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The connexin gene family is the most prevalent gene that contributes to hearing loss. Connexins 26 and 30, encoded by GJB2 and GJB6 respectively, are the most abundant expressed connexins in the inner ear. Connexin 43 which is encoded by GJA1 appears to be widely expressed in various organs, including the heart, skin, brain, and inner ear. The mutations that arise in GJB2, GJB6 and GJA1 can all result in comprehensive or non-comprehensive genetic deafness in newborns. As it is predicted that connexins include at least 20 isoforms in humans, the biosynthesis, structural composition, and degradation of connexins must be precisely regulated so that the gap junctions can operate properly. Certain mutations result in connexins possessing a faulty subcellular localization, failing to transport to the cell membrane and preventing gap junction formation, ultimately leading to connexin dysfunction and hearing loss. In this review, we provide a discussion of the transport models for connexin 43, connexins 30 and 26, mutations affecting trafficking pathways of connexin 26, the existing controversies in trafficking pathways of connexins, and the molecules involved in connexin trafficking and their functions. This review can contribute to a new way of understanding the etiological principles of connexin mutations and finding therapeutic strategies for hereditary deafness.

The aim was to identify the gene expressions of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)-infected human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and to study its possible pathogenic mechanism on atherosclerosis using microarray technology.The gene expression differences in HCMV AD169 strain-infected HUVECs were studied by the microarray technology to explore the potential molecular mechanism of HCMV infection. The qPCRs were performed to verify the transcriptome results.A total of 2,583 differentially expressed genes, including 407 down-regulated genes and 2,176 up-regulated genes, were detected by the systematic bioinformatics analysis. The Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses showed that the significantly differentially expressed genes were mainly involved in regulating protein kinase activity, inflammatory response, ubiquitination, protein phosphorylation, cell metabolism, and exosomes, among which 12 genes had significant changes and were screened by protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis and verified by qPCR. The experimental qPCR results were consistent with the microarray results.The GO and KEGG analyses revealed that the regulation of protein kinase activity, inflammatory response, ubiquitination, protein phosphorylation, and cell metabolism played important roles in the process of endothelial cell infection. Furthermore, 12 genes were involved in the process of HCMV infection of endothelial cells and contributed to the current understanding of the infection and pathogenic mechanisms of atherosclerosis.

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) can improve the wireless link between the transmitter and receiver by configuring the propagation environments of the system. In order to achieve intelligence of the configuration, the channel state information is required. In this paper, we study the downlink channel estimation problem in an IRS-aided frequency division duplexing (FDD) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. We propose a two-phase training scheme such that the direct channel (non-IRS channel) and the cascaded channel (IRS-aided channel) can be tracked by two Kalman filters separately. The pilots transmitted by the base station (BS) and the reflective coefficients at the IRS are then jointly optimized to improve the channel estimation accuracy. Since the formulated problem is non-convex, the optimal solution is not straightforward. A lower bound of the objective function is derived to serve as the baseline for evaluating the performance of a certain pilot and reflective coefficients design. In two special cases, namely the direct channel dominant scenario and the cascaded channel dominant scenario, we find that the optimal pilots and the optimal reflective coefficient matrix can be approximated by some columns of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrices as the number of antennas at the BS and the number of reflective elements at the IRS get larger. We further propose a codebook-based low-complexity design for a general scenario which can significantly reduce the control overhead of the IRS and cut the computational burden. Numerical results are provided to verify the efficiency of the proposed channel estimation method.

What is known about this topic? Dengue fever is an acute febrile illness caused by four types of dengue virus (DENV 1–4), and is a mosquito-borne infectious disease. The incidence of dengue has increased dramatically around the world in recent decades. An estimated of 3.9 billion people in 128 countries are at risk of infection with dengue viruses, 70% of whom are in Asia. In 2017, the first local infections of dengue virus (DENV-2) in Jiangxi Province was reported in Zhanggong District, Ganzhou City. What is added by this report? From August to September 2019, the first dengue outbreak happened in Xin’gan County, where 81 local dengue fever cases were reported, 35 were laboratory-confirmed cases, and 46 were clinically-diagnosed cases; all cases were dengue virus type 1. The DENV-virus strains isolated from the cases of Xin’gan County were close to the strains isolated in Singapore (MF033254|25657|Singapore|2016) and Henan (MK905537|Henan201903|China: Henan Province|2019). What are the implications for public health practice? The outbreak might have been caused by imported cases or covert infections. The outbreak in Xin’gan County indicated that more proactive countermeasures should be taken during the dengue epidemic period such as intensifying surveillance for dengue cases, virus serotype, and Aedes vector density and strengthening cooperation with customs and tourism departments. Moreover, the outbreak should prompt training in medical institutions and improved ability for doctor’s to diagnose dengue fever, which is very important for early detection of dengue cases and taking preventive measures.

