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Late-life depression (LLD) is a common and serious mental disorder, whose neural mechanisms are not yet fully understood. In this study, we aimed to characterize LLD-related changes in intrinsic functional brain networks using a large, multi-site sample.Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, the edge-based functional connectivity (FC) as well as multiple topological brain network metrics at both global and nodal levels were compared between 206 LLD patients and 210 normal controls (NCs).Compared with NCs, the LLD patients had extensive alterations in the intrinsic brain FCs, especially significant decreases in FCs within the default mode network (DMN) and within the somatomotor network (SMN). The LLD patients also showed alterations in several global brain network metrics compared with NCs, including significant decreases in global efficiency, local efficiency, clustering coefficient, and small-worldness, as well as a significantly increased characteristic path length. Moreover, significant alterations in nodal network metrics (increased nodal betweenness and decreased nodal efficiency) were found in patients with LLD, which mainly involved the DMN and SMN. Post-hoc subgroup analyses indicated that the above changes in FC strengths were present in both first-episode, drug-naïve (FEDN) and non-FEDN patients, and were correlated with depression severity in the FEDN patients. Moreover, changes in FC strengths were found in both the early/late-onset (depression starts before/after the age of 50) patients, while altered topological metrics were found in only the late-onset patients.These results may help to strengthen our understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms and biological heterogeneity in LLD.

Management of infected wounds has raised worldwide concerns. Attempts in this field focus on the development of intelligent patches for improving the wound healing. Here, inspired by the cocktail treatment and combinational therapy stratagem, we present a novel Janus piezoelectric hydrogel patch via 3-dimensional printing for sonodynamic bacteria elimination and wound healing. The top layer of the printed patch was poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate hydrogel with gold-nanoparticle-decorated tetragonal barium titanate encapsulation, which realizes the ultrasound-triggered release of reactive oxygen species without leaking nanomaterials. The bottom layer is fabricated with methacrylate gelatin and carries growth factors for the cell proliferation and tissue reconstruction. Based on these features, we have demonstrated in vivo that the Janus piezoelectric hydrogel patch can exert substantial infection elimination activity under the excitation of ultrasound, and its sustained release of growth factors can promote tissue regeneration during wound management. These results indicated that the proposed Janus piezoelectric hydrogel patch had practical significance in sonodynamic infection alleviation and programmable wound healing for treating different clinical diseases.

Purpose: Our study aims to discuss glaucoma patients' needs and Internet habits using big data analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP) based on deep learning (DL). We also developed and validated DL models to recognize social media data. Methods: In this retrospective study, we used web crawler technology to crawl glaucoma-related topic posts from the glaucoma bar of Baidu Tieba. According to the contents of topic posts, we classified them into posts with or without seeking medical advice. Word Cloud and frequency statistics were used to analyze the contents and visualize the keywords. Two DL models, Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), were trained to identify the posts seeking medical advice. The evaluation matrices included: accuracy, F1 value, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC). Results: A total of 10,892 topic posts were included, among them, most were seeking medical advice (N=7071, 64.91%), and seeking advice regarding symptoms or examination (N=4913, 45.11%) dominated the majority, followed by searching for social support , expressing emotions, and sharing knowledge. The word cloud analysis showed that ocular pressure, visual field, examination, and operation were the most frequent words. The accuracy, F1 score, and AUC were 0.891, 0.891, and 0.931 for BERT model, 0.82, 0.821, and 0.890 for Bi-LSTM model. Conclusion: Social media can help enhance the patient-doctor relationship by providing patients’ concerns and cognition about glaucoma. DL models performed well in classifying Chinese medical-related texts, which could play an important role in public health monitoring.

BackgroundThe capacity to distinguish hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) from hypertensive left ventricular hypertrophy (H-LVH) based on morphological features obtained by conventional echocardiography is limited. We investigated the global myocardial work of the left ventricle in two types of hypertrophies using the non-invasive myocardial work index (NMWI).MethodsConventional echocardiography was performed on 107 subjects with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF ≥ 50%), who comprised patients with HCM (n = 40), H-LVH (n = 35), and healthy people with normal blood pressure and left ventricular structure (n = 32). Except for the conventional echocardiographic parameters, the left ventricular myocardial work parameters based on pressure-strain loops, including global myocardial work index (GWI), global constructive work (GCW), global wasted work (GWW), and global work efficiency (GWE), were evaluated in three groups. Multivariate discriminant analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to evaluate the incremental value of NMWI for distinguishing HCM from H-LVH.ResultsCompared to the control group, GWI and GCW were significantly lower in HCM patients (P < 0.05), whereas GWI was significantly higher in H-LVH patients. GWW was higher and GWE was significantly decreased in both HCM and H-LVH patients than in the control group (P < 0.05). Multivariate discriminant analysis and ROC curve revealed that the inter-ventricular septum thickness (IVST)/left ventricular posterior wall thickness (LVPWT) and GCW were each able to distinguish HCM from H-LVH. The combination of IVST/LVPWT and GCW discriminated HCM and H-LVH with a higher predictive accuracy of 94.7%.ConclusionNMWI may provide additional information in evaluating the myocardial function in patients with HCM and H-LVH. Myocardial work combined with conventional echocardiography could improve the clinical diagnostic accuracy of distinguishing HCM and H-LVH.

