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Myocardial fibrosis (MF) is involved in hypertension, myocardial infarction and heart failure. It has been reported that circular RNA (circRNA) is a key regulatory factor of MF progression. In this study, we revealed that circ_0002295 and CXCR2 were elevated, and miR-1287 was reduced in MF patients. Knockdown of circ_0002295 effectively suppressed the proliferation, migration and MF progression. Circ_0002295 was the molecular sponge of miR-12878, and miR-1287 inhibitor reversed the biological functions of circ_0002295 on the myocardial fibrosis. CXCR2 was a target gene of miR-1287, and CXCR2 silencing relieved the impacts of miR-1287 inhibitor on cardiac myofibroblasts. Circ_0002295 promoted MF progression by regulating the miR-1287/CXCR2 axis, providing a possible circRNA-targeted therapy for MF., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) plays a crucial role in the assessment of greenhouse gas emission and carbon balance in peatlands. However, limited research has been conducted on the seasonal variations and properties of soil water DOC content at different depths in the permafrost peatlands of the Great Hing'an Mountains. In this study, we analyzed the seasonal patterns of soil water DOC contents (surface, 10 cm, 20 cm, 30 cm, 40 cm, and permafrost layer) the permafrost peatlands of the Great Hing'an Mountains (Tuqiang Forestry Bureau), and investigated the influencing factors, such as electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, HCO 3 - concentration, pH value, oxidation-reduction potential, and CO 2 content. The stability of DOC was assessed by using UV-Vis spectrum. There were significant seasonal dynamics of DOC content in soil water, with higher contents in autumn and lower content in summer, ranging from 55.7 to 188.1 mg·L -1 . There were significant differences in DOC content among different soil depths, with the highest levels detected in the permafrost layer. The DOC content showed a significantly positive correlation with pH value and electrical conductivity, while showed a significantly negative correlation with redox potential, HCO 3 - concentration, and dissolved oxygen content. Additionally, there was a significantly positive correlation between DOC and CO 2 contents. The dissolved CO 2 content in soil water increased with soil depth, with the highest content observed in the permafrost layer. Results of spectral analysis showed higher aromaticity in autumn compared to summer, indicating greater stability of DOC during the autumn season. Our results clarified the seasonal variations of soil water DOC in permafrost peatlands of the Great Hing'an Mountains and could provide important data to understand the carbon cycling in the region.

Importance: Intravenous thrombolysis is increasingly used in patients with minor stroke, but its benefit in patients with minor nondisabling stroke is unknown., Objective: To investigate whether dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) is noninferior to intravenous thrombolysis among patients with minor nondisabling acute ischemic stroke., Design, Setting, and Participants: This multicenter, open-label, blinded end point, noninferiority randomized clinical trial included 760 patients with acute minor nondisabling stroke (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale [NIHSS] score ≤5, with ≤1 point on the NIHSS in several key single-item scores; scale range, 0-42). The trial was conducted at 38 hospitals in China from October 2018 through April 2022. The final follow-up was on July 18, 2022., Interventions: Eligible patients were randomized within 4.5 hours of symptom onset to the DAPT group (n = 393), who received 300 mg of clopidogrel on the first day followed by 75 mg daily for 12 (±2) days, 100 mg of aspirin on the first day followed by 100 mg daily for 12 (±2) days, and guideline-based antiplatelet treatment until 90 days, or the alteplase group (n = 367), who received intravenous alteplase (0.9 mg/kg; maximum dose, 90 mg) followed by guideline-based antiplatelet treatment beginning 24 hours after receipt of alteplase., Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was excellent functional outcome, defined as a modified Rankin Scale score of 0 or 1 (range, 0-6), at 90 days. The noninferiority of DAPT to alteplase was defined on the basis of a lower boundary of the 1-sided 97.5% CI of the risk difference greater than or equal to -4.5% (noninferiority margin) based on a full analysis set, which included all randomized participants with at least 1 efficacy evaluation, regardless of treatment group. The 90-day end points were assessed in a blinded manner. A safety end point was symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage up to 90 days., Results: Among 760 eligible randomized patients (median [IQR] age, 64 [57-71] years; 223 [31.0%] women; median [IQR] NIHSS score, 2 [1-3]), 719 (94.6%) completed the trial. At 90 days, 93.8% of patients (346/369) in the DAPT group and 91.4% (320/350) in the alteplase group had an excellent functional outcome (risk difference, 2.3% [95% CI, -1.5% to 6.2%]; crude relative risk, 1.38 [95% CI, 0.81-2.32]). The unadjusted lower limit of the 1-sided 97.5% CI was -1.5%, which is larger than the -4.5% noninferiority margin (P for noninferiority <.001). Symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage at 90 days occurred in 1 of 371 participants (0.3%) in the DAPT group and 3 of 351 (0.9%) in the alteplase group., Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with minor nondisabling acute ischemic stroke presenting within 4.5 hours of symptom onset, DAPT was noninferior to intravenous alteplase with regard to excellent functional outcome at 90 days., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03661411.

