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We conducted a two-year (2019–2020) longitudinal study in Jiangsu Province, China to analyze risk factors of pinworm infection and evaluate the effect of behavior change communication–based (BCC-based) interventions in preschool children. The positive rate of pinworm infection was higher in private preschool (2%) than in public preschool (0.24%). Poor sanitation behaviors were risk factors among private preschool children. BCC-based intervention could improve knowledge and practice and reduce pinworm infection. This study may help fill in gaps in pinworm control. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(12):1716–1720. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307067 )

Background:: Melanoma, a highly malignant skin cancer, is a hot topic in oncology treatment research. Nowadays, tumor immunotherapy, especially immunotherapy combined with other therapies, has attracted more and more attention. Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 2 (IDO2), a ratelimiting enzyme of the tryptophan metabolism pathway in the urine of dogs with immunosuppression, is highly expressed in melanoma tissue. Additionally, IDO2 significantly inhibits the anti-tumor immunity of the body and has become a novel target of melanoma treatment. Nifuroxazide, as an intestinal antibacterial agent, was found to be able to inhibit Stat3 expression and exert an anti-tumor effect. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the therapeutic effect of a self-designed IDO2-small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivered by attenuated Salmonella combined with nifuroxazide on melanoma- bearing mice, as well as determine its underlying mechanism. Methods:: The effect of nifuroxazide on melanoma was detected by flow cytometry, CCK-8 and colony- forming ability assays, respectively, in vitro. The plasmid of siRNA-IDO2 was constructed, and the mice-bearing melanoma model was established. After the treatment, the tumor growth and survival rate were monitored, and the morphological changes of tumor tissue were detected by HE staining. The expression of related proteins was detected by Western blotting, and the expression of CD4 and CD8 positive T cells in tumor tissue was detected by IHC and IF, and the proportion of CD4 and CD8 positive T cells in spleen was detected by flow cytometry. Results:: The results demonstrated that the combination therapy effectively inhibited the phosphorylation of Stat3 and the expression level of IDO2 in melanoma cells, which effectively inhibited tumor growth and prolonged the survival time of tumor-bearing mice. The mechanistic study revealed that, compared with control groups and monotherapy groups, the combination treatment group reduced the atypia of tumor cells, increased the apoptotic rate, enhanced the infiltration of T lymphocytes in tumor tissue and increased the CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes in the spleen, suggesting that the mechanism may be associated with the inhibition of tumor cell proliferation, the increase of apoptosis and the enhancement of the cellular immunity. Conclusion:: In conclusion, IDO2-siRNA combined with nifuroxazide therapy could serve a significant role in the treatment of melanoma-bearing mice, enhance the tumor immunity and provide an experimental basis for identifying a novel combination method for the treatment of melanoma clinically.

Ideal repair of intestinal injury requires a combination of leakage-free sealing and postoperative antiadhesion. However, neither conventional hand-sewn closures nor existing bioglues/patches can achieve such a combination. To this end, we develop a sandwiched patch composed of an inner adhesive and an outer antiadhesive layer that are topologically linked together through a reinforced interlayer. The inner adhesive layer tightly and instantly adheres to the wound sites via -NHS chemistry; the outer antiadhesive layer can inhibit cell and protein fouling based on the zwitterion structure; and the interlayer enhances the bulk resilience of the patch under excessive deformation. This complementary trilayer patch (TLP) possesses a unique combination of instant wet adhesion, high mechanical strength, and biological inertness. Both rat and pig models demonstrate that the sandwiched TLP can effectively seal intestinal injuries and inhibit undesired postoperative tissue adhesion. The study provides valuable insight into the design of multifunctional bioadhesives to enhance the treatment efficacy of intestinal injuries.

BACKGROUND: The main objective of this study was to predict the status of blood and the occurrence of lower limb deep vein thrombosis (DVT) after total knee arthroplasty(TKA) by means of mean platelet volume (MPV) combined with thromboelastography (TEG). METHODS: We collected 180 patients who underwent unilateral total knee arthroplasty between May 2015 and March 2022, and the patients were divided into DVT group and control group according to whole-leg ultrasonography on the seventh postoperative day. Blood count and TEG were performed on the day before surgery, the first day after surgery and the seventh day respectively. Multifactorial analysis was used to investigate whether the relevant parameters were independent predictors of DVT after TKA. RESULTS: MPV has the strongest correlation with the maximum amplitude (MA), followed by alpha-angle; MPV and alpha-angle on the first postoperative day are independent predictors of DVT. MPV in patients with thrombosis tends to rise and then fall in the perioperative period. The optimal threshold for MPV to predict thrombosis is 10.85 fL and the area under the ROC curve is 0.694, The area under the ROC curve increases to 0.815 using MPV combined with alpha-angle. In addition, MA, α-angle, composite coagulation index (CI) and MPV were all statistically higher in the DVT group than in the control group (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: MPV is a predictor of DVT after TKA. It can reflect the hypercoagulable state of blood after surgery; Combination of MPV and alpha-angle on the first day after surgery in patients with TKA improves predictive power of DVT.

