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The aim of this study was to verify the effectiveness of the split insemination (IVF+ICSI) in patients with borderline semen for the first cycle, we furthermore compared the treatment outcome of the conventional IVF and ICSI on sibling oocytes with the rate of blastocyst formation in different days (day 5 or day 6) as primary outcome and pregnancy as secondary outcome to provide theoretical support for embryo selection.Between January 2017 and November 2021,190 couples undergoing the split insemination (IVF+ICSI) cycle were enrolled in the study with at least eight oocytes and the borderline semen in first cycle to analyze the basic characteristics and clinical outcome. The remaining 157 patients were analyzed in this study to compare the IVF and ICSI after excluding those who were completely unfertilized by IVF (n=33) including a patient who was completely unfertilized by IVF and ICSI.Present study showed that about 32(32/190,16.8%) patients with borderline semen in first cycle were completely unfertilized performing the conventional IVF and only 1(1/190,0.53%) patient was completely unfertilized using the IVF and ICSI in the split insemination (IVF+ICSI), the rate of total fertilization failure (TFF) was significantly decrease by the ICSI treatment (16.8%0.53%,P0.0001). By the split oocytes, the fertilization rate was significantly superior in ICSI(729/982,74.2%) compared to IVF (486/940, 51.7%, P0.0001), the usable blastocyst and high-quality blastocyst rate on the fifth day were statistically superior in IVF compared to ICSI(31.3%22.8%,P=0.009) (27.3%20.6%,P=0.03), The pregnancy rate, implantation rate and live birth rate in the IVF first cycle were higher than the ICSI(75.9%64%, respectively) (52.3%41.8%, respectively)(64.8%54.7%, respectively),although there was no statistical difference,it is also about ten percentage points difference.The treatment of sibling oocyte with both IVF and ICSI could be an appropriate choice to prevent TFF and preserve the embryo development potential for the patients with the borderline semen in present study. Furthermore, the embryo development potential from conventional IVF was better than the embryo from the ICSI technology, the ICSI technology may have a negative effect on the embryo development.

To ensure the secure and stable operation of lithium-ion batteries, the state of health (SOH) and the remaining useful life (RUL) are the critical state parameters of lithium-ion batteries, which need to be estimated precisely. A joint SOH and RUL estimation approach based on an improved Particle Swarm Optimization Extreme Learning Machine (PSO-ELM) is proposed in this paper. The approach adopts Pearson coefficients to screen multivariate information of the discharge process as health indicators and uses them as inputs to enable accurate estimation of SOH and RUL prediction of lithium-ion batteries on the basis of the PSO-ELM model. The validity of the model is demonstrated by the NASA lithium-ion battery data set: the maximum root mean square error (RMSE) of the SOH estimation of the tested battery is 0.0033, the maximum RMSE of its RUL prediction is 0.0082, and the maximum absolute error of RUL prediction is one cycle number. In comparison with the prediction results of the traditional extreme learning machine, the optimized model proposed in this paper estimates the SOH of lithium-ion batteries and RUL with relatively high accuracy.

Background Growth in insect pest populations poses a significant threat to ecosystem functions and services, societal development, and food security in alpine regions under climate change. Risk assessments are important prioritization tools for pest management, which must be used to study insect pest expansion in alpine ecosystems under global warming. We used species distribution modeling to simulate the current and future distribution probabilities of 58 insect pest species in the Qinghai Province, China, based on a comprehensive field investigation. Subsequently, general linear modeling was used to explore the relationship between the distribution probability of these species and the damage caused by them. Finally, we assessed the ecological risk of insect pest expansion across different alpine ecosystems under climate change. Results Climate change could increase the distribution probabilities of insect pest species across different alpine ecosystems. However, the presence of insect pest species may not correspond to the damage occurrence in alpine ecosystems based on percent leaf loss, amount of stunting, and seedling death of their host species. Significant positive relationships between distribution probability and damage occurrence were found for several of the examined insect pest species. Insect pest expansion is likely to increase extensively in alpine ecosystems under increasing carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emission scenarios. Conclusion The relationships between distribution probability and damage occurrence should be considered in species distribution modeling for risk assessment of insect pest expansion under climate change. Our study could improve the effectiveness of risk assessment of insect pest expansion under changing climate conditions. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.

