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Background and objective The incidence rate of lung cancer in Xuanwei has been continuously increasing in recent years, and it also features high incidence across all age groups and high mortality rates among female lung cancer patients. Therefore, the search for more stable biomarkers for the diagnosis of Xuanwei lung cancer holds tremendous clinical application prospects. This study aims to explore the clinical application value of these four microRNAs (miRNAs) individually and in combination with traditional lung cancer tumor markers in the detection and diagnosis of Xuanwei lung cancer. Methods By detecting the expression levels of four miRNAs and five traditional lung cancer tumor markers in the serum of 45 Xuanwei lung cancer patients and healthy physical examination participants, the Logistic regression model was employed to comprehensively evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic efficacy, and other relevant statistical indicators of the four miRNAs in the diagnosis of Xuanwei lung cancer. Results Among the individual miRNAs, miR-4646-5p and miR-3654 showed significant differences in expression levels between the Xuanwei lung cancer group and the control group (P<0.05). miR-3654 demonstrated the best diagnostic performance with a sensitivity of 86.7%, specificity of 82.2%, and an area under the curve of 0.847. Combining miR-3654 with miR-4646-5p and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) resulted in the highest diagnostic ef- ficacy for Xuanwei lung cancer, with a sensitivity of 73.3%, specificity of 93.3%, area under the curve of 0.901, and a positive predictive value of 91.7%. Conclusion Among the four miRNAs, serum miR-3654 exhibits the best diagnostic efficacy for Xuanwei lung cancer. Combined with miR-4646-5p and CEA, its diagnostic value for Xuanwei lung cancer can be effectively enhanced, making it a promising screening indicator for Xuanwei lung cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor reproductive performance of most local Chinese chickens limits the economic benefits and output of related enterprises. As an excellent local breed in China, Taihe black-bone silky fowl is in urgent need of our development and utilization. In this study, we performed transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses of the ovaries of Taihe black-bone silky fowls at the peak egg-laying period (PP) and nesting period (NP) to reveal the molecular mechanisms affecting reproductive performance. In the transcriptome, we identified five key differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that may affect the reproductive performance of Taihe black-bone silky fowl: BCHE, CCL5, SMOC1, CYTL1, and SCIN, as well as three important pathways: the extracellular region, Neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction and Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction. In the metabolome, we predicted three important ovarian significantly differential metabolites (SDMs): LPC 20:4, Bisphenol A, and Cortisol. By integration analysis of transcriptome and metabolome, we identified three important metabolite-gene pairs: "LPC 20:4-BCHE", "Bisphenol A-SMOC1", and "Cortisol-SCIN". In summary, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the regulatory mechanism of egg production in Taihe black-bone silky fowl and provides a scientific basis for improving the reproductive performance of Chinese local chickens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: National data on the admission rate, distribution, in-hospital mortality, and economic burden of traumatic fractures in China is unclear. We aimed to conduct a cross-sectional population-based study to determine such above data at the national level in China. Methods: A national administrative database was used to review all traumatic fracture hospitalizations in China during 2020, from which a total of 2,025,169 inpatients with traumatic fractures was retrieved. Admission rates and in-hospital mortality rates stratified by age, sex, and region were calculated. The causes of traumatic fracture and economic burden were described. Results: The admission rate of traumatic fractures of all China population in 2020 was 1.437%. The admission rate increased with age and varied with genders and causes of injuries. Falls are the leading cause of traumatic fracture hospitalization, followed by road traffic injuries. The most common diagnoses were femoral neck fractures, with a number of 138,377. The in-hospital mortality was 1.209%. Road traffic injuries led to the highest in-hospital mortality. The median length of stay was 10 days, with the median hospitalization cost of ¥20,900 (about $3,056). Conclusion: Traumatic fractures are concerning conditions with a high admission rate and in-hospital mortality in China, which are mainly caused by falls and road traffic injuries. The government should implement more public health policies to enhance the health of the elderly and improve transportation safety to prevent traumatic fractures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esophageal cancer (EC) remains a significant challenge globally, having the 8th highest incidence and 6th highest mortality worldwide. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most common form of EC in Asia. Crucially, more than 90% of EC cases in China are ESCC. The high mortality rate of EC is likely due to the limited number of effective therapeutic options. To increase patient survival, novel therapeutic strategies for EC patients must be devised. Unfortunately, the development of novel drugs also presents its own significant challenges as most novel drugs do not make it to market due to lack of efficacy or safety concerns. A more time and cost-effective strategy is to identify existing drugs, that have already been approved for treatment of other diseases, which can be repurposed to treat EC patients, with drug repositioning. This can be achieved by comparing the gene expression profiles of disease-states with the effect on gene-expression by a given drug. In our analysis, we used previously published microarray data and identified 167 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Using weighted key driver analysis, 39 key driver genes were then identified. These driver genes were then used in Overlap Analysis and Network Analysis in Pharmomics. By extracting drugs common to both analyses, 24 drugs are predicted to demonstrate therapeutic effect in EC patients. Several of which have already been shown to demonstrate a therapeutic effect in EC, most notably Doxorubicin, which is commonly used to treat EC patients, and Ixazomib, which was recently shown to induce apoptosis and supress growth of EC cell lines. Additionally, our analysis predicts multiple psychiatric drugs, including