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Hypertensive adults are at a higher risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Dietary omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (N3-PUFA) intake has been associated with cardiovascular benefits. However, few studies have specifically investigated whether dietary intake of N3-PUFA is associated with lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality among hypertensive adults in the U.S. This prospective cohort study included 26,914 hypertensive individuals 18 years or older who participated in 10 NHANES cycles from 1999 to 2018. Dietary levels of N3-PUFA were obtained from the 24-hour dietary recalls. The dietary data were linked to mortality records from the National Death Index through December 31, 2019. The associations between dietary N3-PUFA levels and mortality were evaluated by constructing the Multivariable Cox Proportional Hazards models. We observed an increasing trend of dietary N3-PUFA intake levels over the years, mainly driven by alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Lower all-cause mortality risk was observed among hypertensive adults with higher consumption of total N3-PUFA [adjusted hazards ratio, 95% confidence interval: 0.91 (0.86, 0.97)], plant-based ALA [0.88 (0.83, 0.93)], fish oil-based eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) + docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) [0.91 (0.83, 0.99)], EPA [0.93 (0.88, 0.98)], docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) [0.73 (0.58, 0.91)], or DHA [0.95 (0.90, 0.99)]. Hypertensive adults were at lower risk of cardiovascular mortality if their diet contained higher levels of total N3-PUFA [0.68 (0.53, 0.88)], ALA [0.89 (0.80, 0.99)], EPA [0.87 (0.79, 0.97)] or DPA [0.86 (0.78, 0.95)]. Weighted quantile sum analysis showed that ALA, EPA, and DPA were the main contributors of the N3-PUFA benefits against mortality among hypertensive adults. Dietary intake of N3-PUFA, particularly ALA, EPA, and DPA, was associated with lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality among U.S. hypertensive adults. These findings suggest that increasing dietary intake of N3-PUFA may serve as a potential strategy to lower hypertension-associated mortality risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • In Guangxi, some villagers grabbed land at the expense of their neighbours and kin. • This paper focuses on dynamics of land-based changes and production processes. • Small-scale land grabs are not necessarily less significant than large-scale ones. • Land grabs dominated by local actors sometimes have more serious adverse impacts. • Villagers can also be grabbers rather than simply victims, or otherwise resisters. Abstract While most studies focus on large-scale foreign corporate-dominated land grabbing, relatively small-scale land acquisitions initiated by local villagers receive much less attention. This reflects that the scale, the identity of investors and a simplified role of villagers tend to take precedence in analyses of land grabbing. However, the common dichotomies of "large vs small", "outside vs local actors" and "victim vs grabber" might be problematic and even misleading, considering the case of Guangxi. In China's Guangxi province, with the rise of the industrial tree planation (ITP) sector, some villagers have gained control over the land from local or nearby village collectives and have become owners of ITPs. Over the course of these practices, grabbers are not from "outside", but "local villagers" themselves. They are then able to control the land, which was originally collectively used and benefit from it at the expense of their neighbours and kin, under certain contexts. Such land control change is called intimate land grabbing. This case demonstrates that: (1) small-scale land grabs are not necessarily less significant than large-scale ones; (2) land grabs dominated by local actors sometimes have more serious adverse impacts on local communities; and (3) villagers can also be grabbers, rather than simply victims, or otherwise resisters. In bringing the issue of intimate land grabbing into the debate, this paper argues that the importance of a land grab is neither represented by its scale nor the identity of the grabber(s), but by its de facto consequences, especially the distribution of the costs and benefits. This piece hopes to highlight the importance of dynamics of social relations around land and production processes in analyses of land grabbing and contribute to a fuller picture of global land grabbing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Proposing a doubly contrastive learning (DCL) model for representation learning. • Designing a novel personalized federated learning (FL) framework by using DCL. • Obtaining common features by the global model and specific features by the local models. • Achieving high performance on Non-IID federated image classification. [Display omitted] This paper focuses on the problem of personalized federated learning (FL) with the schema of contrastive learning (CL), which is to implement collaborative pattern classification by many clients. The traditional FL frameworks mostly facilitate the global model for the server and the local models for the clients to be similar, often ignoring the data heterogeneity of the clients. Aiming at achieving better performance in clients, this study introduces a personalized federated contrastive learning model, dubbed PerFCL, by proposing a new approach to doubly contrastive representation learning (DCL). Concretely, PerFCL borrows the DCL scheme, where one CL loss compares the shared parts of local models with the global model and the other CL loss compares the personalized parts of local models with the global model. To encourage the difference between the two parts, we created a double optimization problem composed of maximizing the comparison agreement for the former and minimizing the comparison agreement for the latter. We evaluated the proposed model on three publicly available data sets for federated image classification. Experiment results show that PerFCL benefits from the proposed DCL strategy and performs better than the state-of-the-art