Antibiotics provide promising strategies for treating periodontitis, while their delivery and controllable release with desired oral retention remain challenging. Here, inspired by the unique suction-cup structures of abalones, a novel adhesive and photo-responsive microparticle (MP) delivery system is developed to treat periodontitis through microfluidic electrospray technology. Such MPs are generated by quickly ionic cross-linking of sodium alginate together with photo-curing of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate of the distorted microfluidic droplets during their high-speed dropping into calcium chloride solution. Attributing to their unique concave structures, the abalone-inspired MPs exhibit desired underwater adhesion ability and stability under running water. In addition, due to the loading of antibiotics minocycline hydrochloride and near-infrared (NIR)-responsive black phosphorus during their fabrication, the resultant MPs can not only eradicate bacteria directly, but also realize a controllable and effective drug release upon NIR irradiation. Based on these features, it is demonstrated from in vivo periodontitis that the abalone-inspired MPs are firmly adhesive and can controlled-release drugs on the tooth, and thus have outstanding antibacterial efficacy against Porphyromonas gingivalis. These results indicate the particular values of the abalone-inspired MPs for oral-related disease treatment.

Slides are commonly used to present information and tell stories. In academic and research communities, slides are typically used to summarize findings in accepted papers for presentation in meetings and conferences. These slides for academic papers usually contain common and essential topics such as major contributions, model design, experiment details and future work. In this paper, we aim to automatically generate slides for academic papers. We first conducted an in-depth analysis of how humans create slides. We then mined frequently used slide topics. Given a topic, our approach extracts relevant sentences in the paper to provide the draft slides. Due to the lack of labeling data, we integrate prior knowledge of ground truth sentences into a log-linear model to create an initial pseudo-target distribution. Two sentence extractors are learned collaboratively and bootstrap the performance of each other. Evaluation results on a labeled test set show that our model can extract more relevant sentences than baseline methods. Human evaluation also shows slides generated by our model can serve as a good basis for preparing the final presentations.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been potentially identified as new diagnostic markers, prognostic factors and therapeutic targets in cancer. The acquisition of a mesenchymal (MES) phenotype in glioblastomas (GBMs) results into therapeutic resistance and poor clinical outcomes. The correlation between lncRNAs and MES differentiation remains elusive. Here, we report that LINC01057 as a lncRNA is overexpressed in GBMs, especially in MES subtype. LINC01057 knockdown suppresses proliferation, invasion and radioresistance of GBM cells in vitro, and tumor growth in vivo. LINC01057 knockdown leads to loss of MES signature in MES subpopulation of GBM cells, but LINC01057 overexpression promotes MES differentiation in proneural (PN) subpopulation. LINC01057 interacts with IKKα and maintains IKKα nucleus localization, leading to effective chromatin accessibility at NF-κB responsive promoters via histone modification and final NF-κB activation. IKKα knockdown disrupts the effect of LINC01057 overexpression on PN to MES transition (PMT). LINC01057 level is negatively correlated with patient prognosis in MES-subtype GBM. Collectively, our findings uncover LINC01057 as a regulator of NF-κB signaling to promote MES differentiation and a potential target for therapeutic intervention for MES-subtype GBM.

