Search

Federated learning allows a large number of resource-constrained clients to train a globally-shared model together without sharing local data. These clients usually have only a few classes (categories) of data for training, where the data distribution is non-iid (not independent identically distributed). In this paper, we put forward the concept of category privacy for the first time to indicate which classes of data a client has, which is an important but ignored privacy goal in the federated learning with non-iid data. Although secure aggregation protocols are designed for federated learning to protect the input privacy of clients, we perform the first systematic study on category inference attack and demonstrate that these protocols cannot fully protect category privacy. We design a differential selection strategy and two de-noising approaches to achieve the attack goal successfully. In our evaluation, we apply the attack to non-iid federated learning settings with various datasets. On MNIST, CIFAR-10, AG\_news, and DBPedia datasets, our attack achieves >90% accuracy measured in F1-score in most cases. We further consider a possible detection method and propose two strategies to make the attack more inconspicuous.

Card fraud is an important issue and incurs a considerable cost for both cardholders and issuing banks. Contemporary methods apply machine learning-based approaches to detect fraudulent behavior from transaction records. But manually generating features needs domain knowledge and may lay behind the modus operandi of fraud, which means we need to automatically focus on the most relevant fraudulent behavior patterns in the online detection system. Therefore, in this work, we propose a spatial-temporal attention-based graph network (STAGN) for credit card fraud detection. In particular, we learn the temporal and location-based transaction graph features by a graph neural network first. Afterwards, we employ the spatial-temporal attention on top of learned tensor representations, which are then fed into a 3D convolution network. The attentional weights are jointly learned in an end-to-end manner with 3D convolution and detection networks. After that, we conduct extensive experiments on the real-word card transaction dataset. The result shows that STAGN performs better than other state-of-the-art baselines in both AUC and precision-recall curves. Moreover, we conduct empirical studies with domain experts on the proposed method for fraud detection and knowledge discovery; the result demonstrates its superiority in detecting suspicious transactions, mining spatial and temporal fraud hotspots, and uncover fraud patterns. The effectiveness of the proposed method in other user behavior-based tasks is also demonstrated. Finally, in order to tackle the challenges of big data, we integrate our proposed STAGN into the fraud detection system as the predictive model and present the implementation detail of each module in the system.

In this paper, an effective solution is presented for efficient robotic object search by leveraging metric-topological map. Based on the reference of objects, we construct a novel metric-topological map that is particularly suitable for object search, where the topological nodes represent the object-related locations in the environment. To effectively determine the creation of nodes on the map, a rapid adjustment method of the robot viewing angle is introduced. Compared with traditional maps, the map built in this paper not only removes redundant nodes irrelevant to objects, but also facilitates the mobile robot to locate the target object. Besides, inspired by human search behavior, a search strategy is proposed by considering the tradeoff between the current position of the robot and the distance from the robot to the promising location of finding the target object, in order to further improve the search efficiency. The effectiveness and efficiency of our solution is verified through comparative experiments in both simulation and real-world environments. Results show that the presented approach always allows the mobile robot to find the target object efficiently and reliably, while achieving human-like search behavior.

The federated learning provides an effective solution to train collaborative models over a large scale of participated Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications with the help of a global server, building an intelligent life. However, the federated learning is vulnerable to the backdoor attack from strong malicious participants. The backdoor attack is inconspicuous and may result in devastating consequences. To resist the attack on IIoT applications, we propose the federated backdoor filter defense that can identifying backdoor inputs and restore the data to availability by the blur-label-flipping strategy. We build multiple filters with eXplainable AI (XAI) models on the server and send them to clients randomly, preventing advanced attackers from evading the defense. Our backdoor filters show significant backdoor recognition with the accuracy up to 99%. After the implementation of the blur-label-flipping strategy, victim's local model on suspicious backdoor samples can achieve the accuracy up to 88%.

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remains a dominant origin of morbidity, mortality and disability worldwide. Increases in reactive oxygen species (ROS) are key contributor to excessive cardiac injury after AMI. Here we developed an immobilized enzyme with Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) activity cross-link with Zr-based metal-organic framework (ZrMOF) (SOD-ZrMOF) for mitigate ROS-caused injury. In vitro and in vivo evidence indicates that SOD-ZrMOF exhibits excellent biocompatibility. By efficiently scavenging ROS and suppressing oxidative stress, SOD-ZrMOF can protect the function of mitochondria, reduce cell death and alleviate inflammation. More excitingly, long-term study using an animal model of AMI demonstrated that SOD-ZrMOF can reduce the infarct area, protect cardiac function, promote angiogenesis and inhibit pathological myocardial remodeling. Therefore, SOD-ZrMOF holds great potential as an efficacious and safe nanomaterial treatment for AMI., Graphical abstract Image 1, Highlights • We synthesized a superoxide dismutase immobilized nanocomposite with enhanced stability. • We tested the biocompatibility of SOD-ZrMOF and found it could promote the cell viability and proliferation of H9c2 cells. • SOD-ZrMOF shows excellent performance in protecting mitochondrial function of CMs by eliminating excessive ROS under hypoxia. • SOD-ZrMOF exhibited therapeutic effects on MI heart through inhibiting oxidative stress injury by NF-κB/HIF-1α pathway.

The Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for COVID-19 Research (C4R) is a national prospective study of adults at risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) comprising 14 established United States (US) prospective cohort studies. For decades, C4R cohorts have collected extensive data on clinical and subclinical diseases and their risk factors, including behavior, cognition, biomarkers, and social determinants of health. C4R will link this pre-COVID phenotyping to information on SARS-CoV-2 infection and acute and post-acute COVID-related illness. C4R is largely population-based, has an age range of 18-108 years, and broadly reflects the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity of the US. C4R is ascertaining severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and COVID-19 illness using standardized questionnaires, ascertainment of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths, and a SARS-CoV-2 serosurvey via dried blood spots. Master protocols leverage existing robust retention rates for telephone and in-person examinations, and high-quality events surveillance. Extensive pre-pandemic data minimize referral, survival, and recall bias. Data are being harmonized with research-quality phenotyping unmatched by clinical and survey-based studies; these will be pooled and shared widely to expedite collaboration and scientific findings. This unique resource will allow evaluation of risk and resilience factors for COVID-19 severity and outcomes, including post-acute sequelae, and assessment of the social and behavioral impact of the pandemic on long-term trajectories of health and aging.

