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Abstract Background The triglyceride glucose-body mass index (TyG-BMI) is considered to be a reliable surrogate marker of insulin resistance (IR). However, limited evidence exists regarding its association with the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD), particularly in hypertensive patients with different glucose metabolic states, including those with H-type hypertension. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between TyG-BMI and CAD severity across different glucose metabolism conditions. Methods This retrospective cohort study included 1537 hypertensive patients who underwent coronary angiography. The TyG-BMI was categorized into tertiles and analyzed using logistic regression models and restricted cubic spline (RCS) models to assess its association with multi-vessel CAD. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the predictive value of TyG-BMI in detecting the severity of CAD in different glucose metabolism states, including normal glucose regulation (NGR), pre-diabetes mellitus (Pre-DM), and diabetes mellitus (DM). The above method has also been applied to populations of H-type hypertension patients. Results The TyG-BMI was significantly associated with the severity of multi-vessel CAD in hypertensive patients (Odds ratio [OR] 1.043, 95% CI 1.032–1.053). In the diabetic subgroup, after adjusting for risk factors, the risk of multi-vessel CAD in the T3 groups was 3.836-fold (95% CI 1.763–8.347; P = 0.001) higher than in the T1 group, with a non-linear dose–response relationship (P for non-linearity = 0.017). In H-type hypertension patients, the TyG-BMI was also significantly correlated with multi-vessel CAD (OR 5.248, 95% CI 1.821–15.126, P = 0.002) in the DM group. The ROC analysis revealed that TyG-BMI had the highest predictive value for multi-vessel CAD in diabetic patients, with an AUC of 0.720 (95% CI 0.661–0.780, P

Using Arca subcrenata as the research object, this study explored the differences in the utilization of simulated digestion products of Arca subcrenata myofibrillar protein by probiotics, namely Lactiplantibacillus plantarun, Bifidobacterium bifidobacterial, Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. Lactis Probio-M8. The study first simulated the in vitro digestion of myofibrillar protein from Arca subcrenata and used it as a nitrogen source to co-culture with probiotics by nitrogen source replacement and nitrogen source addition, respectively. Subsequently, the utilization characteristics by the probiotics on the digestion products of myofibrillar protein from Arca subcrenata were evaluated by monitoring the growth curve, pH and colony number among others. The results showed that, compared to the de Man-Rogosa-Sharpe group, the nitrogen source replacement group could significantly inhibit the proliferation of the four probiotic species (P

Abstract Nowadays, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and techniques is ubiquitous and transversal. Fields that take advantage of AI advances include sound and music processing. The advances in interdisciplinary research potentially yield new insights that may further advance the AI methods in this field. This special issue aims to report recent progress and spur new research lines in AI-driven sound and music processing, especially within interdisciplinary research scenarios.

Background:: Cerebellar intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) modulates the excitability of the cerebral cortex and may enhance attentional performance. To date, few studies have conducted iTBS on healthy subjects for one week and used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the effect of multiple stimulation sessions on resting-state functional brain networks and the daily stimulation effect on attentional performance. Methods:: 16 healthy subjects participated in a one-week experiment, receiving bilateral cerebellar iTBS or sham stimulation and engaging in multi-task attentional training. The primary measures were the one-week attentional performance and pre- and post-experiment resting-state EEG activities. Amplitude Envelope Correlation (AEC) was used to construct the functional connectivity in the eye-open (EO) and eye-closed (EC) phases. Results:: At least three sessions of iTBS were required to enhance multi-task performance significantly, whereas only one or two sessions failed to elicit the improvement. Compared with the control group, iTBS induced significant changes in PSD, AEC functional connectivity, and AEC network properties during the EO phase, while it had little effect during the EC phase. During the EO phase, the network property changes of the iTBS subject were correlated with improved attentional performance. Conclusion:: The multi-task performance requires multiple stimulations to enhance. iTBS affects the resting-state alpha band brain activities during the EO rather than the EC phase. The AEC network properties may serve as a biomarker to assess the attentional potential of healthy subjects.

A 24-year-old male patient complained of mild knee pain after jogging. The subsequent knee MRI demonstrated bilateral lateral thickened tibiofemoral cartilages, evidenced by deformities of the bilateral subchondral bone beneath the lateral femoral condyle cartilage. The corresponding dislocations of almost all the left lateral meniscus and part of the right lateral meniscus to the center of the joint were detected. After excluding diagnoses of congenital ring-shaped meniscus, bucket handle tear of the C-shaped lateral meniscus, and central tear of the discoid meniscus, the displacement of all or part of the lateral meniscus into the intercondylar notch was considered a consequence of congenital thickening of the lateral superior and inferior cartilage. This case may report a new variant of knee joint pathology.