Importance: Previous studies suggested a benefit of argatroban plus alteplase (recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator) in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). However, robust evidence in trials with large sample sizes is lacking., Objective: To assess the efficacy of argatroban plus alteplase for AIS., Design, Setting, and Participants: This multicenter, open-label, blinded end point randomized clinical trial including 808 patients with AIS was conducted at 50 hospitals in China with enrollment from January 18, 2019, through October 30, 2021, and final follow-up on January 24, 2022., Interventions: Eligible patients were randomly assigned within 4.5 hours of symptom onset to the argatroban plus alteplase group (n = 402), which received intravenous argatroban (100 μg/kg bolus over 3-5 minutes followed by an infusion of 1.0 μg/kg per minute for 48 hours) within 1 hour after alteplase (0.9 mg/kg; maximum dose, 90 mg; 10% administered as 1-minute bolus, remaining infused over 1 hour), or alteplase alone group (n = 415), which received intravenous alteplase alone. Both groups received guideline-based treatments., Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was excellent functional outcome, defined as a modified Rankin Scale score (range, 0 [no symptoms] to 6 [death]) of 0 to 1 at 90 days. All end points had blinded assessment and were analyzed on a full analysis set., Results: Among 817 eligible patients with AIS who were randomized (median [IQR] age, 65 [57-71] years; 238 [29.1%] women; median [IQR] National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, 9 [7-12]), 760 (93.0%) completed the trial. At 90 days, 210 of 329 participants (63.8%) in the argatroban plus alteplase group vs 238 of 367 (64.9%) in the alteplase alone group had an excellent functional outcome (risk difference, -1.0% [95% CI, -8.1% to 6.1%]; risk ratio, 0.98 [95% CI, 0.88-1.10]; P = .78). The percentages of participants with symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage, parenchymal hematoma type 2, and major systemic bleeding were 2.1% (8/383), 2.3% (9/383), and 0.3% (1/383), respectively, in the argatroban plus alteplase group and 1.8% (7/397), 2.5% (10/397), and 0.5% (2/397), respectively, in the alteplase alone group., Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with acute ischemic stroke, treatment with argatroban plus intravenous alteplase compared with alteplase alone did not result in a significantly greater likelihood of excellent functional outcome at 90 days., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03740958.

Background: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a common complication of type 1 and type 2 diabetes that can lead to kidney damage and high blood pressure. Increasing evidence support the important roles of microproteins and cytokines, such as β2-microglobulin (β2-MG), glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), in the pathogenesis of this disease. In this study, we identified novel therapeutic options for this disease., Aim: To analyze the guiding significance of β2-MG, HbA1c, and VEGF levels in patients with DN., Methods: A total of 107 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus complicated with nephropathy and treated in our hospital from May 2018 to February 2021 were included in the study. Additionally, 107 healthy individuals and 107 patients with simple diabetes mellitus were selected as the control groups. Changes in β2-MG, HbA1c, and VEGF levels in the three groups as well as the different proteinuria exhibited by the three groups were examined., Results: Changes in β2-MG, HbA1c, and VEGF levels in the disease, healthy, and simple diabetes groups were significantly different ( P < 0.05). The expression of these factors from high to low were evaluated in different groups by pairwise comparison. In the disease group, high to low changes in β2-MG, HbA1c, and VEGF levels were noted in the massive proteinuria, microproteinuria, and normal urinary protein groups, respectively. Changes in these factors were positively correlated with disease progression., Conclusion: The expression of serum β2-MG, HbA1c, and VEGF was closely correlated with DN progression, and disease progression could be evaluated by these factors., Competing Interests: Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.)

Color rainbow holography can realize color holographic 3D display without speckle noise under white light illumination. However, traditional color rainbow holograms used for high-resolution static color 3D display or near-eye color display are amplitude-type, resulting in low diffraction efficiency due to the presence of conjugate light. In this Letter, a phase-only color rainbow holographic near-eye display is demonstrated. The calculation of a phase-only color rainbow hologram is realized by combining a band-limited diffraction and a bi-directional error diffusion algorithm with high-frequency blazed gratings coded to control longitudinal dispersion. When the wavelength of illumination light is deviated from the designated wavelength of the hologram, only a certain wavefront aberration is caused, but there is no conjugate light. The phase-only color rainbow holographic near-eye display of both a 2D color image and a 3D scene are implemented by optical experiments. It has potential applications in head-mounted 3D augmented reality displays without vergence-accommodation conflict.