Introduction Gut microbiota has been implicated in the pharmacological activities of many natural products. As an effective hypolipidemic agent, berberine (BBR)’s clinical application is greatly impeded by the obvious inter-individual response variation. To date, little evidence exists on the causality between gut microbes and its therapeutic effects, and the linkage of bacteria alterations to the inter-individual response variation. Objectives This study aims to confirm the causal role of the gut microbiota in BBR’s anti-hyperlipidemic effect and identify key bacteria that can predict its effectiveness. Methods The correlation between gut microbiota and BBR’s inter-individual response variation was studied in hyperlipidemic patients. The causal role of gut microbes in BBR’s anti-hyperlipidemic effects was subsequently assessed by altered administration routes, co-treatment with antibiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, and metagenomic analysis. Results Three-month clinical study showed that BBR was effectively to decrease serum lipids but displayed an obvious response variation. The cholesterol-lowering but not triglyceride-decreasing effect of BBR was closely related to its modulation on gut microbiota. Interestingly, the baseline levels of Alistipes and Blautia could accurately predict its anti-hypercholesterolemic efficiency in the following treatment. Causality experiments in mice further confirmed that the gut microbiome is both necessary and sufficient to mediate the lipid-lowering effect of BBR. The absence of Blautia substantially abolished BBR's cholesterol-decreasing efficacy. Conclusion The gut microbiota is necessary and sufficient for BBR’s hyperlipidemia-ameliorating effect. The baseline composition of gut microbes can be an effective predictor for its pharmacotherapeutic efficacy, providing a novel way to achieve personalized therapy.

Ultrasound (US) is recognized in the medical field as a safe and effective imaging modality due to its lack of ionizing radiation, non-invasive approach, and real-time monitoring capability. Accompanying recent progress in nanomedicine, US has been providing hope of theranostic capability not only for imaging-based diagnosis but also for US-based therapy by taking advantage of the bioeffects induced by US. Cavitation, sonoporation, thermal effects, and other cascade effects stimulated by acoustic energy conversion have contributed to medical problem-solving in the past decades, although to varying degrees of efficacy in comparison to other methods. Recently, the usage of liposomesbased nanoplatform fuels the development of nanomedicine and provides novel clinical strategies for antitumor, thrombolysis, and controlled drug release. The merging of novel liposome-based nanoplatforms and US-induced reactions has promise for a new blueprint for future medicine. In the present review article, the value of liposome-based nanoplatforms in US-related diagnosis and therapy will be discussed and summarized along with potential future directions for further investigations.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a high propensity for organ-specific metastasis. However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Here we show that the primary TNBC tumor-derived C-X-C motif chemokines 1/2/8 (CXCL1/2/8) stimulate lung-resident fibroblasts to produce the C-C motif chemokines 2/7 (CCL2/7), which, in turn, activate cholesterol synthesis in lung-colonizing TNBC cells and induce angiogenesis at lung metastatic sites. Inhibiting cholesterol synthesis in lung-colonizing breast tumor cells by pulmonary administration of simvastatin-carrying HER3-targeting nanoparticles reduces angiogenesis and growth of lung metastases in a syngeneic TNBC mouse model. Our findings reveal a novel, chemokine-regulated mechanism for the cholesterol synthesis pathway and a critical role of metastatic site-specific cholesterol synthesis in the pulmonary tropism of TNBC metastasis. The study has implications for the unresolved epidemiological observation that use of cholesterol-lowering drugs has no effect on breast cancer incidence but can unexpectedly reduce breast cancer mortality, suggesting interventions of cholesterol synthesis in lung metastases as an effective treatment to improve survival in individuals with TNBC.

GPS coordinates are fine-grained location indicators that are difficult to be effectively utilized by classifiers in geo-aware applications. Previous GPS encoding methods concentrate on generating hand-crafted features for small areas of interest. However, many real world applications require a machine learning model, analogous to the pre-trained ImageNet model for images, that can efficiently generate semantically-enriched features for planet-scale GPS coordinates. To address this issue, we propose a novel two-level grid-based framework, termed GPS2Vec, which is able to extract geo-aware features in real-time for locations worldwide. The Earth's surface is first discretized by the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system. Each UTM zone is then considered as a local area of interest that is further divided into fine-grained cells to perform the initial GPS encoding. We train a neural network in each UTM zone to learn the semantic embeddings from the initial GPS encoding. The training labels can be automatically derived from large-scale geotagged documents such as tweets, check-ins, and images that are available from social sharing platforms. We conducted comprehensive experiments on three geo-aware applications, namely place semantic annotation, geotagged image classification, and next location prediction. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, as prediction accuracy improves significantly based on a simple multi-feature early fusion strategy with deep neural networks, including both CNNs and RNNs.

The key challenges of scene recognition for service robots in various family environments are the view shortage of holistic scenes and poor adaptation. To address these problems, a family scene recognition mechanism for the service robot is proposed in this paper. A comprehensive application of fish-eye, pinhole, and depth cameras is provided to guarantee the sufficient view of robot. A selective CNN features fusion for the recognition of fish-eye scene images is designed to improve the training efficiency and the recognition accuracy. The mechanism is deployed in a designed hybrid cloud including public and private clouds. The proposed family scene recognition model is trained by large-scale datasets in the public cloud and runs in the private cloud. Besides, the recognition skill can be reinforced and increased by matching human guidance and CNN features to help the robot learn new scenes and improve the adaptation in different family environments. Extensive experiments are implemented to evaluate the proposed method using real scene images from six families. The experiment results show the validity and good performance of our method for the service robot scene recognition in various family environments.

Video object segmentation (VOS) is an essential part of autonomous vehicle navigation. The real-time speed is very important for the autonomous vehicle algorithms along with the accuracy metric. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised real-time method based on the Siamese network using a new polar representation. The input of bounding boxes is initialized rather than the object masks, which are applied to the video object detection tasks. The polar representation could reduce the parameters for encoding masks with subtle accuracy loss so that the algorithm speed can be improved significantly. An asymmetric siamese network is also developed to extract the features from different spatial scales. Moreover, the peeling convolution is proposed to reduce the antagonism among the branches of the polar head. The repeated cross-correlation and semi-FPN are designed based on this idea. The experimental results on the DAVIS-2016 dataset and other public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, journal

In previous studies, researchers have used singing to treat respiratory function in patients with spinal cord injury. However, few studies have examined the way in which vocal training affects respiratory neural plasticity in patients with spinal cord injury. Vocal respiratory training (VRT) is a type of vocal muscle-related treatment that is often a component of music therapy (MT) and focuses on strengthening respiratory muscles and improving lung function. In this randomized controlled study, we analyzed the therapeutic effects of VRT on respiratory dysfunction at 3 months after cervical spinal cord injury. Of an initial group of 37 patients, 26 completed the music therapy intervention, which comprised five 30-minute sessions per week for 12 weeks. The intervention group (n = 13) received VRT training delivered by professional certified music therapists. The control group (n = 13) received respiratory physical therapy delivered by professional physical therapists. Compared with the control group, we observed a substantial increase in respiratory function in the intervention group after the 12-week intervention. Further, the nerve fiber bundles in the respiratory center in the medulla exhibited a trend towards increased diversification, with an increased number, path length, thickness, and density of nerve fiber bundles. These findings provide strong evidence for the effect of music therapeutic VRT on neural plasticity. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of China Rehabilitation Research Center (approval No. 2020-013-1) on April 1, 2020, and was registered with the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration No. ChiCTR2000037871) on September 2, 2020.

