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BACKGROUND: Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is related to developing lung and liver disease, but no large-scale studies examine its association with birth outcomes. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the risk of pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes in mothers and children with AATD. METHODS: Using a large cohort data of Danish mothers and children with AATD from 1973 to 2013 (n = 2,027,229), with 559 cases (305 mothers and 254 children). We conducted Poisson regression to examine associations between alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, adverse birth outcomes, and pregnancy complications in mothers and children. RESULTS: AATD was related to term low birth weight [

BackgroundNeonatal per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) exposure can disrupt hormonal homeostasis and induce neuro- and immunotoxicity in children. In this exploratory study, we investigated associations between PFAS levels in neonatal dried blood spots and retinoblastoma risk.Materials and methodsThis study included 501 retinoblastoma cases born from 1983 to 2011 and 899 controls frequency-matched by birth year (20:1 matching ratio), born to 755 US-born and 366 Mexico-born mothers in California. Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), perflurooctanoic acid (PFOA), and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) feature intensities were identified from neonatal blood spots from California newborn Genetic Disease Screening Program. Using logistic regression, we assessed whether an interquartile range (IQR) increase of PFAS levels or having above-mean levels of PFAS in blood affects retinoblastoma risk overall or its subtypes (i.e., unilateral, bilateral). We assessed children of US-born and Mexico-born mothers, separately.Results and discussionAmong all children, above-mean PFOS levels at birth increased the odds of retinoblastoma overall by 29% (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.00, 1.67) and unilateral retinoblastoma by 42% (95% CI: 1.03, 1.97). For children of Mexico-born mothers, we estimated the highest odds of retinoblastoma overall (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.67; 95% CI: 1.06, 2.66) and bilateral retinoblastoma (aOR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.12, 3.92) with above-mean PFOS levels. Among children of US-born mothers, higher PFOS levels increased the odds of unilateral retinoblastoma by 15% (95% CI: 0.99, 1.35) for each IQR increase and by 71% among children with above-mean PFOS levels (95% CI: 1.04, 2.90). In addition, for children of US-born mothers, PFOA increased the odds of retinoblastoma overall (aOR: 1.41; 95% CI: 1.00, 2.02 for above-mean levels, aOR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.16 per IQR increase). PFNA was not associated with retinoblastoma risk.ConclusionsOur results suggested that PFOS and PFOA might contribute to retinoblastoma risk in children born in California.

BackgroundRetinoblastoma is rare but nevertheless the most common pediatric eye cancer that occurs in children under age 5. High-resolution metabolomics (HRM) is a powerful analytical approach to profile metabolic features and pathways or identify metabolite biomarkers. To date, no studies have used pre-diagnosis blood samples from retinoblastoma cases and compared them to healthy controls to elucidate early perturbations in tumor pathways.ObjectivesHere, we report on metabolic profiles of neonatal blood comparing cases later in childhood diagnosed with retinoblastoma and controls.MethodsWe employed untargeted metabolomics analysis using neonatal dried blood spots for 1327 children (474 retinoblastoma cases and 853 healthy controls) born in California from 1983 to 2011. Cases were selected from the California Cancer Registry and controls, frequency matched to cases by birth year, from California birth rolls. We performed high-resolution metabolomics to extract metabolic features, partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and logistic regression to identify features associated with disease, and Mummichog pathway analysis to characterize enriched biological pathways.ResultsPLS-DA identified 1917 discriminative features associated with retinoblastoma and Mummichog identified 14 retinoblastoma-related enriched pathways including linoleate metabolism, pentose phosphate pathway, pyrimidine metabolism, fructose and mannose metabolism, vitamin A metabolism, as well as fatty acid and lipid metabolism.InterpretationOur findings linked a retinoblastoma diagnosis in early life to newborn blood metabolome perturbations indicating alterations in inflammatory pathways and energy metabolism. Neonatal blood spots may provide a venue for early detection for this or potentially other childhood cancers.

With the advancement of economic globalization, current English teaching in colleges and universities no longer meets the social demand for cultivating liberal arts talents in the new era. The study combines the six stages of the BOPS method and proposes an online, hybrid model for teaching English. Based on this, a teaching experiment is carried out on two parallel classes of students in a university, and the English test scores and specific dimensions of the two courses before and after the experiment are compared. Then, an intelligent algorithm was used to design an English teaching effect evaluation method to assess the comprehensive effect of English teaching from the dimensions of teachers, students, and grades and to explore the effectiveness of the online, hybrid English teaching model. After the teaching experiment, the total English achievement scores and all dimensions of the students in the test group and the control group showed significant differences at the 5% level, with the total English achievement scores of the test group being 14.18% higher and 20.34% higher than before the experiment. The overall English teaching effect is above moderate, with a comprehensive score of 3.387. The online, hybrid English teaching mode positively enhances the effectiveness of English teaching in colleges and universities.

