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The incidence of extrauterine growth retardation (EUGR) varies considerably in different countries due to the distinct definitions and inclusion criteria of individual studies. Most studies included small for gestational age (SGA) very preterm infants (VPIs), resulting in a higher incidence of EUGR. Experts have suggested the accurate definition of "EUGR" in SGA infants is not "true EUGR". The postnatal growth curve of multiple premature births also differs from that of singletons. As far as we know, there is no study about relationship between singleton-non-SGA preterm infants and EUGR.To analyze the factors influencing EUGR among VPIs who were singleton-non-SGA in China.A prospective-multicenter study was conducted in 28 hospitals distributed through China from September 2019 to December 2020. The clinical data on singleton-non-SGA among VPIs were divided into EUGR group (n = 692) and non-EUGR group (n = 912).Compared to non-EUGR group, the mean gestational age (GA), mean birth weight (BW) and percentage of BW in Fenton curve in EUGR group were lower (P0.001 for all). The incidence of EUGR among distinct GA groups (classifications of GA28weeks, 28-28The overall incidence of EUGR was 43.1% among singleton-non-SGA VPIs in China. Raising the full-course antenatal steroids usage, reducing the incidence of moderate and severe BPD, attaching importance to the management of enteral nutrition in VPIs and increasing the weight growth velocity can reduce the incidence of EUGR.

Mechanical allodynia impinges on the life quality of patients. Hen Egg Lysozyme (HEL) is a substance extracted from eggs that is commonly used to inhibit bacterial activity. The role of HEL in regulating and treating pain is unclear. Here, we find that HEL selectively attenuates static mechanical allodynia of mice induced by complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA), spinal nerve ligation (SNL) and chemotherapeutic agent. RNA-seq screening reveals that CFA significantly reduces the expression of Parkin in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons of mice, while pre-administration of HEL increases the expression of Parkin and remits the static mechanical allodynia induced by Parkin-siRNA. Moreover, HEL increases the interaction between nuclear respiratory factor 1 (NRF1) and histone acetyltransferase P300 and then enhances the NRF1 mediated histone acetylation in prkn promoter region in DRGs of mice. Further, Parkin interacts with mechanotransducing ion channel TACAN (Tmem120a) and knockdown of Parkin significantly increases the membrane trafficking of TACAN in sensory neurons of mice. While pre-administration of HEL inhibits the increased membrane trafficking of TACAN in sensory neurons of mice induced by Parkin-siRNA. In addition, pre-given of HEL also significantly attenuates the static mechanical allodynia induced by overexpression of TACAN in mice, and the effect of HEL can be blocked by Parkin-siRNA. This indicates that HEL increases the expression of Parkin through epigenetic mechanisms and then decreases TACAN membrane trafficking in sensory neurons to relieve static mechanical hypersensitivity. Therefore, we reveal a novel function of HEL, which is a potential substance for the treatment of static mechanical pain.

Luminescence ratiometric thermometry based on rare earth (RE) ions has attracted great interest for the potential applications in many fields. But the improvement of the measurement sensitivity and accuracy is significantly restricted due to the small energy gap between thermally coupled levels (TCL). Here, a strategy striving for good thermometric properties of luminescent materials was designed by using the phosphors mixture composed of NaY(WO4)2:Nd3+-Yb3+ and NaY(WO4)2:Er3+, which were prepared by secondary sintering method. Under the excitation of 980 nm laser, the near-infrared (NIR) emissions (710–920 nm) from Nd3+ ions are effectively strengthened when the temperature increases from 304 to 773 K, whereas Er3+ NIR luminescence centered at around 1536 nm is thermally quenched. The remarkably different response of NIR emissions to the thermal variation allows us to map temperature through the ratiometric method. By optimizing the dopant concentration of rare earth (RE) ions, a maximum sensitivity of 5.14%/K together with a measurement uncertainty of about 0.1 K is acquired at 304 K, which is superior to the previously reported RE luminescence-based temperature sensors, indicating that the approach developed here can pave the way for achieving optical thermometry with desired properties.

Neuroinflammation is an important secondary aggravating factor in spinal cord injury (SCI). Inhibition of the inflammatory response is critical for SCI treatment. Glycyrrhizic acid (GA) is an anti-inflammatory drug, but its utility for SCI is unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of GA on inflammation after SCI and the underlying mechanism.Cell counting kit-8 assays were performed to assess the viability of highly aggressively proliferating immortalized cells that had been treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and/or GA. Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting were performed to assess expression of high mobility group box-1 protein (HMGB1), ionized calcium binding adaptor molecule 1, and inflammatory factors in vitro and in vivo. GA (100 mg/kg) was intraperitoneally injected into rats. Anti-inflammatory effects of GA were analyzed in SCI tissues. p38/Jun N-terminal kinase signaling pathway proteins were analyzed by Western blotting.Cell counting kit-8 assay results showed that treatment with 100 ng/mL LPS for 12 hours was optimal. After LPS treatment, highly aggressively proliferating immortalized cells were activated; messenger RNA expression levels of HMGB1 and inflammatory factors were increased. GA significantly inhibited LPS-induced HMGB1 expression and inflammatory responses, as determined by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting. Transfection with an HMGB1-overexpression plasmid reversed the anti-inflammatory effects of GA. In addition, intraperitoneal injection of GA (100 mg/kg) into rats for 3 days significantly reduced expression levels of HMGB1 and inflammatory factors after SCI in vivo. GA reduced phosphorylation, but not levels, of p38 and Jun N-terminal kinase proteins.GA attenuates the inflammatory response after SCI by inhibiting HMGB1 through the p38/JNK signaling pathway and thus has therapeutic potential for SCI.

