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Lu Tong, Long Wu, Nianguo Dong Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Nianguo Dong, Email dongnianguo@hotmail.comAbstract: Ventricular septal rupture (VSR) after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a rare but often fatal complication. Surgery is considered the preferred treatment, although the optimal timing is discussed. The immediate preoperative hemodynamic status significantly impacts postoperative outcomes, making mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices crucial for perioperative hemodynamic stability. We present the case of a 61-year-old woman with no remarkable cardiological history admitted to our hospital with a diagnosis of AMI and VSR. Due to hemodynamic instability and cardiogenic shock, we utilized an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) and an extracorporeal left ventricular assist device (extra-VAD) as a bridge to surgery. After 17 days of IABP support, the patient experienced hemodynamic instability, elevated lactate levels, pulmonary edema, and eventually bedside endotracheal infiltration inventor-assisted breathing. Subsequently, the IABP was removed, and the patient underwent 6 days of extra-VAD therapy, resulting in hemodynamic stability, a decline in lactate levels, and a reduction in pulmonary edema on X-ray. Surgical coronary artery bypass grafting and VSR repair were successfully performed without periprocedural complications, and the patient was subsequently discharged. Extra-VAD is useful for serious cardiogenic shock in patients with VSR after AMI and may be considered a reasonable approach as a bridge to surgery.Keywords: ventricular septal rupture, acute myocardial infarction, extracorporeal left ventricular assist device

Hainan Wen,1,* Weigang Wang,1,2,* Shoujun Xie,3 Qian Sun,1 Yueyi Liang,3 Baojiang Wen,1,2 Yanchao Liu,3 Lihong Sun,3 Zongwei Zhang,3 Jing Cao,1,2 Xiaoxuan Liu,1,2 Xiaoran Niu,1,2 Zirou Ouyang,1,2 Ning Dong,1,2 Jianhong Zhao1,2 1The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, People’s Republic of China; 2Hebei Provincial Center for Clinical Laboratories, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Laboratory, the Affiliated Hospital of Chengde Medical university, Chengde, Hebei, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jianhong Zhao, Email zhaojh_2002@hebmu.edu.cnBackground: Although the principles for blood cultures (BCs) guidelines provide a recommendation for collection patterns, the complexity of clinical practice occasionally prompts clinicians to adopt non-standard collection patterns. Here, we investigate the influences of different BC collection patterns on detection of pathogens.Methods: The BC collection patterns of 96 hospitals were surveyed online. And a retrospective study of BC data from a tertiary hospital was conducted.Results: The results showed that 53.1% of hospitals adopted the recommended patterns. Among the 1439 episodes of true-positive BCs, 67.4% were found in both the left- and right-sided bottles; 58.2% were found in both aerobic and anaerobic bottles.Conclusion: The present study suggested that the rate of standard collection patterns of blood culture was low and the non-standard collection patterns were associated with decreased detection of pathogens. Simultaneous collection of blood on the left and right sides was recommended as an effective pattern of BC collection.Keywords: blood culture, collection pattern, online survey, time-to-positivity, pathogen detection

Baoqing Liu,1 Xiaoxiang Mao,2,3 Dandan Huang,2,3 Fei Li,1 Nianguo Dong11Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Cardiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China; 3Clinic Center of Human Gene Research, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of ChinaBackground: The liver coordinates a series of metabolic adaptations to maintain the energy balance of the system and provide adequate nutrients to key organs, tissues and cells during starvation. However, the mediators and underlying molecular mechanisms that mediate these fasting-induced adaptive responses remain unclear.Materials and methods: Male wild-type C57BL/6J littermates (8-weeks-old) were intraperitoneally injected with MCC950 or vehicle, and then randomly divided into three groups: fed, fasted, and refed. Plasma IL1β and insulin levels were detected by ELISA kits. Plasma and hepatic metabolites were determined using commercial assay kits. HepaRG cell line was applied to verify the regulation of NLRP3 on lipogenesis.Results: NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) and its downstream inflammatory cytokines were significantly suppressed after 24 h fasting and recovered upon 6 h refeeding in plasma and liver tissues of mice. Moreover, fasting-induced hepatic steatosis and accompanied liver injury were ameliorated when mice were intraperitoneally injected with MCC950 (a selective NLRP3 inhibitor). Further study revealed that MCC950 suppressed sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1c (SREBP-1c) expression and transcriptional activity, thus inhibited lipogenesis in the liver, which may explain its role in stabilizing lipid metabolism.Conclusion: The NLRP3 inhibitor-MCC950 protects against fasting-induced hepatic steatosis. The novel and critical role of NLRP3 in lipogenesis may explain its importance in regulating the adaptive responses of the liver upon starvation stress and may provide therapeutic value.Keywords: metabolic homeostasis, starvation stress, NLRP3, MCC950, SREBP-1c

