Search

Despite the success of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV, lifelong treatment is required and there is no cure. HIV can integrate in the host genome and persist for the life span of the infected cell. These latently infected cells are not recognized as foreign because they are largely transcriptionally silent, but contain replication-competent virus that drives resurgence of the infection once ART is stopped. With a combination of immune activators, neutralizing antibodies, and therapeutic vaccines, some nonhuman primate models have been cured, providing optimism for these approaches now being evaluated in human clinical trials. In vivo delivery of gene-editing tools to either target the virus, boost immunity or protect cells from infection, also holds promise for future HIV cure strategies. In this Review, we discuss advances related to HIV cure in the last 5 years, highlight remaining knowledge gaps and identify priority areas for research for the next 5 years. An effective and scalable cure strategy is a top priority for the HIV research field; this Review discusses recent advances, knowledge gaps, and priority research areas for the next 5 years.

To compare the characteristics and efficacy of progestin-primed ovarian stimulation (PPOS) protocol plus letrozole versus PPOS protocol alone for patients with normal ovarian function who received in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection-embryo transfer (IVF/ICSI-ET) assisted pregnancy treatment.From 1 October 2017 to 1 October 2019, 576 patients who underwent IVF/ICSI cycles received PPOS protocol with or without letrozole in the Center of Reproductive Medicine, Renmin Hospital of Shiyan City were included in this retrospective cohort study. The PPOS group included 249 patients who received PPOS protocol alone, and the combined treatment group included 327 patients who received PPOS protocol plus letrozole. The general data and laboratory indicators were detected and used as baseline data. In addition, evaluation of related indicators was performed, including days of gonadotropin (Gn) duration, total amount of dose of Gn and medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), hormone levels on the trigger day, number of oocytes retrieved and mature eggs, fertilization rate, cleavage rate, blastocyst formation rate, high-quality embryo rate, methods of endometrial preparation, stage of embryo transfer, endometrial thickness, the number of embryo transfer, biochemical pregnancy rate, clinical pregnancy rate, implantation rate, abortion rate, ectopic pregnancy rate and live birth rate. The risk factors affecting clinical pregnancy rate were detected by binary Logistic regression analysis.In this study, we found that baseline level of Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) was significantly higher in combined group compared with PPOS group (p 0.05). The days of Gn duration in combined group were significantly longer than that in PPOS group (p 0.05), and the total amount of dose of Gn and MPA in combined group was significantly less than that in PPOS group (p 0.05). The levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) and progesterone in combined group were significantly higher than that in PPOS group on the trigger day (p 0.05). The number of oocytes retrieved and mature eggs in combined group was significantly more than that in PPOS group (p 0.05). Meanwhile, the fertilization rate, cleavage rate and blastocyst formation rate in combined group were significantly higher than that in PPOS group (p 0.05). There was no significant difference in the characteristics of endometrial preparation and embryo transfer, as well as the pregnancy outcomes. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that stage (p 0.001) (OR = 0.281, 95% CI: 0.187, 0.422) and number (p 0.001) (OR = 0.333, 95% CI: 0.196, 0.567) of embryos transfer were risk factors for clinical pregnancy rate.Compared with PPOS protocol alone, letrozole combined with PPOS can achieve similar embryo and pregnancy outcomes while reducing the amount of Gn and MPA, which has a higher cost performance and is worth promoting. Stage and number of embryos transfer are risk factors for clinical pregnancy rate.

BACKGROUND: Persisting shoulder stiffness adversely affects quality of life by causing pain and motion restrictions especially in patients with diabetes. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of arthroscopic capsular release in patients with idiopathic shoulder stiffness. METHOD: A literature search was conducted in electronic databases and studies were selected by following precise eligibility criteria. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed to estimate the changes at latest follow-up in scores of the Constant, American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES), and University of California at Los Angelis (UCLA) scales, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and shoulder range of motion. RESULTS: Nineteen studies were included. The follow-up duration was 42 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 32, 51]. Improvements in scores of the Constant, ASES, UCLA scales, and VAS were 48.3 [95% CI: 38.0, 58.6], 44.6 [95% CI: 24.6, 64.6], 19.3 [95% CI: 16.6, 22.0], and -6.1 [95% CI: -6.9, -5.4] respectively (P< 0.05 all). Improvements in the shoulder range of motion were: abduction 82.0 [95% CI: 65.0, 98.9]; forward flexion 75.9 [95% CI: 59.7, 92.1]; external rotation 43.2 [95% CI: 37.5, 49.0]; and internal rotation 25.4 [95% CI: 15.2, 35.5] degrees; P< 0.05 all). CONCLUSION: Arthroscopic capsular release effectively improves shoulder function in patients with idiopathic shoulder stiffness.

To investigate the dynamic changes of Krebs von den Lungen‐6 (KL‐6) among patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) and the role of KL‐6 as a noninvasive biomarker for predicting long‐term lung injury, the clinical information and laboratory tests of 166 COVID‐19 patients were collected, and a correlation analysis between KL‐6 and other parameters was conducted. There were 17 (10.2%, 17/166) severe/critical and 149 (89.8%, 149/166) mild COVID‐19 patients in our cohort. Serum KL‐6 was significantly higher in severe/critical COVID‐19 patients than in mild patients (median 898.0 vs. 451.2 U/ml, p 100 days postonset) was well correlated to those concentrations within 10 days postonset (Pearson r = .867, p, Highlights KL‐6 is a biomarker for assessing COVID‐19 severityKL‐6 predicts the prognosis of COVID‐19 patientsKL‐6 is associated with CT lung lesions areas.

Aiming at the problem of noise suppression in power lines, traditional noise suppression methods need to know prior knowledge and other defects. In this paper, blind source separation methods that do not need prior knowledge are selected. In the case of low signal-to-noise ratio, the basic independent component analysis algorithm has poor denoising effect. Therefore, this paper proposes a joint independent component analysis algorithm based on Wavelet denoising and Power independent component analysis (WD-PowerICA). In this work, firstly, the pseudo observation signal is constructed by weighted processing, and the blind separation model of single channel is transformed into a multi-channel determined model. Then, the proposed WD-PowerICA algorithm is used to separate noise and source signals. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm in this paper can effectively separate noise and source signal under low SNR. At the same time, the stronger the α pulse noise is, the closer the WD-PowerICA separated signal is to the source signal. The proposed algorithm is better than the state of the art PowerICA algorithm.

