Search

Abstract Septic cardiomyopathy is a life-threatening heart dysfunction caused by severe infection. Considering the complexity of pathogenesis and high mortality, the identification of efficient biomarkers are needed to guide clinical practice. Based on multimicroarray analysis, this study aimed to explore the pathogenesis of septic cardiomyopathy and the related immune landscape. The results showed that septic cardiomyopathy resulted in organ dysfunction due to extreme pro- and anti-inflammatory effects. In this process, KLRG1, PRF1, BCL6, GAB2, MMP9, IL1R1, JAK3, IL6ST, and SERPINE1 were identified as the hub genes regulating the immune landscape of septic cardiomyopathy. Nine transcription factors regulated the expression of these genes: SRF, STAT1, SP1, RELA, PPARG, NFKB1, PPARA, SMAD3, and STAT3. The hub genes activated the Th17 cell differentiation pathway, JAK-STAT signaling pathway, and cytokine‒cytokine receptor interaction pathway. These pathways were mainly involved in regulating the inflammatory response, adaptive immune response, leukocyte-mediated immunity, cytokine-mediated immunity, immune effector processes, myeloid cell differentiation, and T-helper cell differentiation. These nine hub genes could be considered biomarkers for the early prediction of septic cardiomyopathy.

Abstract With the development of green buildings, people pay more attention to the quality of the indoor sound environment. The air sound insulation performance of floors and exterior walls plays a key role in today's green buildings. The thermal performance of the enclosure structure's floor and exterior wall heat transfer resistance is an important factor in reducing building carbon emissions in green buildings. The aim of this paper is to study the efficiency of the acoustic and thermal insulation of a foaming system with porous carbon balls and the combination of different structural ways of construction boards and external walls. The acoustic and thermal parameters of different sound insulation and thermal insulation systems designed with porous carbon sphere foam and inserted into the floors and exterior walls are compared to highlight the optimal structure. The theoretical and experimental tests showed that to improve the sound insulation performance of the floor, a sound insulation system needs to be placed on the surface of the floor in contact with the impact object and inlaid in the vertical gap in contact with the floor and the wall. Furthermore, it has been determined that the surface of the foam particle acoustic ball with micropores has good sound absorption performance. Finally, the high-quality building thermal insulation material with low thermal conductivity in any combination with the floor slabs and the external wall structure improves the thermal insulation performance.

This study takes an old oceanarium in Jiangsu Province, China, as a case study and monitors the energy consumption values related to electricity, water and gas consumption for the whole year before the renovation of the oceanarium. Based on the energy consumption monitoring data, an in-depth analysis of the energy consumption defects of the oceanarium before the renovation is conducted using energy audit technology. We combine the characteristics of the oceanarium itself according to: (1) the results of the building energy audit; (2) the results of the envelope calculation; and (3) the latest energy-saving retrofit technology. We developed a more scientific building energy-saving retrofit programme. Using this method, we can accurately monitor the energy consumption problems in old oceanarium buildings and find building energy consumption defects. In this study, we monitor the real-time energy consumption of nine old government office buildings in Jiangsu Province, China using energy monitoring technology. We analyse and study the monitoring results and finally target the scientific energy-saving retrofits. This method can be used to carry out targeted energy-saving building renovation in the future and put forward new methods and ideas for studying the energy consumption of existing public buildings.

Introduction Early pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is guideline-recommended for all chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients post-hospitalization for COPD exacerbation but many patients experience difficulties participating in early PR due to significant breathlessness. High flow nasal oxygen (HFO) has been shown to improve ventilatory efficiency in stable COPD patients, but there is little data on HFO use during exercise training in PR post-COPD exacerbation. Methods We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) to explore the feasibility of a prospective large-scale RCT to evaluate the impact of HFO in improving PR outcomes of COPD patients post-exacerbation. Patients recently hospitalized for COPD exacerbation were enrolled and randomized to either HFO or usual care during an early 6-weeks, outpatient PR program. Results Twenty two patients were randomized between May 2019 to Dec 2019 and 18 patients completed the study. The HFO arm achieved a greater improvement in exercise capacity than the usual care arm, with the mean difference in 6-min walk distance (6MWD) being 30 m (95% CI: −23 m to 84 m), although this was not statistically significant. All 18 patients in both arms were compliant to the pulmonary rehabilitation program (defined by attending ≥75% of exercise sessions). HFO was well tolerated with no adverse events reported. Conclusion This pilot RCT has shown preliminary evidence of the feasibility and high patient acceptability of HFO during early PR on improving exercise capacity in COPD patients post-exacerbation These promising results would justify a larger RCT to confirm HFO’s benefits and has the potential to change PR practice.

The economic and environmental losses due to serious leakage in the urban water supply network have increased the effort to control the water leakage. However, current methods for leakage estimation are inaccurate leading to the development of ineffective leakage controls. Therefore, this study proposes a method based on the blind source separation theory (BSS) to calculate the leakage of water supply network. The method uses fast independent component analysis (FastICA) algorithm to separate flow signal of laboratory and practical measuring area, adopts trend similarity to solve the uncertainty of separation sequence to get hourly change curve of user usage and physical leakage, and embeds the leakage model into amplitude optimization model to solve amplitude uncertainty to obtain physical leakage value. The study found that the estimation of leakage level using the blind source separation is reasonably accurate and facilitates the identification of the subsequent reduction in water leakage. This can provide scientific evidence for leakage reduction and the investment of pressure relief devices in the next stage.

