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BackgroundMidazolam has been found to exacerbate or unmask limb motor dysfunction in patients with brain tumors. This study aimed to determine whether the exacerbated upper limb motor-sensory deficits are mediated through benzodiazepine sites by demonstrating reversibility by flumazenil in patients with gliomas in eloquent areas.MethodsThis was an interventional, parallel assignment, nonrandomized trial. Study subjects were admitted in the operating room. Patients with supratentorial eloquent area gliomas and volunteers of similar age without neurologic disease were sedated with midazolam, but still responsive and cooperative. Motor and sensory functions for upper extremities were evaluated by the Nine-Hole Peg Test before and after midazolam, as well as after flumazenil reversal.ResultsThirty-two cases were included: 15 in the glioma group and 17 in the control group. The total dose of midazolam and flumazenil were comparable between the groups. In the glioma group, the times to task completion after midazolam in the contralateral hand (P = 0.001) and ipsilateral hand (P = 0.002) were 26.5 (95% CI, 11.3 to 41.7) and 13.7 (95% CI, 5.0 to 22.4) seconds slower than baseline, respectively. After flumazenil reversal, the contralateral hand (P = 0.99) and ipsilateral hand (P = 0.187) performed 1.2 (95% CI, -3.3 to 5.8) and 1.5 (95% CI, -0.5 to 3.5) seconds slower than baseline, respectively. In the control group, the dominant (P < 0.001) and nondominant hand (P = 0.006) were 2.9 (95% CI, 1.4 to 4.3) and 1.7 (95% CI, 0.5 to 2.9) seconds slower than baseline, respectively. After flumazenil, the dominant hand (P = 0.99) and nondominant hand (P = 0.019) performed 0.2 (95% CI, -0.7 to 1.0) and 1.3 (95% CI, -0.2 to 2.4) seconds faster than baseline, respectively.ConclusionsIn patients with eloquent area gliomas, mild sedation with midazolam induced motor coordination deficits in upper limbs. This deficit was almost completely reversed by the benzodiazepine antagonist flumazenil, suggesting that this is a reversible abnormality linked to occupation of the receptor by midazolam.

For slowing down the internal corrosion in crude oil pipeline, the failure mode, morphology and mechanism, as well as influence factors of internal corrosion in buried pipeline transporting purified crude oil were researched systematically. Results showed that the aqueous phase was deposited gradually in some locations during transport, and Cl - content could reach the maximum of 48 859.8 mg/L. In addition, the internal corrosion was mainly pitting and localized corrosion, and during the autocatalytic process of internal corrosion, the continuous migration of Cl - into the pits promoted the development of pitting corrosion, thus the Cl content at the pit bottom was higher than that at the surface by up to one order of magnitude. When the water content of the pipeline fluctuated in the range of 0.1% to 3.9%, the water content possessed little effect on the risk point of internal corrosion, and increasing the medium flow velocity had a more obvious effect on reducing the risk of internal corrosion. When the flow velocity increased to 2.00 m/s, the number of locations at risk of internal corrosion was reduced by 35.23% compared with that when actual flow velocity was 0.29 m/s.