Both genome-wide association study and next-generation sequencing data analyses are widely employed to identify disease susceptible common and/or rare genetic variants. Rare variants generally have large effects though they are hard to detect due to their low frequencies. Currently, many existing statistical methods for rare variants association studies employ a weighted combination scheme, which usually puts subjective weights or suboptimal weights based on some adhoc assumptions (e.g., ignoring dependence between rare variants). In this study, we analytically derived optimal weights for both common and rare variants and proposed a general and novel approach to test association between an optimally weighted combination of variants (G-TOW) in a gene or pathway for a continuous or dichotomous trait while easily adjusting for covariates. Results of the simulation studies show that G-TOW has properly controlled type I error rates and it is the most powerful test among the methods we compared when testing effects of either both rare and common variants or rare variants only. We also illustrate the effectiveness of G-TOW using the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 (GAW17) data. Additionally, we applied G-TOW and other competitive methods to test disease-associated genes in real data of schizophrenia. The G-TOW has successfully verified genes FYN and VPS39 which are associated with schizophrenia reported in existing publications. Both of these genes are missed by the weighted sum statistic and the sequence kernel association test. Simulation study and real data analysis indicate that G-TOW is a powerful test.

The impact of microplastics on the remediation of cadmium-contaminated soil by biochar is still unclear. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated the effects of combining different biochars with polylactic acid (PLA) microplastics on the growth of Chinese cabbage, rhizosphere soil metabolomics, bacterial community structure, and Cd accumulation in Cd-contaminated soil. Compared with the treatment with biochar alone, the addition of PLA suppressed plant growth, but also reduced Cd accumulation in Chinese cabbage by 8–42%; the treatment with sugarcane bagasse biochar (SBC)–PLA showed the most prominent effect. Compared with the treatment with SBC alone, SBC–PLA reduced Cd accumulation in roots and aboveground parts by 47 and 22%, respectively (p < 0.05). The addition of PLA enhanced the soil organic matter, dissolved organic carbon, and total nitrogen contents, but reduced the available phosphorus and readily available potassium contents, with no significant impact on available Cd. The rhizosphere metabolite analysis showed that PLA plus biochar promoted the formation of cyclohexene terpenoids and chelating agents, the urea cycle, and chelation with Cd ions, thereby reducing Cd uptake by Chinese cabbage roots. The microbial structure analysis demonstrated that PLA plus biochar drove chelation between organic carbon, nitrogen, and Cd. This study highlights the potential of microplastics for mitigating Cd accumulation in plants and the remediation of heavy metal-contaminated soil. Highlights: The addition of PLA in biochar (BC) promotes the BC-mediated reduction of Cd accumulation in Chinese cabbage. The addition of PLA in BC promoted the increase in soil organic matter, DOC, and total nitrogen contents. The chelation of organic carbon and nitrogen with Cd is key to reducing Cd accumulation in the roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlled-release blended fertilizer (CRBF) and densification can increase rice yield and nitrogen (N) efficiency. However, the effects of CRBF combined with densification on rice yield, N absorption, economic benefits of fertilization, and ammonia volatilization loss remain unclear. A 2-year field experiment was conducted using five treatments: no N (control, CK), conventional N application (farmer's fertilization practice, FFP), optimal N application (OPT), single basal application of CRBF (CRBF), and CRBF combined with densification (CRFDP). Moreover, rice yield, N absorption and use efficiency, economic benefit, and ammonia volatilization loss were evaluated. CRBF and CRFDP significantly increased rice dry matter, N use efficiency by 11.6%–30.5% and 90.2%–160.0%, finally increased the yield by 33.3% and 26.1% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Compared with FFP, CRFDP with 16.7% reduction of N input significantly increased yield by 33.3% and 26.1% and economic benefit by 46.9% and 38.3% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Compared with CRBF, CRFDP increased the total yield by 2.7% and 15.2%, economic benefit by 3.5% and 7.6%, and N absorption efficiency by 10% and 8.3% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Compared with FFP, CRFDP reduced ammonia volatilization intensity by 62.5% and 60.8%, cumulative ammonia volatilization loss by 46.3% and 50.3% and also lowered NH4+-N of surface water by 69.0%–93.8% and 57.8%–89.7% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The combination of CRBF and densification could improve the rice yield, economic benefit, and N use efficiency and reduce ammonia volatilization. These results might provide data and theoretical support for the high yield of rice and a new environmentally friendly and resource-efficient model of rice cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary contribution of this paper is to research one kind special Kloosterman sums using analytic method. We translate one kind fourth power mean of the Kloosterman sums into the character sums of one kind polynomials. It is possible to construct an exact formula for the fourth power mean of one kind Kloosterman sums by computing the character sums of the polynomials. The paper is novel because of its proof and conversion strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iron-assisted pyrolysis (Fe-assisted pyrolysis) is a high-efficiency technique to remove sulfur from low-rank coal. However, the sulfur removal mechanism of Fe-assisted pyrolysis did not compressively address. For filling this gap, this study explored the sulfur removal mechanism of diphenyl sulfone during Fe-assisted pyrolysis based on the factor optimization of desulfurization performance. The iron powder under the optimal conditions of Fe-assisted pyrolysis was characterized with X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), showing that FeS and some FeS2 were formed on the surface of post-pyrolysis iron powder. Gas chromatography (GC) analysis manifested that the addition of iron powder in the pyrolysis process could considerably reduce the SO2 emission. GC and Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) analyses demonstrated that there was C–S bond broken in the diphenyl sulfone structure during Fe-assisted pyrolysis. From the results of thermogravimetry-mass spectrometry (TG-MS), the addition of iron powder in the pyrolysis process could enhance the reaction rate and reduce the temperature required for the reaction. We believe that the results of the present study provided a theoretical basis for a profound understanding of the desulfurization mechanism of Fe-assisted pyrolysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]