IntroductionMost foreign bodies (FBs) can spontaneously pass through the gastrointestinal tract. Sharp FBs are believed to be able to puncture any part of the gastrointestinal tract, causing perforation and potentially secondary damage to adjacent organs.Case descriptionA 44-year-old man complained of having persistent dull pain in the perianal region. He was diagnosed with a toothpick impacted into the wall of the lower rectum after accepting a digital rectal examination of the lower rectum and a pelvic computed tomography (CT). The surgeon extracted the FB using vascular forceps guided by the operator’s index finger. The patient was discharged after intravenous ceftriaxone was given for 6 days. A follow-up pelvic CT performed 2 weeks after surgery revealed that the perirectal fat and muscles had already normalized.ConclusionA systematic review of relevant literature from the past decade was performed to summarize the imaging features of an orally ingested toothpick perforating the gastrointestinal tract. The location of abdominal pain is an important clue for the diagnosis of toothpick perforation, and a CT examination is recommended as the first option for the detection of an ingested toothpick. Determining the location of the toothpick perforation and assessing the severity of local inflammation are important bases for the selection of treatment.

Aqueous zinc metal batteries (AZMBs) are considered a promising candidate for grid-scale energy storage systems owing to their high capacity, high safety and low cost. However, Zn anodes suffer from notorious dendrite growth and undesirable surface corrosion, severely hindering the commercialization of AZMBs. Herein, a strategy for engineering a dense ZnO coating layer on Zn anodes using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique is developed, aiming to improve its long-term cycling stability with fewer Zn dendrites. The surface-modified Zn anode (ZnO@Zn) exhibits an excellent long-cycling life (680 h) and stable coulombic efficiency when being used in a symmetric cell. Moreover, the ZnO@Zn electrode shows a high stability with almost no capacity decay after 1100 cycles at 2C in a full cell using MnO2 as the cathode. The ZnO coating is conducive to reducing corrosion and the generation of by-products, thus increasing the reversibility of Zn2+/Zn stripping/plating. Particularly, density functional theory (DFT) calculation results reveal that the ZnO coating layer could effectively lower the adsorption energy of the Zn(002) plane in ZnO@Zn, inducing the preferential deposition of Zn2+ towards the (002) crystal plane with fewer Zn dendrites. The surface ZnO coating protocol provides a promising approach to achieve a dendrite-free Zn anode for stable AZMBs.

Abstract String instruments, wind instruments and percussion instruments are three traditional categories of musical instruments, among which wind instruments play an important role. Usually, pitches of wind instruments are determined by the vibrating air column, and the musical pitches will be affected by multiple factors of the air flow. In this article, the mechanism of sound production by a pipe is analysed in terms of the coupling of the edge tone and the air column's vibration in the tube. Experiments and computational fluid dynamics numerical calculations are combined to study the influence of the jet velocity on the oscillation frequency of the edge tone and the musical sound produced by the tube, which help to gain deeper insight into the relation between physics and music.

The corrosion of rebars will change the mechanical properties of the reinforced concrete structure, leading to the decline in the structural strength, which seriously threatens the safety and stability of buildings and power equipment foundations. Hence, it is of great significance to detect the internal corrosion of reinforced concrete structures. In this paper, a nondestructive detection method for detecting the corrosion in reinforced concrete structures based on microwave was proposed, and the corrosion state of rebar can be evaluated by the change of microwave information. Compared with other detection methods, microwave nondestructive detection has the advantages of low energy consumption, strong penetration, no contact, and small equipment volume and weight. In order to verify the effectiveness of the method, a microwave nondestructive detection simulation test platform was built and reinforced concrete test models with different corrosion lengths and depths were made. The influences of concrete parameters, the microwave frequency, and the lifting distance of the waveguide were analyzed. The frequency sweeping and moving scanning detection methods of the waveguide were carried out for the test models with different corrosion defects, and the changes of microwave S-parameters under different corrosion defects were obtained. The results show that when the waveguide is placed horizontally by the frequency sweeping detection method, the corrosion length detection effect of rebar is better. When the waveguide is placed vertically by the frequency sweeping detection method, the corrosion depth can be identified and the amplitude of transmission coefficient increases with the increase in the corrosion depth. The corrosion length of rebars can be identified quantitatively by the moving scanning detection method of the waveguide.