federated-learning models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to estimate, through meta-analysis, the global prevalence of hypertension among people living with HIV (PLWH). A total of 49 studies published during 2011–2016 with 63,554 participants were included in analysis. These studies were conducted in America (25), Europe (13), Africa (10), and Asia (1) with data collected during 1996–2014. Prevalence of hypertension and confidence interval was estimated and stratified by participants’ age, antiretroviral therapy (ART), and calendar-years using random effects modeling. The quality assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Prevalence Critical Appraisal Tool was high for all included studies. The estimated prevalence (95% confidence interval) of hypertension was 25.2% (21.2%, 29.6%) for the overall sample, 34.7% (27.4%, 42.8%) for ART-experienced, and 12.7% (7.4%, 20.8%) for ART-naïve participants. The estimated prevalence was found increased with age and in studies conducted after 2010. Hypertension among PLWH shows an increasing trend and is associated with receiving ART and older age. Findings of this study provide data for decision makers to incorporate blood pressure assessment in primary prevention and for researchers to further investigate factors and mechanisms related to hypertension among PLWH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consuming safe and sustainable food requires trust. Consumer trust in food can be established in different ways, including through personal relationships or various institutional arrangements established by government, private companies and/or civil-society organisations. The recent increase in food-safety incidents and sustainability concerns in China suggests a dwindling trust in the current government-dominated food governance arrangement. This paper investigates whether emerging alternative trust arrangements and modes of food supply are better able to build consumer trust in contemporary China. Based on a survey of urban middle-class consumers in Beijing using various (i.e., alternative and conventional) food-supply modes, the role and importance of personal and institutional trust arrangements are compared. We found that even among the wealthier and more educated consumers in Beijing, only a small proportion regularly use alternative food-supply schemes; most rely on conventional wet markets and supermarkets. Buying food is primarily constrained by convenience, freshness and the price of food and less by food-safety concerns. In Beijing, trust in food-safety information remains largely derived from the government and less from the market (private certification schemes) or civil society. These findings contribute to the increasing body of knowledge on the embedded character of food consumption and on the relevance of designing policy strategies that connect institutional context and particular consumption practices. In our conclusion, we argue that to secure safe and sustainable food provision, the present government-based trust regime in China requires strengthening through linking up with market- and civil society-based trust regimes, complemented by elements of personalised trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The land rush has remained, and is likely to remain, a significant global phenomenon despite waning international media attention. The scope of the phenomenon is likely to be wider than previously thought. Quantifying the extent of land deals in order to study the social phenomenon spotlights the relevance of two distinct but dialectically linked 'scopes', namely, the scope of land deals in terms of the precise geographic physical land area of Operational land deals, and the scope of land deals in terms of the larger extent of lands implicated in land deal-making, of which only a part ends up as operational land deals. The latter category is necessarily bigger than the former, and its logic results in the production of Non-operational land deals. Studies have been overwhelmingly about Operational land deals, inadvertently downplaying the relevance of Non-operational land deals. The challenge is to study both Operational and Non-operational land deals because they are co-constitutive. • The scope of global land deals has been under-estimated. • There are types of 'scope' of land deals: the physical land area of Operational land deals, and the area implicated in land deal-making. • Corporate land deals can be categorized into 'Operational' and 'Non-operational'; nearly all studies focus on the first. • Key is to study both types of scope, and both the Operational and Non-operational land deals because they are co-constitutive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the Songgang River (SR) was selected as a typical tributary that is heavily polluted by rapid urbanization and industrialization. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) distribution at five representative sampling sites from different urban functional areas was studied. The chemical and physical properties and spatial and vertical distribution of PAHs in sediments were investigated. PAH source identification and the ecological risks of the sediments were evaluated. The results suggested that the industrial zone and dense residential and commercial areas were the most contaminated areas of the SR, as the chemical and physical properties of total organic carbon content in sediments was the highest at the dense residential and commercial areas (0.1–4.5%); however, the acid volatile sulfide, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus contents were the highest in the industrial zone, with ranges of 700.0–1618.4 mg/kg dw, 22.4–3543.9 mg/kg dw, and 82.3–4550.7 mg/kg dw, respectively. The spatial distribution of residual PAHs in the sediment cores showed a wide variation among different urban functional areas, and the vertical characterization (0–300 cm) depicted a significant decreasing trend with depth and with an abrupt increase at 180 cm. The concentration of ∑16 PAHs ranged from 208.7 to 7709.8 ng/g dw, with the highest concentrations obtained in the industrial zone. The low molecular weight-PAHs (153–6720 ng/g dw) were predominant in the sediments. Furthermore, there