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Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of contrast‐enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) combined with thyroglobulin (Tg) levels in fine‐needle aspirates (FNA) washout fluid (FNA‐Tg) in diagnosing cervical lymph node (LN) metastasis in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) patients. Methods: Data from 190 LNs in 167 patients suspected of metastasis from the US between November 2018 and September 2020 were included. All subjects underwent FNA, CEUS, and FNA‐Tg examinations. The final outcomes were confirmed by histopathological or cytological examination or follow‐up imaging. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon rank‐sum or chi‐squared test. The diagnostic efficacy of FNA, CEUS, and FNA‐Tg in diagnosing LNs was compared. Results: A cutoff value of 6.15 ng/ml (AUC 0.925, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.885–0.966) successfully identified metastatic LNs. FNA missed 58 LN metastases, of these, 94.8% (55/58) were correctly diagnosed using the combination of CEUS and FNA‐Tg. FNA‐Tg showed higher sensitivity (90.2%), NPV (86.1%) and accuracy (88.9%) than either FNA (48.2, 57.4 and 69.5%, respectively) or CEUS (82.1, 67.7 and 70.5%, respectively) alone. The combination of CEUS, FNA and FNA‐Tg resulted in maximal sensitivity (100%) and NPV (100%) but reduced specificity (51.3%) and overall diagnostic accuracy (80.0%). After adding FNA‐Tg to discordant samples between CEUS and FNA, 81.9% of LNs (77/94) were correctly diagnosed. Conclusions: The combination of FNA, FNA‐Tg and CEUS was found to be a promising imaging tool in detecting metastatic LNs in PTC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers in this study aimed to examine the effect of square dance on the subjective well-being of middle-aged and empty-nest women, as well as the potential moderating role of group belongingness in the relationship between family cohesion and subjective well-being. A total of 331 middle-aged and empty-nest Chinese women participated in a survey to measure their family adaptability and cohesion, group belongingness, general well-being, and square-dancing participation information. The results were found as follows: (a) Chinese middle-aged and empty-nest women's family cohesion was positively associated with subjective well-being, and their group belongingness in square dance was positively associated with subjective well-being; (b) participation in square dance can be the moderator the relationship between family cohesion and subjective well-being; (c) group belongingness was found to be a moderator in the relationship between family cohesion and subjective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Hydrogen is a clean fuel and potential alternative for fossil fuels, and many efforts have been devoted to low-carbon hydrogen production. Highly dispersed and robust Ni/carbon catalysts can be handily prepared in situ for catalytic methane decomposition (CMD) by selective steam gasification of pine sawdust. Effect of the gasification conditions (temperature, mass ratio of PS:Ni, steam flow rate and gasification reaction time) was investigated on the nickel species, activity and stability of the Ni/carbon catalyst in CMD. Besides hydrogen-rich gas released from the gasification process, co-production of hydrogen and carbon fibers can be obtained on the optimized catalyst with high and stable methane conversion (up to higher than 90% at 850 °C) in the 600-min CMD reaction. The implementation of such selective biomass gasification and CMD could be one promising approach towards process intensification for highly cost-effective hydrogen production, and enables it possible to yield a high metal efficiency as well. Highlights • Robust Ni/carbon catalysts are prepared by selective gasification of pine sawdust. • The gasification residue is used for catalytic methane decomposition. • Highly dispersed and robust Ni/carbon catalysts can be handily prepared in situ. • Co-production of H 2 and carbon fibers can be obtained by methane decomposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, thermally exfoliated graphene nanosheets (GNS) were employed to prepare novel Ag3PO4-GNS composite photocatalysts by a facile chemical precipitation approach. The as-prepared Ag3PO4-GNS composite photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric (TG) analysis, ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. It was found that the Ag3PO4 particles were well deposited on the surfaces of GNS. Compared with bare Ag3PO4 and Ag3PO4-rGO composite, the Ag3PO4-GNS composite exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity for the photodegradation of rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation. The photocatalytic degradation rate of Ag3PO4-GNS composite was 1.7 times that of bare Ag3PO4 and about 1.3 times that of Ag3PO4-rGO for the degradation of RhB. Furthermore, the photocatalytic stability of Ag3PO4-GNS composite was also greatly enhanced. This enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability could be ascribed to the positive synergetic effects between the Ag3PO4 particles and GNS sheets, which could provide a greater number of active adsorption sites, suppress charge recombination and reduce the serious photocorrosion of Ag3PO4. Moreover, the photocatalytic degradation of RhB over Ag3PO4-GNS composites was also optimized, suggesting that the optimal amount of GNS in the composites was 11.4wt.%. This work shows a great potential of Ag3PO4-GNS composite for environmental treatment of organic pollutants. Thermally-exfoliated graphene nanosheets (GNS) were employed for the first time to prepare Ag3PO4-GNS composite photocatalysts by a chemical precipitation approach. Compared with bare Ag3PO4 and Ag3PO4-rGO composite, the Ag3PO4-GNS composite exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability for rhodamine B photodegradation under visible light irradiation. This enhanced photocatalytic activity and stability was ascribed to the positive synergetic effects between Ag3PO4 and GNS, which could provide much more active adsorption sites, suppress charge recombination and reduce the serious photocorrosion of Ag3PO4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inverse hypergeometric distribution is of interest in applications of inverse sampling without replacement from a finite population where a binary observation is made on each sampling unit. Thus, sampling is performed by randomly choosing units sequentially one at a time until a specified number of one of the two types is selected for the sample. Assuming the total number of units in the population is known but the number of each type is not, we consider the problem of estimating this parameter. We use the Delta method to develop approximations for the variance of three parameter estimators. We then propose three large sample confidence intervals for the parameter. Based on these results, we selected a sampling of parameter values for the inverse hypergeometric distribution to empirically investigate performance of these estimators. We evaluate their performance in terms of expected probability of parameter coverage and confidence interval length calculated as means of possible outcomes weighted by the appropriate outcome probabilities for each parameter value considered. The unbiased estimator of the parameter is the preferred estimator relative to the maximum likelihood estimator and an estimator based on a negative binomial approximation, as evidenced by empirical estimates of closeness to the true parameter value. Confidence intervals based on the unbiased estimator tend to be shorter than the two competitors because of its relatively small variance but at a slight cost in terms of coverage probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]