d). Our data provide the first evidence that metformin has a wide therapeutic time window for at least 5 days after cTBI, during which it can improve functional recovery by promoting tissue repair and inhibiting glial scar formation and microglial activation in a central AMPK-dependent manner.

Background Preoperative imaging examination is the primary method for diagnosing metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), but it is associated with a high rate of missed diagnosis. Therefore, it is important to establish an accurate model for predicting occult peritoneal metastasis (PM) of GIST. Patients and methods GIST patients seen between April 2002 and December 2018 were selected from an institutional database. Using multivariate logistic regression analyses, we created a nomogram to predict occult PM of GIST and validated it with an independent cohort from the same center. The concordance index (C-index), decision curve analysis (DCA) and a clinical impact curve (CIC) were used to evaluate its predictive ability. Results A total of 522 eligible GIST patients were enrolled in this study and divided into training (n=350) and validation cohorts (n=172). Factors associated with occult PM were included in the model: tumor size (odds ratio [OR] 1.194 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.034-1.378; p=0.016), primary location (OR 7.365 95% CI, 2.192-24.746; p=0.001), tumor capsule (OR 4.282 95% CI, 1.209-15.166; p=0.024), Alb (OR 0.813 95% CI, 0.693-0.954; p=0.011) and FIB (OR 2.322 95% CI, 1.410-3.823; p=0.001). The C-index was 0.951 (95% CI, 0.917-0.985) in the training cohort and 0.946 (95% CI, 0.900-0.992) in the validation cohort. In the training cohort, the prediction model had a sensitivity of 82.8%, a specificity of 93.8%, a positive predictive value of 54.7%, and a negative predictive value of 98.4%; the validation cohort values were 94.7%, 85.0%, 43.9% and 99.2%, respectively. DCA and CIC results showed that the nomogram had clinical value in predicting occult PM in GIST patients. Conclusion Imaging and inflammatory indexes are significantly associated with microscopic metastases of GIST. A nomogram including these factors would have an excellent ability to predict occult PM.

Background Traumatic internal carotid artery dissection (TICAD) is rare and can result in severe neurological disability and even death. No consensus regarding its diagnostic screening and management has been established. Aim To investigate the clinical presentation, imaging features, diagnostic workup, and treatment of TICAD. Methods In this retrospective case series, emergency admissions for TICAD due to closed head injury were analyzed. The demographic, clinical, and radiographic data were retrieved from patient charts and the picture archiving and communication system. Results Six patients (five males and one female, age range of 43-62 years, mean age of 52.67 years) presented with TICAD. Traffic accidents (4/6) were the most frequent cause of TICAD. The clinical presentation was always related to brain hypoperfusion. Imaging examination revealed dissection of the affected artery and corresponding brain infarction. All the patients were definitively diagnosed with TICAD. One patient was treated conservatively, one patient underwent anticoagulant therapy, two patients were given both antiplatelet and anticoagulant drugs, and two patients underwent decompressive craniectomy. One patient fully recovered, while three patients were disabled at follow-up. Two patients died of refractory brain infarction. Conclusion TICAD can cause catastrophic outcomes and even refractory brain hernia. Early and efficient diagnosis of TICAD is essential for initiating appropriate treatment. The treatment of TICAD is challenging and variable and is based on clinician discretion on a case-by-case basis.

In recent years, the emergence of fully convolutional neural networks (FCNs) has delivered significant success in the field of saliency detection. Although the different levels of FCNs layers can hold different types of information for salient object detection, it is still a challenging issue to find a generic method while integrating all relevant information synthetically with multi-level aggregation. In this paper, we present a novel multi-level aggregation method by following a U-shaped architecture of the VGG-16 network. As the shallower layers of FCNs contain the low-level integrated features which are capable of capturing the more details of salient objects, while the more profound layers that hold the high-level integrated features have more contextual information. To exploit all the relevant information, we extend the last four side-outputs of U-Net at the encoder and decoder sides and then utilize the concept of skip and short-connections to incorporate the high-level contextual knowledge with low-level details. Besides, we also integrate the recurrent convolutional layers (RCLs) into our model, which provide more deepness and enhance the capability to integrate more contextual knowledge. At last, we combine all the side-outputs into a final saliency map together for salient object detection. We evaluate the performance of the proposed model on six broadly used saliency detection benchmarks by comparing it with the other 11 state-of-the-art approaches. Experimental outcomes determine that our method achieves a favorable performance for all compared evaluation measures.

