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Background Limited data are available on the relationship between seasonal factors and obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) in China. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of seasonal factors on the severity of OSAHS in children. Methods Children presenting with snoring and/or mouth breathing, suspected of having OSAHS, and admitted to the Department of Respiratory Medicine of the Children's Hospital of Soochow University from December 2016 to February 2022 were enrolled in this study. The severity of OSAHS was determined by full-night polysomnography (PSG) in the sleep laboratory. The correlation between seasonal factors and PSG monitoring results was analyzed. Results Of the 589 included patients, 301 cases (51.1%) were diagnosed with OSAHS. Among them, 77 cases (25.6%) were detected in spring, 74 cases (24.6%) were detected in summer, 59 cases (19.6%) were detected in autumn, and 91 cases (30.2%) were detected in winter. There were 238 cases (79.1%) of tonsillitis hypertrophy, 276 cases (91.7%) of adenoid hypertrophy, 215 cases (71.4%) of rhinitis/sinusitis, and 36 cases (12.0%) of asthma. The proportion of rhinitis/sinusitis and tonsillar hypertrophy in spring was higher than that in summer (P = 0.015 and 0.036, respectively), and the proportion of adenoid hypertrophy in winter was higher than that in summer (P = 0.024). The diagnostic rate of severe OSAHS in winter was higher than that in summer (χ2 = 7.053, P = 0.008). The respiratory arousal index in winter was higher than that in summer (H = -39.297, P = 0.018), and the spontaneous arousal index in spring was higher than that in autumn (H = 44.059, P = 0.020). It was found that the rapid eye movement (REM)-apnea index (AI) in spring and winter was higher than that in summer (H = 52.292, -52.554; all P H = -35.570, P = 0.008). The REM-AI in winter and spring was higher than that in summer and autumn, respectively (H = -33.929 and − 38.632; H = 30.665 and 35.368, all P

Purpose: To explore the screening value of the adenoidectomy / nasopharyngeal (A/N) ratio from nasopharyngeal lateral radiography in children with obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). Methods: Children who had visited the respiratory department due to snoring and/or mouth breathing’ were enrolled. Nasopharyngeal lateral radiography and polysomnography (PSG) were performed. PSG monitoring is the gold standard for OSAHS. The differences in PSG monitoring results among different A/N groups were compared, and the correlation between the A/N ratio and PSG monitoring results was analysed. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was plotted to evaluate the screening value of OSAHS in children with the A/N ratio from nasopharyngeal lateral radiography to determine the diagnostic critical point. Results: A total of 425 children were enrolled. A total of 183 patients (43.1%) were diagnosed with OSAHS, including 113 cases (26.6%) of mild OSAHS and 70 cases (16.5%) of moderate to severe OSAHS. A total of 52 patients (12.2%) had an A/N ratio ≤ 0.60, 77 patients (18.1%) had an A/N ratio from 0.61~0.70, 142 patients (33.4%) had an A/N ratio from 0.71~0.80, and 154 patients (36.2%) had an A/N ratio ≥0.80 The patients with moderate-severe OSAHS had a higher A/N ratio than those with mild OSAHS and non-OSAHS. The OAHI, ODI, and the diagnostic rate of OSAHS were higher and the LSaO 2 was lower in the A/N≥0.80 group than in the other three groups. Spearman’s rank correlation showed that the A/N ratio was correlated with OAHI, ODI, and LSaO 2 (r=0.275, 0.227, -0.225, respectively). The area under the ROC curve for the diagnosis of OSAHS by the A/N ratio was 0.659, the critical value was 0.825, and the sensitivity and specificity were 45.1% and 80.9%, respectively. An A/N ratio ≥0.825 was identified as the main influencing factor of OSAHS by logistic multivariable regression analysis. Conclusion: There is a correlation between the degree of adenoid hypertrophy and OSAHS, and an A/N ratio ≥0.825 has good suggestive value for the diagnosis of OSAHS but is not a substitute for PSG.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to retrospectively identify the effect of iodine on the papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) process and investigate the risk clinicopathologic characteristics of cervical lymph node metastasis (CLNM) for achieving a better preventive strategy of PTC. Methods: Totally 187 patients with CLNM and 279 without CLNM (NCLNM) were enrolled, and their urinary iodine concentration (UIC) and serum iodine concentration (SIC) were measured. Logistic regressions were used to reveal the effects of iodine nutrition on the CLNM status of PTC. Results: The levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and thyroglobulin (TG) were higher in the CLNM group than in the NCLNM group. UIC and SIC were positively correlated, and both of them were correlated with TSH, free thyroxine, and TG. The proportions of UIC >300 μg/L and of SIC >90 μg/L were higher in the CLNM than in the NCLNM. Logistic analysis showed that SIC >90 μg/L was an independent predictor for CLNM in PTC. Additionally, age ≥45, female, TG, multifocality, and diameter of cancer invasion >1 cm also affected CLNM status in PTC, and their logistic regression model showed a certain diagnostic accuracy (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve = 0.72). Conclusions: Relatively high iodine nutrition seemed to be a significant risk factor for the occurrence of CLNM in PTC and may promote lymphatic metastasis in PTC.