Abstract The protein corona formed on nanoparticles (NPs) has potential as a valuable diagnostic tool for improving plasma proteome coverage. Here, we show that spiking small molecules, including metabolites, lipids, vitamins, and nutrients into plasma can induce diverse protein corona patterns on otherwise identical NPs, significantly enhancing the depth of plasma proteome profiling. The protein coronas on polystyrene NPs when exposed to plasma treated with an array of small molecules allows for the detection of 1793 proteins marking an 8.25-fold increase in the number of quantified proteins compared to plasma alone (218 proteins) and a 2.63-fold increase relative to the untreated protein corona (681 proteins). Furthermore, we discovered that adding 1000 µg/ml phosphatidylcholine could singularly enable the detection of 897 proteins. At this specific concentration, phosphatidylcholine selectively depletes the four most abundant plasma proteins, including albumin, thus reducing the dynamic range of plasma proteome and enabling the detection of proteins with lower abundance. Employing an optimized data-independent acquisition approach, the inclusion of phosphatidylcholine leads to the detection of 1436 proteins in a single plasma sample. Our molecular dynamics results reveal that phosphatidylcholine interacts with albumin via hydrophobic interactions, H-bonds, and water bridges. The addition of phosphatidylcholine also enables the detection of 337 additional proteoforms compared to untreated protein corona using a top-down proteomics approach. Given the critical role of plasma proteomics in biomarker discovery and disease monitoring, we anticipate the widespread adoption of this methodology for the identification and clinical translation of biomarkers.

The issue of coal spontaneous combustion greatly threatens the production safety of coal mining, storage, and transportation. It is significant to study oxygen adsorption understand the mechanism of coal spontaneous combustion. In this paper, based on the fractal dimension of coal and the self-similar fractal geometry, the internal pore structure of coal is modeled. Then, the lattice Boltzmann method is employed to conduct the numerical simulation of oxygen adsorption in coal. Compared with the existing experimental data and numerical simulation, the lattice Boltzmann method is verified to be correct. The numerical results indicate that in the process of oxygen adsorption in coal, the preferential flow occurs when the large pores connect to the channel. In the meantime, the large diffusion coefficient leads to an early time for adsorption equilibrium. The oxygen adsorption increases with an increased adsorption rate constant. Pore structure plays a significant role in the adsorption behavior of oxygen in coal. The results can provide theoretical support for reducing coal spontaneous combustion and ensuring coal mine safety in production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The changes and influencing factors of soil inorganic carbon (SIC) and organic carbon (SOC) on precipitation gradients are crucial for predicting and evaluating carbon storage changes at the regional scale. However, people’s understanding of the distribution characteristics of SOC and SIC reserves on regional precipitation gradients is insufficient, and the main environmental variables that affect SOC and SIC changes are also not well understood. Therefore, this study focuses on the Alxa region and selects five regions covered by three typical desert vegetation types, Zygophyllum xanthoxylon (ZX), Nitraria tangutorum (NT), and Reaumuria songarica (RS), along the climate transect where precipitation gradually increases. The study analyzes and discusses the variation characteristics of SOC and SIC under different vegetation and precipitation conditions. The results indicate that both SOC and SIC increase with the increase of precipitation, and the increase in SOC is greater with the increase of precipitation. The average SOC content in the 0–300cm profile is NT (4.13 g kg−1) > RS (3.61 g kg−1) > ZX (3.57 g kg−1); The average value of SIC content is: RS (5.78 g kg−1) > NT (5.11 g kg−1) > ZX (5.02 g kg−1). Overall, the multi-annual average precipitation (MAP) in the Alxa region is the most important environmental factor affecting SIC and SOC.

Blood–brain barrier (BBB) prevents neurotoxins from entering central nervous system. We aimed to establish and characterize an in vitro triple co-culture BBB model consisting of brain endothelial cells hCMEC/D3, astrocytoma U251 cells, and neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells. Co-culture of SH-SY5Y and U251 cells markedly enhanced claudin-5 and VE-cadherin expression in hCMEC/D3 cells, accompanied by increased transendothelial electrical resistance and decreased permeability. Conditioned medium (CM) from SH-SY5Y cells (S-CM), U251 cells (U-CM), and co-culture of SH-SY5Y and U251 cells (US-CM) also promoted claudin-5 and VE-cadherin expression. Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) levels in S-CM and US-CM were significantly higher than CMs from hCMEC/D3 and U-CM. Both GDNF and US-CM upregulated claudin-5 and VE-cadherin expression, which were attenuated by anti-GDNF antibody and GDNF signaling inhibitors. GDNF increased claudin-5 expression via the PI3K/AKT/FOXO1 and MAPK/ERK pathways. Meanwhile, GDNF promoted VE-cadherin expression by activating PI3K/AKT/ETS1 and MAPK/ERK/ETS1 signaling. The roles of GDNF in BBB integrity were validated using brain-specific Gdnf silencing mice. The developed triple co-culture BBB model was successfully applied to predict BBB permeability. In conclusion, neurons enhance BBB integrity by upregulating claudin-5 and VE-cadherin expression through GDNF secretion and established triple co-culture BBB model may be used to predict drugs’ BBB permeability.