1. Infectious injury caused by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a metabolite of gram-negative bacteria, can induce stress responses in animals and is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in young birds. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with oleanolic acid (OA) on acute liver injury in broiler chickens challenged with LPS. 2. In total, 120 broiler chickens were randomly divided into six groups and fed a basal diet containing 0, 50, 100, or 200 mg/kg OA or 100 mg/kg aureomycin. On d 15, broiler chickens were injected with either LPS or an equivalent volume of normal saline. Six hours after LPS injection, two broiler chicks were randomly selected for sampling in each replicate. 3. The results indicated that dietary aureomycin was ineffective in alleviating LSP-associated liver injury, but protected broiler chickens from LPS-induced liver damage. This promoted a significant reduction in the levels of malondialdehyde and an increase in the levels of superoxide dismutase in liver. In addition, OA was found to cause significant reductions in the relative expression of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α in broiler liver tissues, whereas the relative expression of IL-10 was significantly increased. 4. In conclusion, oleanolic acid can alleviate oxidative stress and injury in the livers of broiler chickens induced by lipopolysaccharide. Consequently, oleanolic acid has potential utility as a novel anti-inflammatory and antioxidant feed additive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Cisplatin is a common anticancer drug, but its frequent nephrotoxicity limits its clinical use. Small GTP-binding protein GDP dissociation stimulator (smgGDS), a small GTPase chaperone protein, was considerably downregulated during cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (CDDP-AKI), especially in renal tubular epithelial cells. SmgGDS-knockdown mice was established and found that smgGDS knockdown promoted CDDP-AKI, as demonstrated by an increase in serum creatine, blood urea nitrogen levels and the appearance of tubular patterns. RNA sequencing suggested that protein kinase RNA-like ER kinase (PERK), which bridges mitochondria-associated ER membranes, was involved in smgGDS knockdown following CDDP-AKI, and then identified that smgGDS knockdown increased phosphorylated-PERK in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, we confirmed that smgGDS deficiency aggravated apoptosis and ER stress in vivo and in vitro. And the ER stress inhibitor 4-Phenylbutyric acid and the inhibition of PERK phosphorylation mitigated smgGDS deficiency-induced ER stress related apoptosis following cisplatin treatment, while the eIF2α phosphorylation inhibitor could not reverse the smgGDS deficiency accelerated cell death. Furthermore, the over-expression of smgGDS could reverse the ER stress and apoptosis caused by CDDP. Overall, smgGDS regulated PERK-dependent ER stress and apoptosis, thereby influencing renal damage. This study identified a target for diagnosing and treating cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury.

