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Benzene, a known toxic, carcinogenic, and pervasively present environmental pollutant, necessitates effective monitoring strategies to assess human exposure. S-Phenylmercapturic acid (S-PMA) is a specific biomarker for benzene exposure. This study presents a point-of-care testing (POCT) assay for the detection of S-PMA in human urine, integrating salt-induced phase separation (SIPS) with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). S-PMA in human urine was first effectively separated using SIPS and then detected using a portable Raman spectrometer employing Au colloids as the SERS substrate. The POCT assay exhibited a clear correlation between the signal intensity and logarithmic concentration of S-PMA (0-5 ppm), demonstrating satisfactory recovery and reproducibility. Moreover, high-throughput fingerprint identification and quantitative analysis of S-PMA in urine were achieved within 10 min, with a detection limit as low as 1.06 ppb, by performing SIPS-SERS on 96-well plates. This POCT method holds promise for personal exposure assessment and may potentially aid in the prevention of benzene-induced diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A model to predict preoperative outcomes after percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) with renal staghorn stones is developed to be an essential preoperative consultation tool. Objective: In this study, we constructed a predictive model for one-time stone clearance after PCNL for renal staghorn calculi, so as to predict the stone clearance rate of patients in one operation, and provide a reference direction for patients and clinicians. Methods: According to the 175 patients with renal staghorn stones undergoing PCNL at two centers, preoperative/postoperative variables were collected. After identifying characteristic variables using PCA analysis to avoid overfitting. A predictive model was developed for preoperative outcomes after PCNL in patients with renal staghorn stones. In addition, we repeatedly cross-validated their model's predictive efficacy and clinical application using data from two different centers. Results: The study included 175 patients from two centers treated with PCNL. We used a training set and an external validation set. Radionics characteristics, deep migration learning, clinical characteristics, and DTL+Rad-signature were successfully constructed using machine learning based on patients' pre/ postoperative imaging characteristics and clinical variables using minimum absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithms. In this study, DTL-Rad signal was found to be the outstanding predictor of stone clearance in patients with renal deer antler-like stones treated by PCNL. The DTL+Rad signature showed good discriminatory ability in both the training and external validation groups with AUC values of 0.871 (95% CI, 0.800-0.942) and 0.744 (95% CI, 0.617- 0.871). The decision curve demonstrated the radiographic model's clinical utility and illustrated specificities of 0.935 and 0.806, respectively. Conclusion: We found a prediction model combining imaging characteristics, neural networks, and clinical characteristics can be used as an effective preoperative prediction method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of medical imaging and artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized interventional therapy of valvular heart diseases (VHD), owing to rapid development in multimodality imaging and healthcare big data. Medical imaging techniques, such as echocardiography, cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) and computed tomography (CT), play an irreplaceable role in the whole process of pre-, intra- and post-procedural intervention of VHD. Different imaging techniques have unique advantages in different stages of interventional therapy. Therefore, single imaging technique can’t fully meet the requirements of complicated clinical scenarios. More importantly, a single intraoperative image provides only limited vision of the surgical field, which could be a potential source for unsatisfactory prognosis. Besides, the non-negligible inter- and intraobserver variability limits the precise quantification of heart valve structure and function in daily clinical practice. With the help of analysis clustered and regressed by big data and exponential growth in computing power, AI broken grounds in the interventional therapy of VHD, including preoperative planning, intraoperative navigation, and postoperative follow-up. This article reviews the state-of-the-art progress and directions in the application of AI for medical imaging in the interventional therapy of VHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural language processing (NLP) is a computer-based technology used to process natural language information in written and spoken form that is unique to human society. In the process of mining massive text information, a variety of technologies and research directions in the field of NLP have gradually emerged. And sentiment analysis is an important research direction, which has important research value and practical application value for enterprises and social life. Sentiment analysis is basically a single