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Abstract Metabolomics provide a promising tool for understanding dementia pathogenesis and identifying novel biomarkers. This study aimed to identify amino acid biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Vascular Dementia (VD). By amino acid metabolomics, the concentrations of amino acids were determined in the serum of AD and VD patients as well as age-matched healthy controls. Several differences in the concentration of amino acids were observed in AD patients compared to both healthy controls and VD patients. However, no significant distinction was found between healthy controls and VD patients. Considering comorbidities, cystine levels were higher in AD than in VD among non-diabetic patients, but not in those with diabetes. Notably, creatine, spermidine, cystine, and tyrosine demonstrated favorable results in decision curve analyses and good discriminative performances, suggesting their potential for clinical application. These fundings give novel perspectives of serum amino acids for predicting metabolic pathways in AD and VD pathogenesis.

Objective To study the effect of deep learning applied to the assisted diagnosis of radiolucent lesions and radiopaque lesions of the jaws in panoramic radiography and to reduce the missed diagnosis, with early screening to assist doctors to improve the diagnostic accuracy. Methods This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the West China Stomatological Hospital of Sichuan University. The YOLO v8m-p2 neural network model was constructed with 443 panoramic images as a subject to read. The labeled images were divided into 354 training sets, 45 verification sets, and 44 test sets, which were used for model training, verification, and testing. Accuracy, recall, F-1 score, G score, and mAP50 were used to evaluate the detection performance of the model. Results 443 panoramic images covered the common benign lesions of the jaw, the number of radiolucent lesions of the jaw was 318, containing dentigerous cyst, odontogenic keratocyst, and ameloblastoma. The number of radiopaque lesions was 145, containing idiopathic osteosclerosis, odontoma, cementoma, and cemento-osseous dysplasia; the samples are well representative. The accuracy of the YOLO v8m-p2 neural network model in identifying jaw lesions was 0.887, and the recall, F-1 score, G score, and mAP50 were 0.860, 0.873, 0.873, and 0.863, respectively. The recall rates of dentigerous cyst, odontogenic keratocyst, and ameloblastoma were 0.833, 0.941, and 0.875, respectively. Conclusion YOLO v8m-p2 neural network model has good diagnostic performance in preliminary detection of radiolucent and radiopaque lesions of the jaws in panoramic radiography and multi-classification monitoring of radiolucent lesions of jaws, which can assist doctors to screen jaw diseases in panoramic radiography.

Abstract Objectives Patients undergoing a prior failed attempt of chronic total occlusion‐percutaneous coronary intervention (CTO‐PCI) represent a challenging subgroup across all patients undergoing CTO‐PCI. There are limited data on the effects of a prior failed attempt on the outcomes of subsequent CTO‐PCI. We aimed to compare the procedural results and 24‐month outcomes of prior‐failed‐attempt CTO‐PCI with those of initial‐attempt CTO‐PCI. Methods Patients who underwent attempted CTO‐PCI between January 2017 and December 2019 were prospectively enrolled. We analyzed the procedural results and 24‐month major adverse cardiac events (MACE) between patients who underwent prior‐failed‐attempt and initial‐attempt CTO‐PCI. MACE was defined as a composite of cardiac death, target vessel‐related myocardial infarction, and ischemia‐driven target vessel revascularization (TVR) during follow‐up. Results In total, 484 patients who underwent CTO‐PCI (prior‐failed‐attempt, n = 49; initial‐attempt, n = 435) were enrolled during the study period. After propensity score matching (1:3), 147 patients were included in the initial‐attempt group. The proportion of the Japanese‐CTO (J‐CTO) score ≥2 was higher in the patients who underwent prior failed attempt than in those who underwent initial attempt (77.5% vs. 38.8%, p