The neuropeptide calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) is known to play a central role in the underlying pathophysiology of migraine. In comparison to the effective triptan class of antimigraine treatments, the CGRP antagonists possess a comparable efficacy but a superior cardiovascular safety profile in patients. This paper describes the development of selective and potent peptidic CGRP antagonist, FE 205030, that has a fast onset of action and an optimal half-life (subcutaneous Tmax ~ 60 min, and t1/2 ~ 4.4 h in 80 kg pigs, respectively), which is key to prevention of the progression of debilitating migraine symptoms. The in vivo efficacy of this agent has been established a translational pharmacodynamic model (inhibition of capsaicin-induced increase in skin blood flow) in cynomolgus monkeys and shows maximal inhibitory activity at circulating concentrations of 30-100 nM. Antagonist activity of FE 205030 was characterized on CGRP-induced vasodilation in isolated human mesenteric resistance arteries in an ex vivo isometric myograph study, and FE 205030 effectively blocked CGRP-induced vasodilation with a pA2 of 9.3 ± 0.1, mean ± standard error. Multispecies allometric scaling and modeling of subcutaneous (SC) effective concentrations indicates that a dose of 10–30 mg/day is sufficient to achieve a drug exposure/target coverage of 8h, which is useful to prevent migraine recurrence in patients. The molecule also possesses appropriate physicochemical properties that allows for a convenient dosing form factor of 1 ml injection volume with a sufficient solubility and acceptable short-term stability, optimal for treatment of acute migraine episodes in patients. Hence, FE 205030 may provide an important fast-acting injectable option for patients suffering from frequent acute migraine episodes, complementary to preventative monoclonal antibodies and oral small molecule CGRP-R antagonist therapies.

Based on the principle of two-phase hydrodynamics and the mechanism of cavitation generation, this paper uses the finite volume method (FVM) in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyse the features of fluid flow in jet amplifier, i.e., the pilot stage of jet pipe servo valve, and designs a lab bench to experimentally prove the accuracy of this numerical method. On this basis, the author discussed how four structural parameters influence the amplification efficiency of the jet amplifier. The amplification efficiency of the jet pipe servo valve can be maximized by setting the distance between nozzle and receiving holes of 0.1 mm, the diameter of receiving holes of 0.2 mm, the inclination angle of 22.5°, and the spacing between the two receiving holes of 0 mm (if possible). The research methods and results provide a solid basis for the design and performance prediction of the jet pipe servo valve.

Convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods have become the mainstream in radar ship recognition. However, these methods suffer from two common problems. First, the training samples consist largely of common ship types, giving them an overwhelming numerical advantage over rare ship types. As a result, CNN-based recognition algorithms fail to classify rare ship types correctly. Second, huge high-resolution slices result in heavy computational burdens. To solve the first problem, namely, the class imbalance problem, this letter proposes a CNN training method that combines deep metric learning (DML) with gradually balanced sampling. DML obtains the center of each class in the feature space and performs clustering equally. Gradually balanced sampling adopts a smooth transition from instance-aware resampling to class-aware resampling to improve the recognition rate drop caused by traditional resampling methods. As for the second problem, to reduce the computational complexity of high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, a lightweight CNN is also proposed.

Prior studies have paid little attention to the roles of online reviews of competing products on individuals’ purchase behaviors. This article contributes to the literature by unraveling the effect of competing product reviews on consumer purchase decisions. Conceptualizing competition among rival products along two dimensions of geographical space and characteristic space, we use a panel-level binary logit choice model to examine how online reviews of restaurants are related to consumers’ conversion from browsing to purchasing in the context of restaurant patronage. Our results show that a one-unit increase in average valence (volume) of spatially adjacent and feature similar alternatives reduces the odds of choosing a focal product by 77.7% (53.4%) and by 59.6%, respectively. Furthermore, we conceptualize reviewers as local peers and global peers of consumers and explore how the impact of competing product reviews can be moderated by the consumer–reviewer peer types. We find that the effect of competing product reviews along geographical and characteristic spaces is strengthened by the proportion of local peers’ reviews relative to global peers’ reviews on these competing products. These new findings on the impact of competing product reviews and the moderating role of consumer–reviewer peer types provide implications for academic research and practice.

Although autologous nerve transplantation is the gold standard for treating peripheral nerve defects, it has many clinical limitations. As an alternative, various tissue-engineered nerve grafts have been developed to substitute for autologous nerves. In this study, a novel nerve graft composed of chitin scaffolds and a small autologous nerve was used to repair sciatic nerve defects in rats. The novel nerve graft greatly facilitated regeneration of the sciatic nerve and myelin sheath, reduced atrophy of the target muscle, and effectively restored neurological function. When the epineurium of the small autogenous nerve was removed, the degree of nerve regeneration was similar to that which occurs after autogenous nerve transplantation. These findings suggest that our novel nerve graft might eventually be a new option for the construction of tissue-engineered nerve scaffolds. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Peking University People’s Hospital (approval No. 2019PHE27) on October 18, 2019.

Many recent studies have conducted laparoscopic single-site surgery (LESS) using single-port laparoscopy (SPL), which combines conventional laparoscopy (CL) with a novel multichannel port. However, to implement SPL, several obstacles must be overcome.To study the clinical value of SPL in the surgical treatment of gynecological diseases.Twenty-five patients with ectopic pregnancy (EP) and 11 with uterine leiomyoma (UL) were randomly assigned to undergo either LESS by SPL or CL. The CL was performed routinely, while the SPL was performed through a single port using a self-made, multi-channel laparoscopic approach based on CL. The following parameters were compared between the SPL and CL groups: intraoperative conditions (operation time and blood loss), postoperative conditions (exhaustion and hospital stay time), and visual analog scale. Patients with EP and those with UL were analyzed separately in this regard. In patients with UL, hemoglobin changes, complications, and long-term physical recovery within 6 months of surgery were also compared.The operation time was significantly longer in the SPL group than in the CL group (p0.001). However, blood loss, postoperative exhaustion, and hospital stay time were significantly lower (p0.05 in all cases). In patients with UL, intraoperative and postoperative conditions did not differ significantly between the groups. At the follow-up within 6 months, patients with UL in the SPL group had recovered, with better cosmetic effects and more satisfaction. No cases of umbilical incisional hernia occurred in the SPL group.SPL showed clinical efficacy, with minimal invasion, rapid recovery, and cost-effectiveness in patients with EP or UL.