Liver plays a critical role in drug metabolism and nowadays multi-cellular culture systems aiming at imitating liver-specific morphology and functionality are advancing robustly. Numerous immortalized or stem cell-induced hepatic cell lines have been investigated to enhance the hepatic phenotype in establishing co-culture systems. Owing to the robust progresses of microtechnology and bioengineering, two-dimensional (2D) co-cultures such as sandwich culture and micropatterned co-culture systems have emerged. Controllably arranging the hepatocytes and fibroblasts allows bio-mimic homotypic and heterotypic interactions, and the miniaturized co-culture platform realizes high-throughput and sensitive drug screening. Yet, to address the rapid dedifferentiation and the decreased maintenance of hepatic functions existing in 2D cellular systems, various three-dimensional (3D) and dynamic hepatocyte co-culturing formats have been established to obtain more physiologically relevant liver microsystems and prolonged hepatic functionalities, such as spheroid barcodes, liver organoids, bioengineered hepatic spheroids, and microfluidic perfused liver-on-a-chip. In this review, we first introduce the typical structural color spheroid barcodes which facilitate multiple screening and testing. Then we sketch various advances in liver-imitating cellular co-culture protocols through representative examples. Meanwhile, we summarize current difficulties and propose the prospects of bioengineered liver-on-barcode systems for reliable and high-throughput drug screening.

Microorganisms play an important role in natural material and elemental cycles. Many common and general biology research techniques rely on microorganisms. Machine learning has been gradually integrated with multiple fields of study. Machine learning, including deep learning, aims to use mathematical insights to optimize variational functions to aid microbiology using various types of available data to help humans organize and apply collective knowledge of various research objects in a systematic and scaled manner. Classification and prediction have become the main achievements in the development of microbial community research in the direction of computational biology. This review summarizes the application and development of machine learning and deep learning in the field of microbiology and shows and compares the advantages and disadvantages of different algorithm tools in four fields: microbiome and taxonomy, microbial ecology, pathogen and epidemiology, and drug discovery.

Fire has played an essential role in human civilization. FIRE as such is not only a basic but also a crucial concept in human language, including Chinese. In Chinese, FIRE huǒ 火 acts as an independent character that is often used as a radical in many composite characters. Considering the fact that Chinese radicals are typically regarded as the semantic components within the composite characters to indicate broader concepts and categories of the characters, the FIRE radical is expected to determine the lexical meaning of composite characters one way or another. Since the independent use of the FIRE character precedes its function as a radical, we hypothesize that the semantic development of the FIRE radical will be influenced by those of the FIRE character. Therefore, we first carried out a semantic analysis of the FIRE character in previous research. The present paper studies the semantic structure of the global extensions of the FIRE radical, i.e. the original senses of the composite characters of the FIRE radical that are expected to have developed from the senses of the FIRE character. This analysis shows that, like the FIRE character, the semantic structure of the FIRE radical is still a radial network with prototypical features. However, the FIRE radical showcases semantic developments that occur independently of the FIRE character.

After a CO2 increase, whether the early transient and final equilibrium climate change patterns are similar has major implications. Here, we analyze long-term simulations from multiple climate models under increased CO2, together with the extended simulations from CMIP5, to compare the transient and equilibrium climate change patterns under different forcing scenarios. Results show that the normalized warming patterns (per 1 K of global warming) are broadly similar among different forcing scenarios (including abrupt 2 × CO2, 4 × CO2, and 1% CO2 increase per year) and during different time periods, except for the first 50 years or so when warming is weaker over the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean but stronger over most continents. During the first 200 years, this consistency is stronger over land than over ocean, but is lower in midlatitudes than other regions. Normalized precipitation change patterns are also similar, albeit to a lesser degree, among different forcing scenarios and across different time periods, although noticeable differences exist during the first few hundred years with smaller increases over the tropical Pacific. Precipitation over many subtropical oceans and land areas decreases consistently under different forcing scenarios and over all time periods. In particular, the transient and near-equilibrium change patterns for both surface air temperature and precipitation are similar over most of the globe, except for the North Atlantic warming hole, which is mainly a transient feature. The Arctic amplification and land–ocean warming contrast are largest during the first 100–200 years after CO2 quadrupling but they still exist in the equilibrium response.

Huang et al. recently reported that opposite phases of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) can affect the shift of the East Asian polar front jet (EAPJ) and the East Asian subtropical jet (EASJ) in the boreal winter. To give a full image of the relationship among the IPO, AMO, and concurrent variation of jets throughout the whole year, this study investigates the changes in summer jets response to the combinations of the IPO and AMO, and mostly focuses on the quantitative analysis in the role of the IPO and AMO. Both of the diagnostic analysis and atmospheric model simulations confirm that combinations of the negative phase of the IPO (“−IPO”) and the positive phase of the AMO (“+AMO”) can significantly enhance the EAPJ and reduce the EASJ in the summer, via the meridional temperature gradient and the Eady growth rate, and vice versa in the “+IPO −AMO” combination. The reanalysis data show that this relationship is particularly evident between the periods of 1999–2014 and 1979–98. Based on the simulations, the multilinear regression has indicated that −IPO plays a more important role than +AMO, particularly for the reduced EASJ. We have further revealed two pathways of the stationary Rossby wave activity anomaly, eastward from the North Atlantic to East Asia along 60°N and westward from the North Pacific to East Asia along 40°N. The two activities are associated with anomalous anticyclone along the active regions between EAPJ and EASJ, and therefore affect the jet variations.

Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) refers to the total global warming caused by an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric CO2 from the pre-industrial level in a climate system. ECS is commonly used to measure how sensitive a climate system is to CO2 forcing; but it is difficult to estimate for the real world and for fully coupled climate models because of the long response time in such a system. Earlier studies used a slab ocean coupled to an atmospheric general circulation model to estimate ECS, but such a setup is not the same as the fully coupled system. More recent studies used a linear fit between changes in global-mean surface air temperature (ΔT) and top-of-atmosphere net radiation (ΔN) to estimate ECS from relatively short simulations. Here we analyze 1000 years of simulation with abrupt quadrupling (4 × CO2) and another 500-year simulation with doubling (2 × CO2) of pre-industrial CO2 using the CESM1 model, and three other multi-millennium (~5000 year) abrupt 4 × CO2 simulations to show that the linear-fit method considerably underestimates ECS due to the flattening of the −dN/dT slope, as noticed previously. We develop and evaluate three other methods, and propose a new method that makes use of the realized warming near the end of the simulations and applies the −dN/dT slope calculated from a best fit of the ΔT and ΔN data series to a simple two-layer model to estimate the unrealized warming. Using synthetic data and the long model simulations, we show that the new method consistently outperforms the linear-fit method with small biases in the estimated ECS using 4 × CO2 simulations with at least 180 years of simulation. The new method was applied to 4 × CO2 experiments from 20 CMIP5 and 19 CMIP6 models, and the resulting ECS estimates are about 10% higher on average and up to 25% higher for models with medium–high ECS (> 3 K) than those reported in the IPCC AR5. Our new estimates suggest an ECS range of about 1.78–5.45 K with a mean of 3.61 K among the CMIP5 models and about 1.85–6.25 K with a mean of 3.60 K for the CMIP6 models. Furthermore, stable ECS estimates require at least 240 (180) years of simulation for using 2 × CO2 (4 × CO2) experiments, and using shorter simulations may underestimate the ECS substantially. Our results also suggest that it is the forced −dN/dT slope after year 40, not the internally-generated −dN/dT slope, that is crucial for an accurate estimate of the ECS, and this forced slope may be fairly stable.

As an effective combination chemotherapy, FOLFIRINOX regimen (fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin) has shown definite antitumor efficacy for treating pancreatic cancer (PC) nowadays. However, the traditional systematic administration of these chemotherapeutics limits the drug targeting and causes unwanted effects. Herein, we present a novel Christmas tree-shaped adhesive microneedle (MN) patch coloading fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin simultaneously to realize spatiotemporal FOLFIRINOX therapy in situ. Such MN patch was fabricated by using a layer-by-layer mold replication method, in which oxaliplatin and leucovorin are encapsulated in the top MNs, while irinotecan and fluorouracil are encapsulated in the bottom MNs. The multilayer structure imparts the MNs with enhanced adhesive ability and spatiotemporal drug release property, contributing to the antitumor effect on PC organoid models. Therefore, our Christmas tree-shaped MN patch represents an innovative approach for spatiotemporal multiple-drug delivering and realizes the combination chemotherapy for PC in a single platform.

Flash droughts have severe impacts on the society and environment due to the sudden onset. Most studies focused on the definitions of flash droughts but rarely investigated the mechanisms. This study investigated the variation of the regional flash droughts in China and the possible mechanisms. The results show that the 6-pentads flash droughts show more regional characteristics, particularly for southwestern China (SWC), the northeastern China (NEC), the northwestern China (NWC), and the middle reaches of the Yellow River (MRYRC) during 2000-2018. The frequency of flash droughts decreases in SWC and increases in NWC, but shows no significant change in NEC and MRYRC. From the perspective of water supply factors and energy supply factors, the possible mechanisms have been further proposed. Since it is abundant of radiation energy in NWC, the potential evaporation is high, but evapotranspiration is low in normal circumstance. Thus, before the onset of a flash drought event, precipitation is needed to increase the soil moisture and then raise the evapotranspiration. Such growth can keep positive anomalies of evapotranspiration during the event. In contrast, the abundant soil moisture in SWC means only the excessive anomaly of potential evaporation triggered by shortwave radiation and temperature is required to support evapotranspiration raising during a flash drought event. Such growth of evapotranspiration can lead to a greater soil water deficit. However, soil moisture content in both NEC and MRYRC is less than that in SWC and radiation energy is less than that in NWC, so the evolution of evapotranspiration is similar to that in NWC, but the need for high potential evaporation is similar to that in SWC. The results of this study can improve our understanding of causal mechanisms of flash drought.