The properties and applications of Ag nanowires (AgNWs) are closely related to their morphology and composition. Therefore, controlling the growth process of AgNWs is of great significance for technological applications and fundamental research. Here, silver nanowires (AgNWs) were synthesized via a typical polyol method with the synergistic effect of Cl&minus, Br&minus, and Fe3+ mediated agents. The synergistic impact of these mediated agents was investigated intensively, revealing that trace Fe3+ ions provided selective etching and hindered the strong etching effect from Cl&minus, and Br&minus, ions. Controlling this synergy allowed the obtainment of highly uniform AgNWs with sub-30 nm diameter and an aspect ratio of over 3000. Transparent conductive films (TCFs) based on these AgNWs without any post-treatment showed a very low sheet resistance of 4.7 &Omega, sq&minus, 1, a low haze of 1.08% at a high optical transmittance of 95.2% (at 550 nm), and a high figure of merit (FOM) of 1210. TCFs exhibited a robust electrical performance with almost unchanged resistance after 2500 bending cycles. These excellent high-performance characteristics demonstrate the enormous potential of our AgNWs in the field of flexible and transparent materials.

The association between the higher occurrence of pediatric leukemia and maternal exposure to residential or occupational pesticides is a debatable subject, especially in agricultural country like China. This study evaluates the association between exposure of mothers to home and occupational pesticides and likelihood of pediatric leukemia. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in main hospitals of Zhengzhou city, China, between September 2014 and October 2015 and children and mothers (n=1203) from oncology (cases; n=390) and orthopedic department (controls; n=813) were enrolled. The Odds Ratio (OR) for correlation between incidence of leukemia and professional home pest control applications during pregnancy and post-childbirth were 1.8 [95% Confidence Interval (CI), 1.2-2.8] and 1.3 [95% CI, 1.1-2.4], respectively. The OR for association between incidence of leukemia and garden pesticide exposure during pregnancy was 2.3 [95% CI, 0.8-7.2] and during childhood was 1.23 [CI, 1.1-2.7], respectively. These results suggest that possible pesticide exposure during pregnancy is related to increased likelihood of leukemia in children and mothers are advised to avoid exposure to pesticides during pregnancy.

In this paper, we propose to use Web Workers [1], isolated parallel threads in current browser working in the background, to enforce privilege separation in chrome extensions. Our tests show that our design is applicable to most chrome extensions (those not using the jquery library) and achieves a reduction in TCB up to 77 percent for our examples. Our implementation shows that our design is efficient enough to enforce privilege separation in chrome extensions and not needs to modify the browser or learn new high-level languages.

Effect of material mix proportion on strength of cement asphalt concrete (CAC) was studied based on 7d cleavage strength. Results indicate that the cleavage strength of CAC increase sharply with the increase of the cement content (0-6%), and the optimum content of added water and emulsified asphalt were 2% and 6% respectively while the cement content was 5%.

To increase fault classification performance and reduce computational complexity,the feature selection process has been used for fault diagnosis.In this paper, we proposed a sparse representation based feature selection method and gave detailed procedure of the algorithm. Traditional selecting methods based on wavelet package decomposition and Bhattacharyya distance methods,and sparse methods, including sparse representation classifier, sparsity preserving projection and sparse principal component analysis,were compared to the proposed method.Simulations showed the proposed selecting method gave better performance on fault diagnosis with Tennessee Eastman Process data.

Flame instabilities of inclination and breakup for lean CH 4 /air combustion in porous media are studied experimentally and numerically. Inclination and breakup are observed in the quartz tube filled with alumina pellets of 3 mm in diameter for equivalence ratio range of 0.435–0.490. The effect of the equivalence ratio on the flame inclination and breakup are discussed and the results show that the equivalence ratio plays an important role on the breakup and flame inclination. Breakups always happen when the inclinational angle reaches 54–60°. In order to explain the motivities of the inclination, a two-dimensional one-step chemical reaction, two-temperature model without initial angles are carried out to simulate the experimental cases. In order to check the possible motivities of inclination, we assumed profiles (not uniform) of inlet velocity of premixed gas and equivalence ratio at inlet, different porosities in the tube, half the same on the right, half on the left, in the simulations. The results show that the inhomogeneous inlet velocity gives slight influence on the inclination, but the different distribution of porosity and the inhomogeneous equivalence ratio at inlet give great influences on the inclination. Calculation results show that the heat loss have a significant influence in determining the flame shape at the initial moment and lead to an increase in the development of the inclination instability. At a low mixture velocity, hydrodynamic effect on the inclination instability is ignored, while the inclination angle of the flame front continually increases as the mixture velocity increase.