In this paper, we investigate the optimal configuration of the intelligent walls (IW s) installed in smart buildings. In particular, by controlling the states of IW s, the indoor wireless propagation environment can be judiciously adjusted to maximize the system performance. Since the total number of feasible configuration patterns increases exponentially with the number of the IW s, it becomes impractical to search for the optimal configuration in an exhaustive way when the number of IWs gets large. To address such a problem, we first prove that the optimal system performance can be achieved by only exploiting a limited number of IW configuration patterns. Furthermore, we put forth one efficient algorithm of low complexity to identify the small set of optimal patterns. Numerical results are also provided to verify the proposed scheme.

Although the lithium–sulfur redox flow batteries (Li–S RFBs) are promising candidates for large-scale energy storage application because of outstanding solubility of long-chain polysulfides and low cost of sulfur. Their implementation has been impeded by multiple challenges, especially the dissolution of intermediate lithium polysulfide (Li2SX) species into the electrolyte. Here, Al2O3 particles decorated polypropylene separator (PP-Al2O3) was investigated. The results show that the thermal stability and the electrolyte wettability of the PP-Al2O3 separator are improved obviously. When the PP-Al2O3 separator is used for Li–S RFB, the cyclic stability and rate capability of the battery are enhanced. The PP-Al2O3 separators are effective in improving the initial discharge capacity of Li–S RFBs from 27.5 to 91.5 mAh g−1 at 6.25 mA cm−2. The reason could be ascribed to that the polar Al2O3 coating not only alleviates the shuttle effect by chemical interaction and physical barrier, but also facilitates Li-ion migration by favorable electrolyte wettability. In addition, theoretical calculations reveal that chemical bonds are formed between Al2O3 and Li2SX. This work provides the rational design strategy for functional separators at cell scale to effective utilizing of active sulfur and retarding of polysulfides, which offers the possibility of high energy density Li–S RFBs with long cycling life.

Social learning is usually used to speed up the learning of novice agents, even though this novice agent is only influenced by the external observations. In this paper, an online bandit learning problem that arises in the social learning is analyzed. Specifically, under the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework, there are multiple agents, one learner, and several targets which are interacting with the unknown environment and making online decisions. To better handle the well-known exploration-exploitation tradeoff in bandit problems and maximize the learner’s rewards, we design an online learning algorithm that benefits from others simply by observing the decisions of the targets. The advantage of leveraging the observations is also demonstrated in the derived performance bound. The proposed learning algorithm is further evaluated with numerical simulations.

Optimal task offloading decisions can be made if all the system parameters are known perfectly. However, due to some practical constraints, the task node can only query a subset of helper nodes each time and only the knowledge about these queried nodes are updated accordingly. Considering the fact that the system parameters of the helper nodes vary over time, the task node needs to make the offloading decisions based on the available system knowledge including both the updated and the outdated ones. In this paper, we investigate the optimal query policy at the task node such that task offloading performance is optimized in the long term. We first solve this problem under the reinforcement learning (RL) framework assuming the knowledge of the dynamics of the system parameters. In the absence of the system dynamics, we further put forward an efficient low-complexity algorithm to learn the optimal query decision by exploiting the deep RL tools. Numerical results corroborate that the performance of the proposed algorithm is close to the optimal one.