Layout representation, which models visual elements and their inter-relations in a canvas, plays a crucial role in graphic design intelligence. With a large variety of layout designs and the unique characteristic of layouts that visual elements are defined as a list of categorical (e.g., type) and numerical (e.g., position and size) properties, it is challenging to learn general and compact representations with limited data. Inspired by the recent success of self-supervised pre-training techniques in various natural language processing tasks, in this paper, we propose CanvasEmb (Canvas Embedding), which pre-trains deep representations from unlabeled graphic designs by jointly conditioning on all the context elements in a canvas, with a multi-dimensional feature encoder and a multi-task learning objective. The pre-trained CanvasEmb model can be fine-tuned with just one additional output layer and with a small size of training data to create models for a wide range of downstream tasks. We verify our approach with presentation slides data. We construct a large-scale dataset with more than one million slides and propose two layout understanding tasks with human-labeled sets, namely element role labeling and image captioning. Evaluation results on these two tasks show that our model with fine-tuning achieves state-of-the-art performance. Furthermore, we conduct a deep analysis aiming to understand the modeling mechanism of CanvasEmb and demonstrate its great potential with two extended applications: layout auto completion and layout retrieval.

BackgroudNoninvasive myocardial work, estimated by left ventricular (LV) pressure-strain loop (PSL), has been introduced for assessing LV myocardial performance. Based on both blood pressure and speckle-tracking derived strain data, noninvasive myocardial work is considered to be less load-dependent than global longitudinal strain (GLS). In some conditions, such as hypertension or aortic coarctation, the increased afterload will affect strain measurements, and myocardial work can serve as a more robust metric.ObjectiveWe prospectively recruited healthy children to explore the relationship between myocardial work indices and body size parameters, and to determine the reference values of noninvasive myocardial work indices in healthy children.Methods183 healthy children (aged 1–18 years, males: 52.5%) were enrolled in the study. Global work index (GWI), global constructive work (GCW), global wasted work (GWW), global work efficiency (GWE), were assessed by LVPSL and compared according to age and sex.ResultsThe mean for GWI was 1,448.7 ± 265.0 mm Hg%, 1,859.8 ± 290.7 mm Hg% for GCW, and the median (interquartile range) for GWW was 54.0 (33.0–82.0) mm Hg% and 97.0 (95.0–99.0) % for GWE. male had greater GWI and GCW) than female (1,572.5 ± 250.2 mm Hg% vs. 1,312.2 ± 208.7 mm Hg% and 1,944.3 ± 299.2 mm Hg% vs. 1,766.6 ± 251.5 mm Hg%, respectively, all P < 0.001). GWI and GCW were significantly correlated with baseline parameters, including age, height, weight, BSA, body mass index, heart rate, and blood pressure. After indexed to BSA, GWI (BSA), GCW (BSA) remained significantly negatively correlated with age (P < 0.001).Conclusionswe proposed the normal reference values and regression equations for GWI and GCW based on age and BSA in healthy children. This might provide a basis of reference for the evaluation of cardiac function in children with cardiopulmonary disease.

Background Cardiac damage is the leading cause of death in uremic patients. This study aimed to evaluate the application of non-invasive myocardial work index (NIMWI) by echocardiography in assessing the left ventricular (LV) systolic function in uremic patients. Methods Twenty-six uremic patients and 27 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers were enrolled in the study. Except for the conventional echocardiographic parameters, the LV myocardial work (MW) parameters including GWI (myocardial global work index), GCW (global constructive work), GWW (global wasted work), and GWE (global work efficiency) were calculated in study participants. Differences in MW parameters between the uremic and normal groups were compared by independent-sample t-test. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed for MW parameters to detect abnormal LV systolic function in uremic patients. Results Compared with the normal group, GWW was significantly increased and GWE decreased in the uremic group (P Conclusions NIMWI may be applied to assess the global MW of uremic patients. The presence of reduced GWE can help identify impaired left ventricular myocardial function in uremic patients with preserved LV ejection fraction with a high sensitivity and specificity.

