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Backgrounds: Personal growth initiative (PGI) is regarded as a meaningful concept with potential value at both the individual and organizational levels, but little is known about the factors that contribute to nurses' PGI. This study aimed to explore how proactive personality and hospital work environment affect PGI of clinical nurses. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between September and October 2022 among 4414 nurses from 10 tertiary general hospitals in 10 cities in Sichuan, China, using a two-stage sampling method. Self-reported anonymous online questionnaires, such as sociodemographic information survey, personal growth initiative scale II, the 10-item proactive personality scale, and practice environment scale-nursing work index were used to collect data. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were performed to examine research hypotheses. Results: Among the control variables in this study, nurses' self-perceptions of general health status and professional title positively predicted PGI (β = 0.462, 95%CI = 0.272–0.653; β = 1.078, 95%CI = 0.508–1.648). After adding control variables, both proactive personality (β = 1.143, 95%CI = 1.096–1.190) and work environment (β = 3.391, 95%CI = 2.904–3.879) positively predicted PGI. The work environment positively moderated the association between proactive personality and PGI (β = 0.108, 95%CI = 0.025–0.191). These predictors jointly explained 50.3% of the variance in PGI. Conclusions: Nurses with a greater tendency to have a typical proactive personality have higher levels of personal growth initiative, and this positive effect will be better highlighted in a healthier work environment. Nursing managers should prioritize the employment of people with proactive personality traits, focus on the development and stimulation of proactive personality traits in nurses, and establish a supportive work environment to maximize the personal growth initiative of nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common challenge people face in today's cross-cultural world is how to solve a series of adaptation problems caused by cultural conflict. Exploring Bruce Lee's successful cross-cultural experiences through psychobiography offers some inspiration and thoughts. How did Bruce Lee successfully integrate martial arts, symbolising the Eastern culture, with films representing the Western culture, finally propelling kung fu films onto the international stage? Numerous publicly available materials about Bruce Lee were collected for this study, and the research data were evaluated using thematic analysis. Bruce Lee's success benefitted from reconstructing cultural environment information and exercising his initiative to shape a new cultural environment. His life experiences reflect individual cognition behaviour and social and cultural environments as two aspects of a dynamic circulation system and show that the two have reached internal and spiralling harmony through mutual integration. In the context of the Oriental collectivism culture's family narrative, Chinese adults' personality development features the unique theme of 'inheritance and innovation'. Dealing with the relationship between self-actualisation and familism is another important and challenging task in developing the Chinese personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The product recall is becoming a challenging issue in supply chain management, and both suppliers and manufacturers are motivated to exert recall efforts to improve supply chain performance. Considering a supply chain composed of one supplier and one manufacturer with product recalls and demand uncertainty, we investigate the contract design by integrating the revenue sharing contract with three cost sharing policies, namely, fixed-rate cost sharing (Contract F), linear cost sharing (Contract L), and threshold-based cost sharing (Contract T), to coordinate the production quantity and recall efforts. Results show that cost sharing could improve the product recall probability and supply chain profits, but only Contract T can coordinate the supply chain in both production quantity and recall efforts. Moreover, the cost sharing rate in Contract T first decreases and then increases as the recall cost increases. When the recall cost is small (large), Contract T (Contract F) is optimal for the manufacturer. In contrast to our intuition, we find Contract L could overmotivate supply chain members to exert a recall effort that is greater than the first-best when the cost coefficient of recall efforts is large enough. However, demand uncertainty will mitigate the impact of product recalls on motivating recall efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health promotion behaviors are key determinant of health and well-being, and also play an important role in promoting successful aging. This study investigated levels of engagement in health promotion behaviors among Chinese rural older adults, and explored effects of perceived health competence, health education activities experience and sociodemographic variables on health promotion behavior in this population.Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional survey was performed. Participants were recruited by a multistage, stratified, cluster-sampling procedure from Nanbu County, Sichuan Province, China. All participants completed four paper questionnaires: sociodemographic characteristics and health care status survey, the Chinese version of the health promoting lifestyle profile-II (HPLP-II), perceived health competence scale and Lubben social network scale. Data were collected from July to August 2021. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was performed to analyze the effects of different factors on health promotion behaviors.Results: A total of 425 rural older adults with an average age of 72.7 years were included in analysis. The overall average score of HPLP-II was 101.6. The stepwise multiple linear regression analysis results showed that those who had higher perceived health competence (β = 0.66, P < 0.001), experienced health education activities (β = 0.254, P < 0.001), had physical examination (β = 0.107, P < 0.001), was married (β = 0.189, P < 0.001), had primary school education or above (β = 0.189, P < 0.001), and had a per capita monthly household income of more than 1000¥ (β = 0.085, P = 0.007), have higher levels of engagement in health promotion behaviors; while the level of health promotion behaviors of the older adults living alone was lower than that of living with their spouse or others (β = -0.192, P < 0.001). Combination of the above variables accounted for a total of 69.1% of the variance in health promotion behaviors.Conclusions: The level of health promotion behaviors among Chinese rural older adults is low. Perceived health competence and health education activities experience are two strong determinants of health promotion behaviors. Comprehensive health promotion programs aimed at improving perceived health competences and health literacy through health education activities may be an important part of optimizing the level of health promotion behaviors among rural older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In activated B cells, activation‐induced cytidine deaminase (AID) generates programmed DNA lesions required for antibody class switch recombination (CSR), which may also threaten genome integrity. AID dynamically shuttles between cytoplasm and nucleus, and the majority stays in the cytoplasm due to active nuclear export mediated by its C‐terminal peptide. In immunodeficient‐patient cells expressing mutant AID lacking its C‐terminus, a catalytically active AID‐delC protein accumulates in the nucleus but nevertheless fails to support CSR. To resolve this apparent paradox, we dissected the function of AID‐delC proteins in the CSR process and found that they cannot efficiently target antibody genes. We demonstrate that AID‐delC proteins form condensates both in vivo and in vitro, dependent on its N‐terminus and on a surface arginine‐rich patch. Co‐expression of AID‐delC and wild‐type AID leads to an unbalanced nuclear AID‐delC/AID ratio, with AID‐delC proteins able to trap wild‐type AID in condensates, resulting in a dominant‐negative phenotype that could contribute to immunodeficiency. The co‐condensation model of mutant and wild‐type proteins could be an alternative explanation for the dominant‐negative effect in genetic disorders. Synopsis: Immunodeficiency‐associated activation‐induced deaminase (AID) variants lacking the C‐terminus behave as dominant‐negative in antibody diversification. This study reveals co‐condensation as a basis of this dominant‐negative effect, with mutant AID proteins forming condensates and trapping wild‐type AID from its substrates. The AID C‐terminus is required for its recruitment to genomic antibody switch regionsC‐terminal‐deleted AID protein forms condensates in vitro and in vivoAID condensation causes a faulty distribution of deaminase activityC‐terminal‐deleted AID co‐condensates with wild‐type protein, resulting in the dominant‐negative effect [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Identification of cognition status and its associated factors permit targeted interventions. This study aimed to: (i) investigate cognitive function of Chinese older adults using a large, nationally representative cohort; and (ii) explore its associated factors from aspects of socio‐demographic, health behaviour, physical and mental health. Methods: Data on 2665 adults aged 65 and older from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study wave 4 in 2018 were analyzed. Information on self‐reported cognition status, socio‐demographic characteristics, health behaviour, physical and mental health status were obtained. