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Species abundance distribution (SAD) combines species richness with species abundance in a community and is an important indicator of community structure. Although many studies have applied mathematical models to fit the SADs of plant communities, there are still few studies on the changes in the shape of SAD (i.e., the skewness of the SAD curves) along the environmental gradient. Especially for forest communities, it is still unclear whether the model fitting and shape change of SADs are consistent in different vegetation types. Here, 28 plots of 20 m × 20 m were set up in Hynobius amjiensis National Nature Reserve according to the main forest vegetation types. The species composition and abundance of each species were surveyed in each plot. The logseries model and the lognormal model were fitted to the SAD in each plot, and then the best-fit model was selected based on the corrected Akaike's Information Criteria (AICc). The α value in Gambin model and the η value in Weibull model were calculated to reflect the shape of SAD in each plot. The λ value in Weibull model was calculated to reflect the scale of SAD (i.e., the range observed in abundance). The relationship between altitude and the shape and scale of SAD was analyzed. The results were as follows: (1) The logseries model fitted SAD better than the lognormal model. (2) When all plots were included, there was no significant correlation between SAD shape (α and η) and altitude, but there was a significant positive correlation between the λ value and altitude. (3) There was a negative correlation between altitude and α and η values in the mixed evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved forests, and there was a significant positive correlation between the α value and altitude in the deciduous broad-leaved forests, while there was no significant correlations between both α value and η value and altitude. The results indicate that the model fitting and shape change of SADs along the environmental gradient are related to the vegetation types of the forest community. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the vegetation types when analyzing the relationship between SAD and impact factors in plant communities.

Objectives: Our study aims to investigate the impact of B‐mode ultrasound (B‐US) imaging, color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI), strain elastography (SE), and patient age on the prediction of molecular subtypes in breast lesions. Methods: Totally 2272 multimodal ultrasound imaging was collected from 198 patients. The ResNet‐18 network was employed to predict four molecular subtypes from B‐US imaging, CDFI, and SE of patients with different ages. All the images were split into training and testing datasets by the ratio of 80%:20%. The predictive performance on testing dataset was evaluated through 5 metrics including mean accuracy, precision, recall, F1‐scores, and confusion matrix. Results: Based on B‐US imaging, the test mean accuracy is 74.50%, the precision is 74.84%, the recall is 72.48%, and the F1‐scores is 0.73. By combining B‐US imaging with CDFI, the results were increased to 85.41%, 85.03%, 85.05%, and 0.84, respectively. With the integration of B‐US imaging and SE, the results were changed to 75.64%, 74.69%, 73.86%, and 0.74, respectively. Using images from patients under 40 years old, the results were 90.48%, 90.88%, 88.47%, and 0.89. When images from patients who are above 40 years old, they were changed to 81.96%, 83.12%, 80.5%, and 0.81, respectively. Conclusion: Multimodal ultrasound imaging can be used to accurately predict the molecular subtypes of breast lesions. In addition to B‐US imaging, CDFI rather than SE contribute further to improve predictive performance. The predictive performance is notably better for patients under 40 years old compared with those who are 40 years old and above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease with significant mortality. Identifying prognostic factors that influence patient outcomes is crucial for effective clinical management. In this study, we assessed the dynamic changes of laboratory markers and their association with outcomes in 93 SFTS patients. We found that age and hypertension were significantly associated with poor outcomes in SFTS patients. The deceased group exhibited lower platelet counts, elevated liver and kidney function markers, coagulation profiles, inflammatory markers, and cytokines compared to the survival group. Kinetic analysis showed that these markers gradually normalized in the survival group, while they remained persistently abnormal in the deceased group. Furthermore, hypertension, elevated aspartate aminotransferase, procalcitonin, and interleukin 10 were identified as independent risk factors for predicting poor prognosis of SFTS patients. These findings provide valuable insights into the prognostic significance of laboratory markers and highlight the importance of early identification of high-risk SFTS patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The leading cause of death from a single infectious agent is tuberculosis (TB) (1). Globally, an estimated 1.7 billion persons are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (2), and a country with [...]

Carbapenem-resistant Salmonella has recently aroused increasing attention. In this study, a total of four sequence type 36 Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) isolates were consecutively isolated from an 11-month-old female patient with a gastrointestinal infection, of which one was sensitive to carbapenems and three were resistant to carbapenems. Via antibiotic susceptibility testing, a carbapenemases screening test, plasmid conjugation experiments, Illumina short-reads, and PacBio HiFi sequencing, we found that all four S. Typhimurium isolates contained a blaCTX-M-14-positive IncI1 plasmid. One carbapenem-sensitive S. Typhimurium isolate then obtained an IncHI2 plasmid carrying blaNDM-1 and an IncP plasmid without any resistance genes during the disease progression. The blaNDM-1 gene was located on a new 30 kb multiple drug resistance region, which is flanked by IS26 and TnAs2, respectively. In addition, the ST_F0903R isolate contained eight tandem copies of the ISCR1 unit (ISCR1-dsbD-trpF-ble-blaNDM-1-ISAba125Δ1), but an increase in MICs to carbapenems was not observed. Our work further provided evidence of the rapid spread and amplification of blaNDM-1 through plasmid. Prompting the recognition of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales and the initiation of appropriate infection control measures are essential to avoid the spread of these organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]