Objective Endoscopic submucosal tunnel dissection (ESTD) is a new treatment for superficial upper gastrointestinal precancerous lesions and tumors. However, its safety and efficacy for treating these lesions is still uncertain. This meta-analysis aimed to compare the efficacy and safety of ESTD with those of endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) in treating early superficial upper gastrointestinal precancerous lesions and tumors. Methods Electronic databases, including EMBASE, PubMed, Cochrane Library and the Web of Science, were systematically searched for articles published up to 1 April 2020. The primary outcomes were complete and en bloc resection rates of the lesions. The secondary outcomes included operation time, speed of dissection, complication and recurrence rates. The Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment scale was used to evaluate the quality of the studies. Results Seven studies were included in the final meta-analysis. The complete and en bloc resection rates of early superficial esophageal lesions as well as the en bloc resection rate of early superficial gastric lesions were similar between the ESTD and ESD groups. Compared with the ESD group, the ESTD group had a higher en bloc resection rate for early superficial gastric lesions. A faster dissection speed was observed in both superficial esophageal and gastric lesions. In gastric lesions, the operation time of the ESTD group was shorter than that of the ESD group, while it did not differ for esophageal lesions. There were no obvious differences in bleeding and perforation rates between the groups. Conclusion As an endoscopic technique for treating early superficial upper gastrointestinal lesions, ESTD is as safe as and more effective than ESD, especially for gastric lesions.

Background The aim of the present study was to investigate the pathological features of vestibular aqueduct (VA) related high jugular bulb (HJB) and explore the possible cause-consequence relation between HJB and endolymphatic hydrops (EH), and the potential specific radiological signs for screening causative HJB in Meniere’s disease (MD). Methods High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) and three-dimensional reconstruction (3DRC) were used to detect the anatomical variables associated with VA and jugular bulb (JB) in hydropic and non-hydropic ears. The presence or absence of EH in the inner ear was determined by gadopentetate dimeglumine-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. The presence of different types of HJB, the anatomical variables of the VA and JB and the three types of anatomical relationship between the VA and HJB were compared between the hydropic and non-hydropic ears using the χ2 or Fisher’s exact tests. P Results JB was classified as: Type 1, no bulb; type 2, below the inferior margin of the posterior semicircular canal (PSCC); type 3, between the inferior margin of the PSCC and the inferior margin of the internal auditory canal (IAC); type 4, above the inferior margin of the IAC. There were no significant differences in the presence of types 1, 2 and 3 JB between two groups. The presence of type 4 JB, average height of the JB and prevalence of the non-visualization of the VA in CT scans showed significant differences between two groups. The morphological pattern between the JB and VA revealing by 3DRC was classified as: Type I, the JB was not in contact with the VA; type II, the JB was in contact with the VA, but the latter was intact without obstruction; type III, the VA was obliterated by HJB encroachment. There were no significant differences in the presence of type I and II between two groups. Type III was identified in 5 hydropic ears but no non-hydropic ears, with a significant difference observed between the two groups. Conclusion The present results showed that JB height and non-visualization of the VA on Pöschl’s plane could render patients susceptible to the development of EH. A jugular bulb reaching above the inferior margin of the IAC (type 4 JB) could obstruct VA, resulting in EH in a few isolated patients with MD. VA obliteration revealed by 3DRC, as a specific radiological sign, may have the potential for screening causative HJB in MD.

Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) play an important role in the control of tissue inflammation and homeostasis. However, the role of ILC2s in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) has never been illustrated. In this study, we investigated ILC2s in ESRD patients and their clinical significance. Results showed that the frequencies and absolute numbers of ILC2s, not group 1 innate lymphoid cells or innate lymphoid cell precursors, were significantly elevated in the peripheral blood of ESRD patients when compared with those from healthy donor controls. Moreover, ILC2s from ESRD patients displayed enhanced type 2 cytokine production and cell proliferation. Plasma from ESRD patients significantly increased ILC2 levels and enhanced their effector function after in vitro treatment. The expression of phosphorylation of STAT5 in ILC2s, as well as the amounts of IL-2 in plasma, were increased in ESRD patients when compared with those from healthy donors. Clinically, ESRD patients with higher ILC2 frequencies displayed lower incidence of infectious complications during a mean of 21 month follow-up study. The proportions of ILC2s were negatively correlated with the prognostic biomarkers of chronic kidney disease, including serum parathyroid hormone, creatinine, and phosphorus, whereas they were positively correlated with serum calcium. These observations indicate that ILC2s may play a protective role in ESRD.

