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Research has documented that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with increased adult sleep disturbances, little is known about whether positive childhood experiences (PCEs) influence sleep health in adulthood. This study aimed to examine the associations of ACEs and PCEs with adulthood insomnia, as well as the extent to which PTSD and depressive symptoms mediated these associations.A sample of 7245 adults in China (male 32.7%; mean age 38.09 years, SD = 7.84, range from 18 to 81) completed self-report questionnaires to assess ACEs, PCEs, PTSD and depressive symptoms. Multiple linear regressions were used to examine the independent and interaction effects of ACEs and PCEs on insomnia. Path analyses were performed to examine the direct and indirect effects of ACEs and PCEs on insomnia.After adjustment of demographics, ACEs (β = 0.11, p 0.001) and PCEs (β = -0.09, p 0.001) were both independently associated with adulthood insomnia, while the relationship between PCEs and insomnia was weakened but still significant among participants with high levels of ACEs. After controlling for demographics, PTSD and depressive symptoms partially mediated the overall effect of PCEs on insomnia, and fully mediated the relationship between ACEs and insomnia.These data demonstrate that both positive and adverse childhood experiences influence adulthood insomnia. The findings highlight the importance of joint assessment of PCEs and ACEs to prevent and intervene insomnia. Optimizing the early childhood environment may help to foster healthy sleep throughout the life course.

Background NKX6.1 is a transcription factor for insulin, as well as a marker for β cell maturity. Abnormal NKX6.1 expression in β cells, such as translocation from the nucleus to cytoplasm or lost expression, has been shown as a marker for β cell dedifferentiation. Methods We obtained pancreatic sections from organ donors and immunofluorescence staining with NKX6.1 and insulin was performed to characterize NKX6.1 expression in subjects with or without type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Results Our results showed that cells with insulin expression but no nucleic NKX6.1 expression (NKX6.1Nuc-Ins+), and cells with cytoplasmic NKX6.1 expression but no insulin expression (NKX6.1cytIns−) were significantly increased in T2DM subjects and positively correlated with glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), indicating the elevated β cell dedifferentiation with NKX6.1 inactivation in T2DM. To investigate whether β cell dedifferentiation has initiated in subjects with higher risks for T2DM, we next analyzed the association between β-cell dedifferentiation level in ND subjects with different ages, body mass index, and HbA1c. The results showed the absolute number and percentage of dedifferentiated β cells with NKX6.1 inactivation did not significantly change in subjects with advanced aging, obesity, or modest hyperglycemia, indicating that the β cell dedifferentiation might mainly occur after T2DM was diagnosed. Conclusion Our results suggested that NKX6.1 expression in β cells was changed in type 2 diabetic subjects, evidenced by significantly increased NKX6.1Nuc-Ins+ and NKX6.1cytIns− cells. This abnormality did not occur more frequently in subjects with a higher risk for T2DM, suggesting that β cell dedifferentiation might be secondary to the pathological changes in T2DM.

Background Linezolid is one of the last lines of defence for Gram-positive bacteria, and the increasing emergence of linezolid-resistant enterococci (LRE) has become an important problem in nosocomial infections. Objectives This study aimed to explore the mechanisms of linezolid resistance and analyse risk factors for the infection with LRE. Methods The known resistance mechanisms of linezolid were detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Clinical data of patients with LRE infection were collected from the electronic medical record system. Risk factors associated with LRE were determined by comparing two case groups (LRE group and linezolid-susceptible enterococci [LSE] group) with the control group (without enterococci infection) at a ratio of 1:1:2. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to evaluate independent risk factors for acquiring LRE and LSE. Results A total of 85 (4.5%) LRE isolates were detected during a 5-year period. The main resistance mechanism was acquisition of the transferable gene optrA (98.8%), followed by the L4 protein mutation (37.7%) and L3 protein mutation (4.7%). In our study, 85 LRE cases, 85 LSE cases, and 170 controls were then enrolled; multivariable analyses indicated that transfer from another hospital (odds ratio [OR], 3.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5–7.3; P = 0.004), malignant tumour (OR, 3.7; 95% CI, 1.6–8.8; P = 0.003), polymicrobial infection (OR, 12.2; 95% CI, 1.4–106.2; P = 0.023), and urinary tract infections (OR, 42.7; 95% CI, 11.4–159.3; P = 0.000) were independent predictors for acquiring LRE. In addition, polymicrobial infections (OR, 43.3; 95% CI, 14.1–132.8; P = 0.000), total length of hospital stay (≥30 days) (OR, 5.7; 95% CI, 1.9–17.3; P = 0.002) and exposure to glycopeptide (OR, 6.6; 95% CI, 1.1–38.8; P = 0.035) were independently associated with LSE infections. Conclusions Proper antibiotic management programs and monitoring of patient risk factors are necessary to control LRE infections.

