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This paper focuses on how the phenomenon of naturalized athletes has caused unprecedented domestic discussions on issues of national identity in China. Using online data collected from Sina Weibo, it discusses how the Chinese public reacted to prominent cases of naturalization of athletes in such different sports fields as men's football and a variety of winter sports. It interrogates how Chinese citizens view the possibilities and realities of this particular category of immigrants, and how the appropriate boundaries of 'Chineseness' have been debated and contested. The paper found that Chinese public reaction to naturalization of foreign athletes is overall mixed, which is conditioned on an ethno-racial view of Chinese descent, cultural heritage and linguistic affinity. The paper concludes with reflections on the ethno-racial foundation of the Chinese national identity and the challenges the country will face in a future of accelerated international migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Homebound older people with dementia (OPWD) face a series of care risks due to disease characteristics, care issues, and the family environment. However, China lacks a quantitative assessment tool for care risk. Thus, we attempted to develop a care risk scale for homebound OPWD. Methods: A care risk scale, with initially 18 items, was designed based on a systematic literature review, expert consultation, and a pilot study with 20 OPWD. The initial scale was validated among 1,045 homebound OPWD in Ningbo, China from November 1, 2020 to July 30, 2021. After removing three items that lacked discrimination power, the reliability and validity of the remaining 15 items was evaluated. Factor extraction was performed via principal axis factoring and Cattell's scree plot analysis, with the resulting factors then being subjected to a varimax rotation. Results: The final scale consisted of 15 items assessed on a 5-point Likert scale that loaded on to three different factors, including dementia symptoms (four items), family support (four items), and home environment (seven items). These three factors were found to explain 72.9% of the cumulative variance. The overall Cronbach's alpha for the final scale was 0.907. The correlation coefficients in the item-to-total analysis ranged from 0.511 to 0.662. Conclusion: The validation analysis indicated satisfactory reliability and validity of the 15-item scale for assessing care risk of homebound OPWD. This scale can help long-term care professionals and family caregivers identify care risks and help them take targeted measures to enhance safety of care for OPWD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated immobilization to encapsulate the Pd/C-coated magnetic nanoparticles within the chiral Ru/diamine-functionalized silica shell for the construction of a bifunctional magnetic catalyst is developed. This catalyst realizes a synergistic Suzuki cross-coupling/asymmetric transfer hydrogenation and a successive reduction/asymmetric transfer hydrogenation for the preparation of chiral aromatic alcohols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotic resistance is considered a major threat to global health and is affected by many factors, of which antibiotic use is probably one of the more important. Other factors include hygiene, crowding and travel. The rapid resistance spread in Gram-negative bacteria, in particular extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-E), is a global challenge, leading to increased mortality, morbidity and health systems costs worldwide. Knowledge about resistance in commensal flora is limited, including in China. Our aim was to establish the faecal carriage rates of ESBL-E and find its association with known and suspected risk factors in rural residents of all ages in three socio-economically different counties in the Shandong Province, China. Faecal samples and risk-factor information (questionnaire) were collected in 2012. ESBL-E carriage was screened using ChromID ESBL agar. Risk factors were analysed using standard statistical methods. Data from 1000 individuals from three counties and in total 18 villages showed a high and varying level of ESBL-E carriage. Overall, 42% were ESBL-E carriers. At county level the carriage rates were 49%, 45% and 31%, respectively, and when comparing individual villages (n = 18) the rate varied from 22% to 64%. The high level of ESBL-E carriage among rural residents in China is an indication of an exploding global challenge in the years to come as resistance spreads among bacteria and travels around the world with the movement of people and freight. A high carriage rate of ESBL-E increases the risk of infection with multi-resistant bacteria, and thus the need for usage of last resort antibiotics, such as carbapenems and colistin, in the treatment of common infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a common human malignancy with high incidence rate and poor prognosis. Although the polycomb group protein enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) plays a crucial role in cell proliferation and differentiation during the occurrence and development progress of several kinds of malignant tumors, the impact of EZH2 on the development and progression of OSCC is unclear. In this study, we demonstrate that EZH2 is overexpressed in OSCC cells and clinical tissue. With in vitro RNAi analysis, we generated stable EZH2 knocking down cell lines from two OSCC cell lines, with two sh-RNAs targeting to EZH2, respectively. We found that knocking down of EZH2 could decrease the proliferation ability and induce apoptosis of OSCC cells. Moreover, we demonstrated that of EZH2 inhibition decreased the migration and metastasis of OSCC cells. In conclusion, the results of the current study demonstrated an association between EZH2 expression and OSCC cell development. We recommend that EZH2 acts as an oncogene and plays an important role in OSCC carcinogenesis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Z-transformation graph of perfect matchings of a plane bipartite graph G has the perfect matchings of G as vertices, two perfect matchings being adjacent if their symmetric difference forms a cycle that is the boundary of an interior face of G. In this note, we prove that the Z-transformation graph of perfect matchings of an outerplane bipartite graph has a Hamilton path. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There are hundreds of millions of internal migrants in China, and tuberculosis (TB) is an important health threat to them. However, the mental health problems of internal migrants with TB in China have been ignored. The present study aimed to determine the prevalence of depressive symptoms and its associated risk factors among internal migrants with TB in China. A cross-sectional survey was conducted between June 2018 and March 2019 in Shenzhen, southern China. Data were collected from 1,057 internal migrants with TB using a structured questionnaire. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to identify risk factors for depressive symptoms. Of the 1,057 participants included in this study, 53.8% had depressive symptoms. Of these, 38.9% had mild, whereas 14.9% had moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms. Multinomial logistic regression analysis suggested that higher likelihoods of depressive symptoms were associated with female gender, lower education, family dysfunction, poor doctor-patient communication, and TB-related stigma. This study shows that the prevalence of depressive symptoms among internal migrants with TB is high in China. Targeting interventions and treatment of depressive symptoms among internal migrants with TB are needed.