Environmental problems such as the greenhouse effect have forced countries to consciously reduce the use of coal, and many coal mines have been forced to close. However, most of the abandoned coal mines have not been redeveloped or utilized, resulting in a huge waste and idleness of resources. Abandoned coal mines may also cause subsequent safety, environmental, and social problems. In particular, China has closed a large number of coal mines in recent years, and most of these mines are high‐gas mines. Furthermore, CO2 emissions are still increasing as the global primary energy consumption continues to grow. Because abandoned coal mines are no longer mined, this study proposes the application of CO2‐enhanced coalbed methane drainage technology (CO2‐ECBM) to abandoned coal mines in China for coalbed methane (CBM) extraction and simultaneous CO2 storage. China is the largest coal consumer and CO2 emitter, and the potential capacities for both methane extraction and CO2 storage in China's abandoned mines are evaluated in this paper. This work analyzes the characteristics and development status of abandoned coal resources in China. Then, the amount of CBM and coal resources in the closed coal mines in Chongqing since 2015 is counted, and the CBM production, CO2 storage, and production costs and profits required for CO2‐ECBM technology are calculated. Finally, taking the Chongqing area as an example, the CBM production and CO2 storage potential of abandoned coal mines in China are estimated. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential and economics of using CO2‐ECBM technology in abandoned coal mines. The results provide a reference for the development of abandoned CBM and CO2 underground storage. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tree-type borehole drilling (TTBD) is a novel stress relief method for stimulating methane drainage from coal in underground coal mines. This paper is a report on studies that analyzed the permeability enhancement capabilities of tree-type boreholes in coal seams and presents a precedent-setting industrial trial of this new method in a 200-m section of a drainage roadway in a coal mine, the Shoushan coal mine in Henan province, China. Detailed simulation results indicated that after coal seams were stimulated using the TTBD method, a large number of fractures were initiated around the tree-type boreholes. These fractures propagated along the direction of maximum horizontal stress and formed highly permeable flow channels for methane transport from the coal into the tree-type sub-boreholes. The fractures gradually became shorter along the length of the sub-boreholes. As the sub-boreholes were shortened, the area fractured and the number of induced fracture decreased rapidly. Conversely, the fracture density and the value of homogeneity coefficient, β, increased. The industrial trial showed that compared with gas drainage from a conventional borehole in the Ji15−17 coal seams, the gas production rate from a single tree-type borehole was 4.7 times faster and the percentage of methane in the gas produced was 1.7 times higher. In addition, the borehole drainage attenuation time was 2.5 times longer for the tree-type boreholes. The total volume of gas production produced from 238 tree-type boreholes in a 200-m section of roadway was over 70,000 cubic meters, 1.4 times the methane extracted by 938 conventional boreholes in an adjoining 200-m section of the same roadway. In addition, the number of boreholes required to drain 1.4 times as much gas was 75% smaller. These results have provided support for the appreciation and application of this new technique for improving underground coal mine methane drainage.

This paper focuses on the development of smart grid in the trends of the energy Internet, analyze the development situation of smart grid and studies the requirements for the construction of major advanced smart grid demonstration areas in China. Under this background, this paper proposes medium and long term China smart grid development strategies, key tasks, technical routes and implementation plans. And planning practices in typical regions are carried out to support the implementation of major national strategic decision-making deployments.

Aiming at the lack of top-level planning ideas and implementation schemes in the development of Ubiquitous Power Internet of Things, this article proposes the ideas named “around one goal, planning six areas, and creating eighteen key projects”. And the 18 key projects with " Energy business datamation, Energy data servitization, Energy service valuation, Energy value ecological cultivation, Energy ecological business updation” are proposed as the planning implementation path, they provide planning ideas and proposals for regional Ubiquitous Power Internet of Things planning and construction.

Given the current situation of large-scale energy storage system (ESS) access in distribution network, a practical distributed ESS location and capacity optimization model is proposed. Firstly, a weighted voltage sensitivity is proposed to select the grid-connected node set of ESS. On this basis, the distributed ESS location model is established, which aims at reducing voltage deviation and active power loss of the distribution network. Then, an ESS partition method based on the improved flame propagation model is proposed, and the partition results are obtained by constructing the flammability of nodes, the wind direction of flame propagation, speed of flame propagation and other indicators. Based on partition results, the capacity optimization model is established with the maximum annual net income of energy stored in the partition as the objective function. Finally, the improved IEEE-33 bus distribution network is used to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.

In order to promote the construction of the Ubiquitous Power Internet of Things scientifically and effectively, this paper considers the characteristics of each region comprehensively according to the needs of local and municipal companies, and forms three types of construction tasks with basic, improved and leading characteristics differentially. Key constructions in eight directions are defined, including production operations, customer service, construction management, energy ecology, enterprise intermediate platform, smart internet of things, basic support and technology research, etc. The objectives and effectiveness of twelve specific construction projects are cited as examples, which provide references for promoting the construction for prefecture-level power supply companies comprehensively.

Background Human astrovirus (HAstV) and sapovirus (SaV) are common pathogens that can cause acute gastroenteritis (AGE). However, very few studies have reported the molecular epidemiology and clinical information on HAstV and SaV in China. This study aims to determine the molecular epidemiology and clinical features of HAstV and SaV in patients with AGE in Guangzhou, China. Methods For this study, 656 patients with AGE were enrolled. Their stool samples were screened for 15 enteropathogens using Luminex xTAG® Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel. HAstV and SaV were detected through an in-house multiplex reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction followed by phylogenetic analysis. We described and compared clinical features of AGE in patients with HAstV and SaV. Results Of the 656 stool samples, 63.72% (418/656) were found to be positive, with 550 enteropathogens (296 bacteria and 254 viruses). HAstV and SaV were detected in 20 (3.0%) and 12 (1.8%) samples, respectively. Four genotypes (genotypes 1, 2, 3, and 8) of HAstV and three genotypes (GI.1, GI.2 and GIV) of SaV were identified. Coinfection was observed in ten HAstV-positive and two SaV-positive samples. HAstV was more likely to occur in winter, while SaV in early spring. The median age of the patients with single HAstV infection was higher than that of the patients with other viruses (rotavirus, norovirus, and enteric adenovirus; P = 0.0476) and unknown etiology (P = 0.006). Coinfection with HAstV or SaV were not associated with disease severity (P > 0.05). Conclusion HAstV and SaV are the common causes of AGE in Guangzhou, China.

The target of 2D human pose estimation is to locate the keypoints of body parts from 2D images. State-of-the-art methods for pose estimation usually construct pixel-wise heatmaps from keypoints as labels for learning neural networks, which are usually initialized randomly or using classification models on large dataset, such as ImageNet, for their backbones. According to statistical data, there are strong positional priors for human keypoints, which are highly dependent on their relationship between image patches. To learn positional priors for pretraining pose estimators, we propose Heatmap-Style Jigsaw Puzzles (HSJP) problem as self-supervised pretext task, whose target is to predict the location of each patch from an image composed of shuffled patches. During pretraining, we only use person images in MS-COCO, rather than introducing extra large dataset like ImageNet. A heatmap-style label for patch location is designed and our learning process is in a non-contrastive way. The weights learned by HSJP pretext task are utilised as backbones of 2D human pose estimators, which are then finetuned on MS-COCO human keypoints dataset. With two popular and strong 2D human pose estimators, HRNet and SimpleBaseline, we evaluate mAP score on both MS-COCO validation and test-dev datasets. Our experiments show that downstream pose estimators with our self-supervised pretraining obtain much better performance than those trained from scratch, and are comparable to those using ImageNet classification models as their initial backbones.