In this work, a new method for human re-identification (Re-ID) from multiple surveillance cameras is proposed. Unlike traditional methods in which only the body features are used for matching, our proposed method uses both body and facial features for the Re-ID process. This combination allows us to re-identify people in challenging conditions, such as people with a uniform or similar-looking outfit, a partial or occluded body, appearance changes, or illumination. The face and body feature extraction models were developed using the state-of-the-art deep neural backbones and the synthesis of existing datasets in the literature. The performance of the method was evaluated on a self-generated dataset, which contains images under challenging conditions. The evaluation results show that our method outperforms traditional methods, in which the accuracy Rank1 reaches 91.30% while the traditional ones have a Rank1 of only 86.96%. This newly introduced method can be used for many practical applications in security surveillance of buildings and offices where challenging conditions often appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, an efficient pedestrian attribute recognition system is introduced. The system is based on a novel processing pipeline that combines the best-performing attribute extraction model with an efficient attribute filtering algorithm using keypoints of human pose. The attribute extraction models are developed based on several state-of-the-art deep networks via transfer learning techniques, including ResNet50, Swin-transformer, and ConvNeXt. Pre-trained models of these networks are fine-tuned using the Ensemble Pedestrian Attribute Recognition (EPAR) dataset. Several optimization techniques, including the advanced optimizer Adam with Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization (AdamW), Random Erasing (RE), and weighted loss functions, are adopted to solve issues of data unbalancing or challenging conditions like partial and occluded bodies. Experimental evaluations are performed via EPAR that contains 26 993 images of 1477 person IDs, most of which are in challenging conditions. The results show that the ConvNeXt-v2-B outperforms other networks; mean accuracy (mA) reaches 85.57%, and other indices are also the highest. The addition of AdamW or RE can improve accuracy by 1-2%. The use of new loss functions can solve the issue of data unbalancing, in which the accuracy of data-less attributes improves by a maximum of 14% in the best case. Significantly, when the attribute filtering algorithm is applied, the results are dramatically improved, and mA reaches an excellent value of 94.85%. Utilizing the state-of-the-art attribute extraction model with optimization techniques on the large-scale and diverse dataset and attribute filtering has shown a good approach and thus has a high potential for practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a common condition characterized by the reflux of stomach contents into the esophagus. Despite its widespread prevalence worldwide, the causal link between GERD and various cancer risks has not been fully established, and past medical research has often underestimated or overlooked this relationship. Methods This study performed Mendelian randomization (MR) to investigate the causal relationship between GERD and 19 different cancers. We leveraged data from 129,080 GERD patients and 473,524 controls, along with cancer-related data, obtained from the UK Biobank and various Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) consortia. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with GERD were used as instrumental variables, utilizing methods such as inverse variance weighting, weighted median, and MR-Egger to address potential pleiotropy and confounding factors. Results GERD was significantly associated with higher risks of nine types of cancer. Even after adjusting for all known risk factors—including smoking, alcohol consumption, major depression, and body mass index (BMI)—these associations remained significant, with higher risks for most cancers. For example, the adjusted risk for overall lung cancer was (OR, 1.23; 95% CI: 1.14–1.33), for lung adenocarcinoma was (OR, 1.18; 95% CI: 1.03–1.36), for lung squamous cell carcinoma was (OR, 1.35; 95% CI: 1.19–1.53), and for oral cavity and pharyngeal cancer was (OR, 1.73; 95% CI: 1.22–2.44). Especially noteworthy, the risk for esophageal cancer increased to (OR, 2.57; 95% CI: 1.23–5.37). Mediation analyses further highlighted GERD as a significant mediator in the relationships between BMI, smoking, major depression, and cancer risks. Conclusions This study identifies a significant causal relationship between GERD and increased cancer risk, highlighting its role in cancer development and underscoring the necessity of incorporating GERD management into cancer prevention strategies.

Abstract Icing plays an important role in various physical-chemical process. Although the formation of two-dimensional ice requires nanoscale confinement, two-dimensional bilayer ice in coexistence with three-dimensional ice without confinement remains poorly understood. Here, a critical value of a surface energy parameter is identified to characterize the liquid-solid interface interaction, above which two-dimensional and three-dimensional coexisting ice can surprisingly form on the surface. The two-dimensional ice growth mechanisms could be revealed by capturing the growth and merged of the metastable edge structures. The phase diagram about temperature and pressure vs energy parameters is predicted to distinguish liquid water, two-dimensional ice and three-dimensional ice. Furthermore, the deicing characteristics of coexisting ice demonstrate that the ice adhesion strength is linearly related to the ratio of ice-surface interaction energy to ice temperature. In addition, for gas-solid phase transition, the phase diagram about temperature and energy parameters is predicted to distinguish gas, liquid water, two-dimensional ice and three-dimensional ice. This work gives a perspective for studying the singular structure and dynamics of ice in nanoscale and provides a guide for future experimental realization of the coexisting ice.