Investigation of filtration combustion instability of lean premixed hydrogen/air mixtures in a packed bed is conducted experimentally. The evolution of flame front instabilities, including inclinat...

A promising electrochemical nitrite sensor was fabricated by immobilizing Au@Fe3O4 nanoparticles on the surface of l-cysteine modified glassy carbon electrode, which was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. The proposed sensor exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity toward nitrite oxidation. The kinetic parameters of the electrode reaction process were calculated, (1 – a)na was 0.38 and the heterogeneous electron transfer coefficient (k) was 0.13 cm s � 1 .T he detection conditions such as supporting electrolyte and pH value were optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the linear range for the determination of nitrite was 3.6 � 10 � 6 to 1.0 � 10 � 2 M with a detection limit of 8.2 � 10 � 7 M( S/ N ¼ 3). Moreover, the as-prepared electrode displayed good stability, repeatability and selectivity for promising practical applications.

A novel hydrorefining/hydroupgrading/hydrodewaxing combined process for clean, low freezing diesel production were studied in this paper. the catalytic performance of three hydrorefining/hydroupgrading/hydrodewaxing combined catalysts were examined on 200mL hydrogenation units using the same feedstocks, the results revealed that the sulfur contents of diesel product were less than 50μg·g-1,and all the three combined catalysts can produce-20# diesel, and HU-1 catalyst had the better hydroupgrading performance than HU-2 catalyst.

Objective To construct recombinant Apoptin gene (vp3) retrovirus pLVP3 and to study its apoptosis inducing effect on human breast cancer cells 435 as well as to discuss its mechanism in vitro and in vivo.

Nanoparticles (NPs) consisting of an Fe3O4 core and a thin gold shell (referred to as Au@Fe3O4 NPs) were self-assembled on the surface of a glassy carbon electrode modified with ethylenediamine. Following adsorption of hemoglobin, its interaction with the NPs was studied by UV–Vis spectroscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry. Stable and well-defined redox peaks were observed at about −350 mV and −130 mV in pH 6.0 buffer. The modified electrode was used as a mediator-free sensor for hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), with a linear range from 3.4 µM to 4.0 mM of H2O2, and with a 0.67 µM detection limit (at an S/N of 3). The apparent Michaelis-Menten constant is 2.3 mM.

Temperature is one of the abiotic factors limiting growth and productivity of plants. In the present work, the effect of low non-freezing temperature, as an inducer of “chilling resistance”, was studied in three cultivars of rice (Oryza sativa L.), japonica cv. 9516 (j-9516), the two parental lines of superhigh-yield hybrid rice between subspecies, Peiai/E32 (ji-PE), and the traditional indica hybrid rice Shanyou 63 (i-SY63). Leaves of chill-treated rice showed chilling-induced resistance, as an increase of their low-temperature tolerance was measured using chlorophyll fluorescence measurements, revealing a change in photosystem II (PSII) efficiency. After 5 d of exposure to 11°C under low light (100 μmol m-2 s-1), levels of unsaturated fatty acids in PSII thylakoid membrane lipids decreased during the initial 1-2 d, then increased slowly and reached 99.2%, 95.3% and 90.1% of the initial value (0 d) in j-9516, ji-PE and i-SY63, respectively, on the fifth day. However, under medium light (600 μmol m-2 s-1), all cultivars experienced similar substantial photoinhibition, which approached steady state levels after a decline in levels of unsaturated fatty acids in PSII thylakoid membrane lipids to about 57.1%, 53.8% and 44.5% of the initial values (0 d) in j-9516, ji-PE and I-SY63 on the fifth day. Under either chilling-induced resistance (the former) or low temperature photoinhibition (the latter) conditions, the changes of other physiological parameters such as D1 protein contents, electron transport activities of PSII (ETA), Fv/Fm, xanthophyl cycle activities expressed by DES (deepoxide state) were consistent with that of levels of unsaturated fatty acids in PSII thylakoid membrane lipids. So there were negative correlations between saturated levels of fatty acids (16:1(3t), 16:0, 18:0), especially the 16:1(3t) fatty acid on thylakoid membrane and other physiological parameters, such as D1 protein contents, ETA and (A+Z)/(A+V+Z). A specific role of desaturation of fatty acids and the photoprotective pigments of the xanthophyl cycle, leading to an acclimation response in thylakoid membrane lipids may be involved. We conclude that chilling-induced resistance is accelerated by the unsaturation of thylakoid membranes, and the ability of rice plants to cold-harden can be enhanced by genetic engineering.