Objective To evaluate the clinical and paraclinical features of Chinese patients with anti- LGI1 encephalitis. Methods Patients with memory deficits, psychiatric symptoms, seizures or altered level of consciousness, suspicious of encephalitis, at presentation to Peking Union Medical College Hospital were recruited between July 2013 and January 2018, and tested for anti-LGI1 antibodies in their serum and/or cerebrospinal fluid(CSF) samples. Patients with anti-LGI1 antibodies were enrolled. The demographic characteristics, clinical manifestations, laboratory examination results, neuroimaging features, immunotherapy, follow-up practices and outcomes for included patients were registered and analyzed. Results The study enrolled 120 patients, of whom 66.7% were male. The median age was 61 years (interquartile range [IQR]: 49-66 years). Seizures(65.0%) were the most common initial symptoms. Most patients developed seizures (95.0%), including faciobrachial dystonic seizures (54.2%), memory deficits (92.5%), and psychiatric symptoms (69.1%). Brain MRI and 18F-FDG PET / CT showed that the lesions were mainly located in unilateral or bilateral medial temporal lobes, and (or) basal ganglia. Of the patients, 95.0% received intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) or corticosteroids, 47.5% received mycophenolate mofetil as long-term immunotherapy, and no one received second-line immunotherapy. The median follow-up was 34.2 months(IQR: 22.0-45.6 months). 91.2% had a good outcome (modified Rankin Scale score≤2 points). Residual mild memory deficits were present in 47.8% of the patients. Nine deaths were documented. Relapses occurred in 24.8% of the patients in the first year. In total, 24 (20%)cases were young patients(onset age ≤45 years).There were fewer males among the younger patients(37.5% vs. 74.0%, P < 0.01). Besides, there were fewer younger patients with psychiatric symptoms(50.0% vs. 74.0%, P=0.02), hyponatremia(33.3% vs. 68.8%, P < 0.01), and abnormalities on brain 18F-FDG PET/CT(20.8% vs. 47.9%, P=0.02). The relapse-free survival rate was significantly higher in the young patients. Conclusions Elderly males were predominant in patients with anti-LGI1 encephalitis. Most patients developed symptoms of limbic encephalitis and/or FDBS during the disease course. Several patients were young adults and lacked typical symptoms. Neuroimaging features were consistent with the involvement of limbic system or basal ganglia. Patients with anti-LGI1 encephalitis respond well to immunotherapy, irrespective of the age.

Since clinically acquired standard 12-lead ECGs often contain noise, which could affects the accuracy of the ECG signal classification results, a noise reduction classification algorithm for ECGs based on a two-stage feature extraction network was proposed. Firsty, in the spatial feature extraction stage, spatial features were extracted from the input 12-lead standard ECG signal by a residual contraction network with a deeply coupled soft thresholding denoising method. Secondly, in the temporal feature extraction stage, temporal features were extracted from the ECG signal by a combination of a long and short-term memory network and an attentional mechanism. And ultimately, the extracted spatial and temporal features were fused through the fully-connected network layer to output the probabilistic predictive distributions for the nine categories. In order to verify the effect of the proposed algorithm, comparison experiments were conducted with other state-of-the-art classification algorithms of the same type on the CPSC2018 dataset, and the experimental results showed that the proposed classification algorithm could achieve an average F1 score of 0.848 when classifying the nine categories of ECG signals, which was a much better performance in terms of various indicators. In addition, the experiment proved that the proposed algorithm also could outperform other mainstream networks in noise-containing data, which fully demonstrated the noise reduction classification performance of the proposed algorithm for noise-containing ECG signals. And the algorithm can also be applied to other similar noise-containing physiological signals for analysis and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes have gradually become the first choice for gas networks because of their excellent characteristics. As the use of pipes increases, there will unavoidably be a significant amount of waste generated when the pipes cease their operation life, which, if improperly handled, might result in major environmental contamination issues. In this study, the thermal degradation of polyethylene materials is simulated for different pressures (10, 50, 100, and 150 MPa) and temperatures (2300, 2500, 2700, and 2900 K) in the framework of Reactive Force Field (ReaxFF) molecular dynamics simulation. The main gas products, density, energy, and the mean square displacement with temperature and pressure are also calculated. The findings indicate that raising the temperature leads to an increase in the production of gas products, while changing the pressure has an impact on the direction in which the products are generated; the faster the temperature drops, the less dense the air; both temperature and pressure increase impact the system's energy conversion or distribution mechanism, changing the system's potential energy as well as its total energy; the rate at which molecules diffuse increases with temperature, and decreases with pressure. The results of this investigation provide a theoretical basis for the development of the pyrolytic treatment of polyethylene waste materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monocrystalline SnSe is one of the most promising thermoelectric materials with outstanding performance and a high abundance of constituting elements. However, polycrystalline SnSe, which is more robust for applications, only shows large figure‐of‐merit (zT) values in its high‐symmetry phase. Stabilizing the high‐symmetry phase at low temperatures can thus enhance the average zT value over a broad temperature range. In