This paper presents a novel solution to predict the visual defects, one of the major criteria for analyzing manufacturability for the Laser-based Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) process. For the existing manufacturability investigations, the key challenge is how to model the complex interrelationships among the design, process, and final quality. The recent research proposed machine learning methods to model the manufacturability analysis. Voxel-based Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been investigated as one potential solution for design shape analysis. Those approaches are limited by the computational capability available and only lower resolution was performed. However, low resolution is not enough for analyzing the LPBF manufacturing process precisely. Some detailed features may be omitted through the voxelization process. To solve this issue, a more efficient CNN is proposed in this paper. Design data is stored in a sparse matrix so that only the occupied voxels are trained by CNN operations. It joins with the process data, which is trained by a Neural Network (NN) model to make the prediction of manufacturability. By performing the generalized convolutions, the computational costs decrease sharply compared to voxel-based CNN, which offers the advantage of performing with high resolutions. The approach is validated in terms of effectiveness and efficiency on the manufacturability prediction for the LPBF process.

Objectives This study aimed to compare the current 5 investigation strategies to defer cardiac testing in patients with stable chest pain. Background For the clinical management of stable chest pain, the identification of patients unlikely to benefit from further cardiac testing is important, but the most appropriate investigation strategy is unknown. Methods A total of 4,207 patients referred to coronary computed tomography angiography for stable chest pain were classified into low- and high-risk groups according to the 2016 National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline-determined strategy; PROMISE (Prospective Multicenter Imaging Study for Evaluation of Chest Pain) minimal risk tool–based strategy; 2019 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guideline–determined strategy; and coronary artery calcium score (CACS), either in isolation (the CACS strategy) or as part of a weighted clinical likelihood model–based strategy (the CACS-CL strategy). The associations of obstructive coronary artery disease on coronary computed tomography angiography, major adverse cardiovascular events, and subsequent clinical management with risk groups according to different strategies were evaluated and compared. Results The NICE, PROMISE, ESC, CACS, and CACS-CL strategies classified a proportion (22.63%, 29.21%, 41.84%, 46.76%, and 51.41%, respectively) of patients into low-risk groups. Compared with the NICE, PROMISE, ESC, and CACS strategies, the CACS-CL strategy had a stronger association between risk groups and obstructive coronary artery disease (odd ratios: 16.00 vs 2.93, 5.53, 7.94, and 10.39, respectively), major adverse cardiovascular events (HRs: 6.83 vs 1.90, 2.94, 4.23, and 5.13, respectively) and intensive subsequent clinical management as well as better metrics of diagnostic accuracy and positive net reclassification improvement. Conclusions Among contemporary strategies used to identify patients with stable chest pain at low risk, the use of CACS, especially when combined with clinical risk features, showed the strongest potential to effectively defer cardiac testing.

It is a challenging task to produce recipes from images, due to the difficulty in bridging the gap from intuitive, static images to sequential, dynamic recipes. In this paper, we propose a novel recipe generation system for producing effective recipes from images. As medium steps, ingredient generation is introduced to guide recipe generation in our system. With potential information in ingredient lists, ingredient selection and ingredient sequence, the system is taught to generate effective recipes. For information representation, a hierarchical attention mechanism is designed to extract effective features for ingredient production and recipe generation. In order to guarantee the comprehensiveness and logic in recipes, a specific and explicit criterion around ingredients is designed under the framework of reinforcement learning. In ingredient generation, the system is required to generate ingredients with correct sequence in cooking procedures. And in recipe generation, ingredients in recipes are required to be consistent with produced ingredients. In experiments, the proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods to evaluate the feasibility. The results indicate that the proposed system achieves a better performance than other methods on both aspects of producing proper ingredients and effective recipes.

OBJECTIVE: Gut flora imbalance characterizes patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Although biotic supplementation has been proposed to lessen inflammation and oxidative stress and, thus, reduce the risk of progressive kidney damage and cardiovascular disease, the effects remain controversial. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the therapeutic benefits of biotics in CKD. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases were systematically searched for randomized controlled trials that evaluated any biotic (prebiotic, probiotic, synbiotics) supplements in patients with CKD (CKD, stage 3–4 to end-stage renal disease). Primary endpoints included changes in renal function, markers of inflammation, and oxidative stress. Secondary endpoints included changes in levels of uremic toxins and variations in lipid metabolism. RESULTS: Twenty-three eligible studies included 842 participants. In a pooled-analysis, biotics did not change estimated glomerular filtration rate (mean difference [MD] = 0.08, P = .92) or serum albumin (MD = −0.01, P = .86), although prebiotics reduced serum creatinine (standardized mean difference [SMD] = −0.23, P = .009) and blood urea nitrogen (MD = −6.05, P

BACKGROUND: We aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of echo contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) during high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation therapy for abdominal wall endometriosis (AWE). METHODS: A total of 67 patients with AWE were treated with HIFU ablation, and their demographic characteristics were retrospectively analysed. Blood perfusion of the focal lesion was assessed before the operation, during ablation and after the operation with the use of an ultrasound contrast agent, and the effect of the ultrasound contrast agent on treatment was assessed over a 1-year follow-up period. The degree of symptom relief and adverse effects were evaluated after HIFU ablation. RESULTS: Eighty-two lesions were ablated in 67 patients. CEUS showed that all lesions were successfully ablated with HIFU. The shrinkage ratio of the lesions significantly increased over the follow-up period. Intermittent pain disappeared at 1 month after the operation, and the patients’ pain scores significantly decreased at the 1-year follow-up. The mean [± standard deviation (SD)] lesion volume was 7.64±8.95 cm(3) on B-mode ultrasound. The post-HIFU non-perfused volume was 18.34±24.08 cm(3), and the rate of massive changes on greyscale imaging was 96.16%±5.44% at 12 months. During the procedure, the main complications were a prickling sensation and tenderness in the treatment area and/or a transient “hot” sensation on the skin. After the procedure, there was no obvious discomfort except for pain. Two patients developed an approximately 1-cm area of skin that exhibited a waxy appearance. Seven patients had haematuria. No severe complications were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Ultrasound contrast agents are effective and safe for evaluating the effect of HIFU ablation on AWE, and this approach provides significant guidance and evaluation benefits for the use of HIFU treatment for AWE without obvious side effects.