Background and objectives Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ASCs) are recognized as an advantaged source for the prevention and treatment of diverse diseases including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, alterations in characteristics of ASCs from the aforementioned T2DM patients are still obscure, which also hinder the rigorous and systematic illumination of progression and pathogenesis. Methods and results In this study, we originally isolated peripancreatic adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells from both human type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic donors (T2DM-ASCs, ND-ASCs) with the parental consent, respectively. We noticed that T2DM-ASCs exhibited indistinguishable immunophenotype, cell vitality, chondrogenic differentiation and stemness as ND-ASCs. Simultaneously, there's merely alterations in migration and immunoregulatory capacities in T2DM-ASCs. However, differing from ND-ASCs, T2DM-ASCs exhibited deficiency in adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation, and in particular, the delayed cell cycle and different cytokine expression spectrum. Conclusions The conservative alterations of T2DM-ASCs in multifaceted characteristics indicated the possibility of autologous application of ASCs for cell-based T2DM treatment in the future.

Background Cryptococcosis is a major opportunistic invasive mycosis in immunocompromised patients, but it is also increasingly seen in immunocompetent patients. In the early stages of cryptococcosis, limitations of the detection method may hinder the diagnosis. A molecular diagnostic technique based on nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) method was developed to fulfil the need for efficient diagnosis of cryptococcosis. Methods We compared the diagnostic performance of NASBA, PCR and cryptococcal antigen (CrAg) test (colloidal gold method) in clinical samples from 25 cryptococcosis patients (including 8 cryptococcal meningoencephalitis and 17 pulmonary cryptococcosis) who were categorized as proven cases (n = 10) and probable cases (n = 15) according to the revised EORTC/MSG definitions. 10 patients with non-Cryptococcus infection and 30 healthy individuals were categorized as control group. Results The lowest detection limit of NASBA was 10 CFU/mL, and RNA of non-target bacteria or fungi was not amplified. The sensitivity of NASBA, PCR and colloidal gold method was 92.00% (95% CI 72.50–98.60%), 64.00% (95% CI 42.62–81.29%), 100.00% (95% CI 83.42–100.00%), and the specificity was 95.00% (95% CI 81.79–99.13%), 80.00% (95% CI 63.86–90.39%) and 82.50% (95% CI 66.64–92.11%) respectively. The highest specificity (97.50%), accuracy (95.38%) and k value (0.90) were achieved when both NASBA and colloidal gold results were positive. Conclusions NASBA is a new alternative detection method for cryptococcosis which is both accurate and rapid without expensive equipment and specialised personnel. It may be used as a tool for confirming current infection as well as monitoring the effectiveness of antifungal treatment. The use of NASBA to detect Cryptococcus RNA in blood samples is of great significance for the diagnosis of pulmonary cryptococcosis. The combination of NASBA and colloidal gold can improve the diagnostic accuracy of cryptococcosis.

