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ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of acute respiratory infections in children under 12 years old in Pudong New Area， Shanghai from 2019 to 2023.MethodsAcute respiratory infection samples of children under 12 years old from three sentinel hospitals in Pudong New Area， Shanghai from 2019 to 2023 were collected， and 42 respiratory infection pathogens， including influenza virus， adenovirus， parainfluenza virus， respiratory syncytial virus， human enterovirus/rhinovirus， human pulmonary virus， human bokavirus， coronavirus （229E， HKU1， NL63 and OC43）， and novel coronavirus， were detected with microfluidic chips. The situation of acute respiratory infections among outpatient and inpatient children in this area was analyzed for the before the implementation of non pharmacological intervention measures （2019.12‒2020.1）， during the period of non pharmacological intervention measures （2020.2‒2022.12）， and after non pharmacological intervention measures （2023.1‒2023.6）.ResultsFrom 2019 to 2023， a total of 1 770 samples were collected， and 445 pathogens were detected， with a detection rate of 25.14% （445/1 770）. The main pathogens detected during the study period were influenza virus： 8.70% （154/1 770）， respiratory syncytial virus： 4.41% （78/1 770）， human enterovirus/rhinovirus： 2.66% （47/1 770）， human adenovirus： 2.49% （44/1 770）， and parainfluenza virus： 2.20% （39/1 770）. Before the implementation of non pharmacological intervention measures， outpatients were primarily infected with influenza， parainfluenza virus， and respiratory syncytial virus， with detection rates of 8.09%， 4.49%， and 4.04%， respectively； inpatients were mainly infected with influenza， respiratory syncytial virus， and parainfluenza virus， with detection rates of 4.49%， 3.82%， and 3.15%， respectively. During the period of non pharmacological intervention measures， influenza， rhinovirus and respiratory syncytial virus were the main viruses detected in the samples of outpatient children， with detection rates of 4.04%， 3.60%， and 2.47%， respectively； inpatient samples mainly detected respiratory syncytial virus， rhinovirus， and influenza virus， with detection rates of 3.60%， 2.02%， and 1.80%， respectively. After non pharmacological intervention measures， influenza， rhinovirus and respiratory syncytial virus were the main pathogens detected in the outpatients， with detection rates of 9.89%， 2.92% and 2.02%， respectively； influenza， respiratory syncytial virus， and rhinovirus were the main pathogens detected in inpatient children， with detection rates of 6.29%， 1.57%， and 1.35%， respectively.ConclusionThe prevalence of pathogens related to acute respiratory infections in children is influenced by non pharmacological preventive measures.

In response to increasing power supply needs, maintaining stable substations is vital for reliable electricity. Traditional manual equipment inspections in these substations are inefficient and risky, often leading to hazards and delayed detection of faults. Therefore, there's a growing shift towards using intelligent image recognition technology in video surveillance systems for safer and more efficient inspections. This paper focuses on enhancing the level of intelligent inspection in substations using artificial intelligence‐based visual recognition technology. It introduces a novel small‐sample classification algorithm based on the CLIP architecture. This method uses cross‐modal equipment status information as additional training samples, optimizing the loss function together with image samples, and devises hand‐crafted strategies for text sample inputs to distinguish between equipment and states. The experimental results show that with only 16 training samples per category for 21 types of electrical equipment states, our method achieved a maximum accuracy of 93.38%. This represents a 2.98% higher accuracy than the PPLCNet trained on the full dataset and an 8.63% higher accuracy than the PPLCNet trained with an equal number of samples, with significantly reduced training time. © 2024 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Blunted niacin response (BNR) was an endophenotype of schizophrenia, but the underlying mechanism remains unclarified. The objective of this study was to verify whether genes associated with BNR pathway constitute the genetic basis and the pathological mechanism of BNR phenotypic psychiatric patients. Methods: Two independent sample sets consisting of 971 subjects were enrolled in this study. A total of 62 variants were genotyped in the discovery set, then the related variants were verified in the verification set. The published PGC GWAS data were used to validate the associations between the variants and psychiatry disorders. RT‐PCR analysis, eQTL data, and Dual‐Luciferase Reporter experiment were used to investigate the potential molecular mechanisms of the variants underlying BNR. Results: The results showed that two SNPs, rs56959712 in HCAR2 and rs2454721 in HCAR3 were significantly associated with niacin response. The risk allele T of rs2454721 could affect the niacin responses of psychiatric