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to explore associated factors. Results: The cognition score was 24.8, with 41.1% of Chinese older adults identified as cognitively impaired. Better cognition was associated with being married, more education, living in a city/town or urban–rural integration zone, moderate night‐time sleep (5–9 h) and post‐lunch napping (less than 90 min), moderate/light physical activity for 30 min to 2 h every day, socially active and good health status; while worse cognition was associated with older age, intensive physical activity every day and more than 4 h a day, greater dependency in activities of daily living and depression. Conclusions: Cognitive impairment is a common health problem in Chinese older adults. Its associated factors are multifaceted, including socio‐demographic characteristics, health behaviour and physical and mental health status. Developing interventions focused on these factors may be an important part of optimising cognition in these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lateral motion estimation has been a challenge in ultrasound elastography mainly due to the low resolution, low sampling frequency, and lack of phase information in the lateral direction. Synthetic transmit aperture (STA) can achieve high resolution due to two-way focusing and can beamform high-density image lines for improved lateral motion estimation with the disadvantages of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and limited penetration depth. In this study, Hadamard-encoded STA (Hadamard-STA) is proposed for the improvement of lateral motion estimation in elastography, and it is compared with STA and conventional focused wave (CFW) imaging. Simulations, phantom, and in vivo experiments were conducted to make the comparison. The normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were calculated as the evaluation criteria in the simulations. The results show that, at a noise level of −10 dB and an applied strain of −1% (compression), Hadamard-STA decreases the NRMSEs of lateral displacements by 46.92% and 35.35%, decreases the NRMSEs of lateral strains by 52.34% and 39.75%, and increases the CNRs by 9.70 and 9.75 dB compared with STA and CFW, respectively. In the phantom experiments performed on a heterogeneous tissue-mimicking phantom, the sum of squared differences (SSD) between the reference and the motion-compensated RF data, and the CNR were calculated as the evaluation criteria. At an applied strain of −1.80%, Hadamard-STA is found to decrease the SSDs by 20.91% and 30.99% and increase the CNRs by 14.15 and 24.66 dB compared with STA and CFW, respectively. In the experiments performed on a breast phantom, Hadamard-STA achieves better visualization of the breast inclusion with a clearer boundary between the inclusion and the background than STA and CFW. The in vivo experiments were performed on a patient with a breast tumor, and the tumor could also be better visualized with a more homogeneous background in the strain image obtained by Hadamard-STA than by STA and CFW. These results demonstrate that Hadamard-STA achieves a substantial improvement in lateral motion estimation and maybe a competitive method for quasi-static elastography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, smart data has attracted great attention in the smart city community since it can provide valuable information to support intelligent services such as planning, monitoring, and decision making. However, it imposes a big challenge to explore smart data from big data gathered from smart city with various advanced fusion and analysis approaches. This paper proposes an incremental tensor-based fuzzy c-means approach (IT-FCM) for obtaining smart data from continuously generated big data. Specifically, a weighted version of the tensor-based fuzzy c-means approach (T-FCM) is firstly proposed to cluster the dataset that combines the previous cluster centroids and the new generated data. Aiming to improve the clustering efficiency, the old data objects are represented by the centroids to avoid repeat clustering. Furthermore, this paper presents an edge-cloud-aided clustering scheme to fuse big data from different sources and perspectives and further to implement co-clustering on the fused datasets for exploring smart data. Finally, the proposed IT-FCM approach is evaluated by comparing with T-FCM regarding clustering accuracy and efficiency on two different datasets in the experiments. The results state that IT-FCM outperforms T-FCM in clustering streaming big data in terms of accuracy and efficiency for obtaining smart data. • An edge-cloud-aided computing system for co-clustering is presented. • An edge-cloud-aided computing system for co-clustering is presented. • Experiments are conducted to evaluate the presented approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The hyper-accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) is the leading cause of hepatic fibrosis, and TGF-β-induced activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is the central event of hepatic fibrosis pathogenesis. The deregulation and dysfunction of miRNAs in hepatic fibrosis have been reported previously. Aims: To identify miRNA(s) playing a role in HSC activation and the underlying mechanism. Methods: We analyzed online microarray expression datasets from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) for differentially expressed miRNAs in hepatic fibrosis-related disease liver tissues, examined the specific effects of the candidate miRNA on TGF-β-induced HSC activation, and screened for the targets of the candidate miRNA in the TGF-β/SMAD signaling. Then, the predicted miRNA-mRNA binding, the specific effects of the target mRNA, and the dynamic effects of miRNA and mRNA on TGF-β-induced HSC activation were investigated. Results: The miR-503 expression was upregulated in TGF-β-activated HSCs. miR-503 overexpression enhanced, while miR-503 inhibition attenuated TGF-β-induced HSC proliferation and ECM accumulation in HSCs. miR-503 targeted SMAD7 to inhibit SMAD7 expression. SMAD7 knockdown also aggravated TGF-β-induced HSC proliferation and ECM accumulation in HSCs. The effects of miR-503 overexpression on TGF-β-induced HSC activation were partially reversed by SMAD7 overexpression. In CCl4-induced hepatic fibrosis model in rats, miR-503 overexpression aggravated, whereas SMAD7 overexpression improved CCl4-induced fibrotic changes in rats' liver tissues. The effects of miR-503 overexpression on CCl4-induced fibrotic changes were partially reversed by SMAD7 overexpression. Conclusion: miR-503 acts on HSC activation and hepatic fibrosis through SMAD7. The miR-503/SMAD7 axis enhances HSC activation and hepatic fibrosis through the TGF-β/SMAD pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese government has provided various forms of assistance to the Tibet Autonomous Region and has substantially improved their facilities, which has had a positive influence on the development of tourism in Tibet. The present study investigated how assistance to Tibet (AT) coordinates with tourism development (TD) by exploring the patterns and influencing factors of AT and TD using statistical data from 74 prefectural units from 1991 to 2015. The findings led to several conclusions: (1) AT displayed strong and constant coupling interactions with TD, and the coupling coordination degree increased from moderately unbalanced development (MUD) to barely balanced development (BBD). However, the coupling coordination degree remains low (MUD) in most prefectural units; (2) in 2015, the degree of coupling coordination displayed a "core-periphery" spatial pattern (i.e., low in center and high in the periphery), which highly coincides with the patterns of AT (x) and TD (y), and should thus be improved further; and (3) both AT factors and TD factors have significant effects on the spatial differentiation of coupling coordination degree but not on the coupling degree. This study expands research on coupling coordination and AT and provides scientific guidance for further coordinating AT and TD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 has drawn much attention as a promising way that can effectively alleviate the issue of global warming and energy crisis. In this work, we fabricated a series of CdS/NH2‐UiO‐66 composites with varied CdS amounts and tested their capacity for photocatalytic reduction of CO2. The reactions were performed in a solvent‐free system and displayed excellent selectivity for CO production without liquid phase products. When the content of CdS in the composite is up to 40 %, the hybrid catalyst produces 105.41 μmol/g within 6 h, exhibiting remarkable photocatalytic performance, which is much higher than that catalyzed by mechanically mixed CdS and NH2‐UiO‐66. The brilliant catalytic performance of the composite catalyst is attributed to the formation of heterostructure between the well‐dispersed CdS and NH2‐UiO‐66, which promotes the enhancement of electron transfer during photocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Senescent astrocytes have been