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Aim: To estimate the prevalence of nocturia in middle‐aged and elderly men and evaluate its associated factors and changes over time. Methods: Data of middle‐aged and older men aged ≥40 years from the 2007–2008 and 2017–2020 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were retrospectively analyzed. The prevalence of nocturia was estimated using participant questionnaires on nocturia, lifestyle‐related factors, and health factors, and its decadal changes were examined using multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine related factors associated with the prevalence of nocturia. Results: The prevalence of nocturia was 38.0% in 2007–2008 and 39.6% in 2017–2020, with no significant increase observed (P = 0.3989). Being a non‐Hispanic black was positively correlated with nocturia (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.54, 1.22–1.93, P < 0.001), whereas the correlation with being a Mexican American disappeared (AOR = 1.25, 0.90–1.73, P = 0.187). Diabetes (AOR = 1.32, 1.07–1.64, P = 0.010) and sleep disorders (AOR = 1.31, 1.07–1.60, P = 0.008) showed a statistically significant positive correlation with nocturia, whereas a significant negative correlation was observed between employment (AOR = 0.66, 0.54–0.82, P < 0.001) and nocturia. Above‐high‐school education (AOR = 0.60, 0.47–0.76, P < 0.001) showed a constant trend toward a negative correlation with nocturia. The correlation between high school education or general educational development and nocturia disappeared (AOR = 0.81, 0.62–1.05, P = 0.112). Conclusion: Diabetes and sleep disorders contribute to the development of nocturia, while work and high educational attainment can actively combat nocturia. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2024; 24: 1308–1314. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Previous observational studies have been controversial regarding the association of leukocyte telomere length (LTL) with prostate cancer (PCa) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Methods First, we conducted an observational study utilizing UK Biobank data. The correlation between LTL and the risk of PCa and BPH was evaluated via multivariate-adjusted logistic regression. Then, we conducted a 2-sample Mendelian randomization to examine causal links between LTL (472 174 individuals) and PCa as well as BPH. To verify the reliability of the primary analysis, we conducted a second analysis and sensitivity analyses. Results In the UK Biobank study, individuals in the longer quartiles of LTL were observed to have a higher risk of PCa (1.155-fold to 1.349-fold, all p  < .001) and BPH (1.119-fold to 1.212-fold, all p  < .001) compared to those in the lowest quartile in multivariate-adjusted logistic regression. We observed that genetically predicted longer LTL resulted in a 1.427-fold risk of PCa (odds ratio [OR] = 1.427, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.197–1.702, p  < .001) and 1.539-fold risk of BPH (OR = 1.539, 95% CI = 1.387–1.707, p  < .001) in the primary analysis. In the second analysis, the results also indicated that longer LTL increased the genetic liability to both PCa (OR = 1.338, 95% CI = 1.189–1.507, p  < .001) and BPH (OR = 1.006, 95% CI = 1.003–1.008, p  < .001). Sensitivity analyses also supported the reliability of the results. Conclusions Our study provides convincing evidence supporting that longer LTL increases the risk of PCa and BPH in European individuals. Large-scale studies are needed to elucidate the potential mechanisms of LTL in PCa and BPH occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, HfxAlyOz nanolaminate, single-layer Al2O3, and HfO2 gate insulators were fabricated by atomic layer deposition (ALD) to successfully integrate the InGaZnO (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). Compared with single-layer HfO2-based TFTs, the HfxAlyOz-based IGZO TFTs showed a larger field-effect mobility of 10.31 cm2/Vs and a smaller subthreshold swing of 0.12 V/decade. Moreover, it showed a smaller threshold voltage shift of 0.5 V than that of HfO2-based TFTs under gate-bias stress at +5 V for 900 s due to the smooth surface. Moreover, the high dielectric HfxAlyOz nanolaminate had a larger equivalent SiO2 thinness than that of Al2O3 gate insulators, which are beneficial in applications of high-resolution display. Thus, the high mobility and high stability TFTs could be regarded as good candidates for active-matrix flat panel displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to improve car body stability performance by optimising locomotive parameters when coupler jack-knifing occurs during braking. In order to prevent car body instability behaviour caused by coupler jack-knifing, a multi-locomotive simulation model and a series of field braking tests are developed to analyse the influence of the secondary suspension and the secondary lateral stopper on the car body stability performance during braking. According to simulation and test results, increasing secondary lateral stiffness contributes to limit car body yaw angle during braking. However, it seriously affects the dynamic performance of the locomotive. For the secondary lateral stopper, its lateral stiffness and free clearance have a significant influence on improving the car body stability capacity, and have less effect on the dynamic performance of the locomotive. An optimised measure was proposed and adopted on the test locomotive. For the optimised locomotive, the lateral stiffness of secondary lateral stopper is increased to 7875 kN/m, while its free clearance is decreased to 10 mm. The optimised locomotive has excellent dynamic and safety performance. Comparing with the original locomotive, the maximum car body yaw angle and coupler rotation angle of the optimised locomotive were reduced by 59.25% and 53.19%, respectively, according to the practical application. The maximum derailment coefficient was 0.32, and the maximum wheelset lateral force was 39.5 kN. Hence, reasonable parameters of secondary lateral stopper can improve the car body stability capacity and the running safety of the heavy haul locomotive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the effect of the secondary lateral stopper on the compressed stability of the couplers in order to improve the running safety of the heavy-haul locomotives. The influence mechanism