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Purpose Pandemic-related confinement helps to contain the transmission of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but restricts children's exposure to sunlight, thereby possibly affecting their 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels. This study aimed to examine the effect of COVID-19 measures on 25(OH)D levels in children. Patients and methods This study included children who underwent health checks between March 1 and June 30, 2020, and those over the equivalent period during 2017-2019 (N = 3600). Children's 25(OH)D levels and the proportion of children with vitamin D deficiency were compared between different observation periods. Results The mean serum 25(OH)D level was 84 ± 25nmol/L. The overall proportion of children with vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D level Conclusion The 25(OH)D levels tended to decrease gradually with increasing age. Reduced sunlight exposure during confinement is associated with lower 25(OH)D levels among children aged 3-6 years. Therefore, vitamin D supplementation for children aged >3 years is recommended.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a multifactorial inflammatory disease, and increasing evidence has demonstrated that the mechanism of UC pathogenesis is associated with excessive cellular apoptosis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. However, their function and molecular mechanisms related to UC remain unknown. In this study, Rab27A mRNA and protein were proven to be overexpressed in intestinal epithelial cells of UC patients and DSS‐induced colitis mice, compared with control (P

Carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars are considered to be related to the first generation of stars, and responsible for the chemical evolution of the early Galaxy. More than half of them are in binaries, and could be explained by the binary evolution, but the formation channel of them is still not fully understood. Among the hundreds of CEMP stars, there are nine CEMP RR Lyrae stars identified, and at least seven of which are very likely not binaries. The usual binary star evolution channel is difficult to produce such a single star, particularly that of carbon enrichment. One way in which such a single star might be produced is the merger of a helium white dwarf with a Hertzsprung gap (HG) star. We use a stellar evolution program to calculate the models of the merger remnants, and find that the models can reproduce the observed distribution of these CEMP single RR Lyrae stars in terms of surface temperature, gravity, and carbon abundance. Hence, it is extremely possible that the helium white dwarf and HG star merger model is one of the formation channels of the metal-poor carbon-rich RR Lyrae stars.

Additional file 2: Supplemental Text 2. Weights calculation in the Study.

Additional file 1: Appendix Table 1. Characteristics of the subjects included and excluded in the analysis (age ≥ 35 years old).

Implementing condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of aero-engine bearings is crucial to ensure that aircraft operate safely and reliably. In engineering practice, the fault data for aero-engine bearings are extremely limited. However, the traditional fault diagnosis methods have two shortcomings under extremely small sample conditions: (1) they have limited diagnostic performance and generalization ability, and (2) they do not mine fault information sufficiently or efficiently. This article proposes a Siamese multiscale residual feature fusion network (SMSRFFN) for aero-engine bearing fault diagnosis under small-sample conditions to overcome the weaknesses above. In the proposed SMSRFFN, the training samples are first paired according to the matching rules to realize the expansion of the sample size. Second, a multiscale residual feature extraction network (MSRFEN) is constructed to excavate the fault features of different scales and speed up the convergence speed of the network. Then, a multiscale attention mechanism feature fusion module (MSAMFFM) is designed to achieve efficient fusion of fault features at different scales. Finally, the distance of the input sample is measured based on the fused deep feature representation to identify the fault state of the aero-engine bearing. The proposed SMSRFFN is evaluated using three bearing fault data and also compared with some state-of-the-art small-sample diagnostic methods. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed SMSRFFN in mining fault information and improving diagnosis accuracy under extremely small sample conditions.