implicated in the aging brain and neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson's disease (PD). Astragaloside IV (AS-IV) is an antioxidant derivative from a traditional Chinese herbal medicine Astragalus membraneaceus Bunge and exerts anti-inflammatory and longevity effects and neuroprotective activities. However, its effect on astrocyte senescence in PD remains to be defined.Methods: Long culture-induced replicative senescence model and lipopolysaccharide/1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (LPS/MPP+)-induced premature senescence model and a mouse model of PD were used to investigate the effect of AS-IV on astrocyte senescence in vivo and in vitro. Immunocytochemistry, qPCR, subcellular fractionation, flow cytometric analyses, and immunohistochemistry were subsequently conducted to determine the effects of AS-IV on senescence markers.Results: We found that AS-IV inhibited the astrocyte replicative senescence and LPS/MPP+-induced premature senescence, evidenced by decreased senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity and expression of senescence marker p16, and increased nuclear level of lamin B1, and reduced pro-inflammatory senescence-associated secretory phenotype. More importantly, we showed that AS-IV protected against the loss of dopamine neurons and behavioral deficits in the mouse model of PD, which companied by reduced accumulation of senescent astrocytes in substantia nigra compacta. Mechanistically, AS-IV promoted mitophagy, which reduced damaged mitochondria accumulation and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species generation and then contributed to the suppression of astrocyte senescence. The inhibition of autophagy abolished the suppressive effects of AS-IV on astrocyte senescence.Conclusions: Our findings reveal that AS-IV prevents dopaminergic neurodegeneration in PD via inhibition of astrocyte senescence through promoting mitophagy and suggest that AS-IV is a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases such as PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the distributed finite-time tracking problem for multiple uncertain mechanical systems with dead-zone input and external disturbances. An observer-based adaptive finite-time consensus protocol is designed, which consists of two steps. Firstly, distributed observers are developed such that all the mechanical systems can obtain the leader's state in finite settling time. Then, based on backstepping method and adding a power integrator technique, the finite-time consensus protocol and appropriate adaptive laws are designed to track the estimated leader's state. Rigorous proofs show that the tracking errors between each mechanical system and the leader can converge to a small neighborhood of origin in finite time despite the presence of dead-zone nonlinearity and external disturbances. Finally, simulation example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and predictors of medication nonadherence among patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in Sichuan.Patients and methods: A cross-sectional investigation was performed. Participants were recruited by consecutive sampling from the Rheumatic Clinic of a university hospital between June and September 2016. Patients' self-reported medication adherence was assessed by the eight-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale. Additional surveys included patients' demographics, and clinical and treatment characteristics. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify the predictors of medication nonadherence.Results: A total of 140 patients were included in analysis. The percentage of patients classified as nonadherent to medication was 75%. Low education, rural residency, childlessness, limited comprehension of medication instructions, side effects experienced, dissatisfaction with treatment and better physical health were associated with an increased risk of nonadherence.Conclusion: This study demonstrated a high prevalence of medication nonadherence among SLE patients in Sichuan, and factors associated with the nonadherence are multifaceted. Interventions for these factors, such as appropriate adjustment of the service resources for patients with rheumatic disease in rural communities and improved communication between the health care providers and the patients, may contribute to improve the medication adherence of this cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Endometrial cancer (EC) is one of the most prevalent gynecologic cancers, which poses a serious threat to women's health worldwide. Olaparib, the first FDA-approved PARP inhibitor for the treatment of BRCA-mutated breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers, triggers apoptosis of cancer cells through synthetic lethality by inhibiting PARP1/2 enzymatic activity and BRCA1/2-dependent homologous recombination (HR) repair deficiency. However, the synergistic lethal effects between Olaparib and inhibitors of other DNA damage response proteins, such as ATM, PTEN and RAD51, are still unknown.Aim: Exploring the synergistic lethal effect between Olaparib and KU-55933 on EC.Methods: The GEPIA database was used to test EC patient survival rate. CCK8 was used for cell viability assays. Western blot was used for examining gene levels. The wound healing assay was used to detect cell migration ability. Flow cytometry was used for detecting the apoptosis rate. All experimental conditions were repeated independently in triplicate and analyzed in three separate experiments.Results: In this study, we discovered that the frequency of ATM alterations in endometrial cancer reaches nearly 20% and that there is a positive correlation between ATM alterations and prognosis. Furthermore, we discovered that endometrial cells with low expression levels of ATM are sensitive to Olaparib. Treatment with KU-55933, a specific inhibitor of ATM, significantly enhanced the sensitivity of endometrial cancer cells to Olaparib, as evidenced by colony formation, cell migration and apoptosis assay. Further analysis revealed that KU-55933 potentiates Olaparib-induced cell apoptosis by inhibiting ATM phosphorylation.Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that inhibiting ATM could enhance the sensitivity of endometrial cancer to Olaparib, thereby providing a potential alternative treatment for the clinical treatment of endometrial cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic impurities of lithium ion battery degrade both the capacity and cycling rates, even jeopardize the safety of the battery. During the material manufacture of LiFePO 4 , two opposite and extreme cases (trace impurity Fe(II) with high content of Fe(III) background in FePO 4 of initial end and trace Fe(III) with high content of Fe(II) background in LiFePO 4 of terminal end) can result in the generation of magnetic impurities. Accurate determination of impurities and precise evaluation of raw material or product are necessary to ensure reliability, efficiency and economy in lithium ion battery manufacture. Herein, two kinds of rapid, simple, and sensitive capillary electrophoresis (CE) methods are proposed for quality monitoring of initial and terminal manufacture of LiFePO 4 based lithium ion batteries. The key to success includes the smart use of three common agents 1,10-phenanthroline (phen), EDTA and cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) in sample solution or background electrolyte (BGE), as well as sample stacking technique of CE feature. Owing to the combination of field-enhanced sample injection (FESI) technique with high stacking efficiency, detection limits of 2.5 nM for Fe(II) and 0.1 μM for Fe(III) were obtained corresponding to high content of Fe(III) and Fe(II), respectively. The good recoveries and reliability demonstrate that the developed methods are accurate approaches for quality monitoring of LiFePO 4 manufacture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a crucial role in cancer development, but few lncRNAs have been functionally characterized in gastric cancer (GC). Here, we reported an lncRNA LINC00675 whose expression was significantly decreased in GC tissues compared with the adjacent non-tumor tissues, and its low expression was associated with the poor survival of GC patients. Gain-and loss-of-function studies indicated that LINC00675 was a tumor suppressor because it repressed the proliferation, migration and invasion of GC cells in vitro and also inhibited the distal pulmonary and hepatic metastases of GC cells in vivo. Mechanistic investigations revealed that LINC00675 interacted with vimentin, a protein involved in cell metastasis, and enhanced its phosphorylation level on Ser83 to result in the collapse of vimentin filament in GC cells, thereby reducing cell metastasis. Taken together, our findings indicate that LINC00675 expression signature may serve as a novel biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of GC, and also highlight that LINC00675/vimentin complex may be a potentially therapeutic target of GC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-physical systems, encompass the real physical space and virtual cyber space for providing advanced service for humans, which together, are also namely Internet of Things. The complex and large scale relationships among nodes contain the potential information of user, which is required and essential for providing high quality personalized service. Graph is used to represent, make fusion