Talaromycosis is a fatal opportunistic infection prevalent in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients, previous studies suggest environmental humidity is associated with monthly talaromycosis hospitalizations of HIV-infected patients, but the acute risk factor remains uncertain. In this study, we evaluated the associations between talaromycosis hospitalizations of HIV-infected patients (n = 919) and environmental factors including meteorological variables and air pollutants at the event day (assumed “lag 0” since the exact infection date is hard to ascertain) and 1–7 days prior to event day (lag 1–lag 7) in conditional logistics regression models based on a case crossover design. We found that an interquartile range (IQR) increase in temperature at lag 0–lag 7 (odds ratio [OR] [95% CI] ranged from 1.748 [1.345–2.273] to 2.184 [1.672–2.854]), and an IQR increase in humidity at lag 0 (OR [95% CI] = 1.192 [1.052–1.350]), and lag 1 (OR [95% CI] = 1.199 [1.056–1.361]) were significantly associated with talaromycosis hospitalizations of HIV-infected patients. Besides, temperature was also a common predictor for talaromycosis in patients with co-infections including candidiasis (n = 386), Pneumocystis pneumonia (n = 183), pulmonary tuberculosis (n = 141), and chronic hepatitis (n = 158), while humidity was a specific risk factor for talaromycosis in patients with candidiasis, and an air pollutant, SO2, was a specific risk factor for talaromycosis in patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia. In an age stratified evaluation (cutoff = 50 years old), temperature was the only variable positively associated with talaromycosis in both younger and older patients. These findings broaden our understanding of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of talaromycosis in HIV-infected patients.

Fuzz testing is an important means of vulnerability discovery, but now fuzz testing technology is most for application software on traditional computer platforms, which can be not used on embedded software. We propose a fuzzing method for embedded software, which can solve the two technical difficulties: abnormal monitoring and automation. Also, we independent research and develop embedded fuzzy testing tool called Efuzzer. Experiments prove that the tool has very good practicality and is effective for discover buffer overflow vulnerabilities which can cause a system crash. Now the tool is tried in several software testing institutions, a few vulnerabilities were discovered.

In recent years, the development of deep learning has brought new ideas to internal threat detection. In this paper, three common deep learning algorithms for threat detection are optimized and innovated, and feature embedding, drift detection and sample weighting are introduced into FCNN. Adaptive multi-iteration method is introduced into Support Vector Data Description (SVDD). A dynamic threshold adjustment mechanism is introduced in VAE. In threat detection, three methods are used to detect the abnormal behavior of users, and the intersection of output results is taken as the final threat judgment basis. Experiments on cert r6.2 data set show that this method can significantly reduce the false positive rate.

Objectives: As diagnosis and treatment guidelines for bone sarcomas continue updating, it is important to examine whether, when, and which kinds of patients have had a survival improvement over the last four decades. Methods: This cohort study included 9178 patients with primary bone and joint sarcomas from 1 January 1980 to 31 December 2018 using data from Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-9 Registries. The follow-up period was extended to November 2020. Patients were divided by decade into four time periods: 1980–1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2009, and 2010–2018. The primary endpoint was bone sarcomas-specific mortality (CSM). The 5-year bone sarcomas-specific survival (CSS) rate was determined stratified by demographic, neoplastic, temporal, economic, and geographic categories. The associations between time periods and CSM were examined using a multivariable Cox regression model, with reported hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: The 5-year CSS rate for bone sarcomas was 58.7%, 69.9%, 71.0%, and 69.2%, in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, respectively. Older age, male gender, tumor sites at pelvic bones, sacrum, coccyx and associated joints, as well as vertebral column, osteosarcoma and Ewing tumor, and residence in non-metropolitan areas were independently associated with higher CSM risk. After adjusting for the covariates above, patients in the 1990s (HR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.68–0.82), 2000s (HR = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.65–0.78), and 2010s (HR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.62–0.76) had significantly lower CSM risks than patients in the 1980s. However, patients in the 2000s and 2010s did not have lower CSM risks than those in the 1990s (both p &gt, 0.05). Conclusions: Although bone sarcomas survival has significantly improved since 1990, it almost halted over the next three decades. Bone sarcomas survival should improve over time, similar to common cancers. New diagnostic and therapeutic strategies such as emerging immune and targeted agents are warranted to overcome this survival stalemate.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a global pandemic of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Though vaccines and neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been developed to fight COVID-19 in the past year, one major concern is the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs). Indeed, SARS-CoV-2 VOCs such as B.1.1.7 (UK), B.1.351 (South Africa), P.1 (Brazil), and B.1.617.1 (India) now dominate the pandemic. Herein, we found that binding activity and neutralizing capacity of sera collected from convalescent patients in early 2020 for SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, but not non-VOC variants, were severely blunted. Furthermore, we observed evasion of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs from a VH3-30 mAb 32D4, which was proved to exhibit highly potential neutralization against wild-type (WT) SARS-CoV-2. Thus, these results indicated that SARS-CoV-2 VOCs might be able to spread in convalescent patients and even harbor resistance to medical countermeasures. New interventions against these SARS-CoV-2 VOCs are urgently needed.

Extracting coal mine methane (CMM) is important for underground mining safety. The tree-type borehole drainage (TTBD) technique can effectively remove methane from coal seams. Determining a suitable drilling pattern for multiple tree-type boreholes will promote the efficient application of this technique in coal mines. Aimed at solving the problem that the optimum methane extraction layout for multiple tree-type boreholes is unclear, this study first constructed a full-coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model to simulate methane flow in coal. This model and data from a coal mine were used to investigate the effect of multiple tree-type borehole layouts, tree-type borehole spacing, different Langmuir volume and different Langmuir pressure constants, and initial coal permeabilities on CMM drainage. The results show that the different tree-type borehole layouts result in significant differences in drainage and that the use of a rhombic sub-borehole layout can reduce the methane pre-drainage time by up to 44.4%. As the tree-type borehole spacing increases, the total time required for pre-drainage increases as a power function. As the Langmuir pressure constant, the fracture permeability, or the matrix permeability increases, the effective drainage zone expands. The effective drainage zone also expands when the Langmuir volume constant decreases but all these changes are accompanied by a shortening of the drainage completion time. These results can provide a reliable basis for optimizing tree-type borehole drilling layouts.