Tailoring the electrode structure and morphology with short diffusion distance for fast ions transport is of significant to improve rate capability for advanced lithium-ion batteries. A novel architecture of hollow Co3O4 nanocrystals in situ anchored on holey graphene is successfully fabricated, and individual hollow Co3O4 nanocrystal is located around one etched hole on graphene sheets. This newly fabricated nanostructure is able to greatly shorten mass diffusion distance for enhancement of Li ion transport, resulting in the best rate performance among previously reported composites of Co3O4 and graphene. This work reveals that high rate lithium-ion batteries can be achieved through constructing the hybrids of Co3O4 nanocrystals on in situ etched holey graphene, while rendering fundamental for enhancement of mass transport rate by highly shortened ions diffusion distance in a nanostructured electrode to accomplish superior rate capability.

To investigate the applicability of metabolomics to select thyroid cancer-associated biomarkers and discover the effects of iodine on metabolic changes in thyroid cancer. In this study, a total of 33 papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) patients from areas with iodine excess and 32 PTC patients from areas with adequate iodine were recruited, and their cancerous tissue and paracancerous tissue were collected. These specimens were analyzed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/QTOF/MS) in conjunction with multivariate statistical analysis. Good separations were obtained for PTC tissue vs. paracancerous tissue, and 15 metabolites, including L-octanoylcarnitine, N-arachidonoylglycine, and others were found to be disturbed in PTC tissue. Moreover, the metabolic profile presented considerable separation between PTC tissue from different iodine areas, and 15 metabolomic biomarkers were found to be differentially expressed. Among them, 10 metabolites, including arachidonoylcarnitine and LysoPCs, were related to thyroid cancer and excess iodine. These biomarkers play a role in arachidonic acid metabolism pathways and others. In addition, biomarkers such as 3,5-tetradecadiencarnitine and oxidized glutathione were significantly correlated with thyroid function, and biomarkers such as L-octanoylcarnitine and arachidonic acid were significantly correlated with the clinical characteristics of PTC. Distinct differences in metabolic profiles were found to exist between PTCs from areas with different levels of iodine nutrition. The identified biomarkers have significant potential for diagnosing PTC and investigating its underlying mechanisms.

Tuning the chemical composition and surface structure of electrodes is demonstrated as a feasible and effective strategy to tailor advanced catalysts for energy electrocatalysis. In this work, hierarchical palladium-silver alloy nanosheets (PdAg NS) with the thickness ~7 atoms and rich atomic defects are successfully prepared, using the carbon monoxide (CO) confinement approach. The optimized Pd7Ag3 NS/C exhibits 8.8 times higher catalytic peak current density and much better stability toward ethanol electrooxidation than Pd NS/C catalyst. The catalytic enhancement mechanism could be attributed to the synergetic effects among optimized electronic structure of Pd, novel architecture, and rich atomic defects.