Deep learning models can accurately predict molecular properties and help making the search for potential drug candidates faster and more efficient. Many existing methods are purely data driven, focusing on exploiting the intrinsic topology and construction rules of molecules without any chemical prior information. The high data dependency makes them difficult to generalize to a wider chemical space and leads to a lack of interpretability of predictions. Here, to address this issue, we introduce a chemical element-oriented knowledge graph to summarize the basic knowledge of elements and their closely related functional groups. We further propose a method for knowledge graph-enhanced molecular contrastive learning with functional prompt (KANO), exploiting external fundamental domain knowledge in both pre-training and fine-tuning. Specifically, with element-oriented knowledge graph as a prior, we first design an element-guided graph augmentation in contrastive-based pre-training to explore microscopic atomic associations without violating molecular semantics. Then, we learn functional prompts in fine-tuning to evoke the downstream task-related knowledge acquired by the pre-trained model. Extensive experiments show that KANO outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on 14 molecular property prediction datasets and provides chemically sound explanations for its predictions. This work contributes to more efficient drug design by offering a high-quality knowledge prior, interpretable molecular representation and superior prediction performance.

Organic polysulfide redox is proposed to recycle inactive Li, significantly improving the lifespan of Li–S batteries under practical conditions.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of environmental factors (soil nutrition and meteorological factors) on fruit quality traits of ‘Fuji’ apples. ‘Fuji’ apple fruits, soil samples, and meteorological data were investigated from 66 commercial orchards covering 22 counties of the Loess Plateau region in China. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) and linear programming were combined to analyze the quantitative relationship between fruit quality and environmental factors. The effect of meteorological factors (55.99%) on fruit quality was greater than that of soil nutrition factors (44.01%) in the Loess Plateau apple-producing region of China. Optimum environmental factors for high-quality ‘Fuji’ apples in the Loess Plateau region were: soil organic matter (13.94–17.93 g ∙ kg−1), total N (0.77–1.03 g ∙ kg−1), available N (68.39–115.87 mg ∙ kg−1), P (62.39–124.67 mg ∙ kg−1), K (324.41–468.62 mg ∙ kg−1), Ca (6.54 mg ∙ kg−1), Fe (14.97 mg ∙ kg−1), Zn (1.55–2.72 mg ∙ kg−1), B (0.37 mg ∙ kg−1), and soil pH (7.98–8.20); mean annual temperature (18 ℃), total annual precipitation (431.2–713.8 mm), monthly mean temperature (19.9 ℃), lowest temperature (8.03 ℃), highest temperature (19.63 to 27.25 ℃), temperature difference between day and night (12.41 ℃), total precipitation (338.3–589.8 mm), relative humidity (56.57–82.41%), and sunshine percentage (36.96–55.87%) during the growing period (April–October).

Background: Accurately identifying cognitive changes in Mexican American (MA) adults using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) requires knowledge of population-based norms for the MMSE, a scale which has widespread use in research settings. Objective: To describe the distribution of MMSE scores in a large cohort of MA adults, assess the impact of MMSE requirements on their clinical trial eligibility, and explore which factors are most strongly associated with their MMSE scores. Methods: Visits between 2004–2021 in the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort were analyzed. Eligible participants were ≥18 years old and of Mexican descent. MMSE distributions before and after stratification by age and years of education (YOE) were assessed, as was the proportion of trial-aged (50–85– year-old) participants with MMSE

With the wide application of data-driven intelligence technology, the management efficiency and quality of urban rail transit improve considerably. However, due to data privacy and security protection, a large amount of data is still scattered among operators or rail transit departments in the form of data islands. The data barriers between urban rail departments severely hinder the intelligent development of urban rail transit systems. In this study, we design a distributed data-sharing system based on blockchain for urban rail transit system. Data production node in urban rail department, such as servers in data centers, wayside equipment, and onboard equipment, can share their data in a distributed way. Blockchain provides audit and check functions to guarantee data-sharing security. We explore the data-sharing incentive mechanism which has an impact on sharing willingness of data production nodes. To maximize the individual utility of nodes, we formulate an evolutionary game model for data nodes with bounded rationality to adapt their sharing strategies. The uniqueness and stability of the equilibrium of the game are also analyzed theoretically. Extensive experiments are conducted and illustrated that data production nodes can share their data efficiently and safely in our proposed data-sharing system. Our proposed evolutionary game model can determine the most effective data-sharing incentive mechanism.