Background and Aims We compared risk of acute liver injury and mortality in patients with COVID‐19 and current, past, and no HBV infection. Approach and Results This was a territory‐wide retrospective cohort study in Hong Kong. Patients with COVID‐19 between January 23, 2020, and January 1, 2021, were identified. Patients with hepatitis C or no HBsAg results were excluded. The primary outcome was mortality. Acute liver injury was defined as alanine aminotransferase or aspartate aminotransferase ≥2 × upper limit of normal (ULN; i.e., 80 U/L), with total bilirubin ≥2 × ULN (i.e., 2.2 mg/dL) and/or international normalized ratio ≥1.7. Of 5,639 patients included, 353 (6.3%) and 359 (6.4%) had current and past HBV infection, respectively. Compared to patients without known HBV exposure, current HBV‐infected patients were older and more likely to have cirrhosis. Past HBV‐infected patients were the oldest, and more had diabetes and cardiovascular disease. At a median follow‐up of 14 (9‐20) days, 138 (2.4%) patients died; acute liver injury occurred in 58 (1.2%), 8 (2.3%), and 11 (3.1%) patients with no, current, and past HBV infection, respectively. Acute liver injury (adjusted HR [aHR], 2.45; 95% CI, 1.52‐3.96; P

Background A novel variant of SARS-CoV-2, the Delta variant of concern (VOC, also known as lineage B.1.617.2), is fast becoming the dominant strain globally. We reported the epidemiological, viral, and clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients infected with the Delta VOC during the local outbreak in Guangzhou, China. Methods We extracted the epidemiological and clinical information pertaining to the 159 cases infected with the Delta VOC across seven transmission generations between May 21 and June 18, 2021. The whole chain of the Delta VOC transmission was described. Kinetics of viral load and clinical characteristics were compared with a cohort of wild-type infection in 2020 admitted to the Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital. Findings There were four transmission generations within the first ten days. The Delta VOC yielded a significantly shorter incubation period (4.0 vs. 6.0 days), higher viral load (20.6 vs. 34.0, cycle threshold of the ORF1a/b gene), and a longer duration of viral shedding in pharyngeal swab samples (14.0 vs. 8.0 days) compared with the wild-type strain. In cases with critical illness, the proportion of patients over the age of 60 was higher in the Delta VOC group than in the wild-type strain (100.0% vs. 69.2%, p = 0.03). The Delta VOC had a higher risk than wild-type infection in deterioration to critical status (hazards ratio 2.98 [95%CI 1.29-6.86]; p = 0.01). Interpretation Infection with the Delta VOC is characterized by markedly increased transmissibility, viral loads and risk of disease progression compared with the wild-type strain, calling for more intensive prevention and control measures to contain future outbreaks. Funding National Grand Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Guangzhou Laboratory

This study aimed to investigate the association between the baseline circulating sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) concentration and the number of oocytes retrieved. This retrospective cohort study included 1477 patients who underwent PPOS treatment from January 2018 to December 2019 at the reproductive centre of Shiyan Renmin Hospital, Hubei, China. We investigated the potential relationships of SHBG and the number of oocytes retrieved using piecewise linear regression and multiple logistic regression, respectively. Our results show that baseline SHBG was negatively associated with the number of oocytes retrieved (β= -0.07, 95% CI (-0.13, -0.02)) by fully adjusted linear regression. After adjusting for potential confounders, a nonlinear relationship was found between baseline SHBG and the number of oocytes retrieved (P=0.01). The number of oocytes decreased with SHBG levels above 55.4 nmol/L. A high level of SHBG (SHBG ≥ 55.4) was associated with a lower yield of oocytes (adjusted β=-0.11, (per 10 nmol/L for SHBG), 95% CI (-0.17, -0.05), p=0.0003). The relationship between baseline SHBG and the number of oocytes retrieved is nonlinear. A higher baseline SHBG level is associated with a lower yield of oocytes in PPOS cycles.

High-quality remote sensing images are difficult to obtain due to limited conditions and high cost for data acquisition. With the development of machine vision and deep learning, some image generation methods (e.g., GANs) are introduced into this field, but it’s still hard to generate images with good texture details and structural dependencies. We establish Skip Attention Mechanism to deal with this problem, which learns dependencies between local points on low-resolution feature maps, and then upsample the attention map and combine it with high-resolution feature maps. With this method, long-range dependencies learned from low-resolution are used for generating remote sensing images with more structural details. We name this method as Skip Attention GAN, which is the first method applying cross-scale attention mechanism for unsupervised remote sensing image generation. Experiments show that our method outperforms previous methods under several metrics. Visual and ablation results of attention layers show that Skip Attention has learned long-distance structural dependencies between similar targets.

Introduction: Ageing increases the prevalence of glucose intolerance, but exercise improves glucose homeostasis. The fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21)-adiponectin axis helps regulate glucose metabolism. However, the role of FGF21 in mediating glucose metabolism with ageing and exercise remains unknown. Purpose: This study examined whether FGF21 responses to a glucose challenge are associated with habitual exercise, ageing and glucose regulation. Methods: Eighty age- and sex-matched healthy individuals were assigned to young sedentary and active (≤36 years old, n=20 each group) and older sedentary and active (≥45 years old, n=20 each group) groups. Fasted and post-prandial blood glucose concentration and plasma concentration of insulin, FGF21 and adiponectin were determined during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Results: During the OGTT, glucose concentrations were 9% higher (p=0.008) and FGF21 concentrations were 58% higher (p=0.014) in the older than the younger group, independent of activity status. Active participants had 40% lower insulin concentration and 53% lower FGF21 concentration than sedentary participants, independent of age (all p

