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Objectives: To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy of rectal nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) alone or in combination with other agents for preventing pancreatitis after endoscopic retrograde cholangiopanography. Methods: We carried out a literature search of random controlled trials (RCTs) on preventing post-operative pancreatitis by administration of the anti-inflammatory drugs, indomethacin and diclofenac, following endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). The databases searched for relevant publications up to July 7, 2021, included PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase. We screened the literature according to inclusion criteria and analyzed the extracted data. The overall population and high-risk patient groups were analyzed, with the main outcome being the incidence of PEP. Results: The search identified 32 RCTs that included 15019 patients with post-ERCP pancreatitis and 9 different interventions. The results of the overall population network meta-analysis showed that NSAIDs alone, high-dose NSAIDs, and a combination of NSAIDs significantly reduced the incidence of PEP compared with placebo. However, compared with placebo, there was no statistically significant difference between the two interventions (NSAIDs + standard hydration and high-dose NSAIDs). In addition, NSAIDs + sublingual nitrates were associated with a lower incidence of PEP compared to that observed with NSAIDs alone. Probability ranking results showed that NSAIDs + sublingual nitrate had the best effect, followed by NSAIDs + standard hydration, NSAIDs + melatonin, NSAIDs + aggressive hydration, NSAIDs + somatostatin, NSAIDs alone, NSAIDs + epinephrine, high-dose NSAIDs, and placebo. In the high-risk subgroup, the results of the network meta-analysis showed that NSAIDs alone, high-dose NSAIDs, and a combination of NSAIDs showed no statistically significant difference in their ability to reduce the incidence of PEP compared with placebo. Probability ranking results showed that NSAIDs + hydration had the best effect, followed by NSAIDs + sublingual nitroglycerin and NSAIDs + aggressive hydration. Conclusion: Of the nine interventions, NSAIDs + sublingual nitrates had considerably better efficacy than the other drugs for reducing the incidence of PEP in the overall population. In high-risk patients, NSAIDs + standard hydration may be the best preventive treatment; however, more randomized, controlled trials are needed to validate our results. Trial registration: Name of the registry: PROSPERO-International prospective register of systematic reviews. Unique identifying number or registration ID: CRD42021282205. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a zoonotic disease caused by Echinococcus granulosus (Eg) infection. Th9 cells are reported to be involved in the immune responses in CE patients. This study aims to investigate the role of TGF-β/Smad pathway in the regulation of Th9 cells in CE patients.Methods: Using Western blot analysis, flow cytometry, qPCR, immunohistochemistry, ELISA and MTT assay, we measured the expression levels of TGF-β/Smad, PU.1, IRF-4, and IL-9 in CE patients.Results: The levels of TGF-β, p-Samd3, PU.1 and IL-9 were elevated in the liver of CE patients. IL-9 and IL-9R expressions were also elevated in the infected liver tissue, and IL-9 level was positively correlated with the liver inflammation. The levels of IL-9, IL-4, TGF-β and IL-10 in the supernatant were also significantly increased after stimulating hepatic lymphocytes of CE patients with Eg antigen B. After blocking the TGF-β pathway signaling in vitro, PU.1 and IL-9 were obviously reduced.Conclusions: IL-9 may aggravate the inflammatory response in the liver of CE patients. The TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway is activated, and the signaling pathway may promote the differentiation of Th9 cells and IL-9 expression in active CE patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the existence of multiple positive and negative solutions for a class of Kirchhoff type problems on an unbounded domain. Using the variational methods, we show that our problem admits at least two positive and two negative solutions under different conditions. A cut-off functional is utilized to obtain the bounded Palais–Smale sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we study the multiplicity results of positive solutions for a semi-linear elliptic system involving both concave–convex and critical growth terms. With the help of Nehari manifold and Lusternik–Schnirelmann category, we prove that the problem admits at least distinct positive solutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Molybdenum disulphide (MoS 2) is proven to be a promising catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), but the HER performance of reported MoS 2 -based catalysts is still limited by its poor conductivity and low density of active sites. Herein, a Pt-doped MoS 2 (Pt@MoS 2) catalyst is synthesized by a potential-cycling method, which introduces the Pt dopant into the MoS 2 lattice and achieves partial 2H to 1T phase conversion of MoS 2 simultaneously. Benefitting from the optimized geometric and electronic structure of MoS 2 , the Pt@MoS 2 exhibits a low overpotential of 88.43 mV at 10 mA cm−2, which is decreased by two-thirds as compared to that of the pristine MoS 2. A comprehensive study reveals the position and the contribution of Pt atom in electronic structure modulation of MoS 2. Theoretical calculations further reveal that the S atom adjacent to the Pt in MoS 2 acts as the most active site for HER, and possesses a small hydrogen adsorption free energy (∆ G H * ) of ~ 0.04 eV, similar to the benchmark Pt catalyst. This study opens up a new avenue for designing MoS 2 and other transition metal dichalcogenide-based electrocatalysts with enhanced HER performance, as well as providing in-depth understanding on the HER mechanism in external metal-activated MoS 2 catalyst. This work reports a synergistic Pt doping and phase engineering in MoS 2 realizing an efficient hydrogen evolution activity. Benefitting from the optimized geometric and electronic structure of Pt@MoS 2 , the Pt@MoS 2 exhibits a low overpotential of 88.43 mV at 10 mA cm−2, which is a decrease of two-thirds compared to pristine MoS 2. [Display omitted] • Synergistic Pt doping and phase engineering in MoS 2 have been achieved by a one-step potential-cycling method. • HER performance over the Pt doped 1T MoS 2 is significantly improved. • Atomic-level structure and coordination structure of Pt atom in MoS 2 is investigated. • The contribution of Pt atom in 1T MoS 2 towards HER is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions for a Kirchhoff-type problem involving several potentials and critical nonlinearities on unbounded domain. The first main result is that the problem possesses a ground state solution concentrating around a concrete set relates to the potentials. The second one is that with the help of Nehari manifold and Ljusternik–Schnirelmann category, the relationship between the number of positive solutions and the category of the global minima set of a suitable ground energy function is established. Moreover, we present a sufficient condition for the nonexistence of ground state solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational robust hierarchical-porous Graphene/C/SiO 2 hollow microspheres (G/C/SiO 2 ) were designed as scaffold to load sulfur. The sulfur was impregnated into the microspheres to generate sulfur-Graphene/C/SiO 2 composites (S-G/C/SiO 2 ) for Li-S batteries. The 3D porous microspheres consist of SiO 2 nanoparticles connected by interconnected graphene and carbon layer, which could leave enough room for volume changes of sulfur during the charge-discharge process, and imprison the polysulfide via physical adsorption and chemical binding, thus effectively improving the cycle stability. As a result, the S-G/C/SiO 2 with 20.1 wt. % SiO 2 exhibits high discharge capacities up to 1118.4 mA h g −1 at 0.1C, an excellent rate capability of 551.7 mA h g −1 at 5C, and an exciting cycle performance of 626.3 mA h g −1 after 400 cycles at 0.5C (ultralow capacity decay of only 0.062% per cycle), represented to be a promising cathode material for Li-S batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different from handcrafted features, deep neural networks can automatically learn task-specific features from data. Due to this data-driven nature, they have achieved remarkable success in various areas. However, manual design and selection of suitable network architectures are time-consuming and require substantial effort of human experts. To address this problem, researchers have proposed neural architecture search (NAS) algorithms which can automatically generate network architectures but suffer from heavy computational cost and instability if searching from scratch. In this paper, we propose a hybrid NAS framework for ultrasound (US) image classification and segmentation. The hybrid framework consists of a pre-trained backbone and several searched cells (i.e., network building blocks), which takes advantage of the strengths of both NAS and the expert knowledge from existing convolutional neural networks. Specifically, two effective and lightweight operations, a mixed depth-wise convolution operator and a squeeze-and-excitation block, are introduced into the candidate operations to enhance the variety and capacity of the searched cells. These two operations not only decrease model parameters but also boost network performance. Moreover, we propose a re-aggregation strategy for the searched cells, aiming to further improve the performance for different vision tasks. We tested our method on two large US image datasets, including a 9-class echinococcosis dataset containing 9566 images for classification and an ovary dataset containing 3204 images for segmentation. Ablation experiments and comparison with other handcrafted or automatically searched architectures demonstrate that our method can generate more powerful and lightweight models for the above US image classification and segmentation tasks. • A hybrid NAS framework that also utilizes expert knowledge from existing CNNs. • Progressive growing to stabilize the search process. • Cell re-aggregation to adapt to different tasks. • Extensive comparisons in two large US image datasets demonstrate the superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heteroatom doping carbonaceous materials are of great significance in potassium-ion batteries. In this work, a special iodine-/ nitrogen- dual-doped hard carbon (I/N-HC) material is successfully synthesized. In contrast to single-substitutional N dopant atoms, the I dopant presents two configurations of I 3 − and I 5 − adsorbed on the surface of carbon plane. Both I -doping and N -doping could provide more K -ions storage sites. Furthermore, the enhanced interlayer distance by I -doped and strongly K -ion adsorption energy of I/N codoping (about -4.00 eV), would favor the adsorption of K ions. When used as K -ion batteries anodes, I/N-HC can be maintained a reversible capacity of 149 mAh g−1 over 400 cycles at 500 mA g−1, and an outstanding rate capability of 150 mAh g−1 at 800 mA g−1. This work offers a new type of iodine doping, and reveal the mechanism of I/N co-doping carbon materials for K -ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]