The pro-inflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α augments intracellular Ca2+ signaling and contractile responses of airway smooth muscles, leading to airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR). However, the underlying mechanism has not been fully elucidated. This study aims to investigate the cellular mechanism of the potentiated contraction of mouse tracheal smooth muscle induced by TNF-α. The results revealed that TNF-α triggered facilitation of mouse tracheal smooth muscle contraction in an epithelium-independent manner. The TNF-α-induced hypercontractility could be suppressed by the protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor GF109203X, the tyrosine kinase inhibitor genistein, the Src inhibitor PP2 or the L-type voltage-dependent Ca2+ channel blocker nifedipine. After TNF-α incubation, the α1C L-type Ca2+ channel (CaV1.2) was up-regulated in primary cultured mouse tracheal smooth muscle cells. Pronounced phosphotyrosine level was also observed in mouse tracheas. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that TNF-α enhanced airway smooth muscle contraction via PKC- Src-CaV1.2 pathways, which provides novel insights into the pathological role of pro-inflammatory cytokines in mediating AHR.

African swine fever (ASF), a fatal disease outbroken in China in August 2018, has widely attracted social concern especially in the information era. The occurrence of ASF led to an imbalance between supply and demand in pork and other meat markets. As a result, meat prices fluctuated greatly during the past year in 2019. To measure ASF quantitatively, the internet public concern index about ASF was created using web crawler methods. The relationships between ASF and meat prices were analyzed based on time-varying parameter vector auto-regressive (TVP-VAR) model. The results showed that there were some differences in the impact size, direction and duration of ASF on the prices of pork, chicken, beef and mutton, and the characteristics of time variability and heterogeneity were obvious. At the same time, the impact of ASF on meat prices is not consistent with the trend and degree of ASF. The impulse intensity is strongly correlated with the strength and duration of ASF, and it is generally weak in the early stage and much stronger in the middle and late periods. The results indicate that macro regulations, monitoring and early-warning system, standardizing production and circulation, and the public opinion monitoring and guidance about ASF should be given more attention in future to stabilize the market expectations and to promote a smooth functioning of the livestock markets.

In this paper, the interfacial reaction is investigated by joining SiC ceramic with Inconel 625 superalloy interlayer at different temperatures. CALPHAD method is used based on a Ni-Cr-Si ternary thermodynamic database to analyze the reactions between the Inconel 625 superalloy and the SiC ceramic. It is found that when the liquid alloy reaches a specific composition, the reactions between them stop. An equilibrium is established between the liquid alloy and SiC during the joining process, regardless of the temperature change. Furthermore, thermodynamic predictions of the reaction products are proved right by EBSD and XRD analysis. This work demonstrates that CALPHAD is a suitable method for effectively investigating the complex reaction system and further promoting precise theoretical analysis.

Structural system identification aims at identifying the parameters of a theoretical (e.g., finite element) model using measured data of a constructed structure. As a means of extracting relevant information from noisy vibration data, one common strategy is to adopt a ‘two-stage’ approach, where natural frequencies and mode shapes are first estimated from Stage I (modal identification), and then used for further estimating the structural model parameters (e.g., stiffness, mass) in Stage II. In a Bayesian statistical context with sufficient data so that model parameters can be identified uniquely, the identification result is characterized by the ‘most probable value’ (MPV) that gives the best estimate, and a covariance matrix that quantifies the remaining uncertainty. Computationally, determining the MPV involves solving an optimization problem with a measure-of-fit function; the covariance matrix involves taking the Hessian of the function. Exploiting the mathematical structure of the measure-of-fit function in the two-stage problem, this work proposes a Fisher scoring method for determining the MPV, where the Hessian matrix in a Newton’s iteration is replaced by the Fisher information matrix to eliminate repeated computations of second order derivatives and to improve con-vergence robustness. Advanced techniques of eigenvalue sensitivity are applied so that the gradient and Hessian involved in MPV and covariance matrix computations can be obtained accurately and efficiently by solving full-rank matrix equations for the subject modes only. The proposed methodology is investigated with synthetic and laboratory experimental data. Performance in terms of convergence robustness and efficiency is compared with existing methods, including simplex search and Newton’s method. Ministry of Education (MOE) Nanyang Technological University Submitted/Accepted version The research presented in this work is supported by grant SUG/4 (04INS000618C120) from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (RG68/22) from the Ministry of Education, Singapore.

