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Background: Sepsis is a serious complication that occurs after trauma, burns, and infections, and it is an important cause of death in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Despite many new measures being proposed for sepsis treatment, its mortality rate remains high; sepsis has become a serious threat to human health, and there is an urgent need to carry out in-depth clinical research related to sepsis. In recent years, it has been found that septic shock-induced vasoplegia is a result of vascular hyporesponsiveness to vasopressors. Therefore, this study intended to establish an objective formula related to vasoplegia that can be used to assess the prognosis of patients and guide clinical treatment. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from 106 septic shock patients admitted to the ICU of Jining No. 1 People's Hospital from January 2020 to December 2022. The patients were divided into mortality and survival groups based on 28-day survival, and hemodynamics were monitored by the pulse index continuous cardiac output system. The dose and duration of vasopressors, major hemodynamic parameters, lactic acid (Lac) levels, and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores were recorded within 48 h of hospital admission. Multifactorial logistic regression was used to analyze the independent risk factors affecting the prognosis of patients, and the predictive value of the vascular response index (VRI) was analyzed by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Results: The differences between the survival and mortality groups in terms of age, sex ratio, body weight, ICU length of stay, distribution of infection sites, underlying disease conditions, baseline Lac levels, and some hemodynamic parameters were not statistically significant (P >.05). The results of multifactorial logistic regression showed that the admission Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score, Lac level at 24 h of treatment, maximal vasoactive inotropic score at 24 h (VISmax24), maximal vasoactive inotropic score at 48 h (VISmax48), and VRI were independent risk factors affecting 28-day mortality. Within 48 h of receiving vasopressor therapy, the VRI was lower in the mortality group than in the survival group. The area under the ROC curve for the VRI was 0.86, and the best cutoff value of the VRI for predicting 28-day mortality was 32.50 (YI = 0.80), with a sensitivity of 0.90, a specificity of 0.90, and a better prediction of mortality than the other indicators. Conclusions: The VRI is a good predictor of mortality in patients with septic shock, and a lower VRI indicates more severe vasoplegia, poorer prognosis, and higher mortality in patients with septic shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to assess the impact of climate change on the sustainable use of marine living resources, according to the projection value of the sustainable use of marine living resources, the Eviews6.0 software was used to estimate the nuclear density, and the dynamic characteristics of the sustainable use of marine living resources were obtained. In order to obtain the optimal allocation of the sustainable utilization of marine living resources and make the marine industry obtain the maximum net income, the set of climate factors affecting the sustainable utilization of marine living resources is established, and the AHP method is applied to establish the hierarchical structure model to realize the evaluation of the sustainable development of marine living resources. In the validation phase, one benchmark scenario and three simulation scenarios were set up for analysis. The simulation scenarios were temperature, precipitation, humidity and climate conditions. The results show that the climate factors of temperature and precipitation have little influence on the sustainable development of marine biological resources, while humidity has a certain influence on the sustainable development of marine biological resources. Through the comprehensive comparison of marine living resources consumption and economic development, it is concluded that marine living resources consumption has a great impact on social and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Oral fluid (OF) is a new safe, non-invasive, convenient, and efficient biological sample that can be used for virus nucleic acid and antibody detection. Because few studies have performed surveillance of multiple respiratory pathogens, this study sought to explore the application value of OF in this field. Methods: OF and throat swabs were collected from December 2020 to December 2021 in patients with acute respiratory tract infections in Beijing. Multiplex real-time PCR was performed, and the detection performance of two samples was compared. Results: A total of 769 OF and throat swab samples were collected. The detection rates of respiratory pathogens in throat swabs and OF were 29.26% (225/769) and 20.81% (160/769), respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of the OF assay, compared with the throat swab assay, were 71.11% (160/225) and 100% (544/544), respectively. The two assays had excellent agreement (kappa = 0.78). The detection consistency varied among pathogens. For OF samples, the most common pathogen was the influenza B virus, and the highest detection rate was in the =5-year-old group. The highest positivity rate was observed in December 2021. Conclusion: OF samples have excellent potential for the epidemiological surveillance of respiratory pathogens, and may have application prospects in preventing and controlling infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective(s): This study was designed to investigate whether HBx-induced podocyte injury is related to the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome and the specific mechanism of the oxidative stress pathway in hepatitis B virus-associated glomerulonephritis (HBV-GN). Materials and Methods: The HBx gene was overexpressed in renal podocytes to mimic HBV-GN. Podocyte morphology was observed under a scanning electron microscope. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation was detected by dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) assay. The podocytes in each group were treated with Hoechst 33342 and subjected to immunofluorescence staining. Caspase-1 activity and LDH levels were assessed with a Caspase-1 Activity Assay Kit and an LDH ELISA Kit, respectively. The expression of all pyroptosis-related proteins was examined by Western blot analysis. Results: Pyroptosis-related proteins, including NLRP3, apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing card (ASC), caspase-1, IL-1ß, and IL-18 (P<0.05), were up-regulated upon HBx overexpression, and caspase-1 enzyme activity and LDH and Desmin expression were also enhanced (P<0.05). NLRP3 knockdown attenuated the increased expression of pyroptosis-related proteins upon HBx overexpression (P<0.05), which was also achieved by the addition of an ROS inhibitor (P<0.05). Conclusion: HBx regulates podocyte pyroptosis in HBV-GN by targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome, and mitochondrial oxidative stress plays an important role