Coal tar wastewater is hard to degrade by traditional methods because of its toxic pollutant constituents and high concentration of aromatic hydrocarbons, especially phenolic substances. A new type of hydrophobic benzacetone modified PbO2 anode (BA-PbO2 electrodes) was used for the electrocatalytic treatment of coal tar wastewater in a continuous cycle reactor. The surface morphology, structure, valences of elements, hydrophobicity, hydroxyl radical (·OH) produced capacity, electrochemical properties and stability of BA-PbO2 electrodes were characterized by SEM (scanning electron microscopy), XRD (X-ray diffraction), XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), contact angle, a fluorescence probe test, an electrochemical workstation and accelerated life test, respectively. The BA-PbO2 electrodes exhibited a compact structure and finely dispersed crystallize size of 4.6 nm. The optimum degradation conditions of coal tar wastewater were as follows: current density of 90 mA cm−2, electrode gap of 1 cm and temperature at 25 °C with flow velocity of 80 L h−1. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency reached 92.39% after 240 min of degradation under the optimized conditions and the after-treatment COD value was 379.51 mg L−1 which was lower than the centralized emission standard (less than 400 mg L−1). These findings demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of electrocatalytically degrading coal tar wastewater by BA-PbO2 electrodes. The possible mechanism and pathway for phenol a specific pollutant in coal tar wastewater were investigated by quantum chemistry calculations (Multiwfn) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The toxicity of each intermediate was predicted by the ECOSAR program.

Alzheimer disease (AD) is characterized as a chronic neurodegenerative disease associated with aging. The clinical manifestations of AD include latent episodes of memory and cognitive impairment, psychiatric symptoms and behavioral disorders, as well as limited activities in daily life. In developed countries, AD is now acknowledged as the third leading cause of death, following cardiovascular disease and cancer. The pathogenesis and mechanism of AD remain unclear, although some theories have been proposed to explain AD, such as the theory of β-amyloid, the theory of the abnormal metabolism of tau protein, the theory of free radical damage, the theory of the inflammatory response, the theory of cholinergic damage, etc. Effective methods to predict, prevent or reverse AD are unavailable, and thus the development of new, efficient therapeutic drugs has become a current research hot spot worldwide. The isolation and extraction of active components from natural drugs have great potential in treating AD. These drugs possess the advantages of multiple targets in multiple pathways, fewer side effects and a long duration of curative effects. This article summaries the latest research progress regarding the mechanisms of natural drugs in the treatment of AD, providing a review of the literature and a theoretical basis for improving the clinical treatment of AD.

Despite being one of the most promising cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 has been plagued by its low electronic conductivity and Li+/Ni2+ cation mixing, which lead to poor rate capacity and cycle stability. In this paper, hollow peanut-like hierarchical mesoporous LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 has been synthesized by a simple self-template solid-state method, and the influence of calcination times on the electrochemical performances was also investigated. The results suggest that L2 sample calcined at 850 °C for 10 h shows the highest rate capability and superior cycle stability as compared to L1 sample calcined for 8 h and L3 sample calcined for 12 h. The initial discharge capacity of L2 is 155.1 mAh g−1, and maintains 107.8 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles at 1 C. Surprisingly, its initial discharge capacity is 144.7 mAh g−1 even when cycled at 10 C, and still retains 97 mAh g−1 after 300 cycles. The significant performance improvement of L2 is ascribed to the hollow peanut-like hierarchical mesoporous structure, which can not only buffer the volume changes during the repeated charge/discharge processes, but also shorten the ion transport distance.

The P2-type Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.4O2 (NaMnFe), Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.3Zn0.1O2 (NaMnFeZn), and Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.2Zn0.1Ni0.1O2 (NaMnFeZnNi) are prepared using an acetate decomposition reaction and developed as promising cathode materials for high-capacity sodium-ion batteries. The XRD patterns show that Zn2+ and Ni2+ ions are successfully incorporated into the lattice of the Na-Mn-Fe-O system, and the P2-type structure remains unchanged after substitution. The charging/discharging tests exhibit that the Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.4O2, Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.3Zn0.1O2, and Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.2Zn0.1Ni0.1O2 electrodes have the capacities of 200.4, 182.0, and 202.2 mAhg−1, respectively. The Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.4O2 electrode has a higher initial capacity but faster capacity decay. When partially substituting Zn and Ni for Fe, the Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.3Zn0.1O2 and Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.2Zn0.1Ni0.1O2 electrodes exhibit lower reversible capacity but improved cycling stability (88.3 and 93.4% capacity retention over 100 cycles). The greatly improved electrochemical performance of the Na0.67Mn0.6Fe0.2Zn0.1Ni0.1O2 electrode apparently belongs to the contribution of the Zn2+ and Ni2+ substitution, which facilitates to alleviate the Jahn-Teller distortion of Mn and suppresses the polarization.