IntroductionTo increase the crop yield, the amount of agrochemicals used in field has increased in recent years. Moreover, indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers has led to soil deterioration and compaction. Inclusion of straw and tillage practices to the field could play an important role in improving the soil quality and crop yield. Therefore, we hypothesized that combination of straw return and different tillage practices would result in improvement in soil health and crop productivity.MethodsTherefore an experiment was conducted a split plot design during 2018-2022. They were comprised of traditional planting with no straw return and straw return, accompanied by four different tillage methods: control (no tillage), rotary tillage (25 cm tillage depth), subsoiling (35 cm tillage depth), and subsoiling plus rotary tillage (35 + 25 cm tillage depth).ResultsResults showed that subsoiling along with rotary tillage enhanced soil total nitrogen (TN) by 9.0%, soil organic carbon (SOC) 7.5%, soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC) 6.8%, soil catalase (S-CAT) 9.6%, soil urease (S-UE) 4.1%, soil cellulase (S-CL) 14.5%, soil sucrase (S-SC) 10.8% and maize yield 3.0% compared to no tillage.DiscussionCorrelation analysis showed that (i) maize yield was significantly and positively correlated with S-SC, S-CL, S-UE, SOC, and TN. (ii) S-SC was significantly and positively correlated with TN, SOC, and MBC. (iii) TN was significantly and positively correlated with S-UE, and SOC was significantly and positively correlated with S-SC. It has been concluded that straw return coupled with subsoiling and rotary tillage is an appropriate approach to enrich soil nutrients, enzyme activities, and maize yield.

Abstract 3-dB couplers, which are commonly used in photonic integrated circuits for on-chip information processing, precision measurement, and quantum computing, face challenges in achieving robust performance due to their limited 3-dB bandwidths and sensitivity to fabrication errors. To address this, we introduce topological physics to nanophotonics, developing a framework for topological 3-dB couplers. These couplers exhibit broad working wavelength range and robustness against fabrication dimensional errors. By leveraging valley-Hall topology and mirror symmetry, the photonic-crystal-slab couplers achieve ideal 3-dB splitting characterized by a wavelength-insensitive scattering matrix. Tolerance analysis confirms the superiority on broad bandwidth of 48 nm and robust splitting against dimensional errors of 20 nm. We further propose a topological interferometer for on-chip distance measurement, which also exhibits robustness against dimensional errors. This extension of topological principles to the fields of interferometers, may open up new possibilities for constructing robust wavelength division multiplexing, temperature-drift-insensitive sensing, and optical coherence tomography applications.

Since the development wave of plant-based food in China from 2019, the plant-based food industry has gone through a development process from "soaring and enthusiastic" to "calm and rational". The current development of the entire industry tends to be stable and orderly. After five years of developments, the understandings of plant-based food in its development concepts nutritional characteristics, quality characteristics, processing technology, and policy regulations have basically achieved consensus throughout the industry: Plant-based food is an important way for the food industry to achieve efficient resource utilization and green low-carbon development; plant-based food could provide high-quality protein, which is beneficial for improving the dietary structure of residents; plant-based food has a clear difference from traditional vegetarian food, and it gives full play to its functional properties; the processing of plant-based food should fully realize the nutritional enrichment, quality enhancement and excellent flavor of the products; and the standardized development of the plant-based food industry needs to be supported by the corresponding policies, regulations and standards. In the future, the development of plant-based food industry should be guided by the trend of diversified market development, taking taste, price and clean label as the main problems, breaking through technological bottlenecks, thinking from multiple perspectives, diversifying the choices, and exploring its potential value to achieve the steady progress of the entire industry.

Abstract Background The anatomic structure of the anterior chamber (AC) helps to explain differences in refractive status in school-aged children and is closely associated with primary angle closure (PAC). The aim of this study was to quantify and analyze the anterior chamber and angle (ACA) characteristics in Chinese children with different refractive status by swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT). Methods In a cross-sectional observational study, 383 children from two primary schools in Shandong Province, China, underwent a complete ophthalmic examination. First, the anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior chamber width (ACW), angle-opening distance (AOD), and trabecular-iris space area (TISA) were evaluated automatically using a CASIA2 imaging device. AOD and TISA were measured at 500, 750 μm nasal (N1 and N2, respectively), and temporal (T1 and T2, respectively) to the scleral spur (SS). Cycloplegic refraction and axial length (AL) were then measured. According to spherical equivalent refraction (SER), the children were assigned to hyperopic (SER > 0.50D), emmetropic (-0.50D