of the secondary lateral stopper on the compressed stability of the couplers is theoretically analyzed. To verify the effect of the secondary lateral stopper, both the simulation and the field braking tests are conducted. The multi-body dynamic model consists of two eight-axle locomotives, one dummy of freight vehicle and four detailed connected couplers. The field braking tests are conducted on the tangent line using three eight-axle locomotives. The results indicate that decreasing the free clearance and increasing the stiffness of the secondary lateral stopper both have a positive effect. However, when the free clearance decreases from 20 mm to 10 mm, there is no remarkable decrease in the yaw angles of the coupler and the car body, and the maximum lateral force of the wheelset is still out of the standard in the simulation. When the stiffness of the secondary lateral stopper increases by five times, the yaw angles of the coupler and the car body are reduced significantly and the running safety of the locomotives is also enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recently developed matrix-based complex PCA (MCPCA) can fuse bimodal biometrics at the feature level and obtain a promising classification accuracy. However, when solving the eigen-equation, MCPCA is only a unsupervised method, which implies that in the training process MCPCA is not able to exploit the class labels of training samples. In order to overcome this problem, we propose an improvement to MCPCA, i.e. complex matrix PCA consisting of two transform steps. The proposed improvement has the following advantages: as the proposed improvement is a supervised method, it can fully exploit the class labels of training samples for training. Owing to the same reason, the solution of the proposed improvement can contain more discriminative information than MCPCA. The experimental results show that the proposed improvement to MCPCA can produce a good performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Up to now, a number of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) methods have been developed. Though all these methods have a goal of maximizing the between-class distance and of minimizing the within-class distance, they are formally different and seem to have different performance. This paper aims at revealing the similarity and difference between different matrix-based LDA methods, which is helpful for people to better understand these methods. We first use a formally united framework to present the LDA methodology including different LDA methods and then perform comparison experiments of two LDA methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: The global concern regarding the health implications of night shift work has escalated. Nevertheless, variations exist in the observed association between night shift work and prostate cancer (PCa). This study aims to systematically explore the association between night shift work and the risk of PCa., Design: Cohort study and Mendelian randomisation (MR) study were used., Setting: Cohort study data was from the UK Biobank (UKB). MR study using data was from the Finngen study and UKB through the Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU) Open Genome-Wide Association Study Project., Participants: Participants without prior PCa in paid employment or self-employment were include in the current work schedule cohort, participants without PCa who provided employment history formed the lifetime night shift work cohort., Main Outcome Measures: The outcome, incident PCa, was obtained from cancer register through linkage to national cancer databases. National cancer registries centralised information received from separate regional cancer centres around the UK., Results: A total of 130 853 participants were included in the current work schedule cohort, while the lifetime night shift work cohort comprised 49 511 participants. Over a median follow-up duration of 13.9 years, the current work schedule cohort witnessed 4993 incident cases of PCa, while the lifetime night shift work cohort recorded 2022 PCa cases. In the analysis of the current work schedule, final model showed that no significant association was found between shift work and PCa risk, whether it involved shift but no night shifts (HR 0.96, 95% CI 0.85 to 1.08), some night shifts (HR 1.16, 95% CI 0.99 to 1.33) and usual night shifts (HR 1.01, 95% CI 0.85 to 1.19). In the analysis of the average frequency of night shift work, final model showed no significant impact of different night shift frequencies (<3/month: HR 0.97, 95% CI 0.73 to 1.29; 3-8/month: HR 0.99, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.19; >8/month: HR 0.89, 95% CI 0.73 to 1.07) on the risk of PCa. No significant association was found for either <10 years (HR 0.89, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.09) or ≥10 years (HR 1.00, 95% CI 0.86 to 1.16) of night shift work. Subsequent subgroup and sensitivity analyses demonstrated consistent results without significant alterations. Furthermore, in the two-sample MR analysis, no statistically significant causal relationship was identified between night shift work and the incidence of PCa., Conclusion: In both the cohort studies and MR analysis, our investigation did not find any association between night shift work and PCa., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ Group.)

Cancer exhibits diverse heterogeneity with a complicated molecular basis that usually harbors genetic and epigenetic abnormality, which poses a big challenge for single-target agents. In the current work, we proposed a hybrid strategy by incorporating pharmacophores that bind to the acetylated lysine binding pocket of BET proteins with a typical kinase hinge binder to generate novel polypharmacological inhibitors of BET and kinases. Through elaborating the core structure of 6-(pyrimidin-2-ylamino)-3,4-dihydroquinoxalin-2(1 H )-one, we demonstrated that this rational design can produce high potent inhibitors of CDK9 and BET proteins. In this series, compound 40 was identified as the potential lead compound with balanced activities of BRD4 (IC 50 = 12.7 nM) and CDK9 (IC 50 = 22.4 nM), as well as good antiproliferative activities on a small cancer cell panel. Together, the current study provided a new method for the discovery of bromodomain and kinase dual inhibitors rather than only being discovered by serendipity.