Background This study aimed to examine the specific relationships between screen time and various mental health problems among community-dwelling adults in China. Methods Self-reports of weekday and weekend screen time (TV, computer use and cell phone/tablet use), symptoms of PTSD, depression, and ADHD, and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) were completed by 7121 Chinese adults. Logistic regression was used to examine specific relationships between screen time and mental health problems with demographics, physical activity, drinking, smoking, and sleep duration as covariates. Results On weekdays, the participants spending at least 3 h on watching TV, computer use and cell phone/tablet use respectively accounted for 6.8%, 15.9% and 45.9%. On weekends, the proportions were 15.5%, 12.1% and 50.0%. Computer use on weekends was associated with higher risk of PTSD (OR = 1.81); cell phone/tablet use on weekdays and weekends was related to increased depression (OR = 1.38, OR = 1.28, respectively), while only computer use on weekends was related to depression (OR = 1.33); cell phone/tablet use both on weekdays and weekends was also connected to ADHD (OR = 1.56, OR = 1.48, respectively); on weekdays and weekends, more time TV viewing (OR = 1.76–1.79, OR = 1.46–1.71, respectively) and less cell phone/tablet use (OR = 0.66, OR = 0.65, respectively) were associated with higher numbers of PLEs. Conclusions The relationships between different types of screen time and mental health problems are variant. Future longitudinal studies should subdivide screen time on the basis of content and explore the specific causal relationship between screen time and mental health problems.

Optical tracking systems (OTS) mainly consist of multiple cameras and optical target. A number of markers, at least three, are attached to the target. Position and motion posture of the target are obtained by photographing those markers. A small part of the image is occupied by marker. If markers are searched by traversing the whole image, huge expenditure and extravagant computing resources will be caused. A fast feature point extraction method is described in this paper to reduce computational burden. It combines marker prediction, perspective projection, nearest neighbor fast seed point search algorithm, region growing algorithm, and gray centroid method. Compared with the traditional whole image traversal method, the marker extraction speed is improved by hundreds or even thousands of times, which is verified by trinocular vision tracking experiment. The method is suitable for OTS.

A high precision optical tracking system (OTS) based on near infrared (NIR) trinocular stereo vision (TSV) is presented in this paper. Compared with the traditional OTS on the basis of binocular stereo vision (BSV), hardware and software are improved. In the hardware aspect, a NIR TSV platform is built, and a new active tool is designed. Imaging markers of the tool are uniform and complete with large measurement angle (&gt, 60°). In the software aspect, the deployment of extra camera brings high computational complexity. To reduce the computational burden, a fast nearest neighbor feature point extraction algorithm (FNNF) is proposed. The proposed method increases the speed of feature points extraction by hundreds of times over the traditional pixel-by-pixel searching method. The modified NIR multi-camera calibration method and 3D reconstruction algorithm further improve the tracking accuracy. Experimental results show that the calibration accuracy of the NIR camera can reach 0.02%, positioning accuracy of markers can reach 0.0240 mm, and dynamic tracking accuracy can reach 0.0938 mm. OTS can be adopted in high-precision dynamic tracking.

Vitamin D is synthesized in the skin following exposure to UVB radiation or is directly absorbed from the diet. Following hydroxylation in the liver and kidneys, vitamin D becomes its bioactive form, 1,25(OH)2D, which has been described to have potent immunomodulatory capacity. This review will focus on the effect of vitamin D in modulating the dysregulated immune system of autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ARD) patients across age, in particular in arthritis (rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis), and systemic lupus erythematosus (with adult and juvenile onset). As well as delineating the impact of vitamin D on the innate and adaptive immune functions associated with each disease pathology, this review will also summarize and evaluate studies that link vitamin D status with disease prevalence, and supplementation studies that examine the potential benefits of vitamin D on disease outcomes. Exploring this evidence reveals that better designed randomized controlled studies are required to clarify the impact of vitamin D supplementation on ARD outcomes and general health. Considering the accessibility and affordability of vitamin D as a therapeutic option, there is a major unmet need for evidence-based treatment recommendations for the use of vitamin D in this patient population.