Data center infrastructure uptime increasing, unplanned downtime reduction and data integrity main-taining are increasingly critical in today’s real-time, service-level agreement (SLA)-driven cloud service business environment. Server, as backbone of cloud computing, has been developing and evolving with diverse challenges of preserving data integrity, increasing availability, minimizing planned downtime, especially in high temperature ambient (HTA) data center environment So, rock robust server system design for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) are crucial for cloud service providers.Memory errors in server are among the most common hardware causes of machine crashes in production sites with large-scale systems. The higher temperature environment, the more errors. The typical response to memory failures is to replace any affected memory modules, which makes memory modules among the most commonly replaced server components. So, memory failures and their correction are very costly. Based on data collection and failure analysis from Baidu infrastructure maintenance group, server system memory (uncorrectable error) failure rate is Top 1 in data center. For reducing memory failure rate and related server downtime, Baidu developed an advanced server handling memory correctable and uncorrectable errors throughout a "6 pillars" complete application stack, from the underlying hardware to the scheduling system. Such solutions involve three components: (1) reliability, how the solution preserves data integrity; (2) availability, how it guarantees uninterrupted operation with minimal degradation; and (3) serviceability, how it simplifies proactively and reactively dealing with failed or potentially failed components. Availability is not an independent vector.This paper addresses Baidu rack server memory RAS architecture and design, scoping from Intel Xeon processor hardware errors avoidance, detection and correction RAS features for system reliability and improves fault tolerance; failure identification and reconfiguration such as leakage bucket based software-enhanced error recovery and error containment; extending to kernel level page retirement as well as high availability scheduler. Also, Memory RAS system design specific for HTA data center environment is detail introduced. Then, the related lab test procedure, data, and observations are summarized at the end of each section. Overall conclusion and future work plan are summarized in the end.

Although PdRh-based bimetallic nanocrystals have been demonstrated as effective catalysts for methanol electrooxidation, the impact of introduced Rh on CO poisoning resistance and consequently the catalytic activity is still lacking in-depth studies. In this work, defective PdRh bimetallic nanocrystals (PdRh NAs) with different composition ratios are synthesized. The prepared Pd3Rh1 NAs exhibit much higher peak current density and greater durability in comparison with the control sample of Pd1Rh1 NAs, Pd5Rh1 NAs, and the Commercial Pd/C. In addition, we observe that the introduced suitable amount of Rh plays a critical role in promoting the activity and stability of PdRh NAs for methanol electrooxidation reaction (MOR). This work provides an advanced MOR catalyst, and highlights that modulating both surface structure and chemical composition of catalysts is an effective route to realize catalytic property optimization.

Noble metal-based nanosheets are demonstrated as promising electrodes for energy electrocatalysis due to their remarkable advantages such as large surface area to volume ratio and high utilization efficiency of noble metals. In this work, three-dimensional layered palladium tungsten nanosheet assemblies (L-PdW NAs) have been successfully synthesized using a facile carbon monoxide (CO) confinement strategy, exhibiting much higher catalytic activity and stability toward both ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) and methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) compared to palladium nanosheets (Pd NSs) and commercial Pd/C (Com Pd/C). It is discovered that the tungsten hexacarbonyl (W(CO)6) in the synthetic system displays a decisive key in forming the layered nanosheet structure. The catalytic enhancement mechanism should result the synergetic effects between the introduced W and novel architecture of layered nanosheet assembles. This work offers a low Pd loading, highly active and stable anode catalyst for direct alcohol fuel cells, while highlighting the beauty of the architecture with introduced W to significantly enhance the catalytic activity.

Great efforts have been devoted to the exploration of PdCu-based catalysts toward formic acid oxidation, but their activity is still much lower than that expected. In this work, nanotwin-rich PdCuW trimetallic nanochains were successfully fabricated using a modified polyol method. The formation of crystalline defect of nanotwins should be related to the significant lattice mismatch among Pd, Cu, and the introduced W. It is discovered that the nanotwins could function as superb active sites to highly improve the peak current density of formic acid oxidation. In addition, the W- and Cu-tailored PdCuW nanochains optimize the electronic structure of Pd with suitable binding energy to reduce the charge-transfer resistance, resulting in greatly enhanced catalytic activity. This work highlights the beauty of the architecture with introduced W to significantly enhance catalytic performance in particular the activity of formic acid electrooxidation.