Various uncertainties arising during acquisition process of geoscience data may result in anomalous data instances (i.e., outliers) that do not conform with the expected pattern of regular data instances. With sparse multivariate data obtained from geotechnical site investigation, it is impossible to identify outliers with certainty due to the distortion of statistics of geotechnical parameters caused by outliers and their associated statistical uncertainty resulted from data sparsity. This paper develops a probabilistic outlier detection method for sparse multivariate data obtained from geotechnical site investigation. The proposed approach quantifies the outlying probability of each data instance based on Mahalanobis distance and determines outliers as those data instances with outlying probabilities greater than 0.5. It tackles the distortion issue of statistics estimated from the dataset with outliers by a re-sampling technique and accounts, rationally, for the statistical uncertainty by Bayesian machine learning. Moreover, the proposed approach also suggests an exclusive method to determine outlying components of each outlier. The proposed approach is illustrated and verified using simulated and real-life dataset. It showed that the proposed approach properly identifies outliers among sparse multivariate data and their corresponding outlying components in a probabilistic manner. It can significantly reduce the masking effect (i.e., missing some actual outliers due to the distortion of statistics by the outliers and statistical uncertainty). It also found that outliers among sparse multivariate data instances affect significantly the construction of multivariate distribution of geotechnical parameters for uncertainty quantification. This emphasizes the necessity of data cleaning process (e.g., outlier detection) for uncertainty quantification based on geoscience data.

To investigate the reaction mechanism of Ni/SiC system, 0.1 μm-thick pure nickel foil is used to join SiC ceramic at 1245 °C for different times. Interfacial melting is calculated to occur at 964 °C along the interface due to the low eutectic point of θ-Ni2Si and NiSi, a periodical layered structure, consisting alternating layers of silicides/silicides+graphite, is formed along the interface due to periodical detachment of graphite from SiC reaction interface during the reactions between Ni-Si liquid phase and SiC. The reaction products of Ni/SiC are successfully predicted by CALPHAD method, based on a home-made Ni-Si-C ternary database. The reaction processes between Ni and SiC and the morphology changes of the joined seam are discussed in detail in this paper. The average shear strengths of SiC joints held for 15 min, 30 min and 60 min are tested to be 16.53 MPa, 19.32 MPa and 29.43 MPa, respectively.

Epididymal epithelium possesses active ion transport properties conducive to the maintenance of appropriate epididymal intraluminal microenvironment. The endogenous gasotransmitter carbon monoxide (CO) regulates numerous cellular processes including water and electrolyte transport in various epithelia. However, the functional role of CO in epididymal epithelium is still elusive. This study aims to explore the potential regulatory effect of CO on transepithelial ion transport in rat epididymis. Using qPCR technique, we verified that endogenous CO synthase heme oxygenase 1 was expressed in rat caput, corpus, and cauda epididymis. In addition, endogenous CO was detected in rat cauda epididymis. Ussing chamber experiments showed that CORM-2, a CO donor, induced an increase of the short-circuit current (ISC) in a concentration-dependent manner in rat cauda epididymal epithelium. The ISC response could be abrogated by removing the ambient Cl- or HCO3-. Interfering with the cAMP signaling pathway or blocking cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) partially suppressed the CO-stimulated ISC response. Moreover, the CO-evoked ISC response was significantly attenuated by blocking Ca2+-activated Cl- channel (CaCC) or chelating intracellular Ca2+. Elevation of intracellular Ca2+ level was also observed after CO stimulation in rat cauda epididymal epithelial cells. Collectively, this study demonstrated that CO stimulated anion secretion via activation of CFTR and CaCC in rat cauda epididymal epithelium, which might contribute to the formation of the appropriate microenvironment essential for sperm storage.

N-doped carbon armored metal phosphides were anchored in-situ on backbones of nickel foam (NF), by using polydopamine as both carbon source and targeted precursor delivery vehicle. The product served as a highly efficient chainmail bi-functional catalyst toward electrolytic water splitting, requiring small operating cell voltages of only 1.65, 1.73, and 1.79 V at 50, 100, and 250 mA/cm2, respectively for overall water splitting. More importantly, the product catalyst also possessed excellent long-term stability, even tested at 250 mA/cm2. The excellent activity and durability may be ascribed to the positive synergistic effects between well-mixed metal phosphides, advantageous nanostructure of interwoven thin vertical nanosheets, protective and conductive N-doped carbon matrix, hydrophilic and aerophobic characteristics, and well dispersed and utilized active materials on skeleton surfaces of the highly conductive NF. This synergistic effect boosting and protective layer armored design for highly efficient and stable electrocatalysts is unique and scalable, suitable for large-scale applications not only in the field of electrocatalysis, but also in other heterogeneous catalysis.

Circular RNAs are an increasingly important topic in non-coding RNA biology, drawing considerable attention in recent years. Accumulating evidence suggests a critical role for circular RNAs in both early and latent stages of disease pathogenesis. Circular RNAs are abundantly expressed in brain tissue, with significant implications for neural development and disease progression. Disruption of these processes, including those seen in response to brain injury, can have serious consequences such as hemiplegia, aphasia, coma, and death. In this review, we describe the role of circular RNAs in the context of brain injury and explore the potential connection between circular RNAs, brain hypoxic ischemic injury, ischemia-reperfusion injury, and traumatic injury.