This study aimed to explore whether dietary rumen-protected L-arginine (RP-Arg) or N-carbamylglutamate (NCG) supplementation to feed-restricted pregnant ewes counteracts fetal hepatic inflammation and innate immune dysfunction associated with intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) in ovine fetuses. On d 35 of pregnancy, twin-bearing Hu ewes (n = 32) were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups (8 ewes and 16 fetuses per group) and fed diets containing 100% of the NRC requirements (CON), 50% of the NRC requirements (RES), RES + RP-Arg (20 g/d) (RESA), or RES + NCG (5 g/d) (RESN). At 08:00 on d 110 of gestation, fetal blood and liver tissue samples were collected. The levels of triglyceride, free fatty acid, cholesterol and β-hydroxybutyrate in the fetal blood of RESA and RESN groups were lower (P

Because of the relatively limited understanding of COVID-19 pathogenesis, immunological analysis for vaccine development is needed. Mice and macaques were immunized with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine prepared by two inactivators. Various immunological indexes were tested, and viral challenges were performed on day 7 or 150 after booster immunization in monkeys. This inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was produced by sequential inactivation with formaldehyde followed by propiolactone. The various antibody responses and specific T cell responses to different viral antigens elicited in immunized animals were maintained for longer than 150 days. This comprehensive immune response could effectively protect vaccinated macaques by inhibiting viral replication in macaques and substantially alleviating immunopathological damage, and no clinical manifestation of immunopathogenicity was observed in immunized individuals during viral challenge. This candidate inactivated vaccine was identified as being effective against SARS-CoV-2 challenge in rhesus macaques., Graphical Abstract, This twice inactivated candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was safe, effective in inducing immune responses and effective against SARS-CoV-2 challenge in rhesus macaques.

Screen printing is regarded as a highly competitive manufacture technology for scalable and fast fabrication of printed microelectronics, owing to its advanced merits of low-cost, facile operability and scalability. However, its large-scale application in printed microelectronics is still limited by screen printing functional ink. In this review, we summarize the recent advances of ink formation, typical scalable applications, and challenging perspectives of screen printing for emerging printed microelectronics. Firstly, we introduce the major mechanism of screen printing and the formation of different organic- and aqueous-based inks by various solvents and binders. Next, we review the most widely used applications of screen printing technique in micro-batteries, micro-supercapacitors and micro-sensors, demonstrative of wide applicability. Finally, the perspectives and future challenges in the sight of screen printing are briefly discussed.

Objectives To compare the effects of early surgery (within 24 h) and delayed surgery on the outcomes of patients with acute cervical/thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI) in Beijing, China. Methods We conducted a clinical trial involving patients who were aged 16–85 years, had acute SCI from 1 June 2016 to 1 June 2019 in Beijing. The enrolled patients were divided into two groups according to the timing of surgical decompression. The primary outcome was the ordinal change in the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade. The secondary outcomes included the surgical time, volume of surgical bleeding, rate of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), length of stay in the ICU, duration of mechanical ventilation, length of hospital stay, and postoperative complications. And the time consumption of different phases before operation was recorded for the patients transported to hospital by ambulance. Results A total of 148 patients were included in the study, including 55 in the early surgery group and 93 in the delayed surgery group. At 52 weeks post‐surgery, 27.3% of the patients in the early surgery group showed AIS improvement by at least two grades, compared to 8.7% of the patients in the delayed surgery group (P = 0.102). According to the logistic regression analysis, the odds of at least a two‐grade AIS improvement was six times higher among the patients who underwent early surgery than among those who underwent delayed surgery (OR = 6.66, 95%CI 1.14–38.84). The delay surgery group consumed significantly more time in the phases of transfer and inspection or examination than the early surgery group, and the Chinese regional trauma treatment system was widely used in the early surgery group. Conclusion Decompression within 24 h after SCI can improve patients' recovery of neurological function without increasing the incidence of postoperative complications and surgical risks. The Chinese regional trauma treatment system can improve the diagnosis and treatment efficiency of patients with acute SCI and speed up the operation timing., Decompression within 24 h after SCI can improve patients' recovery of neurological function without increasing the incidence of postoperative complications and surgical risks. The Chinese regional trauma treatment system can improve the diagnosis and treatment efficiency of patients with acute spinal cord injury and speed up the operation timing.

Background and Purpose: This study tests whether patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysm who underwent stent placement benefitted from platelet function monitoring–guided adjustment of antiplatelet therapy. Methods: We conducted a randomized, open-label, parallel group, assessor-blinded trial. Patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysm who underwent stent placement were assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either drug adjustment (patients who had high on-treatment platelet reactivity to antiplatelet therapy on the basis of platelet function monitoring [monitoring group]) or conventional therapy (without monitoring and drug adjustment [conventional group]). The second monitoring was performed 14 days after randomization in patients with drug adjustment. The primary outcome was the composite frequency of ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, stent thrombosis, urgent revascularization, and cerebrovascular death within 7 days after stent implantation. The safety outcome was the composite frequency of major, minor, or minimal bleeding within 1 month after stent implantation. Results: In total, 314 patients were included (n=157 per group). The primary combined outcome occurred in 19 patients (12.1%) in the conventional group and 8 patients (5.1%) in the monitoring group (hazard ratio, 0.39 [95% CI, 0.17–0.92]; P =0.03). Ischemic stroke occurred at a lower frequency in the monitoring group compared with that in the conventional group (4.5% versus 12.1%; hazard ratio, 0.34 [95% CI, 0.14–0.83]; P =0.01), which drove the overall primary combined outcome. The safety outcome occurred in the monitoring group (7.0%) and in the conventional group (1.9%; hazard ratio, 3.87 [95% CI, 1.06–14.14]; P =0.03). A significant difference was observed in the frequency of minor or minimal bleeding events between the two groups (monitoring group versus conventional group, 6.4% versus 1.3%; P =0.02) but not in the frequency of major bleeding events between the two groups. Conclusions: Platelet function monitoring–guided antiplatelet therapy reduces thromboembolic events in patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysm after stent placement, significantly enhancing minor or minimal bleeding events but not major bleeding events. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov ; Unique identifier: NCT03989557.

Backgrounds Concurrent chemo-radiotherapy in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer has significant hematologic toxicities (HT), leading to treatment disruption and affecting patient prognosis. We performed the meta-analysis to assess the clinical benefit of pelvic (active) bone marrow (BM) sparing radiotherapy. Methods A systematic methodological search of six primary electronic databases was performed. This systematic review mainly assessed the differences in pelvic (active) BM dose-volume parameters (DVP), hematologic toxicity of pelvic (active) BM sparing versus non-sparing radiotherapy plans. The secondary objective was to explore optimal dose limitation regimens and evaluate other radiation-induced toxicities (gastrointestinal and urological toxicity (GT/UT)). Random-effects models were used for meta-analysis. Results Final 65 publications that met inclusion criteria were included in the meta-analysis and descriptive tables. Meta-analysis of mean pelvic BM-DVP differences showed that pelvic BM-V10,20,40,50 (Vx: volume of BM receiving ≥ X Gy) were reduced by −4.6% [95% CI: −6.6, −2.6], −10.9% [−13.2, −8.6], −7.3% [−9.5, −5.2] and −3.4% [−4.3, −2.4] in pelvic BM-sparing plans. Pelvic BM sparing radiotherapy decreased G2/3+ HT [odds ratio (OR) 0.31, (0.23, 0.41)/0.42, (0.28, 0.63)], without increasing GT [G2/3+: OR 0.76, (0.51, 1.14)/0.90, (0.47, 1.74)] and UT [G2/3+: OR 0.91, (0.57, 1.46)/0.54, (0.25, 1.17)]. Pelvic active BM sparing radiotherapy also reduced HT [G2/3+ HT: OR 0.42, (0.23, 0.77)/0.34, (0.16, 0.72)]. There were significant variations between publications in dose restriction regimens. Conclusion The pelvic BM protection radiotherapy can decrease BM dose and HT. Moreover, it does not increase GT and UT. The clinical benefit of pelvic active BM protection needs to be further validated in randomized controlled trials.