mining of semantic or grammatical information without establishing the correlation between semantic information and grammatical information. In addition, previous models simply embed the relative distance or grammatical distance of words into the model, ignoring the joint influence of relative distance and grammatical distance on the aspect words. In this paper, we propose a new model that combines deep adversarial neural network model based on information fusion for music sentiment analysis. Firstly, the information of music text sequence is captured by the bidirectional short and long time memory network. Then the sequence information is updated according to the tree structure of dependency syntactic tree. Then, the relative distance and syntactic distance position information are embedded into the music text sequence. Thirdly, the adversarial training is used to expand the alignment boundary of the field distribution and effectively alleviate the problem of fuzzy features leading to misclassification. Semantic information and syntactic information are optimized by attention mechanism. Finally, the fused information is input into the Softmax classifier for music sentiment classification. Experimental results on open data sets show that compared with other advanced methods, the recognition accuracy of the proposed method is more than 90%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teamwork is a vital aspect of human life, including a set of concrete behaviors which could be divided into various categories such as task performance, job dedication, backing up behavior, and monitoring. As an essential psychological factor could form team members to adapt to environmental changes, self-regulation has a marked impact on teamwork results. However, why self-regulation could affect results of teamwork in real life and how self-regulation influence the concrete teamwork behaviors remains unclear. This study recorded and extracted participants' detailed gaming behaviors in Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2), which is an example of real-life teamwork scenario. The sample consisted of 59 DOTA 2 players with relative low-level self-regulation (93.22% male) and 59 with relative high-level self-regulation (96.61% male). Controlling confounding factors, we explored behavioral differences between the two groups in different types of heroes. Results showed that self-regulation influenced specific gaming behaviors including the categories of task performance, job dedication, and backing up behavior, but not including monitoring. Additionally, these impacts of self-regulation varied by hero type. These results demonstrate the different impacts of selfregulation on different categories of teamwork behaviors, and these impacts are considerably determined by individual's role in the team. These findings shed light on the mechanism of the teamwork performance improvement caused by self-regulation and provide new insights into understanding the different impact patterns of self-regulation in different real-life tasks and responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teamwork is a vital aspect of human life, including a set of concrete behaviors which could be divided into various categories such as task performance, job dedication, backing up behavior, and monitoring. As an essential psychological factor could form team members to adapt to environmental changes, self-regulation has a marked impact on teamwork results. However, why self-regulation could affect results of teamwork in real life and how self-regulation influence the concrete teamwork behaviors remains unclear. This study recorded and extracted participants’ detailed gaming behaviors in Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2), which is an example of real-life teamwork scenario. The sample consisted of 59 DOTA 2 players with relative low-level self-regulation (93.22% male) and 59 with relative high-level self-regulation (96.61% male). Controlling confounding factors, we explored behavioral differences between the two groups in different types of heroes. Results showed that self-regulation influenced specific gaming behaviors including the categories of task performance, job dedication, and backing up behavior, but not including monitoring. Additionally, these impacts of self-regulation varied by hero type. These results demonstrate the different impacts of self-regulation on different categories of teamwork behaviors, and these impacts are considerably determined by individual’s role in the team. These findings shed light on the mechanism of the teamwork performance improvement caused by self-regulation and provide new insights into understanding the different impact patterns of self-regulation in different real-life tasks and responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To seek novel diagnostic approaches, we improved the workflow of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) sequencing and evaluated its feasibility in vitreoretinal lymphoma (VRL) specimens; the profile of mutations was preliminarily analyzed for potential diagnostic value. Methods: The study was a diagnostic trial. 