Caffeine is considered the most representative pharmaceutical emerging contaminant (PEC) because of its ubiquity, high environmental abundance, uncovered ecological risks, and its indicator property for anthropogenic environmental inputs of PECs. Ecopharmacovigilance (EPV) targeting caffeine has been proposed as an optimized measure for the control of caffeine pollution sources and the related anthropogenic behaviors from the perspective of pharmacy administration. This cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the environmental knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding caffeine consumption among university students, one of the groups with high caffeine consumption, from an EPV perspective. Three hundred and seven usable survey instruments were acquired. The mean score for environmental knowledge about caffeine consumption was 3.66 out of a total of 7. The consumption frequency of caffeinated drinks, food, or drugs among student respondents was low. Throwing away in "household garbage" was an important disposal mechanism for unconsumed caffeinated products. Most students showed positive attitudes and strong intentions toward caffeine pollution control from the perspective of targeted EPV. These data suggested high acceptance of EPV program targeting caffeine among university students. However, more should be done to enhance their related knowledge, and some strengthening interventions for the effective removal of residual caffeine in garbage are needed.

Background The relationship between circulating exosomal circular RNA (circRNA) and prognosis of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) remain unknown. This study focused on the expression of exosomal circMYC and its relationship with the recurrence and prognosis of patients with NPC. Methods The circulating exosomes were obtained from 210 patients with NPC. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction, 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) staining, colony formation, and bioinformatic analysis were performed. Results Circulating exosomal circMYC was significantly increased in patients with NPC and was associated with tumor size, lymph node metastasis, TNM stage, survival rate, and disease recurrence. Gain-functional and loss-functional experiments revealed that overexpression of circMYC promoted cell proliferation and reduce radiosensitivity, while knockdown of circMYC inhibited cell proliferation and enhanced radiotherapy. Conclusion circMYC is an oncogene in NPC cells and can enhance the radiotherapy resistance of NPC cells. Circulating exosomal circMYC can be used as a potential therapeutic target for NPC.

For addressing the position and attitude control of a fully-actuated 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) rigid body, a new configuration error function is designed, and the configuration error vector is deduced as the gradient of this function, where the configuration stands for the set of position and attitude and is described by the nonlinear manifold SE(3). Based on the newly designed configuration error function, a geometric terminal sliding-mode controller is proposed to stabilize the configuration tracking errors of rigid body in a bounded fixed time considering disturbances. Simulations for close range rendezvous and docking of a spacecraft in an elliptical orbit illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Objectives: To explore and summarize the beneficial effects of a traditional Chinese medicine preparation, Tripterygium glycosides tablets (TGT), in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) animal models of neovascularization, and to provide a reference for future clinical applications and research on its pharmacologic mechanism. Methods: We searched the databases PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP, Wan Fang and SinoMed (China Biomedical Document Service System) to identify studies of TGT with outcome indicators of angiogenesis-related factors that were published before April 2020. Subgroup analysis and meta-regression were performed for dosage and duration of TGT. Statistical tests and subgroup analysis were conducted using RevMan 5.3, and meta-regression and sensitivity analysis were conducted using STATA/SE 15.0. Results: Fourteen studies of TGT in RA rats were included in this analysis. Treatment with TGT significantly reduces synovial microvessel density and the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), VEGF receptor 2, hypoxia inducible factor α, c-Fos, c-Jun, angiopoietin-1 and angiopoietin-2 compared with control groups (P