In order to investigate the impact of climatic factors on the quality of Siraitia grosvenorii fruits pollinated in different seasons and the underlying molecular mechanism involved, the differences in climate factors, quality traits, and gene expression between fruits of the main cultivar S. grosvenorii “Qingpiguo” pollinated in summer and autumn were statistically analyzed by monitoring climate factors at different developmental stages, measuring morphological changes, detecting mogroside metabolism, and analyzing gene expression using qRT-PCR. The results were as follows:(1)Compared to summer-pollinated fruits, the average temperature and effective accumulated temperature of autumn-pollinated fruits decreased significantly after 35 d. Additionally, the temperature difference between day and night increased significantly before 65 d. However, this difference was still less than that of the average temperature and effective accumulated temperature. The light intensity and air humidity remained similar.(2)The transverse diameters, longitudinal diameters, and single fruit weights of autumn-pollinated fruits increased compared to those of summer-pollinated fruits, however, these differences were not statistically significant.(3)Mogroside V and 11-O-mogroside V in autumn-pollinated fruits accumulated slowly from 55 d with a delay of about 10 d, moreover, the content of both compounds in ripe fruits decreased by 40.66% and 46.07%, respectively.(4)In autumn, the number and extent of up-regulated mogroside V synthetase genes were relatively lower, and their co-expression consistency was poorer than in summer. Furthermore, the glucosyltransferase gene SgUGT94-289-3 which was responsible for the final step in mogroside V biosynthesis, exhibited down-regulation at all time points of 55 d. In summary, the shape and size of S. grosvenorii fruits pollinated in different seasons were not significantly affected by climatic factors; however, the content of mogroside V was significantly influenced by the temperature, which potentially influences these variations in mogroside V by regulating both the co-expression consistency and expression level of mogroside V synthetase genes. The results of this study provide the theoretical reference for high-quality cultivation and genetic breeding of S. grosvenorii.

Objective To explore the clinical application value of simple resection in the treatment of pancreatic solid pseudopapillary tumor(SPT). Methods Retrospective analysis of clinical and follow-up data of pancreatic SPT patients who underwent simple pancreatectomy and conventional pancreatectomy from January 2015 to December 2022 in the pancreatic cystic tumor database of Huashan Hospital, Fudan University. A total of 87 patients with pancreatic SPT, including 14 cases underwent simple resection and 73 cases underwent conventional resection, were included. The average age was (36.2±11.7) years old, and females accounting for 87.4%. Results The accuracy of preoperative imaging diagnosis reached 88.5%. Simple resection had a significant advantage over conventional resection in terms of surgical time [(138.3±56.4) min vs. (241.2±89.2) min, P

Objective To investigate physical development level of preschool children from Zhag’yab County in Tibet，aiming to provide reference for improving the nutritional status of children in this region. Methods In this cross-sectional study，the height and weight of children aged 3-6 years old from Zhag’yab County in Tibet were measured. The nutritional status was evaluated according to the WHO child growth standards. Results The overall prevalence rates of malnutrition， stunting， underweight and wasting were 22.6%， 13.0%， 10.9% and 10.0%， respectively. The differences between urban and rural areas were statistically significant （all P 0.05）. Conclusion In Zhag’yab County， the physical development level of preschool children is poor and the malnutrition rate is relatively high. Significant difference can be noted between urban and rural areas. Extensive attention should be paid to scientific feeding and children health，especially in rural area.

Liver injury induced by alcohol is a serious global health problem. Several tea-like plants are widely used as beverages, which are drunk like tea. In this study, the hepatoprotective effects of eight tea-like plant extracts with the intake of 200 mg/kg.bw/day were investigated and compared using a C57BL/6J mouse model of acute alcohol exposure, including sweet tea, vine tea, Rabdosia serra kudo, broadleaf holly leaf, mulberry leaf, bamboo leaf, Camellia nitidissima, and Akebia trifoliata peels. The results showed that the eight tea-like plants had hepatoprotective effects to different degrees against acute alcohol exposure via enhancing the activities of alcoholic metabolism enzymes, ameliorating oxidative stress and inflammation in the liver, as well as regulating gut microbiota. In particular, sweet tea, bamboo leaf, mulberry leaf, and Camellia nitidissima increased the activities of alcohol dehydrogenase or aldehyde dehydrogenase. Among these tea-like plants, sweet tea and Camellia nitidissima had the greatest hepatoprotective effects, and their bioactive compounds were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. Chlorogenic acid, rutin, and ellagic acid were identified in sweet tea, and epicatechin, rutin, and ellagic acid were identified in Camellia nitidissima, which could contribute to their hepatoprotective action. These tea-like plants could be drunk or developed into functional food against alcoholic liver injury, especially sweet tea and Camellia nitidissima. In the future, the effects of sweet tea and Camellia nitidissima on chronic alcoholic liver diseases should be further investigated.