To evaluate the quality of life and surgical outcomes in patients with congenital cervicovaginal malformation after cervicovaginal reconstruction.Thirty-eight patients diagnosed with congenital cervicovaginal aplasia and underwent cervicovaginal reconstruction using acellular porcine small intestinal submucosa (SIS) grafts were included in the study from January 2012 to December 2019. Of these, twenty-one patients underwent conventional laparoscopy, nine underwent robotic surgery, and eight underwent laparoendoscopic single-site (LESS) surgery. Clinical characteristics, perioperative data, condition of the neovagina and neocevix, post-operation complications, body image, resumption of menstruation, sexual function, and quality of life were assessed.The average age of the patients was 16.4 ± 5.78 years. The operative procedure lasted 182.29 ± 70.85 min, with a hemoglobin decrease of 12.53 ± 7.55 g/dl. All surgery was completed successfully without complications. The total cost was highest in the robotic surgery group (P 0.001). The cosmetic scores were significantly higher in the LESS group (P 0.001). At a median follow-up of 49.79 ± 31.02 months, all patients resumed menstruation, except one patient who underwent hysterectomy due to vaginal obstruction. The average length of neovagina was 8.11 ± 0.75 cm, and the length of the cervix was 1.73 ± 1.00 cm. There were one patient with vaginal stenosis, two patients with cervical occlusion, two patients with cervical stenosis, and six patients with intrauterine device loss. Fourteen patients experienced sexual activity, with the total female sexual function index scores of 26.83 ± 3.49. Six patients had a desire of pregnancy, and one patient had pregnant via assisted-reproduction techniques. No differences in the mean physical component score (PCS) and mental component score (MCS) were identified among three different groups at baseline and all post-surgery time points (P 0.05), but with the extension of follow-up, both PCS and MCS increased significantly in all groups (P 0.001).Cervicovaginal reconstruction using an SIS graft is safe and efficient to the management of congenital cervicovaginal atresia whatever by the conventional laparoscopy, robotic surgery or LESS, with good surgical outcomes and high of quality of life.

QRS distortion (G3I) and frontal QRS-T angle (fQRS-T angle) are both electrocardiographic (ECG) signs of ongoing ischemia and depolarization-repolarization heterogeneity, which always occur in patients with ST-segment elevation acute myocardial infarction (STEMI).We retrospectively collected 592 STEMI patients who underwent coronary angiography and follow-up for 42 months. 1. We divided the patients into two groups according to whether they had G3I on admission, compared the differences in examination data and endpoint events between these two groups. 2. Group patients according to whether the endpoint events happened in hospital, at 12 and 42 months, compare whether there is a difference in fQRS-T angle at the same time point, and find out the predictive cutoff value of all-cause death. 3. Combined G3I and fQRS-T angle together to enhance the predictive value.G3I and fQRS-T angle are both independent risk factors for all-cause death in STEMI patients within 12 months (G3I P = 0.014, fQRS-T angle P 0.001) and within 42 months (P 0.001). The cutoff values of fQRS-T angle for predicting all-cause death are 66.5° at 12 months and 90.5° at 42 months. When G3I and fQRS-T angle are combined used to predict the mortality, the specificity is significantly improved, but the sensitivity decreased.G3I and fQRS-T angles are valuable in the prognostic assessment of STEMI patients, especially when combined. These findings help clinicians to identify high-risk patients early for more aggressive treatment.

Purpose Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually leads to memory impairment, cognitive decline and dementia. Previous studies have reported that plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) gene polymorphisms play important roles in cardiovascular diseases, obesity, inflammation and other diseases. However, the role of PAI-1 in the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease has not been reported so far. Methods This study was a case-control study. This study included 131 PD patients and 97 healthy volunteers. polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was used to analyze the polymorphic loci of five different regions in PAI-1 gene (rs2227631, rs1799889, rs6092, rs2227694 and rs7242). 60 PD patients and 60 healthy volunteers were selected to detect the plasma PAI-1 concentration. The allele and genotype frequencies of SNPs were assessed using the SHEsis program. Results We found that GG genotype frequency and G allele frequency of rs2227631 was significantly higher in the PD patients. Statistically significant difference for rs1799889 could be observed in overdominant model. In subgroup analysis, a significant difference in genotype frequency distribution and allele frequency was found for rs2227631 and rs1799889 between early-onset PD group and the control group. For cognitive dysfunction, the subcomponent showed that GG genotype frequency and G allele frequency of rs2227631 was significantly higher in normal cognition group. The codominant model of rs1799889 was significantly different between the cognitive impairment group and the control group. In addition, the expression of PAI-1 in plasma of PD patients was significantly higher than that of controls, and further analysis showed that the expression of PAI-1 in patients with cognitive impairment was significantly higher than that in patients with cognitive normal. Conclusion Our results indicate that the PAI-1 gene rs2227631 and rs1799889 polymorphisms were significantly associated with PD susceptibility in the Chinese Han population. PAI-1 has the potential to become a new therapeutic target and diagnostic marker.

To explore the changes in plasma D-dimer (D-D) levels of pregnant women during pregnancy and their predictive value for venous thromboembolism (VTE).A selection of 240 pregnant women who came to our hospital for routine perinatal care and delivery from January 2018 to January 2019 were selected as the observation group, and 240 cases that came to our hospital for routine physical examination were served as the control group. The D-D levels of the two groups of women were compared, and the D-D levels of pregnant women in the observation group with different delivery methods were explored; the observation group was into VTE and non-VTE groups according to the occurrence of VTE, and the D-D levels of the two groups of pregnant women in different periods were compared, and its predictive value on VTE was analyzed.The observation group exhibited a notably higher D-D level than the control group (The D-D of pregnant women during pregnancy showed an increase trend with the gestational weeks, and they were all beyond the normal range. The D-D level in the second trimester has the highest predictive value for VTE.