Inverse tone mapping(iTM) is an operation to transform low-dynamic-range (LDR) content to high-dynamic-range (HDR) content, which is an effective technique to improve the visual experience. ITM has developed rapidly with deep learning algorithms in recent years. However, the great majority of deeplearning-based iTM methods are aimed at images and ignore the temporal correlations of consecutive frames in videos. In this paper, we propose a multi-scale video iTM network with deformable alignment, which increases time consistency in videos. We first a lign t he i nput c onsecutive L DR f rames a t t he feature level by deformable convolutions and then simultaneously use multi-frame information to generate the HDR frame. Additionally, we adopt a multi-scale iTM architecture with a pyramid pooling module, which enables our network to reconstruct details as well as global features. The proposed network achieves better performance compared to other iTM methods on quantitative metrics and gain a significant visual improvement.

Ying Tian,1 Fei Zhong,2 Cheng Li,3 Chunchun Wu,2 Jiaqi Zou,1 Qiang Wang,1 Zhengxue Song,1 Yufei Cui,4,5 Xiaomin Sun,6 Cong Huang2,5 1College of Sports Science, Shenyang Normal University, Shenyang, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Sports and Exercise Science, College of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Grain Science and Industry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA; 4Institute of Exercise Epidemiology and Department of Physical Education, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai’an, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan; 6Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, School of Public Health, Xi’an Jiaotong University Health Science Center, Xi’an, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Cong HuangDepartment of Sports and Exercise Science, College of Education, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou 310058, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail cohuang@zju.edu.cnPurpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and skeletal muscle mass in Chinese college students.Methods: A cross-sectional study including 2204 college freshmen was conducted in Shenyang, China. Data regarding body composition, health examinations, and a self-reported questionnaire were available from all the participants. Skeletal muscle mass assessment was completed by a bioelectrical impedance analyzer. Information on parental SES (educational levels, annual income, and occupational status) was collected via questionnaires. Covariance analysis was used to adjust for the confounding effects of sex, age, ethnicity, smoking status, alcohol use, and sleep duration.Results: Multivariate analysis showed that college freshmen with higher parental SES levels generally had higher skeletal muscle mass after adjustment for confounding factors (mean [95% confidence interval]: low, 42.4 [42.0, 42.8]; middle, 42.9 [42.6, 43.3]; high, 43.7 [43.4, 44.1], p for trend < 0.001). Similar results were observed for paternal and maternal SES (p for trend < 0.001, respectively), whereas association between paternal SES and youth muscle mass became non-significant after adjusting for maternal SES (p for trend = 0.077). Results also showed positive linear trends for skeletal muscle mass and paternal or maternal educational levels and annual income (p for trend < 0.001, respectively), but not for occupational status.Conclusion: This study found a positive association between parental SES and skeletal muscle mass in Chinese college students. Compared to the normalization of height or weight, body mass index-adjusted skeletal muscle mass is more likely to be associated with SES.Keywords: educational status, annual income, occupational status, muscular fitness, youth

Background : This study investigated the prevalence and related factors of trauma exposure and probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults from a Chinese community sample. Methods : Participants were 7218 adults recruited from Jiangxi and Hunan provinces in China. Life Events Checklist and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 were used to screen lifetime trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, respectively. Participants’ adverse and positive childhood experiences, behavioral inhibition, depression, insomnia, psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) and ADHD symptoms were also measured. Multiple regressions were performed to examine the correlates of PTSD. Results : Approximately 67.1% of participants reported one traumatic event; 27.1% experienced four or more. Participants recruited from private school, male, young age, low socioeconomic status, and poor physical health were associated with more trauma-exposure. The prevalence of PTSD was 2.1% in the total sample and 3.1% among the trauma-exposed. Among participants with PTSD, 53.6% were screened as depression, 54.3% had insomnia, 65.6% had one to three PLEs, 12.6% had four to seven PLEs, and 26.5% were screened as likely ADHD, and 5.3% highly likely ADHD. Younger age, being less educated, poor marriage quality and physical health, more adverse childhood experiences, behavioral inhibition and less positive childhood experiences were associated with increased risk of PTSD among the trauma exposed. After adjustment of these related factors, depression, insomnia, PLEs and ADHD were related to PTSD. Conclusions : PTSD is relatively prevalent among Chinese community population. Childhood experiences, behavioral inhibition, and concurrent mental health account for individual differences in vulnerability to PTSD.