The modification of electronic structure can significantly affect electrocatalytic activity. An architecture art of Pt-skinned PtAg bimetallic nanotubes is successfully synthesized, delivering much higher catalytic activity and better stability toward methanol electrooxidation than PtAg bimetallic nanoparticles and commercial Pt/C catalysts. Theoretical studies reveal that the Pt skin on PtAg bimetallic nanotubes prominently optimize the electronic structure of Pt to greatly enhance the dissociative adsorption of methanol while increasing CO poisoning resistance for fast electrode kinetics, high catalytic current density and stability. This work offers a low Pt loading but highly active anode catalyst for direct methanol fuel cells, demonstrating that rationally tuning the electronic structure by well-controlling surface morphology in nanoscales could open new opportunities to greatly improve the electrocatalytic properties.

Hollow cobalt oxide nanoparticles embedded porous reduced graphene oxide hybrids are constructed by means of a facile etching strategy and the Kirkendall effect. When examined as an anode for lithium-ion batteries, this unique structured composite exhibits remarkable lithium storage capability such as excellent rate capability, superior reversible specific capacity together with good cycling durability, highlighting the importance of embedding active materials on graphene sheets for maximum utilization of hollow structured cobalt oxide and porous reduced graphene oxide for energy devices.

Perforated ultrathin Pd nanosheets with crystalline/amorphous heterostructures are rationally synthesized to offer a large electrochemically active surface area of 172.6 m2 g-1 and deliver a 5.6 times higher apparent reaction rate in comparison to commercial Pd/C, thus offering a facile confined growth method to generate superior catalysts.

Paraoxonase (PON1) is one of the major players in the detoxification of organophosphates (OPs). This study presents our investigation into the effect of OPs on serum PON1 activity and the distribution of common PON1 polymorphisms in Han Chinese workers with repeated high exposure to OP pesticides, and the factors modulating PON1 activity. In all, 400 participants, including 180 workers exposed to OP pesticides occupationally, and 220 controls were investigated. Serum PON1 and cholinesterase (ChE) activity were measured, and genotyping was done using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The association between PON1 activity and PON1 polymorphisms, and the influencing factors of PON1 activity, were analyzed. The results revealed that repeated OP exposures significantly decreased serum PON1 and ChE activity ( P

Sulforaphane (SFN), an isothiocyanate that exists exclusively in cruciferous vegetables, may be the most promising preventive agent for bladder cancer (BC) to date. We previously observed that SFN dramatically inhibits human BC T24 cells in vitro. Our hypothesis is that SFN may attenuate BC growth. To test our hypothesis, we investigated the effect of SFN on human BC UM-UC-3 cell xenografts implanted into athymic mice. Sulforaphane extract was routinely prepared in our laboratory, and its content was measured with high-performance liquid chromatography. Athymic mice were injected subcutaneously with a UM-UC-3 cell suspension (2.0×10 6 cells/200 μ L per mouse) and randomly divided into 2 groups. The positive control group was orally gavaged with water, and the treatment group was orally administered SFN from broccoli sprout (12 mg/kg body weight) for 5 weeks. At the end of the experiment, tumor tissues were harvested and processed for hematoxylin and eosin staining and immunohistochemistry. The average tumor volume decreased from 4.1±1.67 cm 3 in the positive control mice to 1.5±0.72 cm 3 in the SFN-treated mice, evidencing an inhibitory rate of 63%. The SFN extract also reduced the appearance of tumors, including karyopyknosis and angiogenesis. Sulforaphane extract induced caspase 3 and cytochrome c expression but reduced the expression of survivin. Sulforaphane extract retards the growth of UM-UC-3 xenografts in vivo, confirming its future potential in BC therapy.