Objective: To explore the effect of applying acupuncture on children with cerebral palsy dyskinesia. Methods: Research work was carried out in our hospital. The work was carried out from November 2018 to November 2019. A total of 100 patients were selected, all of whom were children with cerebral palsy, accompanied by dyskinesia. They were randomly divided into two groups, and were given conventional rehabilitation training and acupuncture treatment respectively, named the control group and the experimental group, and the clinical efficacy of the two groups of patients was analyzed. Results: There was no significant difference in the MAS scores of the two groups of children before treatment, which was expressed as P> 0.05. After treatment intervention, the scores of the two groups of children were improved, in contrast, the improvement effect is more significant for the experimental group, the data difference is large, P

Objective: To explore the effect of combining modern rehabilitation concepts with acupuncture and massage therapy on the rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy. Methods: Research work was carried out in our hospital. The work was carried out from September 2018 to September 2019. A total of 100 patients were selected, all of whom were children with cerebral palsy. The 100 patients with cerebral palsy were divided into two groups：the control group who was given modern rehabilitation concept intervention, and the intervention group who was given modern rehabilitation concept combined with acupuncture and massage. The recovery condition of the two groups of cerebral palsy children was compared and analyzed. Results: There were 5 patients in the treatment group who were ineffective, the effective rate was 90.00%, and 11 people in the control group were ineffective, the effective rate was 78.00% which has existential meaning. The incidence of sequelae of the children in the experimental group was 14.00%, and the incidence of sequelae of the children in the control group was 32.00%. In contrast, the incidence of the experimental group was low and the effect was good. The difference in data was significant (P

Objective: To explore the clinical effect of applying Buyang Huanwu Decoction in the treatment of sequelae of stroke. Methods: The research work was carried out in our hospital, which was from November 2018 to November 2019. A total of 200 patients were selected for treatment during this period, all of whom were patients with sequelae of stroke, and 100 patients were grouped randomly. One group was given conventional acupuncture treatment as the control group, and the other group was given acupuncture combined with Buyang Huanwu Decoction treatment as the test group. The clinical effects of the two groups of patients were evaluated. Results: After treatment intervention, the treatment rates of the test group and the control group were 94.00% and 78.00%, respectively. The Fahl-Meyer score and Barthel index score of the test group were significantly higher than those of the control group, and the quality of life score was higher. There are significant data differences, which was statistically meaningful (P

Objective: To apply Yiqi Naoluo Tong Decoction for clinical treatment of patients with cerebral infarction, and analyze the therapeutic effect of this method. Methods: 150 cases of cerebral infarction patients who were treated in our hospital were set as the research objects and divided into two groups. The conventional treatment methods were combined with Yiqi Naoluo Tong Decoction and single conventional treatment. Results: After treatment, the improvement of the test group of patients was better than that of the control group, and compared with the control group, the comparison result showed that P

The transcription factor NF-E2 Related Factor-2 (NRF2) is an important drug target. Activation of NRF2 has chemopreventive effects in cancer and exerts beneficial effects in a number of diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory diseases, hepatosteatosis, obesity and insulin resistance. Hence, there have been great efforts to discover and characterize novel NRF2 activators. One reported NRF2 activator is the labdane diterpenoid andrographolide. In this study, we identified the mechanism through which andrographolide activates NRF2. We showed that andrographolide inhibits the function of KEAP1, a protein that together with CUL3 and RBX1 forms an E3 ubiquitin ligase that polyubiquitinates NRF2. Andrographolide partially inhibits the interaction of KEAP1 with CUL3 in a manner dependent on Cys151 in KEAP1. This suggests that andrographolide forms Michael acceptor dependent adducts with Cys151 in KEAP1 in vivo, leading to inhibition of NRF2 ubiquitination and consequently accumulation of the transcription factor. Interestingly, we also showed that at higher concentrations andrographolide increases NRF2 protein expression in a Cys151 independent, but likely KEAP1 dependent manner, possibly through modification of other Cys residues in KEAP1. In this study we also screened secondary metabolites produced by endophytes isolated from non-flowering plants for NRF2-inducing properties. One of the extracts, ORX 41, increased both NRF2 protein expression and transcriptional activity markedly. These results suggest that endophytes isolated from non-flowering or other plants may be a good source of novel NRF2 inducing compounds.

China has attained rice sufficiency with the increased use of nitrogen (N) fertilizer, but this has led to serious N pollution. China has the world’s highest use of N with the lowest N use efficiency (NUE). Including livestock production, China’s agriculture sector has surpassed industry as the greatest polluter of water. Using plastic film on raised-beds, combined with improved agronomic practices, can boost rice yield by 50% with 36% less N fertilizer use, 30% higher NUE, and stabilized the yield of 9.75 t ha−1. It also counters the effects of drought and low ambient temperature. A six-year study was conducted combining no-tillage, crop-residue mulch, and plastic cover, alternating organic rice and rapeseed production. All the treatments, fertilized with biogas slurry and rapeseed meal, gave rice yields of 7.0 to 10.7 t ha−1, well above China’s average of 6.5 t ha−1. In this time, soil organic matter increased from 1.6% to 4.2%. In the first four years, the combination of crop-residue mulch with plastic cover had a slightly higher yield than mulch alone. In the fifth and sixth years, the latter treatment surpassed the use of plastic cover with crop-residue mulch. Trials with a biodegradable film show that plastic pollution can be dealt with.