Kombucha is a well-known fermented beverage traditionally made from black tea infusion. Recent studies have focused on finding alternative materials to create novel kombucha beverages with various health benefits. In this study, we prepared and evaluated two novel kombucha beverages using Rhodiola rosea and Salvia miltiorrhiza as materials. The effects of fermentation with the residue of these plants on the kombucha were also investigated. The antioxidant activities, total phenolic contents, and concentrations of the bioactive compounds of the kombucha beverages were determined by the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity test, ferric-reducing antioxidant power test, Folin–Ciocalteu method, and high-performance liquid chromatography, respectively. The results revealed that the kombucha beverages made with Rhodiola rosea and Salvia miltiorrhiza had strong antioxidant capacities and abundant phenolic contents. Additionally, the kombucha fermented with Rhodiola rosea residue had higher FRAP, TEAC and TPC values than that fermented without residue. On the other hand, the Salvia miltiorrhiza kombucha fermented with residue had similar FRAP and TEAC values but lower TPC values compared to that fermented without residue. The correlation analysis showed that gallic acid, salidroside, and tyrosol were responsible for the antioxidant abilities and total phenolic contents of the Rhodiola rosea kombucha, and salvianolic acid A and salvianolic acid B contributed to the antioxidant abilities of the Salvia miltiorrhiza kombucha. Furthermore, the kombucha fermented with Rhodiola rosea residue had the highest sensory scores among the kombucha beverages studied. These findings suggest that Rhodiola rosea and Salvia miltiorrhiza are suitable for making novel kombucha beverages with strong antioxidant abilities and abundant phenolic contents, which can be used in preventing and managing oxidative stress-related diseases.

Abstract In this paper, a class of stochastic vector variational inequality (SVVI) problems are considered. By employing the idea of a D-gap function, the SVVI problem is reformulated as a deterministic model, which is an unconstrained expected residual minimization (UERM) problem, while it is reformulated as a constrained expected residual minimization problem in the work of Zhao et al. Then, the properties of the objective function are investigated and a sample average approximation approach is proposed for solving the UERM problem. Convergence of the proposed approach for global optimal solutions and stationary points is analyzed. Moreover, we consider another deterministic formulation, i.e., the expected value (EV) formulation for an SVVI problem, and the global error bound of a D-gap function based on the EV formulation is given.

Zirconium alloys have long been used as cladding materials for pressurized water reactors (PWR) due to excellent corrosion resistance and low thermal neutron capture cross-section. With the increasing of burnup, the chemical interaction layer has formed in the gap due to fuel-cladding chemical interaction (FCCI), which has an important influence on the thermal conductivity of fuel-cladding mechanical interaction (PCMI). In addition, if the fuel rods are leaked and the coolant enters the inner side of the cladding, the FCCI will be significantly intensified. The FCCI layer is affected by factors such as burnup, fuel rod leak, neutron irradiation, fission products, stress, temperature, etc., the composition and distribution of FCCI layer phase structure are relatively complex. In recent years, with the development of Raman spectroscopy technology, Raman spectrometer has been applied to the study of radioactive materials (such as fuel pellets, oxide film). In this paper, in order to study phase structure composition and influencing factors of FCCI layer of intact and leaked fuel rods in PWR, the FCCI layers of intact and leak fuel rods with 45 GW·d/tU and 41 GW·d/tU burnup were analyzed by Raman spectroscopy. The results show that the FCCI layer with uniform circumferential thickness of 14.19 μm is formed in the intact fuel rod, which is mainly composed of two different phase structure regions: the mixed phase region of monocline and teteal zirconia near the cladding interface. In the range of about 7 μm near the cladding interface, an obvious 705 cm-1 spectral peak is observed, which reflects the influence of interface compressive stress and irradiation defects. The leak fuel rods forms a chemical interaction layer with circumferential thickness varying from 37 μm to 61 μm, which is mainly composed of two different morphologies and phase structures: the monoinclined zirconia region with porosity and crack which is near the cladding interface; the amorphous phase region which is near the fuel pellet. The distribution of phase structure of chemical interaction layer and its transition factors were discussed. The stability of teteal zirconia in the chemical interaction layer of intact fuel rods is related to interfacial compressive stress, neutron irradiation defects and fission product interaction. The existence of monoclinic zirconia in the chemical interaction layer of leak fuel rods is mainly due to stress relaxation and oxygen stoichiometry.

The palaeo-topography around the ruins of ancient Wucheng City, China suggests erosion rate during the Holocene was largely driven by changes in precipitation, and shows how archaeological evidence can inform landform evolution models.