Background To construct the lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA axis based on the study of molecular oncology, to explore the role and mechanism of this axis in the occurrence and development of liver cancer, so as to provide a new channel for the treatment of liver cancer. Methods Using public online databases to establish lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA ceRNA regulation network, after which using QPCR and other experimental techniques to verify that this axis is established and the mechanism of participating in the development of liver cancer. Results It can be concluded from database mining that the expressions of hsa-miR-182-5p and ADH4 are negatively correlated in hepatocellular carcinoma, and LINC01018 is also negatively correlated hsa-miR-182-5p-ADH4, indicating that LINC01018, hsa-miR-182-5p and ADH4 are strongly correlated. Constitute the regulatory axis to participate in the occurrence and development tendency of tumors. LINC01018 regulates ADH4 to inhibit LIHC cell growth by inhibiting hsa-miR-182-5p, providing a feasible theoretical basis for the treatment of HCC.The regulatory axis may also regulate the occurrence and development tendency in liver cancer by adjusting the expression levels of key proteins and phosphorylation proteins in GO and KEGG signaling pathways. Conclusions In this study, it was found that LINC01018/hsa-miR-182-5p/ADH4 ceRNA regulatory axis exists in the human body, and this axis has the possibility of becoming an immune checkpoint inhibitor for liver cancer, which is regarded as a new entry point in the diagnosis and therapy of liver cancer.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the high incidence tumors and is ranked second in cancer-related mortality. Even though great progress has been made, there are no effective therapeutic strategies for late stage and metastatic CRC patients. Acidity is one characteristic of the tumor microenvironment. However, how cancer cells respond to this acidic environment surrounding them remains largely unknown, especially in colorectal cancer. Methods: Proton sensor receptor expression was analyzed in GEO and TCGA datasets. The expression of GPR4 in CRC specimens was confirmed by western blotting and immunohistochemistry (IHC). The role of GPR4 in CRC progression was analyzed both in vitro and in vivo. Pharmacological intervention, immunofluorescence and gene set enrichment analyses were performed to reveal the underlying molecular mechanisms of GPR4. Findings: We found that GPR4 was upregulated in CRC samples. In addition, its high expression correlated with late stage tumors and poor overall survival in patients. Furthermore, loss-of-function assays proved that GPR4 promoted CRC carcinogenesis and metastatic ability. Mechanistically, GPR4 was activated by extracellular protons in the tumor microenvironment and enhanced RhoA activation and F-actin rearrangement, leading to LATS activity inhibition, YAP1 nuclear translocation and oncogene transcription. Conclusions: The expression of GPR4 is upregulated in colorectal cancer and is associated with shorter overall survival time in CRCpatients. These findings reveal the novel roles of GPR4 in CRC progression and suggest GPR4 might be a new therapeutic target for CRC treatment. Funding Statement: This work was supported by the grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81702300 & No.81873555). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: Study protocol that strictly in line with International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Patients that had received no anti-tumor therapy and signed written informed consent were enrolled in this study.

Obesity is a major epigenetic cause for colorectal cancer (CRC). Leptin is implicated in obesity-associated CRC, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The current study identified over-expression of metallopanstimulin-1 (MPS-1) in CRC patients through microarray and histological analysis, especially in obese CRC patients. MPS-1 was correlated with advanced tumor stage, suggesting its association with CRC progression. In addition, MPS-1 over-expression was associated with poor overall survival (OS) in obese CRC patients, but not in their non-obese counterparts, suggesting its potential as a prognostic marker of obese CRC patients. MPS-1 expression was positively associated with circulating leptin levels in CRC patients, especially in obese cases. Functional experiments demonstrated that MPS-1 silencing inhibited tumor proliferation and colony formation, and induced apoptosis of CRC cells in vitro. Converse results were obtained from the experiments with MPS-1 over-expression. Mechanistically, MPS-1 executed its action through induction of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/c-Jun pathway. Moreover, the promotion effect of MPS-1 on CRC progression was modulated by leptin. In vivo studies demonstrated that MPS-1 silencing suppressed tumor growth of CRC via inhibiting JNK/c-Jun signaling. Collectively, this study indicates that MPS-1 promotes leptin-induced CRC via activating JNK/c-Jun pathway. MPS-1 might represent a potent candidate for the treatment and prognostic prediction of obesity-associated CRC.

Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most prevalent age-related neurodegenerative disease, occurs as a result of the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Long non-coding RNA-p21 (lnc-p21) has been demonstrated to be upregulated in PD. However, its role in PD is unknown. Here, the results showed that lnc-p21 was highly expressed in human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells treated with MPP+. Knockdown of lnc-p21 attenuated the cytotoxicity and cell apoptosis induced by MPP+ as shown by enhanced cell viability, decreased LDH release and cell apoptosis rate, accompanying with reduction of caspase-3 activity and Bax expression, and enhancement of Bcl-2 expression. Furthermore, knockdown of lnc-p21 mitigated MPP+-induced oxidative stress and neuroinflammation, as evidenced by the decrease in ROS generation, increase in SOD activity and decline in TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 levels. Conversely, overexpression of lnc-p21 resulted in the opposite effect. miR-625 was identified as a target of lnc-p21. lnc-p21 overturned the inhibitory effect of miR-625 on MPP+-induced neuronal injury in SH-SY5Y cells. Additionally, lnc-p21 positively regulated TRPM2 expression by targeting miR-625, and knockdown of TRPM2 inhibited MPP+-induced neuronal injury. Overall, our study identified a new lnc-p21-miR-625-TRPM2 regulatory network that lnc-p21 regulated MPP + -induced neuronal injury by sponging miR-625 and upregulating TRPM2 in SH-SY5Y cells, which provide a better understanding for the pathogenesis of PD.

