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In the face of global climate change and the collision of consumer preferences towards green and low-carbon, businesses need to accelerate the transition to sustainable development to achieve long-term growth. Companies must raise significant funds to support this transition and manage high market risk. The existing research on green innovation within supply chains often overlooks market risks, particularly those associated with incomplete information. Hence, this paper considers a two-echelon supply chain system composed of a manufacturer and a retailer. Manufacturers are willing to carry out green innovation and make a single product for sale in the consumer market with green preferences. However, innovation is risky due to the uncertainty in the sales volume of green products. In addition, the manufacturer may lack internal capital to invest in the innovation activities and may seek external financial resources, e.g., bank loans or retail prepayment financing. Hence, the manufacturer and retailer must decide which financial option to adopt. The results show that when the market risk is high, the supply chain members tend to make conservative decisions, no matter which financial modes they choose. However, with the robust optimization approach, the manufacturer and the retailer may earn a higher profit when the market risk is high. When the prepayment rate and bank loan interest rate are equal, regardless of the market risk, the manufacturer's optimal decision is to choose prepayment financing from the retailer. However, when the prepayment rate is higher than the bank loan interest rate, there is no dominant strategy for the manufacturer to choose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It was evidenced that cetylpyridinium‐chloride (CPC) mouthwash could inhibit SARS‐COV‐2 activity and reduce salivary viral load, thus reducing SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission. However, due to insufficient residence time in the oral cavity, CPC‐containing mouthwashes have no prolonged antiviral effect. The duration of action of the CPC buccal tablet is expected to be longer than that of the mouthwash. However, there are currently no reports on the salivary drug concentration of CPC buccal tablets. Objective: The study aimed to investigate the salivary drug concentration of CPC buccal tablets and the antiviral effect of CPC on SARS‐CoV‐2 in vitro. Trial design: This is a single‐dose, single‐arm clinical trial, involving 10 Chinese healthy subjects who received 2‐mg CPC buccal tablet to collect saliva samples and to detect saliva concentration at different timepoints within 2 h (Clinical Trial Registration Number: NCT05802628, Registration Date: April 6, 2023). Materials and methods: CPC concentration in saliva was detected by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS), and pharmacokinetic parameters were calculated based on the non‐compartmental model. With an in vitro antiviral experiment, the activity of CPC buccal tablets against SARS‐CoV‐2 and its cellular toxicity was tested. Results: Drug concentrations in saliva at 15 min, 30 min, 1 h, 1.5 h, and 2 h after administration were 8008.33 (1042.25, 41081.11), 2093.34 (373.15, 5759.83), 1016.58 (378.66, 3480.68), 891.77 (375.66, 6322.07), and 717.43 (197.87, 2152.71) ng/mL. PK parameters of saliva concentration: Cmax = 8008.33 (1042.25, 41081.11) ng/mL, AUC0‐t = 4172.37 (904.42, 13912.61) ng/mL * h, AUC0‐∞ = 6712.85 (1856.77, 19971.12) ng/mL * h, T1/2 = 1.22 (0.59, 2.83) h, Tmax = 0.25 (0.25, 0.25) h. As determined in in vitro experiment, CPC was active on SARS‐CoV‐2 with cytotoxic and inhibitory activity of CC50 = 35.75 μM (≈12155 ng/mL) and EC50 = 7.39 μM (≈2512.6 ng/mL). Conclusions: The comparison between the salivary CPC concentration and EC50/CC50 values from in vitro antiviral experiments suggests that CPC buccal tablets may inhibit SARS‐CoV‐2 activity, and the inhibition may last for approximately 30 min without cytotoxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain extraction is an important prerequisite for the automated diagnosis of intracranial lesions and determines, to a certain extent, the accuracy of subsequent lesion identification, localization, and segmentation. To address the problem that the current traditional image segmentation methods are fast in extraction but poor in robustness, while the Full Convolutional Neural Network (FCN) is robust and accurate but relatively slow in extraction, this paper proposes an adaptive mask-based brain extraction method, namely AMBBEM, to achieve brain extraction better. The method first uses threshold segmentation, median filtering, and closed operations for segmentation, generates a mask for the first time, then combines the ResNet50 model, region growing algorithm, and image properties analysis to further segment the mask, and finally complete brain extraction by multiplying the original image and the mask. The algorithm was tested on 22 test sets containing different lesions, and the results showed MPA = 0.9963, MIoU = 0.9924, and MBF = 0.9914, which were equivalent to the extraction effect of the Deeplabv3+ model. However, the method can complete brain extraction of approximately 6.16 head CT images in 1 second, much faster than Deeplabv3+, U-net, and SegNet models. In summary, this method can achieve accurate brain extraction from head CT images more quickly, creating good conditions for subsequent brain volume measurement and feature extraction of intracranial lesions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the correlation between decoy receptor (DcR)1, DcR2 and osteoprotegerin (OPG) gene polymorphisms with the susceptibility to ulcerative colitis (UC) in Chinese population., Methods: A total of 352 patients with UC as well as 463 sex- and age-matched healthy controls were recruited in the study. The genetic polymorphisms of DcR1 (rs12549481), DcR2 (rs1133782) and OPG (rs3102735) were determined using a mini-sequencing technique method., Results: In the autosomal dominant model, the rates of mutant allele (A) and genotype (GA+AA) of DcR2 (rs1133782) were lower in UC patients compared to the controls [6.25% (44/704) vs 8.96% (83/926), P = 0.043; 11.36% (40/352) vs 17.28% (80/463), P = 0.018, respectively]. In the recessive model, moreover, we found that the rates of mutant allele (T) and homozygote (TT) of OPG(rs3102735) were significantly increased in UC patients in contrast with the controls [86.36% (608/704) vs 81.53% (755/926), P = 0.009; 75.28% (265/352) vs 66.95% (310/463), P = 0.010, respectively]. By means of unconditional Logistic regression analysis, the rate of mutant allele (T) of OPG (rs3102735) was shown to be significantly decreased in patients with severe UC compared to the other UC patients [76.67% (69/90) vs 87.79% (539/614), OR = 0.457, 95%CI 0.265-0.788, P = 0.004]. Nevertheless, the genetic polymorphism of DcR2(rs1133782) was not significantly related to the clinical features in UC patients. In addition, the genotypic distribution of DcR1 (rs12549481) in control group did not conform to the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium rule, thus a further statistical analysis was not performed in our study., Conclusions: The genetic polymorphism of DcR2(rs1133782) might be associated with the susceptibility to UC. Not only is the mutation of OPG (rs3102735) gene correlated to the development of UC, but also to the severity of disease.