BackgroundBody constitution is the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and model workers consist of a special group of workers within China. This study aims to research the relationship between the physical body constitutions based on TCM and the mental health of model workers.MethodsWe recruited 314 model workers from Beijing Rehabilitation Hospital to conduct the questionnaires such as SCL-90 and CCMQ to investigate if there is an association between mental health status and TCM body constitutions. We performed a Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS path modeling).ResultsOur path model results revealed associations between different TCM constitution types and SCL scores, which serve as indicators of psychological well-being. Our research findings demonstrate a strong correlation between the Balanced constitution and elevated levels of psychological well-being, with a path coefficient of -0.503. In contrast, the other eight constitutional types exhibit path coefficients exceeding 0.3, indicating a tendency toward lower levels of psychological well-being. We also investigated the intricate connections between various TCM constitutional types and both mild and severe psychological well-being.ConclusionIn conclusion, the Balanced constitution continues to be closely associated with higher levels of psychological well-being, while the remaining eight body constitution types are consistently linked to lower levels of psychological well-being.

Abstract The quality of the rebar thread head is crucial for the connection between the rebars, thereby affecting the public safety of the building. The edge extraction of the thread image is the most important step in obtaining the accurate size parameters, which helps to complete online inspection of quality. Here, an edge detection method based on improved Canny operator is proposed to solve the problems on sensitivity to noise, existence of false edges, and lack of self‐adaptability. Firstly, an improved adaptive median filtering algorithm is used to denoise the image. Then replace Sobel with Scharr to enhance the gap between pixel values, add 45° and 135° directional templates to prevent edge information loss as well. Besides, introduce a scale factor to improve the interpolation method for non‐maximum suppression and reduce false edges. Finally, use Ostu operator to achieve adaptive extraction of high and low thresholds to complete adaptive edge detection. The qualitative analysis and quantitative results show that the improved algorithm can not only have a good visual effect, have good robustness and feasibility, but also be faster than other algorithms, which provide a basic guarantee for real‐time online quality detection of the thread head.

As a vital conservation area for water sources in the Yellow River Basin, understanding the spatial-temporal dynamics of vegetation coverage is crucial, along with the factors that affect it, to ensure ecological preservation and sustainable development of the Yellow River Source Region (YRSR). In this paper, we utilized Landsat surface reflectance data from 2000 to 2020 using de-clouding and masking methods implementing the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform. We investigated spatial-temporal changes in vegetation coverage by combining the maximum value composite (MVC), the dimidiate pixel model (DPM), the Theil–Sen median slope, and the Mann–Kendall test. The influencing factors on vegetation coverage were quantitatively analyzed using a geographic detector, and future tendencies in vegetation coverage were predicted utilizing the Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) model. The outcomes suggested the following: (1) On the temporal scale, vegetation coverage exhibited a general upward trend between 2000 and 2020, with the YRSR showing a yearly growth rate of 0.23% (p < 0.001). In comparison to 2000, the area designated as having extremely high vegetation coverage increased by 19.3% in 2020. (2) Spatially, the central and southeast regions have higher values of vegetation coverage, whereas the northwest has lower values. In the study area, 75.5% of the region demonstrated a significant improvement trend, primarily in Xinghai County, Zeku County, and Dari County in the south and the northern portion of the YRSR; conversely, a notable tendency of degradation was identified in 11.8% of the area, mostly in the southeastern areas of Qumalai County, Chenduo County, Shiqu County, and scattered areas in the southeastern region. (3) With an explanatory power of exceeding 45%, the three influencing factors that had the biggest effects on vegetation coverage were mean annual temperature, elevation, and mean annual precipitation. Mean annual precipitation has been shown to have a major impact on vegetation covering; the interconnections involving these factors have increased the explanatory power of vegetation coverage’s regional distribution. (4) Predictions for 2030 show that the vegetation coverage is trending upward in the YRSR, with a notable recovery trend in the northwestern region. This study supplies a theoretical foundation to formulate strategies to promote sustainable development and ecological environmental preservation in the YRSR.