23 eyes of 23 patients with VRL and 25 eyes of 25 patients with inflammatory eye diseases were enrolled. Approximate 500ml undiluted vitreous humor and 10ml diluted vitreous fluid was obtained through diagnostic vitrectomy and sent for cytopathological examinations. 500ml of the diluted vitreous fluid was spared for cfDNA sequencing. For cfDNA sequencing, DNA fragmentation procedure was added to the workflow to improve the extraction efficiency; mutations detected were analyzed for potential diagnostic model. The sensitivity and specificity of the cytopathology and cfDNA sequencing were compared. The clinical manifestations were preliminarily analyzed for potential correlations with the genotypes. Results: CfDNA sequencing was accomplished in 23 eyes with VRL and 20 eyes with inflammatory eye diseases. VRL-related mutated genes included MYD88 (18 eyes, 78%), ETV6 (11 eyes, 48%), PIM1 (11 eyes, 48%), BTG2 (7 eyes, 30%), IRF4 (7 eyes, 30%), CD79B (6 eyes, 26%), LRP1B (6 eyes, 26%), etc. Logistic regression based on the mutations of MYD88 and ETV6 was of the potential for the diagnosis of VRL (P<0.001, adjusted R2 = 0.789, sensitivity 0.913, specificity 0.950); by comparison, the sensitivity and specificity of the vitreous cytopathology were 0.826 and 1.000, respectively. Further analysis of the mutation profile showed that patients carrying CD79B mutation tended to have higher intraocular interleukin-10 level (P=0.030), that CARD11 mutation was correlated with younger age at ocular onset (P=0.039), and that patients with intracranial involvement carried more multiple-site mutations in the BTG2 gene (P=0.013). Conclusions: The improved workflow of CfDNA sequencing is of sound feasibility in a limited amount of vitreous humor. The logistic model based on the mutations could help to provide reliable clues for the diagnosis of VRL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Geriatric care professionals were forced to rapidly adopt the use of telemedicine technologies to ensure the continuity of care for their older patients in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is little current literature that describes how telemedicine technologies can best be used to meet the needs of geriatric care professionals in providing care to frail older patients, their caregivers, and their families. Objective: This study aims to identify the benefits and challenges geriatric care professionals face when using telemedicine technologies with frail older patients, their caregivers, and their families and how to maximize the benefits of this method of providing care. Methods: This was a mixed methods study that recruited geriatric care professionals to complete an online survey regarding their personal demographics and experiences with using telemedicine technologies and participate in a semistructured interview. Interview responses were analyzed using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Results: Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from 30 practicing geriatric care professionals (22, 73%, geriatricians, 5, 17%, geriatric psychiatrists, and 3, 10%, geriatric nurse practitioners) recruited from across the Greater Toronto Area. Analysis of interview data identified 5 CFIR contextual barriers (complexity, design quality and packaging, patient needs and resources, readiness for implementation, and culture) and 13 CFIR contextual facilitators (relative advantage, adaptability, tension for change, available resources, access to knowledge, networks and communications, compatibility, knowledge and beliefs, self-efficacy, champions, external agents, executing, and reflecting and evaluating). The CFIR concept of external policy and incentives was found to be a neutral construct. Conclusions: This is the first known study to use the CFIR to develop a comprehensive narrative to characterize the experiences of Ontario geriatric care professionals using telemedicine technologies in providing care. Overall, telemedicine can significantly enable most of the geriatric care that is traditionally provided in person but is less useful in providing specific aspects of geriatric care to frail older patients, their caregivers, and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pelvic floor muscle exercise (PFME) is widely applied for urinary incontinence (UI) after radical prostatectomy (RP). This research aimed to explore the relationship between PFME and UI after RP. We searched databases for studies that met our requirements until 17/4/2021. The UI symptoms of the PFME group and the control group were compared at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after the operation. Subgroup analysis based on surgical approach (open radical prostatectomy vs laparoscopy & robotics radical prostatectomy) and UI definition (questionnaire vs. pad weight) were also conducted. The UI rate in PFME group is significantly lower when compared with control group at each time point. According to subgroup analysis, PFME is more effective to alleviate UI after laparoscopy & robotics radical prostatectomy when compared with open RP at mid‐term (3s and 6 months) whereas no significant difference was detected between two groups at short (1 month) or long (12 months) term. According to this meta‐analysis, post‐operation PFME treatment can effectively alleviate the symptoms of UI after RP at any time