We have developed a novel nitric oxide (NO) cellular biosensor based upon the immobilization of red blood cells (RBCs) onto nanometer‐size colloidal gold that is attached to an electrochemically pretreated glassy carbon electrode via the bridging of an ethylenediamine monolayer. The biosensor has been characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and electrochemistry. The immobilized RBCs display an excellent electrocatalytic response to nitric oxide. The electrocatalytic currents are proportional to the NO concentration in the range from 1.0×10–8 to 1.0×10–6 M and the detection limit is as low as 5.0×10–9 M (S/N=3). Furthermore, the biosensor is very stable and relatively free of potential interference.

This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of combined atorvastatin calcium and methylprednisolone for the treatment of multiple sclerosis relapse. Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) at the relapse phase were randomized to receive either combined treatment of atorvastatin calcium and methylprednisolone (n = 19) or methylprednisolone alone (n = 19). Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) was administered at baseline, 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after treatment initiation. The number and volume of brain lesions were evaluated using magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and 6 months. The levels of IL-13, IL-35, IFN-γ, and IL-10 in the cerebrospinal fluid were examined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. There was no significant difference in EDSS scores at 1, 2, and 4 weeks. At 3 and 6 months, the combined treatment group showed significantly lower EDSS scores than the monotherapy group (P < 0.05). The number and volume of brain lesions in the combined treatment group were significantly lower than the monotherapy group at 6 months (P < 0.001). The mean time to relapse was significantly extended in the combined treatment group than the monotherapy group (P < 0.001). At 2 and 4 weeks, the combined treatment group had significantly higher levels of IL-13, IL-35, and IL-10 in the cerebrospinal fluid than the monotherapy group (P < 0.05), but significantly lower level of IFN-γ (P < 0.001). The levels of IL-13 and IL-10 in the combined treatment group were positively correlated with EDSS scores (r = 0.632, P = 0.001; r = 0.731, P = 0.002). Combined treatment with atorvastatin calcium and methylprednisolone can improve the outcomes of MS relapse compared with glucocorticosteroid alone.

Improving efficacy of inflammation treatment by increasing drug delivery to the inflammatory sites is a challenging endeavor. N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP), the first discovered leukocyte chemotaxis peptide, is composed of formyl methionine, leucine and phenylalanine. It conjugates with formyl peptide receptors on the target cells with high receptor expression on the surface such as macrophages. With this in mind, we developed a novel fMLP-modified liposome (fMLP-LIP) for enhancing drug delivery to the inflammatory sites and resolving the systemic reaction issue with conventional anti-inflammatory drugs. Being a more stable and cheaper liposomal component than phospholipids, cholesterol (CHO) has been thoroughly investigated as an alternative anchor. In this study, fMLP was covalently conjugated with CHO with polyethylene glycol link to prepare the liposomes, cellular uptake of liposomes by differentiated human U937 cells was examined and cellular uptake experiment in vitro was employed to optimize fMLP-LIP prescription and investigate the uptake mechanism. An in vivo inflammatory model was established to evaluate the targeting performance of fMLP-LIP to inflammatory site. The in vitro and in vivo findings indicate that the fMLP ligands playing an important role in increasing drug delivery to inflammatory sites and fMLP-LIP as a promising anti-inflammatory drug carrier.