Objective: To investigate the application value of spectral CT for the diagnosis of mediastinal lymph node metastasis in primary lung cancer. Materials and Methods: 32 patients who had primary lung cancer with 90 enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes underwent spectral CT by using gemstone spectral imaging (GSI) mode. The spectral curves of regions of interest (ROI) in primary lung cancer and mediastinal lymph nodes were measured with GSI post-processing software. The spectral curve slope between 40 and 140 keV was calculated and compared between them for the diagnosis of mediastinal lymph node metastasis. The data were divided into metastatic group (group A) and non-metastatic group (group B) according to the pathologic findings. SPSS17.0 software with paired sample t test was used for statistical analysis and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant difference. Results: The spectral curve slopes in primary lung cancer and mediastinal lymph node in group B were 0.96 ± 0.13 and 1.32 ± 0.17. There was significant difference between them (t = –2.68, P < 0.05). While there was no significant difference between them in group A (t = –1.62, P > 0.05) with the values of 1.06 ± 0.09 and 1.09 ± 0.12. The accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of diagnosing mediastinal lymph node metastasis were 84.21%, 86.67% and 82.77%, respectively in line with spectral curve. Conclusions: Spectral CT, as a new and non-invasive method, has valuable effect for the diagnosis of mediastinal lymph node metastasis in pre-operative staging of lung cancer.

With the increase of mining depth, the complex burial conditions enhance the chemical and physical heterogeneity of deep-burial coal. The accurate characterization of the nanopore within deep-burial coals is still a challenge. In this work, atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurement was conducted on 12 deep-burial coal samples with different ranks varying from bituminous C to anthracite, attempting to gain clearer insights into the nanopore characteristics and surface roughness. Based on the 3-D surface topographies by AFM, nanopore parameters were determined through image processing and analysis. Quantitative study has been carried out on coal surface roughness. Besides, the validation and limitation of AFM experiment were also analyzed, and the correlations between these nanopore parameters and coal rank (indicated by vitrinite reflectance, Ro) were established. The results show that the mean pore size of studied coal samples ranges from 6.83 nm to 40.16 nm with the areal porosity of 0.65%–9.76%. AFM images indicate that the macromolecular of lower rank coals (bituminous C) is arranged loosely with abundant larger pores, but the anthracite molecular is more ordered with regular network structures. A U-shape curve relationship with the bottom at Ro approximately 1.25% has been found between both the nanopore number and areal porosity with increasing Ro, demonstrating two evolution stages. The values of surface roughness parameters Ra and Rq are 6.43–30.27 nm and 7.51–35.27 nm, respectively. The exponential decline of surface roughness with increasing coal rank suggests that coalification enables coal surface to become smooth. Comparison of nanopore size distribution explored by AFM and low-pressure nitrogen gas adsorption (LP-N2GA) has also been made, indicating that AFM is an effective tool for coal nanopore characterization.

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is among the most common and devastating diseases encountered in premature infants, yet the true etiology continues to be poorly understood despite decades of research. Recently, gut bacterial dysbiosis has been proposed as a risk factor for the development of NEC. Based on this theory, several best clinical practices designed to reduce the risk of NEC have been proposed and/or implemented. This review summarizes the results of recent clinical trials and meta-analyses that support some of the existing clinical practices for reducing the risk of NEC in premature infants. It is evident that human milk feeding can reduce the incidence of NEC. While most of the studies demonstrated that probiotic supplementation can significantly reduce the incidence of NEC in premature infants, there are still some concerns regarding the quality, safety, optimal dosage, and treatment duration of probiotic preparations. Antibiotic prophylaxis does not reduce the incidence of NEC, and prolonged initial empirical use of antibiotics might in fact increase the risk of NEC for high-risk premature infants. Lastly, standardized feeding protocols are strongly recommended, both for prevention of postnatal growth restriction and NEC.

The study aims to investigate the effects of the alcohol extract of Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt (AC) on diabetic nephropathy (DN) mice. A total of 30 db/db (DN) mice were divided into 3 groups, which were treated with AC (300 mg/kg/day), metformin (180 mg/kg/day), or saline by gavage for 10 weeks. Ten db/m mice treated with saline were used as normal control (NC group). Body weight (BW) and fasting blood glucose (FBG), HbA1c, 24 h urinary albumin excretion (UAE), and renal pathological fibrosis were analyzed. Expression of miR-192, miR-200b, and proteins in the PTEN/PI3K/AKT pathway was analyzed by qPCR or western blot. The DN mice had significantly higher BW, FBG, and 24 h UAE, as well as more severe pathological fibrosis when compared with NC. Treatment of AC could decrease BW, FBG, and 24 h UAE and alleviated kidney damage. Compared with the NC group, expressions of miR-192 and miR-200b were increased, whereas their target proteins (ZEB2 and PTEN) were reduced in the kidneys of DN mice, which further modulated the expression of their downstream proteins PI3K p85α, P-AKT, P-smad3, and COL4 α1; these proteins were increased in the kidneys of DN mice. In contrast, AC treatment reversed the expression changes of these proteins. These findings demonstrate that AC may protect the kidneys of DN mice by decreasing miR-192 and miR-200b, which could further regulate their target gene expression and modulate the activity of the PTEN/PI3K/AKT pathway to reduce the degree of renal fibrosis.

Based on the propagation model correction technique, this paper establishes the model of the influence degree of terrain, obstacles and human environment on the path loss in radio wave propagation. After completing various steps, such as project establishment, transmitter setting, data collection and processing, K-factor correction, and result verification in the calibration software, a general propagation model suitable for the region is obtained. Furthermore, the wireless private networks planning expected value can be achieved.

Aiming at the existing problems in power communication network and communication management project, based on the planning forecasting strategy of business priority and the evaluation index system of planning effectiveness, the overall structure of power communication network considering global information fusion is constructed. And the whole process information system platform of power optical transmission network is built. Relying on the platform of communication planning system, the weaknesses of provincial power communication network in China are analyzed, and the provincial and prefectural target network frame of 13th Five-Year Plan in China (2016-2020) communication network is constructed. The technology supports the construction of provincial backbone communication network project and the planning of power wireless private network project.