Hierarchical mesoporous LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 spheres have been synthesized by urea-assisted solvothermal method with adding Triton X-100. The structure and morphology of the as-prepared materials were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and electron microscope. The results show that the as-prepared samples can be indexed as hexagonal layered structure with hierarchical architecture, and the possible formation mechanism is speculated. When evaluated as cathode material, the hierarchical mesoporous LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 spheres show good electrochemical properties with high initial discharge capacity of 129.9 mAh g−1, and remain the discharge capacity of 95.5 mAh g−1 after 160 cycles at 10C. The excellent electrochemical performance of the as-prepared sample can be attributed to its stable hierarchical mesoporous framework in conjunction with large specific surface, low cation mixing and small particle size. They not only provide a large number of reaction sites for surface or interface reaction, but also shorten the diffusion length of Li+ ions. Meanwhile, the mesoporous spheres composed of nanoparticles can contribute to high rate ability and buffer volume changes during charge/discharge process.

Lithium-sulfur batteries have several disadvantages, such as intrinsic insulation of sulfur and Li 2 S, large volume expansion, and inevitable shuttle effect, which lead to low utilization of active materials and rapid capacity decay. Herein, leaf-like interconnected network structure of MWCNT/Co 9 S 8 was synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method. The MWCNT/Co 9 S 8 /S delivers a high specific capacity and good cycling stability. The initial discharge capacity of MWCNT/Co 9 S 8 /S is 1124 mAh g −1 and retains at 503 mAh g −1 after 100 cycles at 0.1 C. The improved electrochemical performance of MWCNT/Co 9 S 8 /S could be attributed to the interconnected network MWCNT and polar Co 9 S 8 . As conductive skeletons, the interconnected network structure of MWCNT midribs provide fast conduction paths for electron and additional space for volume expansion of sulfur. Furthermore, sulfur particles well-distributed on the MWCNT/Co 9 S 8 scaffold facilitate Li + ions storage and release for energy delivery, which is beneficial to excellent activation of sulfur and high rate capacity. In addition, the polar Co 9 S 8 leaves provide strong binding sites to trap polar polysulfide intermediates, which can suppress the shuttle effect effectively.

Tubular magnesium oxide (MgO) nanocrystals were fabricated via combining ammonium sulfate leaching and precipitation method with calcined dolomite (CaCO 3 ·MgO) as magnesium source. The relationship between (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 /MgO molar ratio, volume of distilled ammonia and dosage of calcined dolomite and the leaching rate of magnesium were investigated, and the highest value of 96.81% for leaching rate was obtained by optimizing leaching conditions. The tubular MgO nanocrystals were synthesized by precipitation and calcination process, which were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM and TEM. After calcination process, the crystallite size of MgO nanocrystals varies from 12.4 nm to 42.2 nm with the calcination temperature increases from 500 °C to 1000 °C. The activation energy for crystal growth of MgO nanocrystals is about 10.69 ± 1.13 kJ/mol before 650 °C, while it increases to about 27.02 ± 0.95 kJ/mol after 650 °C.

A pitch-derived soft carbon is successfully prepared by easy-accessible pyrolysis process in this work. The electrochemical performance of the acquired soft carbon can be improved via doping phosphorus. We found that the phosphorus doping can increase layer spacing and defects of soft carbon, which improved the capacity of soft carbon significantly. The cell's initial reversible capacity of the phosphorus-doped pitch-derived soft carbon is as high as 251 mAh g −1 , the capacity retention has been kept at 80.1% after 200 cycles. Herein, phosphorus doping is an effective way to improve the electrochemical performance of the pitch-derived soft carbon while phosphorus doped soft carbon is a promising candidate as an anode material for sodium ion batteries.

Bicontinuous hierarchical mesoporous LiFePO4/C (BHM-LFP/C) microbelts have been synthesized using a simple dual-solvent electrospinning method for the first time. The use of a dual-solvent is beneficial for the electrospinning synthesis, which increases the salt solubility, as well as decreases the surface tension to improve the spinnability. The sample exhibits a high reversible capacity (153 mA h g−1 at 0.5C), and achieves an excellent high rate cycling performance. The enhanced electrochemical performance can be attributed to the unique microbelts providing bicontinuous electron/ion pathways, and the thoroughly mesoporous structure facilitating electrolyte penetration, especially for hierarchical architectures, which have three-dimensional diffusion channels for Li+. This method can be extended to fabricate other electrospun multi-element oxide cathode materials for advanced lithium-ion batteries.

