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Arsenic (As) is an abundant metalloid in marine environments, while the biogeochemical cycling of As in cold seeps remains poorly understood. We characterized the speciation of As and investigated controls of As distribution in cold seeps of South China Sea. High methane concentrations (0.2-5.5 mmol/L) and rapid sulfate depletion were observed in the seepage. Dissolved inorganic arsenic (DIAs) was enriched in the porewater ranging from 7.5 to 23.5 μg/L. As in the solid phase ranged from 2.9 to 22.6 μg/g, and sulfide mineral-bound As dominated the total arsenic (TAs) pool, followed by iron (manganese, aluminum) oxide-bound As. The significant correlations between porewater Fe 2+ and DIAs reflect the controls of iron on DIAs release. Incubation experiments showed that adsorption to the solid phase and sulfate reduction activity affected the bioavailability and removal of DIAs, suggesting that multiple processes regulate the speciation and transformation of As in seep sediments., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Dimethylated sulfur compounds play an important role in global sulfur cycle. We investigated the seasonality of dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), dimethylsulfide (DMS) and associated processes in two north China marginal seas during 2014 and 2016. High concentrations of DMS, DMSP and DMSO occurred in summer/spring, while the lowest were observed in winter. This clear seasonality was primarily driven by biomass abundance and phytoplankton communities, reflected in chlorophyll a concentrations and the composition/ratios of diatoms and dinoflagellates. The spring maximum was attributed to the annual occurrence of algal bloom. The sea-to-air fluxes of DMS also varied largely between seasons, with an average of 8.84, 11.87, 10.50 and 2.14 μmol m -2  day -1 in spring, summer, autumn and winter, respectively. Given the seasonal uncertainty of sea-to-air flux, the seasonality or situations where specific blooms occur regularly should be considered for accurate estimation of annual global DMS emission., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: The objective of this study was to retrospectively research the clinical characteristics, pathogen distribution, prognosis of nosocomial bloodstream infection (nBSI), and the associated risk factors for nBSI., Materials and Methods: The clinical and microbiological data of patients with nBSI were retrospectively studied. Patients were treated at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University (Zhejiang Hangzhou, China) between January 2013 and December 2016., Results: Our study spanned a four-year period and included 704 episodes of nBSI. The incidence rate was 4.11 per 1000 admissions. Of these cases, 96.7% were monomicrobial: gram-negative bacteria (56.4%), gram-positive bacteria (33.4%), and fungal (7%). Of all the Escherichia coli isolates, 41.5% were extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing (ESBL)-positive. Of the Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates, 50.9% were resistant to imipenem. Of the Staphylococcus aureus isolates, 42.1% were methicillin-resistant. The overall 28-day mortality rate in all patients with nBSI was 24.4%. Parenteral nutrition (PN) and sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores (≥5) were closely related to the 28-day mortality rate of nBSI, while removal of venous catheters and appropriate empirical therapy were protective factors of 28-day mortality., Conclusions: Gram-negative bacteria predominantly developed in nBSI. Timely removal of venous catheters (catheter retention time ≥ 7 days) and implementation of appropriate empirical therapy improved the nBSI outcomes., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To establish BP artificial neural network predicting model regarding the daily cases of infectious diarrhea in Shanghai., Methods: Data regarding both the incidence of infectious diarrhea from 2005 to 2008 in Shanghai and meteorological factors including temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, duration of sunshine and wind speed within the same periods were collected and analyzed with the MatLab R2012b software. Meteorological factors that were correlated with infectious diarrhea were screened by Spearman correlation analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to remove the multi-colinearities between meteorological factors. Back-Propagation (BP) neural network was employed to establish related prediction models regarding the daily infectious diarrhea incidence, using artificial neural networks toolbox. The established models were evaluated through the fitting, predicting and forecasting processes., Results: Data from Spearman correlation analysis indicated that the incidence of infectious diarrhea had a highly positive correlation with factors as daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, minimum relative humidity and average relative humidity in the previous two days (P < 0.01), and a relatively high negative correlation with the daily average air pressure in the previous two days (P < 0.01). Factors as mean absolute error, root mean square error, correlation coefficient(r), and the coefficient of determination (r(2)) of BP neural network model were established under the input of 4 meteorological principal components, extracted by PCA and used for training and prediction. Then appeared to be 4.7811, 6.8921,0.7918,0.8418 and 5.8163, 7.8062,0.7202,0.8180, respectively. The rate on mean error regarding the predictive value to actual incidence in 2008 was 5.30% and the forecasting precision reached 95.63% ., Conclusion: Temperature and air pressure showed important impact on the incidence of infectious diarrhea. The BP neural network model had the advantages of low simulation forecasting errors and high forecasting hit rate that could ideally predict and forecast the effects on the incidence of infectious diarrhea.