Background This study aimed to compare the efficacy and toxicity of raltitrexed (Saiweijian®) plus cisplatin (SP regimen) and 5‐fluorouracil plus cisplatin (FP regimen) as concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) in patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (LA‐NPC). Methods Eligible patients (N = 135) were allocated randomly in a ratio of 1:1 to receive CCRT with either SP or FP. At least 2 cycles of chemotherapy was administrated during radiotherapy. Progression free survival (PFS) was primary endpoint. Secondary endpoints included overall survival (OS), loco‐regional relapse free survival (LRRFS), distant metastasis free survival (DMFS) and toxicity. Results In this study, 68 patients received SP as CCRT, and 67 received FP. Objective responses were noted in 97.1% of the patients in the SP group and in 97.0% of the patients in the FP group (P = 1.00). At the end of a median 36 months follow‐up period, the estimated 3‐year PFS rates were 70.1% for SP and 66.6% for FP, respectively. The 3‐year LRRFS, DMFS and OS rates were 88.9%, 74.7% and 84.0%, respectively, for the SP group, and 92.3%, 71.0% and 73.7%, respectively, for the FP group. Overall, there was no difference between treatment groups with regard to response or survival. The most frequent acute toxicities monitored in both groups were bone marrow suppression, gastrointestinal side effects and oral mucositis (OM). The overall incidence of grade 3‐4 OM in the FP group (47.8%) was higher than in the SP group (11.8%). However, the incidence of other adverse effects observed in both groups was similar (P > .05). Conclusions These data indicate that SP and FP therapies have similar efficacy in treating LA‐NPC. The SP regimen showed a tolerable safety profile along with a lower frequency of severe OM and therefore, an improved life quality. In conclusion, SP was a well tolerated, effective, regimen for LA‐NPC treatment., The incidence of other adverse effects seen in both groups was similar (P > .05).The efficacy of both regimens i.e. SP and FP are found similar. The SP regimen has tolerable safety profile, with a lower incidence of severe OM and consequently, an improved quality of life.

Purpose. In this study, we differentiated between tuberculosis (TB) and infections caused by nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) or Nocardia in a tertiary general hospital in China. Differences in clinical manifestations and factors between respiratory infections associated with these organisms were also investigated. Methodology. A retrospective analysis was conducted for suspected pulmonary TB patients with positive bacterial culture results under treatment at Wangjing Hospital, a tertiary general hospital, between January 2014 and June 2017. Sputum samples were submitted for liquid culture and species identification by mass spectrometry. Results. Between January 2014 and June 2017, a total of 3981 suspected TB cases were analysed, of which 151 (3.8 %) exhibited positive mycobacterial culture results. Using mass spectrometry, the 151 isolates were classified into three groups: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) (n=112; 74.2 %), NTM (n=21 13.9 %) and Nocardia (n=18; 11.9 %). The NTM and Nocardia prevalence rates were significantly higher amongst elderly patients [aged ≥65 years; odds ratio (95 % confidence interval): 3.89 (1.05–14.38) for NTM; odds ratio (95 % confidence interval): 5.10 (1.09–23.91) for Nocardia ]. In addition, treatment with immunosuppressive therapy [odds ratio (95 % confidence interval): 3.92 (1.16–13.27)] was identified as a risk factor for Nocardia infection in these patients. Conclusion. Our results demonstrated that a quarter of culture-positive ‘suspected TB patients’ harboured NTM or Nocardia infections. Notably, nearly all patients with non-TB infections presented with clinical syndromes mimicking pulmonary TB. Individuals receiving immunosuppressive therapy were at greater risk of acquiring Nocardia infections.

Chronic neuropathic pain is frequently accompanied by memory impairment, yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we showed that mice displayed memory impairment starting at 14 days and lasting for at least 21 days after chronic constriction injury (CCI) of unilateral sciatic nerve in mice. Systemic administration of the pan histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor sodium butyrate attenuated this memory impairment. More specifically, we found that hippocampus HDAC3 was involved in this process because the levels of its mRNA and protein increased significantly in the hippocampus at 14 and 21 days after CCI, but not sham surgery. Systemic administration of the selective HDAC3 antagonist RGFP966 attenuated CCI-induced memory impairment, improved hippocampal long-term potentiation impairment, and rescued reductions of dendritic spine density and synaptic plasticity-associated protein in the hippocampus. In addition, HDAC3 overexpression in the hippocampus led to memory impairment without affecting basal nociceptive responses in naive mice. Our findings suggest that HDAC3 contributes to memory impairment after CCI by impairing synaptic plasticity in hippocampus. Histone deacetylase 3 might serve as a potential molecular target for therapeutic treatment of memory impairment under neuropathic pain conditions.