We introduce a footstep-induced floor vibration sensing system that enables us to quantify the gait pattern of individuals with Muscular Dystrophy (MD) in non-clinical settings. MD is a neuromuscular disorder causing progressive loss of muscle, which leads to symptoms in gait patterns such as toe-walking, frequent falls, balance difficulty, etc. Existing systems that are used for progressive tracking include pressure mats, wearable devices, or direct observation by healthcare professionals. However, they are limited by operational requirements including dense deployment, users' device carrying, special training, etc. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a new approach that senses floor vibrations induced by human footsteps. Gait symptoms in these footsteps are reflected by the vibration signals, which enables monitoring of gait health for individuals with MD. Our approach is non-intrusive, unrestricted by line-of-sight, and thus suitable for in-home deployment. To develop our approach, we characterize the gait pattern of individuals with MD using vibration signals, and infer the health state of the patients based on both symptom-based and signal-based features. However, there are two main challenges: 1) different aspects of human gaits are mixed up in footstep-induced floor vibrations; and 2) structural heterogeneity distorts vibration propagation and attenuation through the floor medium. To overcome the first challenge, we characterize the symptom-based gait features of the footstep-induced floor vibration specific to MD. To minimize the performance inconsistency across different sensing locations in the building, we reduce the structural effects by removing the free-vibration phase due to structural damping. With these two challenges addressed, we evaluate our system performance by conducting a real-world experiment with six patients with MD and seven healthy participants. Our approach achieved 96% accuracy in predicting whether the footstep was from a patient with MD.

The divergence between labeled training data and unlabeled testing data is a significant challenge for recent deep learning models. Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) attempts to solve such a problem. Recent works show that self-training is a powerful approach to UDA. However, existing methods have difficulty in balancing scalability and performance. In this paper, we propose an instance adaptive self-training framework for UDA on the task of semantic segmentation. To effectively improve the quality of pseudo-labels, we develop a novel pseudo-label generation strategy with an instance adaptive selector. Besides, we propose the region-guided regularization to smooth the pseudo-label region and sharpen the non-pseudo-label region. Our method is so concise and efficient that it is easy to be generalized to other unsupervised domain adaptation methods. Experiments on ‘GTA5 to Cityscapes’ and ‘SYNTHIA to Cityscapes’ demonstrate the superior performance of our approach compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Nanorods and nanotubes are widely used as biosensors and reinforced fibers. Surface effects should be considered due to their nano-meter order dimension in at least one direction. This paper studies vibration and stability of a nanocantilever carrying mass under non-conservative loading. Special emphasis is placed on determination of flutter loads and resonant frequencies of a nanocantilever-mass system subjected to a generalized follower force. An exact characteristic equation is derived. For various concrete cases, the load–frequency interaction curves are displayed and the influences of surface elasticity and residual surface tension are analyzed for both conservative and non-conservative forces. The resonant frequencies are calculated for bending vibration of a sensor with attached mass. Flutter loads are obtained under a generalized follower force. Beck’s column with the surface effects is a special case of the present. Surface influences from residual surface tension and surface elasticity on the resonant frequencies and critical loads are examined. It is found that there exists the lowest flutter load independent of the tip mass through which all force–frequency interaction curves passes at a given frequency for any generalized follower force in possible direction.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic condition and the most common form of inflammatory bowel disease. The goal of standard treatment is mainly to induce and maintain remission with anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive agents, and/or colectomy. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been used successfully to treat relapsing or refractory Clostridium difficile infection. The alteration of microbiota in mouse models of UC as well as in patients suggested the possibility of treating UC with FMT. To study the effects of FMT on dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced UC model in mice. Littermates of BALB/c and C57BL/6J were randomized into four groups: normal control , treatment with DSS for 7 days (DSS – FMT), treatment with DSS followed by FMT for another 8 days (DSS + FMT), and treatment with DSS and FMT followed by another 5 days for recovery (remission). Body weight, survival rate, and DAI scores of mice in each group were recorded. Changes in distal colon were studied by histopathology. Alterations of spleen and lamina propria regulatory lymphocytes, major bacterial species in feces and inflammatory cytokines in colon were also studied. C57BL/6J mice experienced more significant weight loss than BALB/c mice after DSS treatment, regardless of whether the two strains of mice were co-housed or not. FMT caused reversal of DAI scores in BALB/c but not in C57BL/6J mice. In BALB/c mice, FMT also reduced colon inflammation that was paralleled by decreased inflammatory cytokine levels, altered bacterial microbiota, and regulatory lymphocyte proportions. FMT is effective in a mouse model of UC through its modulation on gut microbiota and the host immune system.