In this paper, we study the existence and uniqueness theorem for Lp (1 < p < 2) solutions to a class of infinite time interval backward doubly stochastic differential equations (BDSDEs). Furthermore, we obtain the comparison theorem for 1-dimensional infinite time interval BDSDEs in Lp.

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is a novel cardiovascular biomarker which is particularly useful for detection and assessment of heart failure (HF). However, previous studies examining PTH in heart failure have primarily focused on left HF; thus, the relationship between PTH and right HF remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the serum PTH levels in patients with chronic right HF. A total of 154 patients with chronic right HF were enrolled in the present study. A binary logistic regression analysis model was used to assess the independent predictive value of PTH levels in chronic right HF. Partial correlative analysis was used to demonstrate the relevance of PTH levels on the parameters of assessment of right heart function. A multiple linear regression analysis model was used to evaluate the independent factors of PTH levels in patients with right HF. The results showed that the serum PTH levels in the right HF group were significantly higher compared with the control group. After adjusting for predictors of right HF, serum PTH levels were associated with right HF with an odds ratio of 1.066 (95% confidence interval: 1.030-1.102, P

The aim of the present study was to investigate the correlation between serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels and coronary artery calcification (CAC) in patients without renal failure, as well as to determine independent risk factors of CAC score (CACS). A total of 157 patients who underwent coronary computed tomography angiographic examination at the 101th Hospital of the People's Liberation Army between December 2013 and February 2015 were retrospectively evaluated. The correlation between PTH levels and CACS was determined using a Pearson correlation analysis. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn to determine the best cutoff PTH level for prediction of CAC. The independent association between serum PTH levels and CAC was analyzed by using a logistic regression analysis model with the response variable Be binary class. The results revealed that PTH levels in patients in the CAC group were significantly higher than those of patients in the non-calcification group. PTH levels were positively correlated with CACS (r=0.288, P

Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) counterpulsation for the patients with acute ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI). Methods To retrospectively analyze the data collected from the Management System of Cardiovascular Interventional Treatment in Military Hospitals. A total of 8878 consecutive patients with acute STEMI undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were recruited in present study, of whom 732 patients received IABP therapy were assigned into IABP group and the other 8146 patients received no IABP into control group. Contrastive analysis was performed to analyze the baseline data of the two groups, and 1:1 propensity matching was done to compare the differences between the two groups of intraoperative mortality, in-hospital mortality, stent thrombosis and postoperative hemorrhage. Results Multi-logistic regression revealed that age, heart failure and renal dysfunction were the risk factors for in-hospital mortality. By 1:1 propensity matching analysis, no statistical differences were found between the two groups in intraoperative mortality, postoperative hemorrhage and stent thrombosis, and the in-hospital mortality was higher in IABP group than in control group (10.4% vs 2.5%, P

In order to realize a wider application for graphene materials specifically in the field of energy storage, a simple and mass-scalable method described as “the atmospheric, low-temperature, shock-heating process” is proposed in this work. During this low-temperature process, the graphite oxide without pre-treatment is completely exfoliated to form the few-layer graphene materials at atmospheric conditions. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET)-specific surface area of acquired material at 350 °C can reach 487 m2 g−1. The acquired few-layer graphene materials are also confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The results demonstrate that this simple method is feasible for synthesizing the few-layer graphene materials. Besides that, the acquired graphene is also used as the cathode material in the surface-enabled lithium ion-exchanging cell. The galvanostatic charge/discharge tests show that the graphene prepared from this method is suitable for this system and displays a satisfactory electrochemical performance. The acquired graphene sample exhibits the reversible capacities of around 187, 107, 84, 58, and 45 mAh g−1 at 0.1, 2, 5, 10, and 15 A g−1, respectively. At the current density of 0.5 A g−1, the capacity retention can reach 75 % after 2000 cycles.

Monolithic SiO2-TiO2 aerogels were prepared via supercritical drying using tetraethoxysilane and tetrabutyltitanate as precursors and ethanol as solvent. Influence of the heat-treatment on the microstructure and properties of SiO2-TiO2 aerogels were investigated in detail. The results showed that the as-prepared SiO2-TiO2 aerogels had low densities, high specific surface areas, small average pore diameters, and three-dimensional nanoporous structures. The anatase TiO2 phase of SiO2-TiO2 aerogels could form during supercritical drying process, and the transition to rutile TiO2 phase occurred after experiencing 1200°C for 2 h. SiO2-TiO2 aerogels containing 30 wt% TiO2 (ST3) still presented relatively high specific surface area of 451 m2/g even they undergo the treatment of 1000°C for 2 h. And the SEM images indicated that the agglomerated particles derived from ST3 appeared gradually to some extent. The glassy luster of ST3 heat-treated at 1200°C for 2 h illuminates SiO2 started to vitrify. Besides, the thermal conductivity of ST3 at room temperature is up to 0.03257 W·m-1·K-1.