and process the relationships data, which has been used in many domains with traditional small data sets. K -hop reachability query answering in graphs is seeing a growing number of applications, such as ranked keyword search in databases, social networking, ontology reasoning and bioinformatics. Currently, techniques for efficient evaluation of such queries are based on vertex-cover technology. These methods suffer from a lack of scalability; that is, they cannot be applied to very large graphs. To solve these problems, we propose the compound-index method, namely BFSI-B, which uses the special index to decrease the k -hop reachability query time and improve pruning efficiency. The theoretical analysis and experiment results demonstrate that our method has a smaller index size and a faster query time than the k -reach method, in both dense graphs and very large graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A compliant, conformal, and durable fiber mate strain sensor was developed for on-skin electronics. • The fiber mate features a double-level elastic structure on both polymer chain level and fiber chain level. • Conformal attachment onto any curved surfaces was realized through a sacrificial fiber layer. • Its thinness and softness lead to minimum mechanical constraints on skin during deformation. • This welded mate can also be used as a gas sensor with serpentine structure engineering. On-skin electronics have been attracting tremendous attentions due to their potential use for continuous, long-term physical movement detection and physiological signal monitoring. However, developing on-skin strain sensors that can be conformally attached to skin with good breathability and adhesion remains a challenge. Here, we present an ultrathin, lightweight, breathable welded fiber mate-based strain sensor that can be conformally adhered to curved human skin through a sacrificial interlayer. The modulus of the fiber mate is similar to human skin, and its thinness and softness lead to minimum mechanical constraints on skin during deformation (0.03 N at 5 % strain). The welded mate sensor exhibits large stretchability (420 %) and sensing durability due to its double-level elastic structure on both polymer chain and fiber chain levels. It can work over a wide temperature range from 0 to 40 °C with almost no temperature interference. After patterned into a serpentine geometry, the welded mate can also be used as a stretchable and conformal gas sensor to detect harmful gases with excellent stability against strain interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explored the predictors of quality of life and depressive features in older people living in temporary housing 13 months after the Wenchuan earthquake in western China. Anonymous data were collected via questionnaires in a cross-sectional survey of 189 older people living in temporary housing 13 months after the earthquake. To explore the predictors of the outcomes of interest, Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis were used. The results indicated that interests/hobbies, subjective support, and family function were positive predictors of quality of life, whereas instrumental activities of daily living and depressive symptoms were its negative predictors. In addition, we found that a higher level of instrumental activities of daily living predicted a greater likelihood of depression. These results suggested that developing strategies to decrease the instrumental activities of daily living score of these people helps improve their quality of life and depression. To enhance the quality of life of these individuals, healthcare providers should also focus on developing their interests/hobbies and provide them with adequate social support, especially subjective support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a reusable electrochemical biosensor was developed for highly sensitive detection of mercury ions (Hg 2+ ) using an anionic intercalator, which was based on Hg 2+ -induced conformational change of a thymine-rich, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) supported on the platform of ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) and self-doped polyaniline (SPAN) nanofibers. In the presence of Hg 2+ , the mercury-specific oligonucleotides were induced and folded into hairpin structure through mismatched thymine-Hg 2+ -thymine (T-Hg 2+ -T) base pairs from random coils. Then, the indicators intercalated into the hairpin structure and increased electric signal. OMC and SPAN nanofibers possessed excellent electrical conductivity which synergistically accelerated electron transfer and greatly improved the efficiency of electrochemical reaction at the electrode interface. Meanwhile, SPAN nanofibers strongly adhered to the electrode surface and attached rod-like OMC homogeneously and firmly, which provided a stable platform for DNA immobilization. Under the optimal conditions, the detection limit (LOD) for Hg 2+ was 0.6 fM (S/N = 3). Furthermore, the biosensor could be easily regenerated by cysteine for cyclic utilization. Some environmental samples including lake sediment pore water and tap water were analyzed by the developed biosensor, the relatively satisfactory results indicated that it provided a green and promising strategy for detection of trace Hg 2+ in the practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some low or non-UV absorbing compounds like amino acids might be accessible to direct UV detection by capillary electrophoresis (CE), due to the photochemical reaction in the detection window of the separation capillary under extremely strong alkaline conditions. However, with regards to the photochemical reaction procedure and the influencing factors in CE, no comprehensive studies have been done. Herein, two strategies were applied to investigate the photochemical reaction mechanism including the introduction of an additional UV lamp and the utilization of driving pressure. The former confirmed the occurrence of photolysis, while the latter solved the interference of electroosmotic flow (EOF). Furthermore, the online photochemical reaction and online preconcentration technique were combined to develop a rapid, simple and sensitive method for determination of seven essential amino acids (valine, leucine, phenylalanine, methionine, tryptophan, threonine and lysine). Eventually, the developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of real samples with good reproducibility and reliability. This novel and simple method, based on the photochemical reactions occurring in the detection window and coupling with online preconcentration techniques, shows a great potential for the rapid and sensitive detection of low or non-UV absorbing compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: It is usually difficult to obtain a good view of the dissection plane during esophageal endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of clip traction in ESD for the treatment of early esophageal carcinoma (EEC) or precancerous lesions.Methods: This is a case-matched comparative study. We selected 100 EEC patients who had undergone ESD. Fifty cases underwent ESD without clip traction (non-clip group), and 50 cases underwent ESD with clip traction (clip group). The patient-related variables, dissection time, data regarding muscularis propria injury, etc. were statistically analyzed.Results: ESD was successful in all cases without complication. There were no significant differences between the two groups with respect to age, gender, the longitudinal diameter of the lesions, etc. Wide visual field exposure of the submucosal tissue below the lesion was obtained by applying clip traction. The dissection time of ESD was shorter in the clip group than in the non-clip group [22.02 (6.77) min vs 26.48 (12.56); P = 0.018] when the extent of lesion was less than half of the circumference of the esophagus; otherwise, there was no difference between the two groups (P = 0.252). Moreover, the muscularis propria injuries in the clip group were obviously less than the non-clip group (10 vs 30 %, P = 0.007).Conclusion: Clip traction can decrease the rate of muscularis propria injury and shorten the dissection time. It is recommended as a safe and effective auxiliary procedure for the treatment of esophageal ESD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients have high risk for anxiety and depression. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of anxiety and depression in SLE patients in Southwest China. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling from Rheumatic Outpatient Clinic of West China Hospital Sichuan University between August and October 2014. The prevalence of anxiety and depression was evaluated using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Risk factors were explored by multiple logistic regression analyses. A total of 352 participants were enrolled, of who 64 (18.2 %) met the HADS criteria for anxiety and 82 (23.3 %) for depression. In multivariable analysis, higher levels of pain (OR = 1.17, P = 0.02) and fatigue (OR = 1.19, P < 0.01) predicted a higher risk of anxiety. Similarly, a higher level of fatigue (OR = 1.2, P < 0.01) was associated with a higher risk of depression. The results suggest that anxiety and depression are common in patients with SLE in Southwest China. Health care providers and SLE patients should take some measures to cope with them as early as possible. Strengthening management of pain and fatigue may be useful. But further studies are needed to verify these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple, cheap and practicable miniaturized electrochemical device based on a biconical microchannel was developed, for which only 1 μL sample solution was needed to implement a typical electrochemical experiment. The practicability of the designed device was validated by detecting uric acid as a model molecule in human serum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black phosphorus nanosheet (BPNS) is considered as a promising gas sensing material due to its unique puckered layer structure and excellent physical/chemical properties. However, previously reported BPNS based gas sensors mostly suffered from low selectivity and/or poor stability. Herein, we propose to modify BPNS through surface chemistry and regulate its gas sensing properties based on surface terminations/decorated nanoparticles. A two-step functionalization was utilized including self-polymerization of dopamine, and secondary reactions to anchor self-assembly monolayers or metal catalysts via the polydopamine (PDA) medium. The modified PDA layer could offer hydrogen bonding interactions with gas analytes, which leads to a 9-fold increase in NO 2 sensitivity compared with bare BPNS (4000% for PDA@BPNS versus 426% for bare BPNS at 1 ppm). Further surface functionalization through secondary reactions yields a variety of modified PDA@BPNS composites with extended sensing properties (e.g., better stability and selectivity). We finally fabricated a sensor array system containing these modified PDA@BPNS composites and successfully identified a variety of gas molecules with good separation efficiency. [Display omitted] • Gas sensing performance of BPNS was regulated through surface chemistry. • PDA decorated on BPNS provided adsorption sites for gas and anchoring sites for secondary reactions. • Secondary reactions yielded extended gas sensing functions. • A sensor array containing various modified BPNS composites was fabricated for gas identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The orthogonal triangular factorization (QRF) method is a widespread tool to calculate eigenvalues and has been used for many practical applications. However, as an emerging topic, only a few works have been devoted to handling dynamic QR factorization (DQRF). Moreover, the traditional methods for dynamic problems suffer from lagging errors and are susceptible to noise, thereby being unable to satisfy the requirements of the real-time solution. In this paper, a bounded adaptive function activated recurrent neural network (BAFARNN) is proposed to solve the DQRF with a faster convergence speed and enhance existing solution methods' robustness. Theoretical analysis shows that the model can achieve global convergence in different environments. The results of the systematic experiment show that the BAFARNN model outperforms both the original ZNN (OZNN) model and the noise-tolerant zeroing neural network (NTZNN) model in terms of accuracy and convergence speed. This is true for both single constants and time-varying noise disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third cause of cancer-related death worldwide. However, the treatments for HCC are limited, and most of them are only available to the early stage. In the later stages, traditional chemotherapy has only marginal effects and may include toxicity. Thus, the identification of new predictive markers is urgently needed. New targets for non-conventional treatments will help to accelerate research on the molecular pathogenesis of HCC. A new class of transcripts, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), has recently been found to be pervasively transcribed in the human genome. Aberrant expression of several lncRNAs was found to be involved in the tumorigenesis of HCC. In this review, we describe the possible molecular mechanisms that underlie lncRNA expression changes in HCC, as well as potential future applications of lncRNA research in the diagnosis and treatment of HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the virtualization technology is widely applied in cloud computing environment, the virtual machine always suffers from the I/O performance degradation problem because it is difficult for the VM to obtain the process information from the upper layers and consequently result that the different processes from the same VM are not distinguished. To fill this gap, this paper presents a Process-aware disk predictive scheduling algorithm, where the VM manager indirectly learns and utilizes the process information. The process awareness is based on the relationship between the process and the address space. As a consequence, the I/O request can be distinguished. Moreover, the Process-aware predictive scheduling scheme is implemented and the result is tested. The experimental results illustrate that the Process-aware predictive scheduling algorithm is feasible and the disk I/O speed can also be improved significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To evaluate the performance of a dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) virtual non-calcium (VNCa) technique in the detection of edema-like marrow signal intensity (ELMSI) in patients with knee joint osteoarthritis (OA) compared to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods: The study received local ethics board approval, and written informed consent was obtained. DECT and MRI were used to examine 28 knees in 24 patients with OA. VNCa images were generated by dual-energy subtraction of calcium. The knee joint was divided into 15 regions for ELMSI grading, performed independently by two musculoskeletal radiologists, with MRI as the reference standard. We also analyzed CT numbers through receiver operating characteristics and calculated cut-off values. Results: For the qualitative analysis, we obtained CT sensitivity (Readers 1, 2 = 83.7%, 89.8%), specificity (Readers 1, 2 = 99.5%, 99.5%), positive predictive value (Readers 1, 2 = 95.3%, 95.7%), and negative predictive value (Readers 1, 2 = 97.9%, 98.7%) for ELMSI. The interobserver agreement was excellent (κ = 0.92). The area under the curve for Reader 1 and Reader 2 was 0.961 (95% CI 0.93, 0.99) and 0.992 (95% CI 0.98, 1.00), respectively. CT numbers obtained from the VNCa images were significantly different between regions with and without ELMSI (p <.001). Conclusions: VNCa images have good diagnostic performance for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of knee osteoarthritis-related ELMSI. Key points: DECT-VNCa images had important clinical significance in diagnosing ELMSI. DECT-VNCa images can improve the diagnosis of ELMSI by cut-off value. The research of DECT-related post-processing technology in the diagnosis of OA-related pain needs further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtualization is a popular technology. Services and applications running on each virtual machine have to compete with each other for limited physical computer or network resources. Each virtual machine has different I/O requirement and special priority. Without proper scheduling resource management, a load surge in a virtual machine may inevitably degrade other's performance. In addition, each virtual machine may run different kinds of application, which have different disk bandwidth demands and service priorities. When assigning I/O resources, we should deal with each case on demand. In this paper, we propose a dynamic virtual machine disk bandwidth control mechanism in virtualization environment. A Disk Credit Algorithm is introduced to support a fine-gained disk bandwidth allocation mechanism among virtual machines. We can assign disk bandwidth according to each virtual machine's service priority/weight and its requirement. Related experiments show that the mechanism can improve the VMs' isolation and guarantee the performance of the specific virtual machine well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The mechanisms underlying development of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are related to immune tolerance, but are as yet incompletely understood. Furin has been found to be essential for maintenance of peripheral immune tolerance mediated by regulatory T cells (Treg). Such effect of furin on chronic HBV infection was investigated in this study. Methods: Peripheral blood from 40 individuals with self-limited HBV infection, 40 patients with asymptomatic persistent HBV infection and 40 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) was collected and mRNA expression levels of furin, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and the Treg-function-related forkhead transcription factor FoxP3 were detected using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ Treg were detected using flow cytometry. Results: Furin mRNA expression in peripheral blood was significantly higher in patients with persistent HBV infection than in individuals with self-limited infection ( P < 0.01), and was much higher in CHB patients than in those with asymptomatic persistent infection ( P < 0.01). Furthermore, furin mRNA was relatively higher in patients with positive hepatitis B e antigen and higher levels of serum HBV DNA (>10 000 copies/mL). In patients with CHB, furin mRNA expression was found to correlate with TGF-β1 mRNA and FoxP3 mRNA expression using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient test. It was 5.7-times higher in CD4+CD25+ T cells than in CD4+CD25- T cells and correlated with the frequency of Treg ( P < 0.05). Conclusion: Furin mRNA expression in peripheral blood correlates with chronic HBV infection and liver damage, and seems to participate in immune inhibitory and anti-inflammatory mechanisms in HBV infection, mediated by TGF-β1 and/or Treg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endoscopy was performed when she was aged 34 years, revealing a severe pharyngeal stricture with severe scar adhesion and a partial defect of the epiglottis. Scar incision with insulation-tipped knife and hook knife, and submucosal injection of long-acting steroid. The patient has been visiting the outpatient department for 4 years, and endoscopy has shown no stricture recurrence. [Extracted from the article]