To explore the relationship between duration of sleeping and cerebral infarction.A case-control study involved 1037 cerebral infarction patients admitted by the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University,December 2011-December 2012 as cases. Another 1205 adults free from cerebro-vascular diseases who had undergone physical examination in the hospital at the same period, were served as controls. All the subjects were interviewed with unified questionnaire. Chi-square test, u-test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed.After adjustment for potential confounding factors including age, sex, body mass index, wrist-hip ratio, smoking, alcohol intake, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease and lipid parameters, data from the multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the risk of cerebral infarction was greater in people who slept less than 6 hours per night than those who slept between 6 hours and 8 hours per night, with an odds ratio (95% CI)as 2.81 (95% CI:1.68-4.70). There was no significant association between factor as 'sleeping longer than 8 hours/pre day' and cerebral infarction. Through the subgroup analysis, data showed that the association between 'shorter than 6 hour sleep/night' and cerebral infarction consistently existed, across the categories of sex, and the degree of association was greater in women than in men, with the odds ratio as 5.58 (95% CI: 1.78-17.52) and 2.00 (95% CI:1.10-3.64) respectively.Short sleeping duration might increase the risk of developing cerebral infarction.

In order to explore the genetic mutations of the H9N2 subtype avian influenza viruses isolated in Shandong, sixteen avian influenza virus subtype H9N2 were isolated from different areas of Shandong Province. The complete HA fragments of the viruses were amplified by RT-PCR and the sequences were analyzed on homology and heredity evolution after the cloning and sequencing of the products. The results showed that the amino acid motif of cleavage sites for all the sixteen virus in the HA gene were RSSR decrease GLF, which was consistent with the characterization of the LPAIV. Seven to nine potential glycosylation sites were found during the analysis and the receptor binding sites were relatively conservative except the 198 site. The Leucine(L) at the amino acid position 234 in the HA genes of all isolates indicated the potential of binding with SAalpha,2-6 receptor of mammals. Homology analysis showed that the homology of HA nucleotide and amino acid sequences was 96.3%-99.9% and 97.1%-99.6% for different strains. They belonged to a branch of the A/Duck/Hong Kong/Y280/97 in the phylogenetic tree.

This study was to evaluate the replication and pathogenicity of attenuated human metapneumovirus (HMPV) mutants in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice. SCID mice were intranasally infected with either wild type GFP-rHMPV (WT), or mutant viruses (M1, M2 and M4) with the N-linked glycosylation(s) of the F protein removed. The organs were collected for viral isolation, titration, pulmonary histopathology and mRNA detection by PCR at different time points. WT or mutant viruses were successfully isolated from the lungs of infected mice after inoculation. The titers of WT and M1 peaked on 5th day and remained detectable until 14th day post-inoculation. M2 reached approximately 4 logs lower titer on 5th and 9th day post-inoculation as compared to WT and M1. M4 showed similar growth kinetics to M2. Viral signal was never detected from the heart, liver, spleen, kidney and brain on 5th day post-inoculation. The pulmonary pathology score in the M1 infected mice was similar to WT infected mice but higher than in M2 or M4 infected mice. WT and HMPV mutants can thus only replicate in the lungs of SCID mice. Attenuated M2 and M4 may be considered as candidates for the preparation of vaccine against HMPV.

To investigate the prevalence of viral infections and putative association of viral infection with illness severity in young children with severe lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) in Chongqing.Respiratory secretion specimens were collected from 119 hospitalized patients with severe pneumonia from December 2006 to March 2008.After being processed, the samples were detected for respiratory viruses including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus (ADV), human metapneumovirus (hMPV), human bocavirus (HBoV), parainfluenza virus 1, 2, 3 (PIV 1, 2, 3), influenza virus A and B (IVA and IVB) either by PCR or RT-PCR. Clinical data were analyzed along with virological data by using appropriate statistical methods.Viral pathogens were identified in specimens of 86 (72.3%) cases, among which RSV was detected in 49 (41.2%) patients. More than one virus was detected in 23 individual (26.7%) samples, of which 19 were dual positive for RSV and another virus. Bacterial cultures were performed for 69 patients. Both bacterial and viral pathogens were identified in 53 (76.8%) patients. Bacterial and viral coinfection was demonstrated in samples from 41 (59.4%) cases.Viral pathogens are the main etiology of severe pneumonia in young children in Chongqing area during the study period. RSV was the most frequent viral pathogens, followed by ADV and hMPV. Coinfection with respiratory common viruses was relatively common, though co-infection with viruses did not appear to aggravate the patients' condition.