This paper reviews the development of power communication network, followed by the situation and demand that power communication network is facing. Aiming at the problems, such as lack of global planning platform for power optical transmission network, lack of precise planning for power wireless private network and lack of whole process connection for planning information, the planning forecasting strategy and planning effectiveness evaluation index system based on business priority are put forward. The whole process information management system structure is constructed, which is composed of the whole process information organization module, the technology module and the collaboration module, etc. It will cover three major stages of power communication network in an all-round way (communication network planning, construction and post-evaluation stage), and form the "headquarters-provinces-municipalities-counties" four-level linkage scientifically.

Salmonella is one of the most common foodborne pathogens around the world. Phages are envisioned as a new strategy to control foodborne pathogenic bacteria and food safety. A Salmonella specific lytic phage vB_SalS-LPSTLL (LPSTLL) was selected for food applications on the basis of lytic range, lytic efficiency, functional stability and characteristics. Phage LPSTLL was able to lyse 11 Salmonella serotypes, which represents the broadest range reported Salmonella phages, and was able to suppress the growth of Salmonella enterica in liquid culture over nine hours. LPSTLL exhibited rapid reproductive activity with a short latent period and a large burst size in one-step growth experiment. LPSTLL remained active over a pH range of 3.0 to 12.0, and at incubation temperatures up to 60 °C for 60 min, indicating wide applicability for food processing and storage. Significant reductions of viable Salmonella were observed in diverse foods (milk, apple juice, chicken and lettuce) with reductions up to 2.8 log CFU/mL recorded for milk. Sensory evaluation indicated that treatment with phage LPSTLL did not alter the visual or tactile quality of food matrices. Genome analysis of LPSTLL indicated the absence of any virulence or antimicrobial resistance genes. Genomic comparisons suggest phage LPSTLL constitutes a novel member of a new genus, the LPSTLLvirus with the potential for Salmonella biocontrol in the food industry.

Anomaly detection research was conducted traditionally using mathematical and statistical methods. This topic has been widely applied in many fields. Recently reinforcement learning has achieved exceptional successes in many areas such as the AlphaGo chess playing and video gaming etc. However, there were scarce researches applying reinforcement learning to the field of anomaly detection. This paper therefore aimed at proposing an adaptable asynchronous advantage actor-critic model of reinforcement learning to this field. The performances were evaluated and compared among classical machine learning and the generative adversarial model with variants. Basic principles of the related models were introduced firstly. Then problem definitions, modelling processes and testing were detailed. The proposed model differentiated the sequence and image from other anomalies by proposing appropriate neural networks of attention mechanism and convolutional network for the two kinds of anomalies, respectively. Finally, performances with classical models using public benchmark datasets (NSL-KDD, AWID and CICIDS-2017, DoHBrw-2020) were evaluated and compared. Experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed model with the results indicating higher rewards and lower loss rates on the datasets during training and testing. The metrics of precision, recall rate and F1 score were higher than or at least comparable to the state-of-the-art models. We concluded the proposed model could outperform or at least achieve comparable results with the existing anomaly detection models.

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the dynamics of endolymphatic hydrops (EH) and symptoms in a group of patients who underwent endolymphatic duct blockage (EDB) for treatment of intractable Meniere's Disease (MD), and to explore a metric for verifying the effectiveness of EDB procedure.Methods: A total of 22 patients with intractable MD patients who underwent EDB participated in the present study. EH was visualized using locally enhanced inner ear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) prior to and following surgery. The vestibular hydrops ratio (VHR) in the second MRI examination was compared with the pre-surgery recordings.Results: Following EDB, 6 patients exhibited complete or partial reversal of EH, complete control of vertigo spells and reported improvement in hearing; 13 patients showed no changes in EH or hearing, but 5 of these patients exhibited complete control of vertigo attacks, and the other 8 patients exhibited improved control of vertigo attacks. The final 3 patients showed an increase in EH, but symptomatic worsening in 2 patients, and symptomatic improvement in 1 patient. There was a significant difference in the average VHR prior to and following EDB. Postoperative VHR was positively correlated with the frequency of vertigo spells in the latest 6 months of follow-up and improvement of postoperative average hearing threshold.Conclusion: The decreased EH accompanying the reduction in vertigo attacks and hearing preservation may provide a metric for verifying the effectiveness of EDB treatment in patients with MD.

Ancylostomiasis is a fairly common small bowel parasite disease identified by capsule endoscopy (CE) for which a computer-aided clinical detection method has not been established. We sought to develop an artificial intelligence system with a convolutional neural network (CNN) to automatically detect hookworms in CE images. We trained a deep CNN system based on a YOLO-V4 (You Look Only Once-Version4) detector using 11236 CE images of hookworms. We assessed its performance by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and its sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy using an independent test set of 10,529 small-bowel images including 531 images of hookworms. The trained CNN system required 403 seconds to evaluate 10,529 test images. The area under the curve for the detection of hookworms was 0.972 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.967-0.978). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the CNN system were 92.2%, 91.1%, and 91.2%, respectively, at a probability score cut-off of 0.485. We developed and validated a CNN-based system for detecting hookworms in CE images. By combining this high-accuracy, high-speed, and oversight-preventing system with other CNN systems, we hope it will become an important supplement for detecting intestinal abnormalities in CE images. This trial is registered with ChiCTR2000034546 (a clinical research of artificial-intelligence-aided diagnosis for hookworms in small intestine by capsule endoscope images).