The present study investigated the role of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (CM) and its underlying mechanism. A total of 30 Sprague-Dawley male rats were randomly divided into a control group (n=6) and an experimental group (n=24). To induce CM in the rats of the experimental group, 2 mg/kg Adriamycin (ADR) was administered intraperitoneally with 5 equal injections every third day followed by 5 weekly injections resulting in a cumulative dose of 20 mg/kg. Following establishment of the model, rats in the experimental group were subdivided into a PTH-untreated CM group that received daily normal saline subcutaneous injections for 7 days and three treated CM groups that received daily subcutaneous injections of 5, 10, or 20 µg/kg of recombinant PTH for 7 days. Rats in the control group accordingly received intraperitoneal and subcutaneous injections of normal saline. Blood sample analysis revealed that B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), troponin T, C-reactive protein (CRP), creatinine and phosphorus concentrations were increased in the PTH-untreated CM group compared with that in the control group, whereas PTH and calcium concentrations were decreased. Administration of PTH dose-dependently decreased BNP, CRP, creatinine and phosphorus levels, and increased PTH and calcium levels. Notably, there were significant differences in PTH, BNP, troponin T, CRP, creatinine, calcium, and phosphorus levels among the rats in the five groups (P0.05). Immunohistochemical staining and western blot analysis using an anti-PTH polyclonal antibody was performed to evaluate the protein expression levels of PTH in myocardial tissues. The mRNA expression levels of PTH and BNP were measured using reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The results demonstrated that the mRNA and protein expression levels of PTH in myocardial tissues were significantly decreased in ADR-treated rats compared with the levels in the control group rats. Injection of recombinant PTH significantly increased PTH expression and reduced BNP expression in dose-dependent manners (P

Background Many studies have reported associations between estrogen receptor (ER) gene polymorphisms and postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP) risk and bone mineral density (BMD), but the results are controversial. The aim of the present meta-analysis is to verify the association between ERα and ERβ gene polymorphisms and osteoporosis susceptibility and BMD in postmenopausal women. Methods PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and China WeiPu Library were searched. OR and WMD with 95% CI were calculated to assess the association. Results Overall, no significant association was observed between ERα XbaI, ERα PvuII and PMOP susceptibility in either overall, Caucasian or Asian populations. ERα G2014A was significantly associated with a decreased risk of PMOP in Caucasian populations. There was a significant association between ERβ RsaI and PMOP risk in both overall and Asian populations. Caucasian PMOP women with ERα XbaI XX and Xx genotypes had a higher LS Z value than women with xx genotype. ERα XbaI XX genotype was associated with increased FN BMD in overall and Caucasian populations, an increased FN Z value in Asians, and a decreased FN Z value in Caucasians. There was also a significant association between ERα XbaI Xx genotype and an increased FN Z value in either Asians or Caucasians. ERα PvuII PP genotype was associated with a low LS Z value in Caucasians and a low FN BMD and Z value in Asians. Pp genotype in PMOP women was significantly correlated with low LS BMD in overall populations, a low FN Z value in either overall, Caucasian or Asian populations. Conclusion Each ERα and ERβ gene polymorphism might have different impact on PMOP risk and BMD in various ethnicities.

Alumina aerogels were prepared from aluminum sect-butoxide via sol-gel process and supercritical drying. The influence of Ethyl acetoacetate (Etac) on the aerogel properties, microstructure, and thermal stability was systematically studied. At the same time, reaction mechanism was also investigated. The results show that, without and with Etac addition, the alumina aerogels are consisted of crystalline boehmite and amorphous network, respectively. When nEtac/nAl molar ratio is 0.01~0.15:1, Al2O3 aerogels have larger surface area (71~98 m2/g) than pure alumina aerogel (61m2/g) after heated at 1200°C, a proper ratio of Etac is helpful to increases the gelation time and stability of alumina sol, and is useful to improve the thermal stability of Al2O3 aerogels.