Ferulic acid (FA) is a natural phenolic acid with a strong protective effect against disorder of hepatic lipid metabolism. To elucidate the effect of FA on metabolic associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), the physiological parameters of mice fed high-fat diet (HFD) with or without FA were examined, and the liver transcriptome and metabolome were evaluated. FA significantly inhibited increases in liver weight and decreased the serum triglyceride levels and prevented HFD-induced hepatic steatosis. Omic data showed that FA might reduce the deposition of carnitine C16:1 to alleviate HFD-induced liver damage by reducing the expression of SOCS3 in vivo. Oleic acid induced steatosis in Hepa1-6 cells was used to verify the hepatoprotective effect of FA in vitro. Treatment with FA suppressed cellular lipid droplet deposition and decreased the expression of SOCS3 and adipogenesis markers. This work indicates the potential of FA as a novel drug for the alleviation of hepatic steatosis.

In agricultural robots, trajectory tracking can be affected by disturbances such as road slopes or bumps, leading to sudden changes in path curvature and reduced control accuracy. To address this issue, we propose a servo motor drive control method based on an improved Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) threshold. A mathematical model integrating the drive and control of the servo motor is established, and the driving performance of the servo motor is analyzed. By detecting the speed and position of the servo motor, the specified three-phase current values for motor drive control are derived. The actual current of the motor is collected using Hall current sensors and denoised with an improved EMD threshold wavelet filtering method. Within the servo motor drive control model, the system calculates the difference between the given three-phase current values and the actual motor current, and this difference is then used to adjust the motor control via an input linear amplifier, ensuring integrated drive control. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed trajectory tracking control method for the agricultural robot’s permanent magnet synchronous motor servo system exhibits high control accuracy, strong anti-interference ability, and good performance, making it more suitable for practical applications.

For understanding the influence of malware attacking on complex heterogeneous networks, this work studies a fractional network-based SIRS epidemic model with fuzzy transmission and saturated treatment function. Firstly, we apply the next-generation method to obtain the basic reproductive ratio R0, that is an important threshold value in the investigation of asymptotic behavior of the proposed epidemic model. The obtained theoretical results indicates that the value R0 significantly depends on the topology structure of the underlying network and the malware load. In addition, we give a threshold value R̃0 > R0 that not only determines the existence of endemic equilibrium E* but also ensures the clean of malware programs on the network. At last, the sensitivity analysis of the threshold value R0 and some graphical simulations are presented to illustrate for the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Clostridioides difficile is considered an urgent threat to human health by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent years, C. difficile has been reported increasingly as a cause of gastrointestinal disease in children, and the prevalence of hospital-acquired C. difficile infection and community-acquired CDI in children is increasing.Aim: To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of risk factors for CDI in children.Methods: MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, OVID, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang (Chinese), SinoMed (Chinese) and Weipu (Chinese) were searched from inception to 12th January 2022. Observational studies (cohort, case-control and cross-sectional) on CDI in children were included in the analysis. Data were pooled using a fixed or random-effects model, and odds ratios (OR) were calculated.Findings: In total, 25 observational studies were included in the analysis. Prior antibiotic exposure [OR 1.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.97], prolonged hospitalization (OR 14.68, 95% CI 13.24-16.28), history of hospitalization (OR 3.67, 95% CI 1.91-7.06), gastric acid suppressants (OR 1.96, 95% CI 1.41-2.73), male gender (OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.05-1.32), neoplastic disease (OR 3.40, 95% CI, 2.85-4.07), immunodeficiency (OR 4.18, 95% CI 3.25-5.37), solid organ transplantation (OR 4.56, 95% CI 3.95-5.27) and enteral feeding (OR 2.21, 95% CI 1.05-4.62) were associated with increased risk of CDI.Conclusion: This systematic review and meta-analysis provides further evidence for the susceptibility factors of CDI to improve clinicians' awareness of CDI, and prevent C. difficile-associated diarrhoea in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, LTPO structure was used to develop 1500PPI LCD VR display device, and LTPS TFT process structure was used for peripheral driving to ensure excellent driving performance. The display area adopts oxide TFT process structure to achieve high aperture rate pixel design, and the actual aperture rate can reach 38%.In addition, the Com metal shading layer (CM) is designed above the COM electrode to block the crosstalk light of adjacent pixels and improve the crosstalk effect. The measurement is based on the perspective of 30°, Δuv<4JNCD@White，Δuv<10JNCD@RGB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Left ventricular opacification (LVO) improves the accuracy of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) by enhancing the visualization of the endocardium. Manual delineation of the endocardium by sonographers has observer variability. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the reproducibility of LVO to assess LVEF. Objectives The aim was to develop an AI model and evaluate the feasibility and reproducibility of LVO in the assessment of LVEF. Methods This retrospective study included 1305 echocardiography of 797 patients who had LVO at the Department of Ultrasound Medicine, Union Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology from 2013 to 2021. The AI model was developed by 5-fold cross validation. The validation datasets included 50 patients prospectively collected in our center and 42 patients retrospectively collected in the external institution. To evaluate the differences between LV function determined by AI and sonographers, the median absolute error (MAE), spearman correlation coefficient, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were calculated. Results In LVO, the MAE of LVEF between AI and manual measurements was 2.6% in the development cohort, 2.5% in the internal validation cohort, and 2.7% in the external validation cohort. Compared with two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE), the left ventricular (LV) volumes and LVEF of LVO measured by AI correlated significantly with manual measurements. AI model provided excellent reliability for the LV parameters of LVO (ICC > 0.95). Conclusions AI-assisted LVO enables more accurate identification of the LV endocardium and reduces observer variability, providing a more reliable way for assessing LV function.