Background. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a prevalent microvascular complication of diabetes, and the levels of chemerin were associated with the severity of DR. However, there is no research on chemerin in the development of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). Therefore, our study aimed to explore the relationship between chemerin and PDR. Methods. The levels of chemerin/chemokine-like receptor (CMKLR1), proinflammatory cytokines, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in 90 cases of PDR and nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) patients and in high glucose (HG) stimulated human retinal pigment epithelium cells (ARPE-19) were evaluated by ELISA. Moreover, chemerin was added into HG-induced ARPE-19 cells to assess its effect on proinflammatory cytokines and VEGF. Results. The levels of chemerin/CMKLR1 were higher in PDR patients than NPDR ones, and chemerin was positively correlated with CMKLR1 in PDR patients. Compared to NPDR, the secretions of proinflammatory cytokines and VEGF were increased in PDR patients and positively correlated with chemerin/CMKLR1. Additionally, chemerin activated CMKLR1 and aggravated HG-induced cell injury, inflammatory responses, and VEGF expressions in ARPE-19 cells. Conclusion. Our study demonstrated that chemerin/CMKLR1 axis aggravated the progression of PDR, which suggested that inhibition of chemerin might serve as a new therapeutic approach to treat PDR.

OBJECTIVES To evaluate safety and immunogenicity of V114 (15-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine [PCV] containing serotypes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6A, 6B, 7F, 9 V, 14, 18C, 19A, 19F, 22F, 23F, and 33F), followed by 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23) 8 weeks later, in adults living with HIV. DESIGN In this phase 3 study (V114-018; NCT03480802), pneumococcal vaccine-naive adults with HIV (CD4+ count ≥50 cells/μl, plasma HIV RNA

BACKGROUND Both squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) are common malignant tumors in the neck. However, seldom has SCC of the thyroid been diagnosed. Further, cytological features of SCC and PTC have rarely been reported. The significance of fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in the diagnosis of neck masses has been established. Herein, we present an exceedingly rare case of an intrathyroidal SCC diagnosed using FNAC, along with its cytological features. CASE SUMMARY A 66-year-old man presented with a left-sided neck mass. Ultrasound examination showed an ill-defined nodule. The appearance was hypoechoic with a few hyperechoic spots. FNAC of the left thyroid nodule was performed. A cellular smear was obtained, and it showed a large number of neoplastic cells with rich cytoplasm and poor cell adhesion. Tumor cell nuclei showed coarse nuclear chromatin and a few enlarged prominent nucleoli. An increased nuclear/cytoplasm ratio was observed. Thus, malignancy was diagnosed without a confirmed tumor type. Percutaneous tumor biopsy was performed to make a definite diagnosis. The tumor cells showed typical squamous cell characteristics. CONCLUSION Head and neck SCC and PTC have different cytologies. Measures are needed to ensure accurate diagnosis using FNAC.

BACKGROUND Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is injury of alveolar epithelial cells and capillary endothelial cells caused by various factors, including endogenous and exogenous lung factors, leading to diffuse pulmonary interstitial and alveolar edema, and acute respiratory failure. ARDS involves alveolar epithelial cells and pulmonary interstitial capillary endothelial cells. Circulating endothelial cells (CECs) are the only marker that directly reflects vascular endothelial injury in vivo. There have been few studies on the correlation between peripheral blood CECs and ARDS at home and abroad. The lungs are the organs with the highest capillary density and the most endothelial cells, thus, it is speculated that when ARDS occurs, CECs are stimulated and damaged, and released into the circulatory system. AIM To explore the correlation between CEC level and severity of ARDS in patients postoperatively. METHODS Blood samples were collected from all patients on day 2 (d2) and day 5 (d5) after surgery. The control group comprised 32 healthy volunteers. Number of CECs was measured by flow cytometry, and operation time was recorded. Changes in various indexes of patients were monitored, and diagnosis of ARDS was determined based on ARDS Berlin definition. We comprised d2 CECs in different groups, correlation between operation time and d2 CECs, ARDS of different severity by d2 CECs, and predictive value of d2 CECs for ARDS in postoperative patients. RESULTS The number of d2 CECs in the ARDS group was significantly higher than that in the healthy control group (P < 0.001). The number of d2 CECs in the ARDS group was significantly higher than that in the non-ARDS group (P < 0.001). The number of d2 CECs in the non-ARDS group was significantly higher than that in the healthy control group (P < 0.001). Operation time was positively correlated with number of CECs on d2 (rs = 0.302, P = 0.001). The number of d2 CECs in the deceased group was significantly higher than that in the improved group (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in number of d2 CECs between patients with mild and moderate ARDS. The number of d2 CECs in patients with severe ARDS was significantly higher than that in patients with mild and moderate ARDS (P = 0.041, P = 0.037). There was no significant difference in number of d5 and d2 CECs in the non-ARDS group after admission to intensive care. The number of d5 CECs was higher than the number of d2 CECs in the ARDS improved group (P < 0.001). The number of d5 CECs was higher than the number of d2 CECs in the ARDS deceased group (P = 0.002). If the number of CECs was > 1351/mL, sensitivity and specificity of predicting ARDS were 80.8% and 78.1%, respectively. CONCLUSION Changes in number of CECs might predict occurrence and adverse outcome of ARDS after surgery, and higher numbers of CECs indicate worse prognosis of ARDS.

For a long time, the oil exploration and development business of Chinese oil enterprises is mostly limited to China, and the international cooperation of transnational oil and gas started late. Therefore, compared with foreign companies, there is still a big gap in understanding the business model of overseas oil and gas industry. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize and learn from the past business model. This paper summarizes the main modes of offshore oil and gas cooperation among global oil companies, compares various modes, and studies the cooperative development mode of offshore oil and gas resources. The research shows that under the lease contract mode, foreign oil companies have greater management rights, but with the continuous development of international oil industry, the government of resource countries has gradually increased its control over foreign oil companies.

RT-PCR is the primary method to diagnose COVID-19 and is also used to monitor the disease course. This approach, however, suffers from false negatives due to RNA instability and poses a high risk to medical practitioners. Here, we investigated the potential of using serum proteomics to predict viral nucleic acid positivity during COVID-19. We analyzed the proteome of 275 inactivated serum samples from 54 out of 144 COVID-19 patients and shortlisted 42 regulated proteins in the severe group and 12 in the non-severe group. Using these regulated proteins and several key clinical indexes, including days after symptoms onset, platelet counts, and magnesium, we developed two machine learning models to predict nucleic acid positivity, with an AUC of 0.94 in severe cases and 0.89 in non-severe cases, respectively. Our data suggest the potential of using a serum protein-based machine learning model to monitor COVID-19 progression, thus complementing swab RT-PCR tests. More efforts are required to promote this approach into clinical practice since mass spectrometry-based protein measurement is not currently widely accessible in clinic.