point; pre‐operation PFME alone was not sufficient to relieve UI. Compared with open prostatectomy, PFME is more effective for the UI after laparoscopy & robotics radical prostatectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starch digestion processing of whole grain foods is associated with its health benefits in improving insulin resistance. This study modified the digestibility of whole quinoa flour (WQ) via heat-moisture treatment (HMT), HMT combined with pullulanase (HMT+P), HMT combined with microwave (HMT+M), and HMT combined with citric acids (HMT+A), respectively. Results showed that all the treatments significantly increased (p < 0.05) the total dietary fiber (TDF) content, amylose content, and resistant starch (RS) content, however, significantly decreased (p < 0.05) the amylopectin content and rapidly digestible starch (RDS) content of WQ. HMT+P brought the highest TDF content (15.3%), amylose content (31.24%), and RS content (15.71%), and the lowest amylopecyin content (30.02%) and RDS content (23.65%). HMT+M brought the highest slowly digestible starch (SDS) content (25.09%). The estimated glycemic index (eGI) was respectively reduced from 74.36 to 70.59, 65.87, 69.79, and 69.12 by HMT, HMT+P, HMT+M, and HMT+A. Moreover, a significant and consistent reduction in the heat enthalpy (∆H) of WQ was observed (p < 0.05), after four treatments. All these effects were caused by changes in the starch structure, as evidenced by the observed conjunction of protein and starch by a confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM), the decrease in relative crystallinity, and transformation of starch crystal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Sacubitril/valsartan significantly reduced heart failure (HF) hospitalization and cardiovascular mortality in a randomized controlled trial. However, little is known about real-world efficacy and safety of sacubitril/valsartan in Chinese patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). We aimed to evaluate whether sacubitril/valsartan could improve cardiac function in Chinese patients with HFrEF in a tertiary hospital in China. Methods and results Patients with HFrEF receiving sacubitril/valsartan in our hospital between January 2018 and January 2020 were recruited in the present study. We retrospectively collected and analysed all clinical parameters at baseline and during follow-up. A total of 100 consecutive patients (73% male) with HFrEF were recruited in the present study. During a median follow-up period of 365 days [interquartile range (IQR), 346–378], a pronounced improvement of cardiac function was achieved. New York Heart Association classification was significantly improved (P < 0.001), and median N-terminal pro- B-type natriuretic peptides level significantly decreased from 3003 pg/mL (IQR, 1513–5404) to 2039 pg/mL (IQR, 921–3955) (P = 0.010). Mean left ventricular ejection fraction increased from 31 ± 6% to 38 ± 10% (P < 0.001) and median left ventricular end-diastolic diameter reduced from 63 mm (IQR, 59–67) to 60 mm (IQR, 55–68) (P = 0.001). Mean pulmonary arterial systolic pressure decreased significantly from 49 ± 13 mmHg to 44 ± 12 mmHg (P < 0.001) and median right ventricular end-diastolic diameter reduced from 23 mm (IQR, 21–26) to 22 mm (IQR, 20–25) (P = 0.030). After treatment with sacubitril/valsartan, mean estimated glomerular filtration rate significantly decreased (from 88.8 ± 22.4 mL/min to 71.8 ± 27.3 mL/min, P < 0.001). Median serum creatinine and median blood urea nitrogen levels significantly increased [from 0.9 mg/dL (IQR, 0.8–1.0) to 1.1 mg/dL (IQR, 0.9–1.3), P < 0.001, and from 6.8 mmol/L (IQR, 5.5–8.9) to 8.0 mmol/L (IQR, 6.6–10.3), P = 0.002, respectively]. The proportion of patients with chronic kidney disease Stage 3/4 increased significantly from 8% to 39% (P < 0.001). Conclusions In Chinese patients with HFrEF, sacubitril/valsartan treatment was associated with a pronounced improvement of cardiac function, but might be prone to a decrease in blood pressure and deterioration in renal function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between blood glucose levels and mortality in patients with sepsis. Methods: Medline and EMBASE were searched from inception to April 8, 2018. Cohort studies or case-control studies reported the association between blood glucose and mortality in patients with sepsis were selected. Study characteristics, baseline characteristics, definition of hyperglycemia, and outcomes of interest were extracted. We performed a dose-response meta-analysis to assess the effect of blood glucose level on mortality. We also conducted metaanalysis for patients with or without diabetes separately. Results: Ten cohort studies involving 26 429 patients were included, of which 5 were prospective studies and 5 retrospective studies. Dose-response analysis showed that the effect of blood glucose on mortality may differ in patients with versus without diabetes. There was a U-shaped relationship for patients with diabetes and a J-shaped relationship for patients without diabetes, with blood glucose at 145 to 155 mg/dL corresponding to lowest mortality both in patients with and without diabetes. Conclusions: Current evidence suggested U-shaped relationship between blood