Venlafaxine, as repositioned drugs. This is in line with recent research which suggests that psychiatric drugs should be investigated for use in gastrointestinal cancers such as EC. Our study shows that a drug repositioning approach is a feasible strategy for identifying novel ESCC therapies and can also improve the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the drug targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Building highly qualified General Practitioners (GPs) is key to the development of primary health care. It's therefore urgent to ensure the GPs' quality service under the background of the new round of health care system reforms in China. A new model of GP qualification examination was originally implemented in Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China, which aimed to empirically evaluate the GPs' capability in terms of clinical performance and social recognition. In the current study, an analysis was made of the first two years (2014-2015) of such theoretical and practical examinations on the GPs there with a view to getting a deep insight into the GP community so as to identify the barriers to such a form of GP qualification examination. Methods: The agency survey method was applied to the two-year database of the GP examinees, the formative research conducted to explore the key elements for developing the examination model. The data analysis was performed with SPSS for Windows (Version 19.0) to describe the GPs' overall characteristics, and to make comparisons between different groups. Results: In 2015, the total number of GPs was 1264 in the area, in different districts of which, statistically significant differences were found in sex, age, professional title and employment span (P < 0.05). Such results were found to be similar to those in 2014. The examinees' theoretical scores were statistically different (F = 7.76; P < 0.05), showing a sloping trend from the urban district to the suburban, to the rural and then to the farther rural, as indicated by LSD-t test (P < 0.05). From the theoretical examinations the scores were higher on the western medicine than on the traditional Chinese medicine (F = 22.11; P < 0.05). Conclusions: As suggested by the current study on the GPs' qualification examination, which was pioneered in Pudong New Area of Shanghai, the construction of GP community was far from sufficient. It was a preliminary study and further studies are merited along the construction and development in terms of continuing medical education, performance appraisal and incentive mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Sediment connectivity is influenced by vegetation, slope and watersheds area. • Anticlockwise loop is the most frequent hysteresis type and transport the most sediment. • Indices of connectivity showed a high correlation with sediment parameters and hysteresis index. Sediment connectivity is an important property influencing landscape evolution. Understanding the link between sediment connectivity and hydrologic processes plays an important role in developing strategies for soil and water conservation measures. Based on 10 years of observations for 30 hydrologically monitored watersheds on the Loess Plateau, measurements for 926 hydrologic events were analyzed and the index of connectivity (IC) was calculated. The high-frequency runoff and sediment data were analyzed, and a normalized hysteresis index (HI) was calculated to assess the dominant hysteresis patterns for each watershed. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between IC and HI. The results showed that the watersheds with low IC values were located in regions with dense vegetation and flat terrain and were dominated mainly by a clockwise hysteresis pattern, while the watersheds with high IC values were located in regions with sparse vegetation and steep terrain and were dominated by an anticlockwise hysteresis pattern. The anticlockwise hysteresis pattern was the most frequent and the most efficient type in terms of sediment transport among the 30 watersheds. The anticlockwise hysteresis type was more likely to occur as the IC values increased. A significant negative correlation was observed between the IC values and HI values during small and medium hydrologic events. The link is correlated with the notion that the separation into two components in connectivity indexes are similar to the two sediment sources controlling the hysteresis type. The outcomes from this study are helpful for determining the relationship between sediment connectivity and hydrologic behavior and thus for providing insight into the hydrologic processes that are essential to facilitate sustainable watershed management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of COVID-19 throat swab samples delivered by medical drones in epidemic prevention and control. This study was carried out in both southern and northern hospital districts of the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University from May to October 2022. The main participants were the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University and Zhejiang Antwork Technology Co., Ltd. We first constructed an urban medical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) delivery system and developed a UAV-specific storage box for COVID-19 samples. The UAV system was used to transport COVID-19 throat swab samples from the northern hospital district to the southern hospital district, and the following indexes were obtained: (1) flight time of COVID-19 samples delivered by UAV, (2) real-time temperature of COVID-19 nucleic acid samples during transportation, and (3) the time of distribution of COVID-19 nucleic acid samples by road traffic as measured using the Baidu Maps application, compared with the flight time of UAV. The COVID-19 sample delivery system for urban medical UAV mainly consists of intelligent logistics UAV, low-temperature COVID-19 throat swab sample storage box, unmanned logistics hub, and cloud operation control platform. The flight distance between the northern and southern districts of the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University was 10 km, and the ground distance was 24 km. From May 11 to October 28, 2022, a total of 1,190 UAV flights occurred. The average flight time was 13 minutes, which was 40 to 70 minutes faster than the average road travel time required for manual delivery of COVID-19 throat swab samples. At different time points in the day, UAV delivery efficiency increased by 67.5% to 82%. The use of 5G with the Internet of Things and UAV technology to deliver nucleic acid samples has the characteristics of fast speed, being unaffected by ground traffic conditions, and the ability to ensure the safety of nucleic acid samples in the transportation process, which is worthy of further study.