We herein report an efficient Ag+ and S2− dual sensing scenario by a three-dimensional (3D) Cu-based metal–organic framework [Cu(Cdcbp)(bpea)]n (MOF 1, H3CdcbpBr = 3-carboxyl-(3,5-dicarboxybenzyl)-pyridinium bromide, bpea = 1,2-di(4-pyridinyl)ethane) shielded with a 5-carboxytetramethylrhodamine (TAMRA)-labeled C-rich single-stranded DNA (ss-probe DNA, P-DNA) as a fluorescent probe. The formed MOF-DNA probe, denoted as P-DNA@1, is able to sequentially detect Ag+ and S2− in one pot, with detection limits of 3.8 nM (for Ag+) and 5.5 nM (for S2−), which are much more lower than the allowable Ag+ (0.5 μM) and S2− (0.6 μM) concentration in drinking water as regulated by World Health Organization (WHO). The detection method has been successfully applied to sense Ag+ and S2− in domestic, lake, and mineral water with satisfactory recoveries ranging from 98.2 to 107.3%. The detection mechanism was further confirmed by molecular simulation studies.

PCOS often showed abnormal follicular development. Previous studies have found that the increased apoptosis of granulosa cells (GCs) is one of the key factors leading to follicular dysplasia. It has been found that the decrease or deletion of PATL2 function can significantly inhibit the development and maturation of human oocytes. We found that PATL2 was also expressed in human ovarian GCs, suggesting that PATL2 may be involved in the regulation of related biological events in GCs. This study aims to explore the function of PATL2 on regulation of GCs apoptosis, and the potential role of PATL2 in the development of PCOS-related abnormal follicles.The follicular GCs of PCOS patients and normal ovulating female patients were collected. Moreover, human granular cell line (KGN) was used for(1) The maturation rate and fertilization rate of oocytes in the PCOS group were significantly lower than those in the normal control group (Reduced PATL2 could resulted in the increased apoptosis level of ovarian GCs, which might be closely related to the occurrence and development of abnormal follicles in PCOS.

Absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2), a DNA sensor that plays an important role in natural immunity system, has been reported to participate in colorectal cancer (CRC) development. However, the functional role of AIM2 in BRAF-mutant CRC remains unclear. In this study, we first investigated AIM2 expression level in BRAF-mutant CRC tumor tissues. Overexpression of AIM2 in CRC cells was performed to investigate the effect of AIM2 on CRC cell viability, and cell death detection and caspase activity assay were performed to explore the mechanism that AIM2 impacts the growth of BRAF-mutant CRC cells. Moreover, we confirmed the antitumor effect of AIM2 in BRAF-mutant CRC cell-derived tumor xenograft (CDX) models as well as patient-derived organoids (PDOs). Herein, we reported that AIM2 expression was lower in BRAF-mutant than that in BRAF wild-type CRC tumor tissues. Restoring the expression of AIM2 in BRAF-mutant CRC cells greatly inhibits the tumor cell growth by inducing necrotic cell death. Mechanism studies revealed that AIM2-induced cell death is in a caspase-1-dependent manner. Additionally, overexpression of AIM2 significantly inhibits tumor growth and metastasis in BRAF-mutant CRC in vivo, which was further confirmed in BRAF-mutant CRC PDOs. Taken together, our data suggested that AIM2 inhibits BRAF-mutant colon cancer growth in a caspase-1-dependent manner, which may provide evidence to understand the pathogenesis of CRC with BRAF-mutant, as well as new strategies for manipulation of CRC.