patients through elevated HCAR3 gene expression. These two genes, especially HCAR3, were significantly associated with the risk of schizophrenia, as identified in this study and verified using the published GWAS data. Conclusion: HCAR3 is a novel schizophrenia susceptibility gene which is significantly associated with blunted niacin response in schizophrenia. In‐depth investigation of HCAR3 is of great significance for uncovering the pathogenesis and propose new therapeutic targets for psychiatric disorders, especially for the BNR subgroup patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases enable efficient genome editing in a wide variety of organisms and cell types (1,2). Target site recognition by Cas9 is programmed by a chimaeric single guide RNA (sgRNA) [...], Although CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases are widely used for genome editing (1,2), the range of sequences that Cas9 can recognize is constrained by the need for a specific protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) (3-6). As a result, it can often be difficult to target double-stranded breaks (DSBs) with the precision that is necessary for various genome-editing applications. The ability to engineer Cas9 derivatives with purposefully altered PAM specificities would address this limitation. Here we show that the commonly used Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9) can be modified to recognize alternative PAM sequences using structural information, bacterial selection-based directed evolution, and combinatorial design. These altered PAM specificity variants enable robust editing of endogenous gene sites in zebrafish and human cells not currently targetable by wild-type SpCas9, and their genome-wide specificities are comparable to wild-type SpCas9 as judged by GUIDE-seq analysis (7). In addition, we identify and characterize another SpCas9 variant that exhibits improved specificity in human cells, possessing better discrimination against off-target sites with non-canonical NAG and NGA PAMs and/or mismatched spacers. We also find that two smaller-size Cas9 orthologues, Streptococcus thermophilus Cas9 (St1Cas9) and Staphylococcus aureus Cas9 (SaCas9), function efficiently in the bacterial selection systems and in human cells, suggesting that our engineering strategies could be extended to Cas9s from other species. Our findings provide broadly useful SpCas9 variants and, more importantly, establish the feasibility of engineering a wide range of Cas9s with altered and improved PAM specificities.

This study explored whether infants understand information transmission in a third-party communication context involving multiple agents. Infants aged 12 and 15 months were habituated to two agents pursuing two different objects and then tested with one agent (the communicator) interacting with a new agent (the recipient), whereas the other agent (the noncommunicator) did not interact with anyone. Results showed that 15-month-olds looked for longer when the recipient reached toward the preferred object of the noncommunicator in contrast to that of the communicator, suggesting that they recognized information transmitted from the communicator (versus the noncommunicator) to the recipient. Furthermore, the information was perceived as being specifically transmitted between agents, and this inference was not driven by the low-level perceptual factors of the communicator or the communication itself. However, 12-month-old infants did not show an understanding of transmission between the agents. The selective understanding of information transmitted among multiple agents, and the critical role of agency in such understanding are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primitive erythropoiesis serves a vital role in embryonic development, generating primitive red blood cells responsible for transportation of oxygen throughout the body. Although diverse niche factors are known to function in definitive hematopoiesis, the microenvironment contributing to primitive hematopoiesis remains largely elusive. Here, we report that platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) signaling is required for erythroid progenitor differentiation in zebrafish. Ablating pdgfαa (also known as pdgfaa) and pdgfαb (also known as pdgfab) or blocking PDGF signaling with an inhibitor impairs erythroid progenitor differentiation, thus resulting in a significant decrease in the number of erythrocytes. We reveal that pdgfαb is expressed in sclerotomal cells, and that its receptor genes, pdgfra and pdgfrb, are expressed in the adjacent erythroid progenitor cells. Sclerotome-specific overexpression of pdgfαb effectively restores primitive erythropoiesis in pdgfαa-/-;pdgfαb-/- mutant embryos. In addition, we have defined ERK1/2 signaling as a downstream pathway of PDGF signaling during embryonic erythropoiesis. Taken together, our findings indicate that PDGF signaling derived from sclerotome functions as a niche cue for primitive erythropoiesis., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing or financial interests., (© 2023. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.)