in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Nowadays, both customers and producers prefer thin-tailed fat sheep. To effectively breed for this phenotype, it is important to identify candidate genes and uncover the genetic mechanism related to tail fat deposition in sheep. Accumulating evidence suggesting that post-transcriptional modification events of precursor-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA), including alternative splicing (AS) and alternative polyadenylation (APA), may regulate tail fat deposition in sheep. Differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) analysis is a way to identify candidate genes related to tail fat deposition. However, due to the technological limitation, post-transcriptional modification events in the tail fat of sheep and DETs between thin-tailed and fat-tailed sheep remains unclear. Methods In the present study, we applied pooled PacBio isoform sequencing (Iso-Seq) to generate transcriptomic data of tail fat tissue from six sheep (three thin-tailed sheep and three fat-tailed sheep). By comparing with reference genome, potential gene loci and novel transcripts were identified. Post-transcriptional modification events, including AS and APA, and lncRNA in sheep tail fat were uncovered using pooled Iso-Seq data. Combining Iso-Seq data with six RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) data, DETs between thin- and fat-tailed sheep were identified. Protein protein interaction (PPI) network, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses were implemented to investigate the potential functions of DETs. Results In the present study, we revealed the transcriptomic complexity of the tail fat of sheep, result in 9,001 potential novel gene loci, 17,834 AS events, 5,791 APA events, and 3,764 lncRNAs. Combining Iso-Seq data with RNA-Seq data, we identified hundreds of DETs between thin- and fat-tailed sheep. Among them, 21 differentially expressed lncRNAs, such as ENSOART00020036299, ENSOART00020033641, ENSOART00020024562, ENSOART00020003848 and 9.53.1 may regulate tail fat deposition. Many novel transcripts were identified as DETs, including 15.527.13 (DGAT2), 13.624.23 (ACSS2), 11.689.28 (ACLY), 11.689.18 (ACLY), 11.689.14 (ACLY), 11.660.12 (ACLY), 22.289.6 (SCD), 22.289.3 (SCD) and 22.289.14 (SCD). Most of the identified DETs have been enriched in GO and KEGG pathways related to extracellular matrix (ECM). Our result revealed the transcriptome complexity and identified many candidate transcripts in tail fat, which could enhance the understanding of molecular mechanisms behind tail fat deposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by the ecology theory, this study seeks to understand the interdependency between instrumental and identity resource domains that drives the formation of interorganizational networks. Corresponding to the conceptual distinction of instrumental and identity relations, this study examines the multiplex networks of strategic alliances and follower-followee relations. Eighteen years of alliances data of 150 U.S. technology companies were retrieved from the SDC Platinum database and matched with their current Twitter accounts to obtain the follower-followee network, and the two networks were evaluated with a multivariate exponential random graph model using XPNet. The results confirmed cross-network mechanisms at dyadic and triadic levels and showed that the liability of newness and niche similarity affected the formation of multiplex networks. Theoretical and practical implications of cross-domain multiplexity are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to alleviate the environmental pressure caused by production process of thermal power plants, the application of cleaner production is imperative. To estimate the implementation effects of cleaner production in thermal plants and optimize the strategy duly, it is of great significance to take a comprehensive evaluation for sustainable development. In this paper, a hybrid model that integrated the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) algorithm optimized by grid search (GS) algorithm is proposed. Based on the establishment of the evaluation index system, AHP is employed to pre-process the data and GS is introduced to optimize the parameters in LSSVM, which can avoid the randomness and inaccuracy of parameters' setting. The results demonstrate that the combined model is able to be employed in the comprehensive evaluation of the cleaner production in the thermal power plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, with the burgeoning development of economy, CO2 emissions increase rapidly in China. It has become a common concern to seek effective methods to forecast CO2 emissions and put forward the targeted reduction measures. This paper proposes a novel hybrid model combined principal component analysis (PCA) with regularized extreme learning machine (RELM) to make CO2 emissions prediction based on the data from 1978 to 2014 in China. First eleven variables are selected on the basis of Pearson coefficient test. Partial autocorrelation function (PACF) is utilized to determine the lag phases of historical CO2 emissions so as to improve the rationality of input selection. Then PCA is employed to reduce the dimensionality of the influential factors. Finally RELM is applied to forecast CO2 emissions. According to the modeling results, the proposed model outperforms a single RELM model, extreme learning machine (ELM), back propagation neural network (BPNN), GM(1,1) and Logistic model in terms of errors. Moreover, it can be clearly seen that ELM-based approaches save more computing time than BPNN. Therefore the developed model is a promising technique in terms of forecasting accuracy and computing efficiency for CO2 emission prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the effects of winter/summer school breaks on occurrences of influenza-like illness (ILI). Methods: We jointly analysed ILI surveillance data with the timing of school breaks in a temperate district in Beijing, China from 2008 to 2015. ILI incidence rate ratios (IRRs) of schoolchildren (5-14 and 15-24 years of age) to adults (25-59 and >60 years of age) were used to measure the age shift of ILI incidence before, during and after the 4-week winter/7-week summer breaks. Serfling-based Poisson regression model with adjustment for unmeasured confounders was built to further assess the effect of winter school breaks. Results: ILI incidences were consistently lower during winter breaks than before winter breaks for all age groups. IRRs of younger schoolchildren aged 5-14 to adults were higher during winter school breaks than before breaks, while the opposite was true for the IRRs of older schoolchildren aged 15-24 to adults. Schoolchildren-to-adults IRRs during summer breaks were significantly lower than before or after school breaks (p<0.001). Conclusions: Both winter and summer breaks were associated with reductions of ILI incidences among schoolchildren and adults. Our study contributes additional evidence on the effects of school breaks on ILI incidence, suggesting school closure could be effective in controlling influenza transmission in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]