Studies have found that circRNA in exosomes is associated with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) progression. In this study, we examined the expression of circ_0000199 in circulating exosomes from patients with OSCC and its role in the evaluation of relapse and prognosis. Real‐time quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction was performed to assess circ_0000199 expression in circulating exosomes from 108 patients with OSCC and 50 healthy people. Gain- and loss-functional experiments were performed to assess the role of circ_0000199 on cell proliferation and apoptosis in OSCC cells. Our results showed that the high level of circ_0000199 in circulating exosomes was significantly associated with betel quid chewing, tumor size, lymphatic metastasis, and TNM stage in patients with OSCC. In addition, the patients with high exosomal circ_0000199 had higher tumor recurrence rate and higher mortality rate than the patients with low exosomal circ_0000199. Overexpression of circ_0000199 promoted, while knockdown of circ_0000199 inhibited OSCC cell growth. Bioinformatics analysis predicted that circ_0000199 interacted with miR-145-5p and miR-29b-3p simultaneously, which were involved in multiple tumor‐related signaling pathways. In conclusion, upregulation of circ_0000199 in circulating exosomes from patients with OSCC is positively associated with poor survival outcome. Circulating exosomal circ_0000199 can be used as a biomarker and potential therapeutic target for OSCC.

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science together with current approaches in material synthesis and optimization will act as an effective approach for speeding up the discovery of high-performance photoactive materials in organic solar cells (OSCs). Yet, like model selection in statistics, the choice of appropriate machine learning (ML) algorithms plays a vital role in the process of new material discovery in databases. In this study, we constructed five common algorithms, and introduced 565 donor/acceptor (D/A) combinations as training data sets to evaluate the practicalities of these ML algorithms and their application potential when guiding material design and D/A pairs screening. Thus, the best predictive capabilities are provided by using the random forest (RF) and boosted regression trees (BRT) approaches beyond other ML algorithms in the data set. Furthermore, >32 million D/A pairs were screened and calculated by RF and BRT models, respectively. Among them, six photovoltaic D/A pairs are selected and synthesized to compare their predicted and experimental power conversion efficiencies. The outcome of ML and experiment verification demonstrates that the RF approach can be effectively applied to high-throughput virtual screening for opening new perspectives to design of materials and D/A pairs, thereby accelerating the development of OSCs.

Augmented reality (AR) technologies create an immersive environment by augmenting the real world with rendered virtual objects. One of the key requirements of an AR system is to understand how users perceive the depth of an AR object. Perceived distances to AR objects can be based on various depth cues such as rendering method used for the virtual object. The existing researches on the shading model and opacity mainly focus on the shape perception or the position relationship of several virtual objects in the virtual environment. We predicted that shading models and opacity would impact a user's estimation of a virtual object's depth in AR. We conducted two experiments to investigate the impact of color, size (Experiment 1), shading model, and opacity (Experiment 2) on the depth perception in an optical see-through head-mounted display (HMD). We found that the virtual object's color and size impact estimation efficacy. An interaction effect between color and size was also found. The results showed that shading models with specular highlights could help to improve depth perception in AR. Additionally, users had the lowest matching error when the opacity of a virtual object was 0.8. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Based on recent advances in MEC and knowledge transfer in artificial intelligence, we propose a novel framework named ISVN, in which the intelligence of different MEC servers can be shared to improve performance. Specifically, we present the main techniques in the ISVN framework, including aggregation and representation for context features, relationship mining and reasoning, and knowledge transfer among MEC servers. The results of object detection experiments with the proposed ISVN framework are presented. By taking advantage of MEC and knowledge transfer, the processing speed and accuracy of object detection can be significantly improved in different scenarios of vehicular networks.