this work, the high‐symmetry rock‐salt SnSe phase is successfully obtained by alloying SnSe with AgVVI2 compounds (V = Sb, Bi; VI = Se, Te). These cubic SnSe phases show a unique portfolio of properties including a high optical dielectric constant, a large maximum of optical absorption, a large Born effective charge, and abnormal bond‐breaking behavior in laser‐assisted atom probe tomography. All of these characteristics are indicative of metavalent bonding. In contrast, the Pnma phase of SnSe employs covalent bonding. The enhanced symmetry at low temperatures is realized by tailoring chemical bonding. Concomitantly, zT near room temperature is increased by a factor of more than 10 from the pristine Pnma SnSe to Fm3¯${{\bar{3}}}$m SnSe alloys. This provides insights into the enhancement of the thermoelectric performance of SnSe and other chalcogenides over a broad temperature range by manipulating the chemical bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of global climate change and the need for energy diversification, electrocatalytic technology emerges as an eco‐friendly solution. However, persistent electrode failures hinder long‐term stability. This review comprehensively outlines the primary causes leading to the failure of self‐supported electrodes, encompassing substrate passivation, substrate/catalyst dissolution, CO poisoning, catalyst migration and agglomeration, as well as cathodic etching. Proposed strategies center on material design, emphasizing anchoring, lattice matching, substrate stability, and morphological control. Advanced characterization techniques and in situ technologies offer promising ways. The integrated deployment of these strategies will provide crucial guidance and support for the sustainable advancement of electrocatalytic technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Psychosocial factors have been found to profoundly impact mental health of older adults, but the main focus in the current literature has been on one particular aspect of these factors. This study aimed to identify latent classes of older adults based on four psychosocial factors (loneliness, social isolation, perceived social support, and social capital) and the transition of classes over 6 months. We also sought to assess the predictive role of changes in these classes in relation to depression, anxiety, and stress at 18-month follow-up. Methods: We analyzed longitudinal data from 581 community-dwelling older adults in Shanghai, China. The data were collected at baseline (T0), 6-month follow-up (T1) and 18-month follow-up (T2) between March 2021 and April 2023. Using latent class analysis, we identified three underlying classes (Social Connectors, Subjective Social Isolates, and Social Isolates) of the sample. We also established five transition categories from T0 to T1 (Social Connectors T0-T1, Subjective Social Isolates T0-T1, Social Isolates T0-T1, Good Transition, and Bad Transition) using latent transition analysis. Logistic regression was employed to examine the temporal relationships between these transition categories and subsequent symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, adjusting for age, sex, education, marital status, family income level, sleep quality, health status and outcome variables at T0. Results: Multivariable associations revealed that compared to older adults with persistent good social environment (Social Connectors T0-T1), those with persistent high levels of loneliness and social isolation and low levels of perceived social support and social capital (Social Isolates T0-T1), and those who shifted towards a poorer social environment (Bad Transition) were more likely to experience depression, anxiety and stress at T2. Sustained subjective social isolation (Subjective Social Isolates T0-T1) was associated with more severe depressive symptoms at T2. Conclusion: Our study indicated that adverse psychosocial environment worsened mental health in older adults. These findings highlight the importance of early identification of older individuals at long-term psychosocial risk and development of tailored interventions to improve their social environment and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rotavirus is considered a directly transmitted disease due to its high infectivity. Environmental pathways have, therefore, largely been ignored. Rotavirus, however, persists in water sources, and both its surface water concentrations and infection incidence vary with temperature. Here, we examine the potential for waterborne rotavirus transmission. We use a mechanistic model that incorporates both direct and waterborne transmission pathways, coupled with a hydrological model, and we simulate rotavirus transmission between two communities with interconnected water sources. To parameterize temperature dependency, we estimated temperature-dependent decay rates in water through a meta-analysis. Our meta-analysis suggests that rotavirus decay rates are positively associated with temperature (n = 39, P [Formula: see text] 0.001). This association is stronger at higher temperatures (over 20 °C), consistent with tropical climate conditions. Our model analysis demonstrates that water could disseminate rotavirus between the two communities for all modeled temperatures. While direct transmission was important for disease amplification within communities, waterborne transmission could also amplify transmission. In standing-water systems, the modeled increase in decay led to decreased disease, with every 1 °C increase in temperature leading to up to a 2.4% decrease in incidence. These effect sizes are consistent with prior meta-analyses, suggesting that environmental transmission through water sources may partially explain the observed associations between temperature and rotavirus incidence. Waterborne rotavirus transmission is likely most important in cooler seasons and in communities that use slow-moving or stagnant water sources. Even when indirect transmission through water cannot sustain outbreaks, it can seed outbreaks that are maintained by high direct transmission rates.