glucose and mortality in all patients irrespective of their diabetes status. Diabetic patients with blood glucose below 145 mg/dL may have poorer prognosis compared to patients without established diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To assess the impact of adjunctive antibiotic therapy on uncomplicated skin abscesses. Design Systematic review and network meta-analysis. Data sources Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and ClinicalTrials. gov. Study selection A BMJ Rapid Recommendation panel provided input on design, important outcomes and the interpretation of the results. Eligible randomised controlled trials (RCTs) included a comparison of antibiotics against no antibiotics or a comparison of different antibiotics in patients with uncomplicated skin abscesses, and reported outcomes prespecified by the linked guideline panel. Review methods Reviewers independently screened abstracts and full texts for eligibility, assessed risk of bias and extracted data. We performed random-effects meta-analyses that compared antibiotics with no antibiotics, along with a limited number of prespecified subgroup hypotheses. We also performed network meta-analysis with a Bayesian framework to compare effects of different antibiotics. Quality of evidence was assessed with The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Results Fourteen RCTs including 4198 patients proved eligible. Compared with no antibiotics, antibiotics probably lower the risk of treatment failure (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.90; low quality), recurrence within 1 month (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.77; moderate quality), hospitalisation (OR 0.55, 95% CI 0.32 to 0.94; moderate quality) and late recurrence (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.48 to 0.85; moderate quality). However, relative to no use, antibiotics probably increase the risk of gastrointestinal side effects (trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX): OR 1.28, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.58; moderate quality; clindamycin: OR 2.29, 95% CI 1.35 to 3.88; high quality) and diarrhoea (clindamycin: OR 2.71, 95% CI 1.50 to 4.89; high quality). Cephalosporins did not reduce the risk of treatment failure compared with placebo (moderate quality). Conclusions In patients with uncomplicated skin abscesses, moderate-to-high quality evidence suggests TMP-SMX or clindamycin confer a modest benefit for several important outcomes, but this is offset by a similar risk of adverse effects. Clindamycin has a substantially higher risk of diarrhoea than TMP-SMX. Cephalosporins are probably not effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrimination, the ability to distinguish sensory stimuli and respond accordingly, is a critical factor underscoring optimal foraging decisions. Nevertheless, little is known about how mammals discriminate between apparently similar foods of different quality. Here, we compared the foraging behavior of Chinese white-bellied rats, Niviventer confucianus, and Edwards's long-tailed giant rats, Leopoldamys edwardsi, under natural conditions in the field and in a captive enclosure without predation/competition. We examined the behavioral processes involved in discriminating between sound (i.e., undamaged) and insect larvae-infested nuts of seguin chestnuts (Castanea seguinii) and demonstrated that both rats could discriminate nut quality, where nut examination improved the rats' success rate at selecting sound nuts. Despite similar extents of discrimination-derived benefit in both settings for each species, differences between species-specific discrimination processes were identified. Chinese white-bellied rats engaged in a higher relative frequency and longer duration of nut examination in the enclosure than in the wild. This indicates that they alter their feeding strategy to trade-off selection for nut quality in captivity for a quantity-driven strategy in the field. In contrast, giant rats showed a consistent relative frequency of nut examination in both experimental settings. Their fixed strategy balanced food quality and quantity primarily to maximize caloric uptake without compromise when faced with predation or competition risk. We posit that this behavioral difference in optimal foraging between rat species is mediated by their differing, size-dependent energetic requirements as well as the higher competition pressure and predation risk faced by the approximately 8 times smaller whitebellied rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic water-gated transistors (OWGTs) have emerged as promising sensing architectures for biomedical applications and environmental monitoring due to their ability of in-situ detection of biological substances with high sensitivity and low operation voltage, as well as compatibility with various read-out circuits. Tremendous progress has been made in the development of p-type OWGTs. However, achieving stable n-type operation in OWGTs due to the presence of solvated oxygen in water is still challenging. Here, we report an ambipolar OWGT based on a bulk heterojunction active layer, which exhibits a stable hole and electron transport when exposed to aqueous environment. The device