Practice has witnessed that the retail platform usually withholds strategic inventory in the reselling channel to improve channel efficiency. This intensifies the channel competition, which is essential to supplier encroachment in the retail platform. Thus far, the existing literature leaves the influence of strategic inventory holding behavior on supplier encroachment in the retail platform supply chain unexplored. In this paper, we build a two-period dynamic model to explore the connection between supplier encroachment and the retail platform's strategic inventory withholding behavior. Results show that without encroachment, the retail platform's strategic inventory decisions hinge on the holding cost, with encroachment, the retail platform's strategic inventory decisions are moderated by the commission rate when the holding cost is intermediate. Moreover, the supplier's optimal encroachment strategies are jointly moderated by the commission rate and slotting fee. Importantly, the retail platform's strategic inventory withholding behavior mitigates supplier encroachment from a qualitative and quantitative perspective, and supplier encroachment narrows the region of the strategic inventory holding. Interestingly, supplier encroachment could bring all-win outcomes, however, low inventory holding cost induces a small region of all-win outcomes. • Without encroachment, the strategic inventory decisions hinge on the holding cost. • With encroachment, the commission rate moderates the strategic inventory holding decision if the holding cost is intermediate. • The commission rate and slotting fee jointly moderate the supplier's optimal encroachment strategies. • Platform's strategic inventory-holding behavior mitigates supplier encroachment. • Supplier encroachment narrows the region of strategic inventory withholding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Biological control of plant diseases caused by fungal pathogens using antagonistic microorganisms including Bacilli has been considered to be an effective and safe alternative to chemical fungicides. Fusarium crown rot of wheat is a serious fungal disease affecting yield and grain quality. In this study, a newly isolated strain of Bacillus subtilis YB-15 from soil of wheat rhizosphere significantly inhibited Fusarium crown rot as well as improved growth of wheat seedlings. Multiple potential biocontrol and growth-promoting attributes of Bacillus subtilis YB-15 were determined in vitro and according to the whole genome sequencing analysis. Overall, the results demonstrated that Bacillus subtilis YB-15 has great potential for practical application in controlling plant fungal diseases and improving plant growth. Fusarium crown rot caused by Fusarium pseudograminearum is one of the most devastating diseases of wheat worldwide causing major yield and economic losses. In this study, strain YB-15 was isolated from soil of wheat rhizosphere and classified as Bacillus subtilis by average nucleotide identity analysis. It significantly reduced Fusarium crown rot with a control efficacy of 81.50% and significantly improved the growth of wheat seedlings by increasing root and shoot fresh weight by 11.4% and 4.2%, respectively. Reduced Fusarium crown rot may have been due to direct antagonism by the production of β-1, 3-glucanase, amylase, protease and cellulase, or by the ability of B. subtilis YB-15 to induce defense-related enzyme activities of wheat seedlings, both alone and in seedlings infected with F. pseudograminearum. Improved plant growth may be related to the ability of B. subtilis YB-15 to secrete indole acetic acid and siderophores, as well as to solubilize phosphorus. In addition, the genome of strain YB-15 was determined, resulting in a complete assembled circular genome of 4,233,040 bp with GC content of 43.52% consisting of 4207 protein-encoding genes. Sequencing the B. subtilis YB-15 genome further revealed genes for encoding carbohydrate-active enzymes, biosynthesis of various secondary metabolites, nutrient acquisition, phytohormone production, chemotaxis and motility, which could explain the potential of strain YB-15 to be plant growth-promoting bacteria and biological control agent. B. subtilis YB-15 appears to be a promising biocontrol agent against Fusarium crown rot as well as for wheat growth promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We conducted this multicenter, retrospective cohort study aiming to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of vedolizumab (VDZ) and infliximab (IFX) in biologic‐naïve patients with moderate‐to‐severe ulcerative colitis (UC). Methods: Biologic‐naïve patients with moderate‐to‐severe UC who were treated with IFX or VDZ for at least 14 weeks at three tertiary hospitals in southwest China between January 2021 and January 2023 were retrospectively included. Efficacy of the biologics was evaluated based on the steroid‐free clinical remission rate, clinical remission rate, and mucosal healing rate at Weeks 14 and 52. Adverse events related to biologic use were recorded. Results: Altogether 122 biologic‐naïve patients with moderate‐to‐severe UC were included. No marked differences in the steroid‐free clinical remission rate and clinical remission rate were observed between the two groups at Week 14 or Week 52 (P > 0.05). The VDZ group exhibited a higher mucosal healing rate at Week 14 compared to the IFX group (33.3% vs 16.9%, P = 0.036), while that at Week 52 did not differ between the two groups (65.6% vs 47.1%, P = 0.098). There was no statistically significant difference in the rate of adverse events between the two groups (P = 0.071). Conclusion: VDZ and IFX showed comparable clinical efficacy and safety profiles and can be used as viable first‐line therapeutic options for biologic‐naïve patients with moderate‐to‐severe UC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is considered to be spread primarily by people who have tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here, we discuss a patient with severe COVID-19 and a history of type 2 diabetes who had a recurrence of positive SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid (RNA) after recovering. The patient was initially discharged after two consecutive negative SARS-CoV-2 RNA tests and partially absorbed bilateral lesions on chest computed tomography (CT). However, at his first follow-up, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay with an oropharyngeal swab sample was positive for SARS-CoV-2. Despite this, he displayed no obvious clinical symptoms and improved chest CT. The patient was prescribed anti-viral medication. Eight consecutive RT-PCR assays on oropharyngeal swab specimens were conducted after he was re-admitted to our hospital. The results tested positive on the 12th, 14th, 19th, 23rd and 26th of March and negative on the 28th of March, and 6th and 12th of April. After his second discharge, he has tested negative for 5 weeks. This case highlights the importance of active surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA during the follow-up period so that an infectivity assessment can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of blockchain technology with Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has gained significant attention across various industry domains such as manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and energy management. The consensus mechanism serves as the fundamental component of decentralized blockchain systems, and the efficiency of the consensus algorithm greatly impacts the practicality of the entire system. One of the most well-known representative algorithms in the field of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus is PBFT, which operates through successive views where a replica is designated as the leader in each view. The leader assumes the responsibility of proposing new requests and gathering votes from other replicas. However, in cases where the leader becomes Byzantine or faulty, a view-change process is triggered after a Δ timer expires, transitioning to the next view. Requests that failed to commit in a previous view may experience a delay of up to Δ + 6 δ (δ representing the actual network delay) before being committed in the new view. Given that Δ is typically set to a large value, this latency becomes unacceptable for CPS, which necessitates real-time transaction processing or data exchange. Following PBFT, several works, including SBFT, have aimed to improve consensus performance. However, all these works primarily focus on reducing latency in the normal case and overlook the aforementioned issue that existed during the view-change process. To address this issue, we propose