Earth system models (ESMs) have been widely used to simulate global terrestrial carbon fluxes, including gross primary production (GPP) and net primary production (NPP). Assessment of such GPP and NPP products can be valuable for understanding the efficacy of certain ESMs in simulating the global carbon cycle and future climate impacts. In this work, we studied the model performance of 22 ESMs participating in the fifth and sixth phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5 and CMIP6) by comparing historical GPP and NPP simulations with satellite data from MODIS and further evaluating potential model improvement from CMIP5 to CMIP6. In CMIP6, the average global total GPP and NPP estimated by the 22 ESMs are 16% and 13% higher than MODIS data, respectively. The multi-model ensembles (MME) of the 22 ESMs can fairly reproduce the spatial distribution, zonal distribution and seasonal variations of both GPP and NPP from MODIS. They perform much better in simulating GPP and NPP for grasslands, wetlands, croplands and other biomes than forests. However, there are noticeable differences among individual ESM simulations in terms of overall fluxes, temporal and spatial flux distributions, and fluxes by biome and region. The MME consistently outperforms all individual models in nearly every respect. Even though several ESMs have been improved in CMIP6 relative to CMIP5, there is still much work to be done to improve individual ESM and overall CMIP performance. Future work needs to focus on more comprehensive model mechanisms and parametrizations, higher resolution and more reasonable coupling of land surface schemes and atmospheric/oceanic schemes.

Objectives: To analyze the association between global myocardial work indices evaluated by non-invasive left ventricular (LV) pressure-strain loop (PSL) and LV myocardial fibrosis in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).Methods: A total of 57 patients with DCM were included in this prospective study. Global work index (GWI), global constructive work (GCW), global wasted work (GWW), global work efficiency (GWE) and global longitudinal strain (GLS) were measured using LVPSL. LV volumes and LV ejection fraction (LVEF) were evaluated using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI), LV myocardial fibrosis was estimated at CMRI by qualitative assessment of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE). According to the CMRI, the studied population was divided into two groups, namely: patients without LGE (LGE-) and patients with LGE (LGE+).Results: The LGE+ group presented with increased age, LV end systolic volume (LVESV) index and reduced GWI, GCW, GWE, GLS, CMRI-derived LVEF (LVEFCMRI), the differences between the two groups were statistically significant (P < 0.05). After correcting for age and LVESV index, LVEFCMRI, GLS, GWI, GCW, and GWE retained independent associations with LV myocardial fibrosis. According to receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis, LVEFCMRI, and GCW showed larger AUC and higher accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity than GLS, the accuracy of predicting LV myocardial fibrosis ranged from high to low as: LVEFCMRI, GCW, GWE, GWI, and GLS.Conclusions: LVEFCMRI, GWI, GCW, GWE, and GLS remained significant predictors of LV myocardial fibrosis. LVEFCMRI, and GCW appeared to better predict LV myocardial fibrosis compared with GLS.

Plasma ignition technology is the research frontier in the field of energy and power. In this paper, a novel type of plasma jet igniter called pre-combustion plasma jet igniter is designed and the experimental results show that it has great potential in strengthening jet stiffness, improving ignition energy, decreasing ignition energy consumption and reducing igniter ablation. The value S called jet stiffness is defined for the first time to reflect the stiffness characteristics of the plasma jet. And the effects of jet gas flow rate, fuel-air ratio and input current on the jet stiffness are investigated experimentally. The experimental results show that the stiffness of the pre-combustion plasma jet is significantly stronger than that of the air plasma jet. When the total jet gas flow rate is increased from 16 L/min to 40 L/min, the stiffness of the air plasma jet and the pre-combustion plasma jet are increased by 73.3 % and 27.2 % respectively. When the current value reaches 30 A, the jet stiffness is increased by about 70 % compared to the input current of 20 A.