Purpose: Cigarette smoking (CS) is one of the major risk factors of cerebral atherosclerotic disease, however, its level of contribution to extracranial and intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (ECAS and ICAS) was not fully revealed yet. The purpose of our study was to assess the association of CS to cerebral atherosclerosis along with other risk factors., Materials and Methods: All consecutive patients who were angiographically confirmed with severe symptomatic cerebral atherosclerotic disease between January 2002 and December 2012 were included in this study. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify risk factors for ECAS and ICAS. Thereafter, CS group were compared to non-CS group in the entire study population and in a propensity-score matched population with two different age-subgroups., Results: Of 1709 enrolled patients, 794 (46.5%) had extracranial (EC) lesions and the other 915 (53.5%) had intracranial (IC) lesions. CS group had more EC lesions (55.8% vs. 35.3%, P<0.001) whereas young age group (<50 years) had more IC lesion (84.5% vs. 47.6%, P<0.001). In multivariate analysis, seven variables including CS, male, old age, coronary heart disease, higher erythrocyte sedimentation rate, multiple lesions, and anterior lesion were independently associated with ECAS. In the propensity-score matched CS group had significant more EC lesion compared to non-CS group (65.7% vs. 47.9%) only in the old age subgroup., Conclusion: In contrast to a significant association between CS and severe symptomatic ECAS shown in old population, young patients did not show this association and showed relatively higher preference of ICAS.

Background: Irrational antibiotic use is common in rural areas of China, despite the growing recognition of the importance of appropriate prescribing to contain antibiotic resistance. The aim of this study was to analyze doctors' attitudes and prescribing practices related to antibiotics in rural areas of Shandong province, focusing on patients with the common cold., Methods: A survey was conducted with doctors working at thirty health facilities (village clinics, township health centers and county general hospitals) in three counties within Shandong province. Questions were included on knowledge and attitudes towards antibiotic prescribing. Separately, a random selection of prescriptions for patients with the common cold was collected from the healthcare institutions at which the doctors worked, to investigate actual prescribing behaviors., Results: A total of 188 doctors completed the survey. Most doctors (83%, 149/180) had attended training on antibiotic use since the beginning of their medical practice as a doctor, irrespective of the academic level of their undergraduate training. Of those that had training, most had attended it within the past three years (97%, 112/116). Very few doctors (2%, 3/187) said they would give antibiotics to a patient with symptoms of a common cold, and the majority (87%, 156/179) would refuse to prescribe an antibiotic even if patients were insistent on getting them. Doctors who had attended training were less likely to give antibiotics in this circumstance (29% vs. 14%, p < 0.001). A diagnosis of common cold was the only diagnosis reported on 1590 out of 8400 prescriptions. Over half (55%, 869/1590) of them included an antibiotic. Prescriptions from village clinics were more likely to contain an antibiotic than those from other healthcare institutions (71% vs. 44% [township] vs. 47% [county], p < 0.001)., Conclusions: Most doctors have recently attended training on antibiotic use and report they would not prescribe antibiotics for patients with a common cold, even when placed under pressure by patients. However, more than half of the prescriptions from these healthcare institutions for patients with the common cold included an antibiotic. Exploring and addressing gaps between knowledge and practice is critical to improving antibiotic use in rural China.