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Purpose: We undertook a multicenter epidemiological survey among hospitalized patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), aiming to reveal the characteristics of elderly CKD by comparing it with non-elderly CKD. Methods: Medical records were obtained from 18 military hospitals across China from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2011. The characteristics of chronic kidney disease in the elderly were analyzed through comparing with those in younger patients with chronic kidney disease. Results: A total of 380,461 hospitalized patients were included in the database, with 25,826 (6.8%) diagnosed with CKD. Unlike non-elderly, the top-three causes of chronic kidney disease among elderly patients were diabetic nephropathy (24.1%), hypertension-related renal impairment (20.9%), and primary glomerular disease (11.1%). 71.6% of the elderly patients with CKD had more than one comorbidities and the number of morbidities increased with age. In-hospital mortality of the elderly was significantly higher than those of younger patients (3.3% vs. 1.0%). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that age, CKD 5 stage, acidosis, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, infection disease, neoplasm, and dementia were independent risk factors for death from CKD in the elderly. The median length of stay (LOS) was similar between elderly and younger CKD patients. The median cost was higher for elderly CKD patients than for younger CKD patients. Among elderly individuals with CKD, LOS, and hospitalization costs also increased with an increase in the number of coexisting diseases. Conclusions: Diabetic nephropathy, and hypertension-related kidney injury were the leading causes of chronic kidney disease in elderly patients, which is different from the non-elderly. Elderly patients with chronic kidney disease were more likely to have a higher burden of comorbidities, which were associated with worse in-hospital outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced Organic Chemical Materials Co‐constructed Mechanically bonded amphiphiles (MBAs), also known as mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs), have emerged as an important kind of functional building block for the construction of artificial molecular machines and soft materials. Herein, a novel MBA, i. e., bistable [2]rotaxane H2 was designed and synthesized. In the solution state, H2 demonstrated pH and metal ion‐responsive emissions due to the presence of a distance‐dependent photoinduced electron transfer (PET) process and the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) process, respectively. Importantly, the amphiphilic feature of H2 has endowed it with unique self‐assembly capability, and nanospheres were obtained in a mixed H2O/CH3CN solvent. Moreover, the morphology of H2 aggregates can be tuned from nanospheres to vesicles due to the pH‐controlled shuttling motion‐induced alternation of H2 amphiphilicity. Interestingly, larger spheres with novel pearl‐chain‐like structures from H2 were observed after adding stoichiometric Zn2+. In particular, H2 shows pH‐responsive emissions in its aggregation state, allowing the visualization of the shuttling movement by just naked eyes. It is assumed that the well‐designed [2]rotaxane, and particularly the proposed concept of MBA shown here, will further enrich the families of MIMs, offering prospects for synthesizing more MIMs with novel assembly capabilities and bottom‐up building dynamic smart materials with unprecedented functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the electronic and piezoelectric properties of two-dimensional Janus CrXY (X/ Y = S, Se,Te) systems were investigated. The results show that the Janus CrXY systems are excellent semiconductor materials and the band gap widths of Janus CrXY range from 0. 27 eV to 0. 83 eV. The strain regulation in the x-axis direction has a great influence on the band gap, while the strain regulation in the z-axis direction has little influence on the band gap, indicating that the electronic properties of the system have good stability in the z-axis direction. The piezoelectric properties of the system were studied by density generalized perturbation method, the results show that all three materials have large out-of-plane piezoelectric coefficients d33, especially, the d33 of CrSeTe reaches 56. 89 pm/ V, which is about ten times that of the common piezoelectric material AlN (d33 = 5. 60 pm/ V). This research provides theoretical support for the practical application of two-dimensional Janus CrXY systems in the field of flexible and intelligent nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes that has a serious impact on the quality of life of patients. VEGFA is necessary in the physiological state to maintain endothelial activity and physical properties of blood vessels. VEGFA plays an important role in the promotion of neovascularization; therefore, inhibition of VEGFA can degrade the structure of blood vessels and reduce neovascularization. In the present study, HERB, a high-throughput experimental and reference-oriented database of herbal medicines, was used for compound mining targeting VEGFA. The compounds most likely to interact with VEGFA were screened by molecular docking. Next, the compounds were used to verify whether it could inhibit the activity of the VEGF signaling pathway in vitro and neovascularization in vivo. In vitro , we found that dioscin could inhibit the activation of the VEGFA–VEGFR2 signaling pathway and cell proliferation of human retinal microvascular endothelial cells in a high-glucose (HG) environment. A more important dioscin intervention inhibits the expression of pro-angiogenic factors in the retinas of db/db mice. In conclusion, our study indicates that dioscin reduces the vascular damage and the expression of pro-angiogenic factors in the retina of db/db mice and implies an important and potential application of dioscin for treatment of DR in clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Current metalenses with large numerical apertures suffer from low efficiency. In this paper, we demonstrate a refractive-meta hybrid system consisting of a ball lens mainly providing the ray bending ability, and a meta-corrector to eliminate aberration of the optical system. Spatial frequency requirement of the meta-device is significantly reduced since system ray bending ability is mainly provided by refractive element. As a result, a large pixel liquid crystal spatial light modulator is sufficient to demonstrate the concept of meta-corrector for the refractive-meta hybrid system with a numerical aperture of 0.52. It is shown that the focal spot size can be significantly reduced from 322.07 μm to 0.636 μm for ray-tracing simulation, and 101.6 μm to 7.7 μm for measurement, as an appropriate phase distribution of the meta-corrector is added. We believe this pilot experiment can be applied to ball lenses and other optical lens-sets like cookie triplets as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]