Background Microvascular decompression (MVD) has become accepted as an effective therapeutic option for hemifacial spasm (HFS); however, the curative rate of MVD for HFS varies widely (50–98%) in different medical centers. This study could contribute to the improvement of the MVD procedure. Methods We retrospectively analyzed 32 patients in whom initial MVD failed in other hospitals and who underwent a second MVD at our center. The clinical characteristics, operative findings, outcome of the second MVD, and complications were recorded. Results There were 18 women and 14 men (56.3 and 43.7%, respectively). The left-to-right ratio was 19:13. The mean age of the patients was 59.8 years. We found an undiscovered conflict site located in zone 4 in 10 patients and in the root entry zone in 8 patients. The initial MVD failed in nine patients because of ignorance of the arterioles that originate from the anterior inferior cerebellar artery. There were no special findings in four patients. No Teflon felts were found in the whole surgical field in one patient. Conclusion Omission of the offending vessel is the most common cause of an unsuccessful MVD. Intraoperative abnormal muscle response associated with the Z-L response is a good measure to correctly identify the involved arterioles.

To develop a nomogram based on pretreatment dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) to predict pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). A total of 108 female patients with TNBC treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery between January 2017 and October 2020 were enrolled. The patients were randomly divided into the primary cohort (n = 87) and validation cohort (n = 21) at a ratio of 4:1. The pretreatment DCE-MRI and clinicopathological features were reviewed and recorded. Univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to determine the independent predictors of pCR in the primary cohort. A nomogram was developed based on the predictors, and the predictive performance of the nomogram was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC). The validation cohort was used to test the predictive model. Tumor volume measured on DCE-MRI, time to peak (TTP), and androgen receptor (AR) status were identified as independent predictors of pCR. The AUCs of the nomogram were 0.84 (95% CI: 0.75–0.93) and 0.79 (95% CI: 0.59–0.99) in the primary cohort and validation cohort, respectively. Pretreatment DCE-MRI could predict pCR after NAC in patients with TNBC. The nomogram can be used to predict the probability of pCR and may help individualize treatment. • Pretreatment DCE-MRI findings can predict pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. • A nomogram based on the independent predictors of tumor volume measured on DCE-MRI, time to peak, and androgen receptor status could help personalized cancer treatment in TNBC patients.

Objective. To investigate association of incidence between pancreatic adipose infiltration and metabolic syndrome (METS). Methods. We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases up to July 2021. We compared incidence rate of METS between adults with and without pancreatic adipose infiltration, along with their clinical features, such as fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and hypertension (HTN). Cross-sectional study, cohort study, and case control study were included. Two investigators independently completed study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment. Results. Eleven eligible studies that involved 17,127 patients were included, including 8 cross-sectional studies, 2 cohort studies, and 1 case control study. There was a trend of increasing in incidence rate of METS ( OR = 2.66 , 95% CI: 1.89-3.75) of adults with pancreatic adipose infiltration when compared to those without the disease. There was a trend of increasing in HTN ( OR = 1.68 , 95% CI: 1.32-2.13) and levels of FBG ( SMD = 0.54 , 95% CI: 0.35-0.72) and TG ( SMD = 0.39 , 95% CI: 0.25-0.53) of adults with pancreatic adipose infiltration, while there was a trend of decreasing in HDL level ( SMD = − 0.29 , 95% CI: -0.43~ -0.15). Conclusion. There was an association of incidence between pancreatic adipose infiltration and METS. Indicators of clinical features related to pancreatic adipose infiltration were more likely to arise, such as FBG and TG levels and HTN, but HDL level tended to decrease.

Objective Helicobacter pyloriinfection is mostly a family-based infectious disease. To facilitate its prevention and management, a national consensus meeting was held to review current evidence and propose strategies for population-wide and family-basedH. pyloriinfection control and management to reduce the related disease burden. Methods Fifty-seven experts from 41 major universities and institutions in 20 provinces/regions of mainland China were invited to review evidence and modify statements using Delphi process and grading of recommendations assessment, development and evaluation system. The consensus level was defined as ≥80% for agreement on the proposed statements. Results Experts discussed and modified the original 23 statements on family-basedH. pyloriinfection transmission, control and management, and reached consensus on 16 statements. The final report consists of three parts: (1)H. pyloriinfection and transmission among family members, (2) prevention and management ofH. pyloriinfection in children and elderly people within households, and (3) strategies for prevention and management ofH. pyloriinfection for family members. In addition to the ‘test-and-treat’ and ‘screen-and-treat’ strategies, this consensus also introduced a novel third ‘family-basedH. pyloriinfection control and management’ strategy to prevent its intrafamilial transmission and development of related diseases. Conclusion H. pyloriis transmissible from person to person, and among family members. A family-basedH. pyloriprevention and eradication strategy would be a suitable approach to prevent its intra-familial transmission and related diseases. The notion and practice would be beneficial not only for Chinese residents but also valuable as a reference for other highly infected areas.

Solar energy is a green and renewable clean energy. Using this as main or auxiliary energy to dry agricultural materials could reduce energy consumption and improve product quality. In the drying process of agricultural materials, not only drying technologies but also drying parameters would affect the quality of materials. This paper provides a guided technological tour on solar drying through a literature research. An overview about the drying technologies to evaluate the drying quality, such as traditional sun drying, solar tunnel drying, solar greenhouse drying, solar-assisted drying system, is presented to demonstrate advances and application potential of solar drying. Finally, variable temperature drying is preliminarily proposed and tested to verify its superiority of energy saving and drying quality improvement. The literature research in this paper gives a reference on the effective application of solar drying through specifying the mechanisms of quality transformation.

The breakdown accident of cable joint occurs frequently when the sheath overvoltage cable line is closed, but the cable joint is ignored or simply treated in the previous overvoltage simulation of cable system. To solve this problem, a joint equivalent impedance model is established for a 500 kV cable line intermediate joint structure, and a 500 kV high voltage cable system simulation model considering the cable intermediate joint is built in the transient simulation software ATP-EMTP to simulate and calculate the switching overvoltage on the core and metal sheath of the cable intermediate joint, and to study the influence of different number of outgoing buses and residual charge of cable core The influence of some factors on the switching overvoltage of cable joint. In addition, the measures to restrain the switching overvoltage of cable joint are analyzed. The research results provide reference for the fault analysis of cable joint and the parameter design of cable insulation coordination.

Background Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare, non-treatable and fatal neurological complication of measles , still present due to the return of the epidemic linked to the loosening of vaccination policies. Its mechanism remains unexplained. Objective The main objective was to investigate explanatory variables relating to the risk of developing SSPE and its pathophysiology . Methods Literature analysis was focused on different varieties of SSPE: perinatal forms, short-incubation forms similar to acute measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE), rapidly evolving forms, forms occurring in the immunosuppressed, adult forms, and family forms. In addition, several studies on the parameters of innate immunity and interferon responses of patients were analyzed. Results Two main data were highlighted: a relationship between the so-called fulminant forms and the prescription of corticosteroids was established. In familial SSPE, two groups were individualized according to the duration of the latency period, prompting an analysis of patient exomes . Conclusion Treatment with corticosteroids should be banned. Knowledge of the genes involved and epigenetics should be useful for understanding the pathophysiology of SSPE and other late-onset neurological infections with RNA viruses .