Reversing the highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) is essential to achieve long-term efficacy with cancer immunotherapy. Despite the impressive clinical response to checkpoint blockade in multiple types of cancer, only a minority of patients benefit from this approach. Here, we report that the oncolytic virus M1 induces immunogenic tumor cell death and subsequently restores the ability of dendritic cells to prime antitumor T cells. Intravenous injection of M1 disrupts immune tolerance in the privileged TME, reprogramming immune-silent (cold) tumors into immune-inflamed (hot) tumors. M1 elicits potent CD8+ T cell-dependent therapeutic effects and establishes long-term antitumor immune memory in poorly immunogenic tumor models. Pretreatment with M1 sensitizes refractory tumors to subsequent checkpoint blockade by boosting T-cell recruitment and upregulating the expression of PD-L1. These findings reveal the antitumor immunological mechanism of the M1 virus and indicated that oncolytic viruses are ideal cotreatments for checkpoint blockade immunotherapy.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has presented new challenges to food manufacturers. In addition to preventing the spread of microbial contamination of food, with SARS-CoV-2, there is an additional focus on preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in food plant personnel. During the early phase of the pandemic, several large outbreaks of Covid-19 occurred in food manufacturing plants resulting in deaths and economic loss. In March of 2020, we assisted in implementation of environmental monitoring programs for SARS-CoV-2 in 116 food production facilities. All participating facilities had already implemented measures to prevent symptomatic personnel from coming to work. During the study period, from March 17, 2020 to September 3, 2020, 1.23% of the 22,643 environmental samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, suggesting that infected individuals are actively shedding virus. Virus contamination was commonly found on frequently touched surfaces. Most plants managed to control their environmental contamination when they became aware of the positive findings. Comparisons of the personnel test results to environmental contamination in one plant showed a good correlation between the two. Our work illustrates that environmental monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 can be used as a surrogate for identifying the presence of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic personnel in workplaces and may aid in controlling infection spread.HighlightsEnvironmental contamination by SARS-CoV-2 virus was detected in food plantsOut of 22,643 environmental swabs, 278 (1.23%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2Frequently touched surfaces had the most contaminationSurface testing for SARS-CoV-2 may indicate presence of asymptomatic carriers

Time series classification and forecasting have long been studied with the traditional statistical methods. Recently, deep learning achieved remarkable successes in areas such as image, text, video, audio processing, etc. However, research studies conducted with deep neural networks in these fields are not abundant. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to propose and evaluate several state-of-the-art neural network models in these fields. We first review the basics of representative models, namely long short-term memory and its variants, the temporal convolutional network and the generative adversarial network. Then, long short-term memory with autoencoder and attention-based models, the temporal convolutional network and the generative adversarial model are proposed and applied to time series classification and forecasting. Gaussian sliding window weights are proposed to speed the training process up. Finally, the performances of the proposed methods are assessed using five optimizers and loss functions with the public benchmark datasets, and comparisons between the proposed temporal convolutional network and several classical models are conducted. Experiments show the proposed models&rsquo, effectiveness and confirm that the temporal convolutional network is superior to long short-term memory models in sequence modeling. We conclude that the proposed temporal convolutional network reduces time consumption to around 80% compared to others while retaining the same accuracy. The unstable training process for generative adversarial network is circumvented by tuning hyperparameters and carefully choosing the appropriate optimizer of &ldquo, Adam&rdquo, The proposed generative adversarial network also achieves comparable forecasting accuracy with traditional methods.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has presented new challenges to food manufacturers. During the early phase of the pandemic, several large outbreaks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred in food manufacturing plants resulting in deaths and economic loss, with approximately 15% of personnel diagnosed as asymptomatic for COVID-19. Spread by asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals has been implicated in large outbreaks of COVID-19. In March 2020, we assisted in implementation of environmental monitoring programs for SARS-CoV-2 in zones 3 and 4 of 116 food production facilities. All participating facilities had already implemented measures to prevent symptomatic personnel from coming to work. During the study period, from 17 March to 3 September 2020, 1.23% of the 22,643 environmental samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, suggesting that infected individuals were actively shedding virus. Virus contamination was commonly found on frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs, handles, table surfaces, and sanitizer dispensers. Most processing plants managed to control their environmental contamination when they became aware of the positive findings. Comparisons of positive test results for plant personnel and environmental surfaces in one plant revealed a close correlation. Our work illustrates that environmental monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 can be used as a surrogate for identifying the presence of asymptomatic and presymptomatic personnel in workplaces and may aid in controlling infection spread. HIGHLIGHTS

Session-based recommendation aims to predict the next item that a user may visit in the current session. By constructing a session graph, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are employed to capture the connectivity among items in the session graph for recommendation. The existing session-based recommendation methods with GNNs usually formulate the recommendation problem as the classification problem, and then use a specific uniform loss to learn session graph representations. Such supervised learning methods only consider the classification loss, which is insufficient to capture the node features from graph structured data. As unsupervised graph learning methods emphasize the graph structure, this paper proposes the HybridGNN-SR model to combine the unsupervised and supervised graph learning to represent the item transition pattern in a session from the view of graph. Specifically, in the part of unsupervised learning, we propose to combine Variational Graph Auto-Encoder (VGAE) with Mutual Information to represent nodes in a session graph; in the part of supervised learning, we employ a routing algorithm to extract higher conceptual features of a session for recommendation, which takes dependencies among items in the session into consideration. Through extensive experiments on three public datasets, we demonstrate that HybridGNN-SR outperforms a number of state-of-the-art methods on session-based recommendation by integrating the strengths of the unsupervised and supervised graph learning methods.

ObjectiveTo compare a modified two-tension-band (MTTB) technique with the AO tension band in treating patellar fractures.MethodsThis retrospective study included patients treated with AO tension band (group 1) or MTTB (group 2). Data obtained during serial follow-up evaluations of time to bony union, range of motion (ROM), Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) score and complication rates, were analysed.ResultsFractures healed in all 51 patients included in the study (group 1, n = 28; group 2, n = 23), with no statistically significant between-group difference in time to bony union. Regarding function results, group 2 had better HSS scores at 3 and 6 months postoperatively; however, at 1 year postoperatively, both groups had similar HSS scores and achieved acceptable flexion and ROM. The overall complication rate was significantly lower in group 2, but average costs were higher in group 2 versus group 1.ConclusionMTTB provides secure fixation and improved knee function at 3 and 6 months postoperatively, and has a lower complication rate with early mobilization, compared with the AO tension-band technique.

First, the authors believed that elevated levels of liver injury markers, particularly aspartate aminotransferase (AST), may reflect true hepatic injury in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). However, it should be noted that AST is usually considered a less specific marker for liver injury than alanine aminotransferase (ALT).