Doppel, an approach that reduces the latency caused by a faulty leader. Doppel achieves this by introducing two leaders, namely L 1 and L 2 , in each view and enabling request commitment during the view-change process. These leaders are assigned different priorities. If L 1 is non-faulty, Doppel can commit requests within 5 δ , which is equivalent to PBFT and SBFT. Conversely, if L 1 is faulty but L 2 is non-faulty, Doppel significantly reduces latency to 7 δ , which is notably smaller than Δ + 6 δ in PBFT and SBFT. We have implemented a system prototype of and conducted multiple experiments to evaluate its performance. The experimental results consistently demonstrate Doppel's outperformance over PBFT and SBFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Interindividual variation characterizes the relief experienced by constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-C) patients following linaclotide treatment. Complex bidirectional interactions occur between the gut microbiota and various clinical drugs. To date, no established evidence has elucidated the interactions between the gut microbiota and linaclotide. We aimed to explore the impact of linaclotide on the gut microbiota and identify critical bacterial genera that might participate in linaclotide efficacy. Methods: IBS-C patients were administered a daily linaclotide dose of 290 µg over six weeks, and their symptoms were then recorded during a four-week posttreatment observational period. Pre- and posttreatment fecal samples were collected for 16S rRNA sequencing to assess alterations in the gut microbiota composition. Additionally, targeted metabolomics analysis was performed for the measurement of short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) concentrations. Results: Approximately 43.3% of patients met the FDA responder endpoint after taking linaclotide for 6 weeks, and 85% of patients reported some relief from abdominal pain and constipation. Linaclotide considerably modified the gut microbiome and SCFA metabolism. Notably, the higher efficacy of linaclotide was associated with enrichment of the Blautia genus, and the abundance of Blautia after linaclotide treatment was higher than that in healthy volunteers. Intriguingly, a positive correlation was found for the Blautia abundance and SCFA concentrations with improvements in clinical symptoms among IBS-C patients. Conclusion: The gut microbiota, especially the genus Blautia, may serve as a significant predictive microbe for symptom relief in IBS-C patients receiving linaclotide treatment. Trial registration: This trial was registered with the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (Chictr.org.cn, ChiCTR1900027934). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With the aging population and the ongoing pandemic, older persons account for a large proportion of ICU admissions. Despite numerous studies on the impact of COVID‐19 on older persons, there has been a small body of research investigating nursing practice with critically ill older patients admitted to ICU for COVID‐19. Aims: To explore current challenges in the nursing care of older persons with severe COVID‐19 through the experience of frontline nurses. Study Design: A qualitative descriptive design was used. In‐depth and semi‐structured interviews with 18 ICU nurses were conducted to explore the experience of providing care for older persons with severe COVID‐19 in the Omicron wave. A content analysis approach was adopted to analyse qualitative data. Findings: Three themes emerged as follows: (1) no plan survives first contact with the enemy, (2) expectations versus Reality and (3) difficulty in providing holistic care. Conclusions: Challenges could be encountered in different stages of providing care for older persons with severe COVID‐19, including the preparation and training of knowledge and skills in the early stage, the challenges posed by old age in the diagnostic and treatment stage and the challenges of psychological care and rehabilitation care. Relevance to Clinical Practice: With the regular prevention and control of COVID‐19, our study provides guidance for establishing measures (training courses of ICU nurses) to improve the nursing quality of older persons with severe COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore the efficacy and safety of the 'Walk with you' application for titrating basal insulin (BI) doses in type‐2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) hospitalised patients. Methods: This was a randomised, single‐centre, open‐label, controlled clinical trial to compare the changes in fasting blood glucose (FBG) and postprandial blood glucose (PBG), time to reach target FBG (FBG‐TRT), incidence of hypoglycaemia events and FBG coefficient of variation in the application group (weight‐based titration of BI dose regimen) and control group (typical adjustment regimen). Patients: This study selected 173 patients with T2DM using basal–prandial insulin therapy who were admitted to Binhaiwan Central Hospital of Dongguan between December 2021 and December 2022. Patients were randomised to the control group or the application group (App group) and then titrated to achieve an FBG concentration of less than 7.0 mmol/L. Results: There were 86 patients in the control group and 87 patients in the App group. The FBG concentrations in the control and App groups were decreased by 6.77 ± 4.75 and 5.95 ± 4.06 mmol/L, respectively. The FBG‐TRTs in the control and App groups were 3.80 ± 1.52 and 2.82 ± 1.34 days, respectively (p <.001). Fewer patients in the control group reached the FBG‐TRT within 3 days than in the App group, with 46.5% and 71.3% of patients reaching that target, respectively. There was no significant between‐group difference in hypoglycaemia incidence. Conclusion: The use of this weight‐based insulin dose titration protocol for BI app is effective and safe for achieving the target FBG in noncritically ill patients with T2DM and is free, easy to use and user friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology and the exponential growth in the number of images, image detection and recognition technology is becoming more widely used. Image knowledge management is extremely urgent. The data source of a knowledge graph is not only the text and structured data but also the visual or auditory data such as images, video, and audio. How to use multimodal information to build an information management platform is a difficult problem. In this paper, a method is proposed to construct the result of image recognition as a knowledge graph. First of all, based on the improvement in the BlendMASK algorithm, the hollow convolution kernel is added. Secondly, the effect of image recognition and the relationships between all kinds of information are analyzed. Finally, the image knowledge graph is constructed by using the relationship between the image entities. The contributions of this paper are as follows. (1) The hollow convolution kernel is added to reduce the loss from extracting feature information from high-level feature images. (2) In this paper, a method is proposed to determine the relationship between entities by dividing the recognition results of entities in an image with a threshold, which makes it possible for the relationships between images to be interconnected. The experimental results show that this method improves the accuracy and F1 value of the image recognition algorithm. At the same time, the method achieves integrity in the construction of a multimodal knowledge graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The well‐studied xylanase inhibitor protein (XIP‐I) regularly inhibits fungi‐derived xylanases, yet some fungal xylanases are not inhibited by XIP‐I. Based on the sequence alignment with the known XIP‐I resistant NpXyn11A from Neocallimastix patriciarum, a new annotated xylanase from ruminal fungus Neocallimastix sp. GMLF1 was found, noted as Xyn1B, which shared 77.8% of sequence identity with NpXyn11A and was proved to be resistant to XIP‐I. To evaluate the performance of a XIP resistant xylanase used in barley malt saccharification, a XIP‐I sensitive xylanase ThXyn1 from Trichoderma harzianum was chosen as a control. The barley malt saccharification experiment was carried out on the condition with or without extra XIP‐I added. The results showed that Xyn1B displayed only slight difference in presence and absence of added XIP‐I, with the difference of xylose released (ΔX) and the difference of mash clarity (ΔA) being 0.17 g L−1 (P > 0.05) and 0.007 (P > 0.05), respectively; while those for ThXyn1 group reached 0.96 g L−1 (P < 0.01) and 0.095 (P < 0.05), indicating that XIP‐I did not adversely affect Xyn1B's function, but did affect ThXyn1's function. Our work for the first time suggested that a xylanase with resistance to xylanase inhibitor proteins might have an advantage in barley malt saccharification over an inhibitor sensitive xylanase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modification of inner surface has significant influence in the properties of the nano or microchannel based on various materials, especially for the ionic current rectification (ICR) that arises from the selective interaction between ions in solution and the inner surface. Herein, we demonstrate a simple strategy to asymmetrically modify the inner wall of a glassy biconical microchannel with silver, copper or gold by means of silver mirror reaction and polydopamine platform, respectively. And the