Public healthcare institutions are facing challenges to upgrade the level of services to satisfy gradually increased healthcare needs of residents as the economy develops. To address such challenges, Shanghai Huangpu District Waitan Community Health Center (HDWCHC) has explored a way for the development of featured brand community-based specialty care services, and developed a standardized operation toolkit that can be reproduced and promoted based on a summary of the practice of building Chu's traumatology, the first brand specialty built by the HDWCHC. We reviewed the process and achievements of building Chu's traumatology, hoping to provide methodological guidance for the development of featured brand community-based specialty care services in other areas of China. The brand building of Chu's traumatology includes four stages covering seven parts: standards formulation (diagnostic standards formulation, intervention standards formulation, referral standards formulation) , internal promotion (determination of the inheritor of Chu's traumatology, service team building) , standardized single disease diagnosis and treatment and building the standardized clinic room (expanding to all accessible sites in primary care) and external promotion (building a standardized, community-based operation toolkit featured by the brand of Chu's traumatology) . The exploratory practice of HDWCHC has enabled the development of featured services delivered by a standardized process mode transformed from individual mode (from single-person mode to multi-person cooperation mode, or from single-institution mode to multi-institution cooperation mode) , enhancing the transferability, promotion and reproducibility of featured services as well as bettering their allocation, facilitating the formation of ideas of integrated development of multiple techniques with Chu's traumatology services as the core, thereby improving the effectiveness of healthcare services.

Abstract Endocrine therapy is the frontline treatment for estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancer patients. However, the primary and acquired resistance to endocrine therapy drugs remain as a major challenge in the clinic. Here, this work identifies an estrogen‐induced lncRNA, LINC02568, which is highly expressed in ER‐positive breast cancer and functional important in cell growth in vitro and tumorigenesis in vivo as well as endocrine therapy drug resistance. Mechanically, this work demonstrates that LINC02568 regulates estrogen/ERα‐induced gene transcriptional activation in trans by stabilizing ESR1 mRNA through sponging miR‐1233‐5p in the cytoplasm. Meanwhile, LINC02568 contributes to tumor‐specific pH homeostasis by regulating carbonic anhydrase CA12 in cis in the nucleus. The dual functions of LINC02568 together contribute to breast cancer cell growth and tumorigenesis as well as endocrine therapy drug resistance. Antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) targeting LINC02568 significantly inhibits ER‐positive breast cancer cell growth in vitro and tumorigenesis in vivo. Furthermore, combination treatment with ASO targeting LINC02568 and endocrine therapy drugs or CA12 inhibitor U‐104 exhibits synergistic effects on tumor growth. Taken together, the findings reveal the dual mechanisms of LINC02568 in regulating ERα signaling and pH homeostasis in ER‐positive breast cancer, and indicated that targeting LINC02568 might represent a potential therapeutic avenue in the clinic.

IntroductionThe complement system is a key component of the innate immune system, and its aberrant activation underlies the pathophysiology of various diseases. Zilucoplan is a macrocyclic peptide that binds and inhibits the cleavage/activation of human complement component 5 (C5). We present in vitro and ex vivo data on the mechanism of action of zilucoplan for the inhibition of C5 activation, including two clinically relevant C5 polymorphisms at R885.MethodsThe interaction of zilucoplan with C5, including for clinical C5 R885 variants, was investigated using surface plasmon resonance (SPR), hemolysis assays, and ELISA. The interference of C5b6 formation by zilucoplan was investigated by native gel analysis and hemolysis assay. The permeability of zilucoplan in a reconstituted basement membrane was assessed by the partition of zilucoplan on Matrigel-coated transwell chambers.ResultsZilucoplan specifically bound human complement C5 with high affinity, competitively inhibited the binding of C5 to C3b, and blocked C5 cleavage by C5 convertases and the assembly of the cytolytic membrane attack complex (MAC, or C5b9). Zilucoplan fully prevented the in vitro activation of C5 clinical variants at R885 that have been previously reported to respond poorly to eculizumab treatment. Zilucoplan was further demonstrated to interfere with the formation of C5b6 and inhibit red blood cell (RBC) hemolysis induced by plasmin-mediated non-canonical C5 activation. Zilucoplan demonstrated greater permeability than a monoclonal C5 antibody in a reconstituted basement membrane model, providing a rationale for the rapid onset of action of zilucoplan observed in clinical studies.ConclusionOur findings demonstrate that zilucoplan uses a dual mode of action to potently inhibit the activation of C5 and terminal complement pathway including wild-type and clinical R885 variants that do not respond to eculizumab treatment. These data may be relevant to the clinically demonstrated benefits of zilucoplan.