This article investigates an artistic collaboration between the pioneering modernist Chinese calligrapher Wang Dongling and German conceptual painter Martin Wehmer. The project was hosted at the China Academy of Art (CAA) in 2010, with Wehmer as a visitor from Berlin’s University of the Arts. The artists co-produced Visual Dialogue, a comic-like composition of painted and written speech bubbles. I examine Visual Dialogue in order to reveal its incentives, conditions, limitations, and potential, as a collaborative project realized under institutional tutelage. Informed by critical contemporary discourses on Chinese art in a global context, picture theory, comics studies, and translation studies, I explore Visual Dialogue’s multiple textual, scriptural, and pictorial elements, alongside related epistemological issues. I argue that the artwork is polyvalent, because it is conditioned by multiple, culturally specific aesthetic and semiotic systems. My discussion ultimately aims to expose the transcultural significance of this collaboration, which is relevant to the writing of world art history, and thereby contributes to a deterritorialization of “Chinese calligraphy” in its prevalent conception as an essentialist-exceptionalist discursive field in mainland China., The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Vol. 11 No. 2 (2020)

Background: Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is one of the serious complications of diabetes. It is the result of a joint effect of lower extremities vascular lesions, neuropathy, and infection, which require amputation and even threaten the life of the patient. At present, the conventional treatment for DFU includes infection control, wound care, wound reduction, reduction of foot pressure, use of dressings that are beneficial to wound surface healing, etc, but the effectiveness is not satisfactory. Recombinant human growth hormone and alginate dressing have been used in clinical, but there is lack of the relevant evidence of its effectiveness and safety, so this study evaluates the clinical effectiveness and safety of recombinant human growth hormone combined with alginate dressing in the treatment of DFU by systematic evaluation, the purpose is to provide a theoretical basis for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcer. Methods: This study mainly retrieves the randomized controlled trial of recombinant human growth hormone combined alginate dressing in the treatment of DFU in 7 electronic databases, such as PubMed, EMbase, Cochrane Library, SinoMed, CNKI, WANGFANG database, and VIP database. All the retrieval dates of database are from the establishment of the database until May 31, 2020. At the same time, searching the related degree papers, conference papers, and other gray literature by manual. The original literature data are independently screened and extracted by 2 researchers on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria and literature information sheets, and cross-checked and resolved through group discussions and consultations when there are differences of the opinion. Assessing the methodological quality of inclusion in the study based on the “Bias Risk Assessment Form” of the Cochrane Collaboration Network. Using the software of RevMan 5.3.3 and STATA 13.0 for statistical analysis. Results: This study compares the main and secondary outcome indicators by systematic evaluation and it will provide strong evidence of recombinant human growth hormone combined alginate dressing in the treatment of DFU. Ethics and dissemination: All data in this study are obtained through the web database and do not involve humans, so ethical approval is not suitable for this study. OSF registration number: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/W6P24. Conclusion: This study will give positive conclusions about the effectiveness and safety of recombinant human growth hormone combined alginate dressing in the treatment of DFU.

From Oct. 2019 to Apr. 2020, LAMOST performs a time-domain spectroscopic survey of four $K$2 plates with both low- and med-resolution observations. The low-resolution spectroscopic survey gains 282 exposures ($\approx$46.6 hours) over 25 nights, yielding a total of about 767,000 spectra, and the med-resolution survey takes 177 exposures ($\approx$49.1 hours) over 27 nights, collecting about 478,000 spectra. More than 70%/50% of low-resolution/med-resolution spectra have signal-to-noise ratio higher than 10. We determine stellar parameters (e.g., $T_{\rm eff}$, log$g$, [Fe/H]) and radial velocity (RV) with different methods, including LASP, DD-Payne, and SLAM. In general, these parameter estimations from different methods show good agreement, and the stellar parameter values are consistent with those of APOGEE. We use the $Gaia$ DR2 RV data to calculate a median RV zero point (RVZP) for each spectrograph exposure by exposure, and the RVZP-corrected RVs agree well with the APOGEE data. The stellar evolutionary and spectroscopic masses are estimated based on the stellar parameters, multi-band magnitudes, distances and extinction values. Finally, we construct a binary catalog including about 2700 candidates by analyzing their light curves, fitting the RV data, calculating the binarity parameters from med-resolution spectra, and cross-matching the spatially resolved binary catalog from $Gaia$ EDR3. The LAMOST TD survey is expected to get breakthrough in various scientific topics, such as binary system, stellar activity, and stellar pulsation, etc., Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures, 7 tables. Accepted for publication in RAA