bidirectional ionic current rectification phenomena were observed in all of the modified biconical microchannels. All of the modification methods are simple, facile and low-cost, and can be applied in the modification of other glassy pipettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To screen coral‐derived compounds with neuroprotective activity and clarify the potential mechanism of lead compounds. Methods: The lead compounds with neuroprotective effects were screened by H2O2 and 1‐methyl‐4‐phenyl‐1,2,3,6‐tetrahydropyridine (MPP+)‐induced cell damage models in SH‐SY5Y cells. CCK8 and LDH assays were used to detect cell viability. The anti‐apoptosis of lead compounds was evaluated by flow cytometry. JC‐1 and MitoSox assays were performed to examine the changes in mitochondrial membrane potential and mitochondrial ROS level. Survival of primary cortical and dopaminergic midbrain neurons was measured by MAP2 and TH immunoreactivities. The Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model was established to determine the effect of lead compounds on dopaminergic neurons and behavior changes. Results: Three compounds (No. 63, 68, and 74), derived from marine corals, could markedly alleviate the cell damage and notably reverse the loss of worm dopaminergic neurons. Further investigation indicated that compound 63 could promote the expression of Nurr1 and inhibit neuronal apoptosis signaling pathways. Conclusion: Lead compounds from marine corals exerted significant neuroprotective effects， which indicated that coral might be a new and potential resource for screening and isolating novel natural compounds with neuroprotective effects. Furthermore, this study also provided a new strategy for the clinical treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital deep integration of cyber space, physical space and social space facilitates the formation of Cyber–Physical–Social Systems (CPSS). Knowledge empowers CPSS to be capable of solving complex tasks and providing intelligent services. Knowledge representation, fusion, and reasoning are complementary in the knowledge graph and worthy of continuous exploration and in-depth research. Since the concept of knowledge representation learning has been proposed, various models have been developed and demonstrated their superior ability in knowledge fusion and reasoning. In this paper, we investigate the progress and function of representation learning models adopted in knowledge fusion and reasoning, and extract their commonalities and characteristics, which is a perspective that has never been developed before, to provide new ideas for scholars and realize the mutual promotion of knowledge fusion and reasoning. This paper comprehensively reviews classic methods and investigates advanced and emerging works, which are published in authoritative journals or conferences. Furthermore, to overcome the limitations of existing methods, we propose an integrated knowledge representation learning and application framework for CPSS and a series of tensor-based knowledge fusion and reasoning models. Finally, four future directions are discussed in this paper, we analyze the challenges faced by them and suggest promising solutions. • Extensive coverage of emerging advances about knowledge representation learning. • Targeted investigations and new perspectives about knowledge fusion and reasoning. • Tensor-enabled representation learning framework and promising models for CPSS. • Insightful prospects on representation learning-based knowledge reasoning and fusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-physical-social systems (CPSSs) represent an emerging paradigm encompassing the cyber world, physical world and social world. One of the main purposes of CPSSs is to provide high-quality, proactive, and personalized services for humans. For CPSSs to realize this purpose, a novel services framework is needed. In this article, we present a tensor-based cloud-edge computing framework that mainly includes the cloud and edge planes. The cloud plane is used to process large-scale, long-term, global data, which can be used to obtain decision making information such as the feature, law, or rule sets. The edge plane is used to process small-scale, short-term, local data, which is used to present the real-time situation. Also, personalized services will be directly provided for humans by the edge plane according to the obtained feature, law, or rule sets and the local high-quality data obtained in the edge plane. Then a tensor-based services model is proposed to match the requirement of users in the local CPSS. Finally, a case study about CPSS services is proposed to demonstrate the application features of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cultivated land quality (CLQ) is associated with national food security, benign economic development, social harmony, and stability. The scientific evaluation of CLQ provides the basis for achieving the "trinity" protection of cultivated land quantity, and quality, as well as ecology. However, the current research on CLQ evaluation has some limitations, mainly the poor consideration of evaluation indicators, time-consuming and labor-intensive data acquisition, and low precision of evaluation at the regional scale. Therefore, this study introduced multisource data to evaluate CLQ and proposed a new method for CLQ evaluation (natural grade evaluation, utilization grade evaluation, and economic grade evaluation), combining multisource data and the recurrent neural network (RNN) algorithm. Initially, optimal indicators were determined by correlation analysis and generalized linear regression coefficient methods based on factors related to CLQ acquired from multisource data. Then, CLQ evaluation models were constructed with the RNN algorithm on the basis of the aforementioned optimal indicators. Finally, the models were adopted to map CLQ. The present study was carried out in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, China. According to the results: (1) CLQ showed close relationship to pH, effective soil layer thickness (EST), chemical fertilizer application rate (CHFE), organic matter content (OMC), annual accumulated temperature (TEMA), 5–15 cm soil depth soil cation exchange capacity (CEC515), 0–5 cm soil depth soil cation exchange capacity (CEC05), 5–15 cm soil depth soil organic carbon content (SOC515), 0–5 cm soil depth soil organic carbon content (SOC05), field slope (FS), groundwater level (GWL), and terrain slope (TS). (2) All modeling accuracies ( R 2 ) were greater than 0.80 for the CLQ evaluation models constructed based on the RNN algorithm. The area and spatial distribution of each grade of CLQ evaluation were consistent with the actual situation. The best and the worst quality cultivated land occupied a small area, and the area without a gap with the actual CLQ was as high as 76%, indicating that the model results were reliable. The study shows the suitability of the method for evaluating CLQ at the regional scale, offering a scientific foundation for the rational utilization and management of cultivated land resources, as well as a reference for evaluating CLQ in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Workplace violence is a serious problem for clinical nurses, as it leads to a series of adverse consequences. However, little information is available on the prevalence and influencing factors of workplace violence in China. Objectives To determine the prevalence of workplace violence against Chinese nurses, and its influencing factors. Design A multi-center, cross-sectional study. Settings The seven geographical regions (i.e., northeast, north, central, east, south, northwest, and southwest) of China. Participants Four thousand one hundred and twenty-five nurses. Methods We randomly selected 28 hospitals, located in 14 cities over 13 provinces across the seven geographical regions. We distributed 4125 questionnaires between May 4 and September 23, 2014. The questionnaire included demographic information, the Workplace Violent Incident Questionnaire, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professionals, and the Practice Environment Scale of Nursing Work Index. Workplace violence was assessed in terms of physical violence, non-physical violence, sexual harassment, and organized healthcare disturbances. We then performed descriptive analyses and logistic regressions on the collected data. Results The response rate was 92.97% (n = 3835). Additionally, we obtained valid questionnaires from 3004 individuals. Of these, 25.77% reported experiencing physical violence, 63.65% non-physical violence, 2.76% sexual harassment, and 11.72% organized healthcare disturbances. A logistic regression analysis revealed that nurses who have less experience, work a rotating roster, work in emergency rooms and pediatrics departments, have low empathy levels, and who work in poor nursing environments have greater odds of experiencing violence. Conclusions Experiences of workplace violence are prevalent among Chinese nurses, and several complex factors are associated with a greater risk of such violence, including nurses’ personal characteristics, work settings, and work environments. Our results might help nursing managers understand their employees’ work status. We recommend that nursing leaders provide and enhance education and support for high-risk groups to help protect Chinese nurses from workplace violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]