Plasma-assisted combustion is the frontier research in the field of energy and power. In order to reveal the mechanism of plasma-assisted combustion, the mechanism of plasma excitation on CH4/Air combustion reaction is studied. Using the CHEMKIN, a CH4/Air discharge model and a zero-dimensional dynamic calculation model of plasma-assisted CH4/Air combustion are established. Through the simulation calculation, the ignition delay time, the evolution law of the active particle concentration, the chemical reaction path and the consumption of OH, and the sensitivity of the elementary reactions are obtained. The results show that during the CH4/Air mixed gas discharge breakdown, a large number of excited-state particles are generated, in which N2(ap) reacts most strongly with CH4 to promote the reaction. The dissociation effect of N2(C3) on CH4 is most prominent in the combustion reaction. In addition, it is found that adding plasma, increasing ignition temperature and increasing reaction pressure can shorten the ignition delay time and increase the upper limit of temperature rise. In the combustion reaction, H + O2 = O + OH play a major role in promoting the reaction.

Governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) equation, daily mean temperature (Tm) and precipitation extremes would be theoretically linked by atmospheric moisture. However, precipitation extremes cannot systematically follow the CC rate of 7% per warming degree, due to moisture limitations. In this study, the observational tri-pole relation among Tm, atmospheric moisture and precipitation intensity over China have been investigated. The results indicate that atmospheric moisture (specific humidity and dew-point temperature) is positively correlated with Tm (precipitation) across four seasons at the interannual timescale. Particularly, the increase in precipitation extremes is accompanied by high atmospheric moisture, but is different in four seasons. In comparison, the year-to-year relation between Tm and atmospheric moisture is stronger than that between atmospheric moisture and precipitation. The atmospheric moisture has acted as a bridge linking Tm and precipitation extremes. Tm is highly correlated with precipitation extremes, while the relation also shows seasonal difference. The difference may be attributed to the negative scaling of daily precipitation extremes and precipitation efficiency (defined as the percentage of moisture in the air converting into precipitation) with Tm, when Tm exceeds ~25 °C.

Cluster extreme event (CEE), which is characterized by large affected area and long duration of extreme weather, has been arousing the worldwide serious concerns due to its severe impact on society. The winter cluster extreme events of low temperature (LT_CEEs) in the northern hemisphere from 1979 to 2013 are identified with a simplified objective method based on ERA-Interim and JRA-25 daily minimum surface air temperature. The probability density function (PDF) distributions of most indices in the winter LT_CEEs derived from the two datasets are well consistent with each other, especially in the occurrence frequency, duration, and affected area. As expected, the downward trend of all indices in recent 35 years under global warming is congruously revealed from both reanalysis. Nevertheless, the various indices of the winter LT_CEEs after 1998 are generally stable accompanied with slight upward trend, which might be closely related to the speed slowdown of global warming but require further investigation. Similar analysis was carried out with the simulated results of BCC_CSM1.1 model under four scenarios of RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5. The occurrence frequency of the winter LT_CEEs under RCP2.6 remains stable after 2050, but significantly decreases under RCP4.5 and RCP6.0, and disappears under RCP8.5 scenario. Overall, the descent rate of the winter LT_CEEs accelerates with the emission rise.

In this study, the concurrent meridional shift of the East Asian polar-front jet (EAPJ) and the East Asian subtropical jet (EASJ) and the associated thermal conditions have been investigated. The concurrent meridional shift is dominantly characterized by an out-of-phase shift of the two jets, as an equatorward shift of the EAPJ and a poleward shift of the EASJ, and vice versa. This shift is linked with the dipole surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly over the Eurasian continent and a La Niña–like sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly. Associated with the dipole SAT anomaly, the meridional temperature gradient (MTG) anomaly exhibits a tripole pattern from low to high latitudes over the Eurasian continent, as well as an enhanced maximum eddy growth rate and an anomalous divergence of Eliassen–Palm flux (E-P flux) over the regions between the EAPJ and EASJ. Additionally, the synoptic-scale transient eddy activities (STEA) significantly decrease over the high latitudes and enhance between the EAPJ and EASJ. All the anomalies would benefit the equatorward and poleward shift of the EAPJ and EASJ, respectively. The MTG, E-P flux and STEA anomalies are also indicated in that associated with the Niña-like SST anomaly. Particularly, the variations are evident in low latitudes. The pathway of the stationary Rossby wave activity flux anomalies shows an eastward Rossby wave packet propagation along the southern portion of the EAPJ is associated with the SAT anomaly and that along the northern portion of the EASJ is associated with the SST anomaly. The relative contributions of the two thermal conditions have emphasized the role of the dipole SAT anomaly, based on multilinear regression.