can be used as a photodetector both in the hole and electron accumulation regions to yield a maximum responsivity of 0.87A W-1. More importantly, the device exhibited stable static and dynamic photodetection even when operated in the n-type mode. These findings bring possibilities for the device to be adopted for future biosensing platforms, which are fully compatible with lowcost and low-power organic complementary circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Oxymatrine (OMTR) is widely used for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in China. Several recent reports revealed that OMTR together with interferon yielded a higher sustained virological response (SVR) than interferon alone. Aim. To elucidate this topic using meta-analysis of data from published randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Material and methods. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Medline, Science Citation Index, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Database and China Biomedical Database were searched to identify RCTs that evaluated SVR to interferon therapies and interferon plus OMTR therapies in CHB patients. Results. The literature search yielded 238 studies, and 11 RCTs comprising 968 patients matched the selection criteria. Overall, SVR was significantly higher in patients treated with interferon plus OMTR than in patients treated with interferon alone (SVR: 60.7 vs. 39.8%; relative risk: 1.56; 95% confidence interval: 1.37-1.77; p < 0.05). Combined therapy of interferon plus OMTR were also superior to interferon therapies alone in achieving the end-of-treatment viral response, alaninetransaminase normalization, HBeAg loss, and HBeAg seroconversion. Conclusions. Combined therapy of interferon plus OMTR may yield a higher SVR than interferon therapies. The exact outcome needs to perform rigorously designed, multicenter, and large randomized controlled trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of cheaper and recyclable biomaterials (like eggshells) to synthesize high purity hydroxyapatite (HAp) with better properties (small particle size, large surface area and pore volume) for applications (in environmental remediation, bone augmentation and replacement, and drug delivery systems) is vital since high-purity synthetic calcium sources are expensive. In this work, pure and mesoporous HAp nanopowder with large pore volume (1.4 cm³/g) and surface area (284.1 m2/g) was produced from raw eggshells at room temperature using a simple two-step procedure. The control of precursor droplets could stabilize the pH value of the reaction solution, because of the size of the needle (of the syringe pump used for precursor additions) leading to production of HAp with high surface area and pore size. The as-produced HAp revealed high ibuprofen (as a model drug) loading (1.38 g/g HAp), enhanced dissolution and controllable release of the drug via solute-saturated supercritical carbon dioxide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial and temporal fluctuations in the availability of food resources can affect adaptive foraging strategies substantially, with the potential to promote temporal dietary switching and specialisation among generalist carnivores. To understand this relationship better at the causal level, we examined spatial and temporal variation in diet composition and diversity in the hitherto little-known hog badger ( Arctonyx collaris), in comparison to the environmental abundance of principal food resources, in a subtropical forest of central China. Here, hog badgers fed predominantly on earthworms and fruits, complemented with arthropod imagoes and invertebrate larvae, whereas vertebrate prey categories (mammals, birds and reptiles) were consumed infrequently. We observed strong seasonal variation in the consumption of different food categories. Earthworms predominated during spring, fruits in autumn, and earthworms, complemented by arthropods, in summer, with hog badgers apparently hibernating in winter. Fluctuation in dietary preferences between seasons and habitats correlated only partially with environmental food abundance; in autumn, when fruit abundance peaked, and despite a concomitant peak in earthworm abundance, hog badgers exhibited a dietary shift, indicating a preference for fruit, over earthworms. This resulted in autumnal minima in seasonal food niche breadth and evenness values. We conclude that, in this region, hog badgers exhibited a generalist diet but switched between food categories in response to changes in environmental seasonal abundance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-performance palladium-based Pd/Al(OH)3 catalyst has been prepared by the one-pot three-component method. It was found that this 'ligandless' Pd/Al(OH)3 catalyst showed remarkable reactivity and gave excellent yields (up to 99%) towards the condensation of aryl bromides with various arylboronic acids under mild conditions, and afforded good yields of the coupling products (up to 97%) with most aryl chlorides in two different catalytic systems. Furthermore, this catalyst could be easily recovered through filtration and reused for 8 cycles without significant loss of the yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]