were combined sources (biomass burning: 40.3%; fossil fuel combustion: 25.5%; mixed source: 21.5%; oil pollution: 12.7%) and a long term accumulation effect, with anthropogenic activities and industrial pollution as the major contributing sources. The concentrations of Nap, Acy, Ace, Flu, and Ant exceeded the lower limit of the sediment quality criteria, and higher toxic equivalent concentration values of the total carcinogenic PAHs were observed nearby the midstream of the SR, which may cause adverse biological effects and implies a need for regular monitoring. Image 1 • PAH distribution in sediments from different urban functional areas was studied. • The industrial zone and dense residential areas had the highest PAH concentrations. • Combustion and petroleum pollutants were the major PAH sources. • Toxicological effects of Nap, Acy, Ace, Flu, and Ant should not be underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Reinfection defined as experienced more than two independent attacks regardless of subtypes • The median age at the first influenza virus infection was 4.5 (inter quartile range, 2.0–7.5) years • Reinfection was similar with influenza infection occurred in autumn and winter • The recurrent episode occurred 1.2–96.1 months between two consecutive onsets • No subtypes analysis due to the low number of laboratory-confirmed diagnoses Epidemiological characteristic profile of the reinfection of the influenza virus has not been well described. This study included all influenza cases of Guangxi, China from January 2011–December 2019 that were recorded in the National Notifiable Infectious Disease Reporting Information System (NIDRIS) within 24 hours after diagnosis. A total of 53,605.6 person-months and the median time of 8.7 months were observed for reinfection. The median age at the first influenza virus infection was 4.5 (interquartile range=2.0–7.5) years. The cumulative reinfection incidence was 2% at 6 months, 4% at 12 months, 5% at 24 months, and 7% after 59 months. Living in the rural area (hazard ratio [HR]=1.37 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.29-1.45]), age ≤6 years (HR=11.43 [95% CI, 9.47–13.80]) were independent risk factors associated with influenza reinfection. Among 49 patients experiencing two laboratory tests, 32 patients (65.3%) were found to be infected with different virus types. The interval between two consecutive laboratory-confirmed episodes of the four groups differed (p =0.148): the maximum was 72.9 months and the minimum was 1.2 months. The reinfection of the influenza virus in Guangxi was independently and positively associated with living the rural area and younger age. The unusually high frequency of reinfection points to a need for further prospective longitudinal studies to better investigate the sufficient impact on different subtypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The rise of the ITP sector in China has led to diverse dynamics of land-use change. • The focus of analyses should shift from land access to land control. • Land-use change is not only economic and personal, but also social and political. • Interventions "from above" and "from below" and their interactions (re)shape land-use change. This paper explores the distinct dynamics of land-use change in the context of the rise of the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector in Southern China, considering both land access and three political-economic control mechanisms. It demonstrates that the expansion of the ITP sector in Southern China involves multiple directions of land-use change. It argues that land-use change does not solely result from personal economic decisions based on one's land access, but is also affected by political economic circumstances. In other words, having land access does not necessarily secure full control over land use. Instead, a series of structural and relational factors, including state and corporate interventions "from above", political reactions "from below", and interactions of the two – serve to drive forward, block or modify the direction of land-use change, even though they might not affect land access. In highlighting these factors, this piece hopes to shift attention from land access to land control and thus contribute to a fuller understanding of land-use politics not only in China, but also in other regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Resveratrol (Res) displays potent anti-oxidant activity and is a selective estrogen receptor modulator. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether Res consumption protects ovariectomized (OVX) rats chronically treated with d-galactose (d-gal) from developing memory decline and whether Res administration decreases pathological changes in the endometrium and lumen of the uterus compared with estradiol replacement therapy. Rats were divided into 6 groups: 1) Sham control group; 2) OVX+ d-gal 100mg/kg group (OVX+ d-gal); 3–5) OVX, d-gal and Res 20, 40, 80mg/kg treated groups; and 6) OVX, d-gal and estradiol valerate 0.8mg/kg treated group (ET). Twelve weeks later, in a Morris water maze test, the OVX+ d-gal rats exhibited a significant memory impairment compared with the Sham control rats, which was accompanied by decreased total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities and an increased thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) level in the serum. In addition, the TBARS and protein carbonylation levels increased in the hippocampus. The beneficial roles of the 40 and 80mg/kg Res treatments were manifested in the prevention of memory decline and markedly decreased oxidant stress indices. The disruption of the cristae in the mitochondria and the irregular nuclei and condensed chromatin in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampal CA1 region were also reduced after Res treatment. Furthermore, edema in the endometrium and lymphocyte infiltration was avoided in all three of the Res-treated groups compared with the ET group. These results suggest that Res is useful not only in protecting OVX+ d-gal rats from developing memory decline by increasing the anti-oxidation but also in avoiding the effects on the uterus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]