Background: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome and fracture are all serious hazards to human health that create a widespread alarm. Biomarkers that are closely linked to HIVRNA and fracture are unknown. Methods: 48 cases with HIV and fracture and 112 normal cases were recruited. Blood neutrophil count (NEU), white blood cell count (WBC), PAK1 and HIVRNA were measured. Pearson's chisquared test was used to evaluate the association between HIVRNA with fracture and NEU, WBC, PAK1. BP neural network model was constructed to analyze the predictive power of the combined effects of NEU, WBC, PAK1 for HIV RNA with fracture. Results: There exist strong correlations between PAK1, NEU, WBC and HIVRNA with fracture. The neural network model was successfully constructed. The overall determination coefficients of the training sample, validation sample, and test sample were 0.7235, 0.4795, 0.6188, 0.6792, respectively, indicating that the fitting effect between training sample and overall was good. Statistical determination coefficient of the goodness of fit R2 ≈ 0.82, it can be considered that degree of fit between the estimate and corresponding actual data is good. Conclusion: HIVRNA with fracture could be predicted using a neural network model based on NEU, WBC, PAK1. The neural network model is an innovative algorithm for forecasting HIVRNA levels with fracture.

The Overhead Contact System (OCS) is critical infrastructure for train power supply in rail transit systems. OCS state monitoring and fault detection are indispensable to guarantee the safety of railway operations. The existing human-based OCS state monitoring and fault diagnosing method has some inherent drawbacks, such as poor real-time capability, low detecting precision, and waste of human resources. Edge Intelligence (EI) can perform complex computing tasks offloaded from trains within a little delay, and it is believed to help empower the OCS. In this paper, we propose an EI-based OCS state monitoring and fault detecting system. The latest Computer Vision (CV) model YOLOv5s is used to detect the OCS faults using the collected images. Edge Computing (EC) is used to perform the CV model inference. The EC system receives the OCS images taken by the train cameras and calculates the real-time fault detection results. The consistency and scalability of running jobs on edge devices are also addressed in our approach. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EI-based system can detect OCS faults in real-time. The adopted YOLOv5s achieves a high fault detection rate, outperforming other models.

Background: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a common inflammatory disease in otolaryngology, mainly manifested as nasal congestion, nasal discharge, facial pain/pressure, and smell disorder. CRS with nasal polyps (CRSwNP), an important phenotype of CRS, has a high recurrence rate even after receiving corticosteroids and/or functional endoscopic sinus surgery. In recent years, clinicians have focused on the application of biological agents in CRSwNP. However, it has not reached a consensus on the timing and selection of biologics for the treatment of CRS so far. Summary: We reviewed the previous studies of biologics in CRS and summarized the indications, contraindications, efficacy assessment, prognosis, and adverse effects of biologics. Also, we evaluated the treatment response and adverse reactions of dupilumab, omalizumab, and mepolizumab in the management of CRS and made recommendations. Key Messages: Dupilumab, omalizumab, and mepolizumab have been approved for the treatment of CRSwNP by the US Food and Drug Administration. Type 2 and eosinophilic inflammation, need for systemic steroids or contraindication to systemic steroids, significantly impaired quality of life, anosmia, and comorbid asthma are required for the use of biologics. Based on current evidence, dupilumab has the prominent advantage in improving quality of life and reducing the risk of comorbid asthma in CRSwNP among the approved monoclonal antibodies. Most patients tolerate biological agents well in general with few major or severe adverse effects. Biologics have provided more options for severe uncontrolled CRSwNP patients or patients who refuse to have surgery. In the future, more novel biologics will be assessed in high-quality clinical trials and applied clinically.

The waste recycling of epoxy resin-based fiber reinforced plastics is an important topic of current environmental protection. This work investigated the potential engineering benefits of applying simply crushed recycled epoxy resin-based fiber reinforced plastic in structural concrete. In this paper, the mixing and mechanical properties of concrete products with crushed and recycled waste epoxy plates instead of some fine aggregate were studied experimentally. Three kinds of recycled crushing materials with different particle sizes below 4mm, 4mm to 9mm, and 9mm were used to prepare 10 groups of concrete samples with different proportions by replacing sand with 5, 10, and 15% volumes, respectively. The results showed that the density of the recycled plastic concrete was reduced and the slump of the concrete was increased, with the increase of the recycled crushing materials, and the mechanical properties of concrete were improved within the 5%-10% admixture, and the best results of comprehensive mechanical properties were achieved when the admixture was 10% and the particle size was 4-9mm. These results indicated that it is feasible to replace concrete fine aggregates with recycled crushing materials of waste epoxy plate, and this study not only explores a new way to recycle waste epoxy resin-based fiber reinforced plastic, but also reduces the over-exploitation of sand natural resources, which have a high social and economic value.