BackgroundInvestigating the relationship between gut microbiota and Rheumatic Valve Disease (RVD) is crucial for understanding the disease’s etiology and developing effective interventions. Our study adopts a novel approach to examine the potential causal connections between these factors.MethodsUtilizing a two-sample Mendelian Randomization (MR) framework, we incorporated a multi-variable MR (MVMR) strategy to assess the mediatory mechanisms involved. This approach involved analyzing data from the MiBioGen consortium for gut microbiota and the FinnGen for RVD, among other sources. Instrumental variables (IVs) were carefully selected based on rigorous MR principles, and statistical analysis was conducted using bidirectional two-sample MR, such as inverse variance-weighted (IVW), weighted median, MR-Egger regression and MR Steiger Test methods. The MR-PRESSO strategy was employed for outlier detection, and MVMR was used to untangle the complex relationships between multiple microbiota and RVD.ResultsOur analysis highlighted several gut microbiota classes and families with potential protective effects against RVD, including Lentisphaerae, Alphaproteobacteria, and Streptococcaceae. In contrast, certain genera, such as Eubacterium eligens and Odoribacter, were identified as potential risk factors. The MVMR analysis revealed significant mediation effects of various immune cell traits and biomarkers, such as CD4-CD8- T cells, CD3 on Terminally Differentiated CD8+ T cell and Pentraxin-related protein PTX, elucidating the complex pathways linking gut microbiota to RVD.ConclusionThis study underscores the intricate and potentially causal relationship between gut microbiota and RVD, mediated through a range of immune and hormonal factors. The use of MVMR in our methodological approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of these interactions, highlighting the gut microbiota’s potential as therapeutic targets in RVD management. Our findings pave the way for further research to explore these complex relationships and develop targeted interventions for RVD.

Bone damage is a complex orthopedic problem primarily caused by trauma, cancer, or bacterial infection of bone tissue. Clinical care management for bone damage remains a significant clinical challenge and there is a growing need for more advanced bone therapy options. Nanotechnology has been widely explored in the field of orthopedic therapy for the treatment of a severe bone disease. Among nanomaterials, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) along with other biomaterials are emerging as a new paradigm for treatment with excellent potential for bone tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. In recent years, a great deal of research has focused on demonstrating the potential for GNPs to provide for enhancement of osteogenesis, reduction of osteoclastogenesis/osteomyelitis, and treatment of bone cancer. This review details the latest understandings in regards to GNPs based therapeutic systems, mechanisms, and the applications of GNPs against various bone disorders. The present review aims to summarize i) the mechanisms of GNPs in bone tissue remodeling, ii) preparation methods of GNPs, and iii) functionalization of GNPs and its decoration on biomaterials as a delivery vehicle in a specific bone tissue engineering for future clinical application.