Research on Multi-person pose estimation is partly improved by deep learning and the computer vision. Multi-person pose estimation is expected to be involved in many applications, such as fitness training, pedestrian recognition, military training, and so on. The prospect of multi-person estimation development is promising and challenging. This paper provides a brief survey on four major multi-person pose estimation methods – DeepCut, DeeperCut, OpenPose and AlphaPose, and presents the advantages and disadvantages of these methods.

With the popularization of health concept, the demand of fitness trainer system has increased. However, the existent trainer systems only provide motion demonstration but lack users’ motion feedback. This paper designs and implements intelligent fitness trainer system based on human pose estimation, which not only shows fitness training courses but also provides motion correction. The system obtains users’ motion data by optical camera, and then applies human pose estimation, finally providing motion correction advice. In this paper, we present the system design on hardware and software, and introduce the applied human pose estimation algorithm in detail. The field trail results show that the system exerts a good influence on fitness training.

Screen content is partly driven by the rapid development of screen applications such as wireless display, screen sharing, cloud computing and gaming, etc. Different from camera-captured content, screen content has relatively bad continuity in spatiotemporal domain and severe movements or sudden changes may occur in continuous pictures. Owing to the special characteristics of screen content, conventional coding tools including High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard are unsuitable for screen content coding (SCC). A SCC extension to HEVC was brought out and developed to meet the demand of screen content coding. This paper provides a brief survey on the main coding tools in the HEVC-SCC extension. Screen content sequences also pose challenges on transmission due to its discontinuity. The alternate presentation of moving and stationary pictures makes the exploitation of bandwidth a technical difficulty. This paper introduces the improvements of SCC rate control in HEVC with better transmission performance and more efficient bandwidth utilization.

Background: A physiological hallmark of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is β cell dysfunction. Despite adequate treatment, it is an irreversible process that follows disease progression. Therefore, the development of novel therapies that restore β cell function is of utmost importance. Methods: This study aims to unveil the mechanistic action of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by investigating its impact on isolated human T2DM islets ex vivo and in vivo. Findings: We propose that MSCs can attenuate β cell dysfunction by reversing β cell dedifferentiation in an IL-1Ra-mediated manner. In response to the elevated expression of proinflammatory cytokines in human T2DM islet cells, we observed that MSCs was activated to secret IL-1R antagonist (IL-1Ra) which acted on the inflammed islets and reversed β cell dedifferentiation, suggesting a crosstalk between MSCs and human T2DM islets. The co-transplantation of MSCs with human T2DM islets in diabetic SCID mice and intravenous infusion of MSCs in db/db mice revealed the reversal of β cell dedifferentiation and improved glycaemic control in the latter. Interpretation: This evidence highlights the potential of MSCs in future cell-based therapies regarding the amelioration of β cell dysfunction. Keywords: Mesenchymal stem cells, Type 2 diabetes mellitus, β cell dysfunction, Inflammation, β cell dedifferentiation