Objective: To explore the factors associated with severe hand-food-mouth disease (HFMD) case in Shanghai., Methods: A total of 105 severe HFMD cases diagnosed from May to July, 2011 in Shanghai were enrolled as case group while another 210 mild HFMD cases were randomly selected as control group in the same period. All subject's parents or babysitters were asked to fill in the questionnaire in which including demography, ways of babysitting, behavior and the like. All HFMD cases were diagnosed by both clinical symptom and nuclear acid testing. Data was processed by EpiData (V3.0) and analyzed by SPSS (V17.0)., Results: Factors as age, gender, Diaspora pattern, migrant, size of house, numbers of family member, numbers of children, frequency of seeing doctor, dishware that sharing with babysitter, food chewed by babysitter, dirty hand, EV71 virus type and diagnosis on HFMD in the fist visit to hospital were found associated with severe HFMD by univariate analysis., Results: through multivariate logistic regression showed that factors including: being the only male kid, more than 3 children in the family, dirty hands, unable to be diagnosed as HFMD in the first visit to the hospital, visiting doctor during the past 6 months for 2 and 3 times etc. could be kept in the model with statistical threshold of 0.05. Adjusted ORs and confidence intervals of them were 2.431 (1.317 - 4.487), 2.661 (1.332 - 5.315), 3.403 (1.871 - 6.191), 6.607 (3.011 - 14.500), 2.431 (1.111 - 5.321), 2.628 (1.137 - 6.071) respectively. Being Infected by EV71 was also found a very important risk factor compared with CoxA16 or other enteroviruses, and its adjusted OR was 5.614 (2.409 - 13.082)., Conclusion: It was necessary to implement molecular diagnosis for identifying the virus type of HFMD, together with improvement on the capacity of clinical diagnosis in order to diagnose the HFMD cases earlier. More attention should be paid to these HFMD cases with EV71 infection as well as prompting frequent visits to hospitals on those families with more children.

Objectives: Concerns regarding change in the onset and tempo of pubertal growth in ethnic Chinese have posed a need for current information on growth characteristics. This study is to update the normative data of pubertal linear growth characteristics and distribution of age at menarche in healthy Chinese adolescents., Methods: A multistage stratified cluster sampling investigation based on age and sex was designed for anthropometric data collection in 2008, including 15,204 healthy boys and 13,047 healthy girls. The PB1 mathematical growth model was utilized to derive biological parameters of the adolescent growth curves. Ages at menarche were estimated in 6,476 girls through probit analysis at the ages at which 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90% of the girls attained menarche., Results: The peak growth age (PGA) was 12.6 years for boys and 10.6 years for girls. The PHV was 6.91 cm/yr in boys and 6.69 cm/yr in girls. The overall increments of adult height since 1985 were 3.3 cm for males and 2.3 cm for females, yielded rates of 1.4 and 1.0 cm/decade, respectively. Less than 10% of Chinese girls experience onset of menses before 11.38 years, and approximately 90% of all Chinese girls are menstruating by 13.88 years, with a median age of 12.63 years., Conclusions: The current study showed an advancing trend in PGA in both Chinese boys and girls. Decreasing menarche age was also observed for Chinese girls. These updated data would serve as useful reference for interpretation of endocrine and growth status and growth disorders in Chinese during peripubertal period., (© 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)