Recent concurrent shifts of the East Asian polar-front jet (EAPJ) and the East Asian subtropical jet (EASJ) in the boreal winter have raised concerns, since they could result in severe weather events over East Asia. However, the possible mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, the roles of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) are investigated by analyzing reanalysis data and model simulations. Results show that combinations of opposite phases of the IPO and AMO can result in significant shifts of the two jets during 1920–2014. This relationship is particularly evident during 1999–2014 and 1979–98 in the reanalysis data. A combination of a negative phase of the IPO (−IPO) and a positive phase of the AMO (+AMO) since the late 1990s has enhanced the meridional temperature gradient and the Eady growth rate and thus westerlies over the region between the two jets, but weakened them to the south and north of the region, thereby contributing to the equatorward and poleward shifts of the EAPJ and EASJ, respectively. Atmospheric model simulations are further used to investigate the relative contribution of −IPO and +AMO to the jet shifts. The model simulations show that the combination of −IPO and +AMO favors the recent jet changes more than the individual −IPO or +AMO. Under a concurrent −IPO and +AMO, the meridional eddy transport of zonal momentum and sensitive heat strengthens, and more mean available potential energy converts to the eddy available potential energy over the region between the two jets, which enhances westerly winds there.

Introduction Orthognathic surgery accelerates orthodontic tooth movement, and tooth movement accelerates with demineralized bone and accelerated bone remodeling. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether orthognathic surgery induces accelerated bone remodeling. The research design included a human model and an animal model. Methods The levels of serum tartrate resistant acid phosphatase-5b (TRAP) and bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP) were measured in 15 patients after sagittal split ramus osteotomy. For the animal study, 18 rabbits were divided into 6 groups: a control group and 5 surgery groups. The rabbits in the surgery groups had osteotomies in the molar regions of the mandible. Changes in bone mass of the anterior mandibles were examined by microcomputed tomography, and changes in osteoblast and osteoclast numbers were analyzed by real-time polymerase chain reaction, hematoxylin and eosin staining, TRAP staining, and alkaline phosphatase staining. Results In the 15 patients, TRAP-5b increased from 1 to 8 weeks postoperatively, and BALP increased significantly in 2 weeks postoperatively. In the rabbits, the levels of mRNA expression of TRAP were increased at 3 weeks, and matrix metalloproteinase 9 was increased at 4 and 8 weeks, whereas mRNA expression of BALP and bone morphogenetic protein 2 were increased at 4 weeks. Bone loss was detected from 1 week postoperatively and reached the maximum at 3 weeks; and bone mass and mechanical structure did not recoverer to preoperative levels until 8 weeks postoperatively. Conclusions These findings show active bone remodeling induced by osteotomy.

Microcarrier-based mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) delivery have attracted increasing attention in acute liver failure (ALF) therapy, while there is still room for improvement in terms of improving cell loading efficiency, enhancing anti-inflammatory features, and controlling cell release. Here, novel lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-composited magnetic-thermal responsive inverse opal particles (MIOPs) are presented for the delivery of MSCs. The MIOPs are composed of a chitosan inverse opal skeleton filled with a hydrogel containing LPS, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), and Fe

The present study explored the relationship between the ankle-brachial index (ABI) (>.9) and all-cause or cardio-cerebrovascular mortality. Participant details were obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2004. The association between baseline ABI and the risk of mortality was evaluated by a priori defined quartile categories and on a continuous scale (per .1-unit change) with Cox regression models adjusted for demographic and traditional risk factors. A total of 7087 individuals (age: 59.6 ± 12.8 years) were included; 3612 (51.0%) were male. After an average follow-up of 12.2 years, 1926 deaths occurred. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that the lowest ABI quartile (

Glioma is the most common primary brain tumor with poor prognosis and high mortality. The purpose of this study was to use the epigenetic signature to predict prognosis and evaluate the degree of immune infiltration in gliomas. We integrated gene expression profiles and DNA methylation data of lower-grade glioma and glioblastoma to explore epigenetic differences and associated differences in biological function. Cox regression and lasso analysis were used to develop an epigenetic signature based on eight DNA methylation sites to predict prognosis of glioma patients. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that the overall survival time of high- and low-risk groups was significantly separated, and ROC analysis verified that the model had great predictive ability. In addition, we constructed a nomogram based on age, sex, 1p/19q status, glioma type, and risk score. The epigenetic signature was obviously associated with tumor purity, immune checkpoints, and tumor-immune infiltrating cells (CD8+ T cells, gamma delta T cells, M0 macrophages, M1 macrophages, M2 macrophages, activated NK cells, monocytes, and activated mast cells) and thus, it may find application as a guide for the evaluation of immune infiltration or in treatment decisions in immunotherapy.