Remote sensing images, field survey data, and historical monitoring data are collected to analyze the historical change trend and spatial variation rules of sediment quality of the Liaohe Estuary and further investigate the effects of sea-area utilization type and vegetation succession stage on the variation patterns of environmental elements in the sediments. The results showed that the quality of the sediments in the Liaohe Estuary is overall favorable, and the average contents of various elements all satisfy the quality standards of first-grade sediments. The nutritive elements in the sediments exhibit obvious zonal distribution patterns, while heavy metals are randomly distributed and exhibit no obvious patterns. The effect of sea-area utilization type on the enrichment of pollutants in the sediments exhibits certain significant differences, suggesting that the distributions of heavy metals and pollutants are subject to human activities and exhibit certain randomness. The main control factors are significantly different at different vegetation succession stages. Specifically, the vegetation distribution in the initial succession stage is mainly affected by salinity; with the transition from halophytic vegetation to terrestrial vegetation, the inherent correlation between vegetation distribution characteristics and the contents of total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus increase gradually. Meanwhile, the content of heavy-metal pollutants exhibits no significantly inherent correlation between the distributions of the plant community.

The hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs) have attracted much attention recently due to their preeminent efficiency in solar cells. According to the difference on the crystalline structure, the HOIPs could be classified into layered and non-layered perovskites. Very recently, it has been realized that the non-layered HOIPs with common-vertex structure possess even better opto-electrical performance. Yet the carrier recombination mechanism in perovskite remains not very clear, and a clear understanding of this mechanism is essential to pinpoint the working mechanism of photovoltaic and electroluminescent materials. Here we report the optical studies on the hybrid perovskite crystalline nano-sheet of CH 3 NH 3 PbBr 3 with common-vertex structure. It is shown that the non-layered perovskite crystalline nanosheets possess the exciton binding energy about two orders of magnitude smaller than that of the layered perovskite and the colloidal nanoplates, which is beneficial for the designing of the high-efficiency photovoltaic devices. By measuring the temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) spectra, the excitation-power-variant PL spectra, and the time-resolved PL spectra, we identify that both the free-carrier and the localized exciton recombination channels may coexist in the crystallites. Further, for the thin crystallite (∼60 nm), the free-carrier recombination channel dominates; whereas when the thickness increases beyond 200 nm, the localized exciton recombination channel plays the major role. We suggest these results are helpful to improve further the photovoltaic and electroluminescent performances of perovskite devices.

The aim of cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) is to inform the allocation of scarce resources. CEA is routinely used in assessing the cost-effectiveness of specific health technologies by agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales. But there is extensive evidence that because of barriers of accessibility and acceptability, CEA has not been used by local health planners in their annual task of allocating fixed budgets to a wide range of types of health care. This paper argues that these planners can use Socio Technical Allocation of Resources (STAR) for that task. STAR builds on the principles of CEA and the practice of program budgeting and marginal analysis. STAR uses requisite models to assess the cost-effectiveness of all interventions considered for resource reallocation by explicitly applying the theory of health economics to evidence of scale, costs, and benefits, with deliberation facilitated through an interactive social process of engaging key stakeholders. In that social process, the stakeholders generate missing estimates of scale, costs, and benefits of the interventions; develop visual models of their relative cost-effectiveness; and interpret the results. We demonstrate the feasibility of STAR by showing how it was used by a local health planning agency of the English National Health Service, the Isle of Wight Primary Care Trust, to allocate a fixed budget in 2008 and 2009., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

In this work, we have experimentally demonstrated that in a rectangular multilayered Ag/SiO₂ nanoplate array, electric and magnetic resonances are exchanged at the same frequency simply by changing the polarization of incident light for 90°. Both electric and magnetic resonances originate from localized surface plasmons, and lead to negative permittivity and permeability, respectively. The numerical calculations on electromagnetic fields agree with the experiments. The investigations provide a simple building block for a metamaterial to switch electric and magnetic resonances by external excitation field.

We report here a unique in-plane self-templating electrochemical growth of arrays of copper nanopearl chains from an ultrathin layer of CuSO4 electrolyte. Scanning electron microscopy indicates that the electrodeposit filaments form equally spaced bundles, which consist of long, straight, pearl-chain-like copper filaments with corrugated periodic structure. The bundle separation can be tuned by changing the applied electric current in electrodeposition. Experiments show that the periodic morphology on the nanopearl chain corresponds to the periodic distribution of copper and cuprous oxide. The mechanism for the bundle formation is discussed.

Pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) plays an important role on animal ingestive behavior and energy homeostasis. Genetic variation of POMC was detected by PCR-SSCP and DNA sequencing techniques in 480 individuals from seven cattle breeds (i.e., Qinchuan, Nanyang, Jiaxian Red cattle, Jinnan, Luxi, Angus, and Chinese Holstein), and association analyses were carried out to evaluate the effects of genotypes of the candidate genes on growth traits in Nanyang cattle. Three SNPs (811845 C>T, 811821 T>C and 811797 A>G, ref. NW&#95;928357) in linkage were detected in P3 locus, which were located at the 3' flanking region of bovine POMC gene. The body weight at 6-month-old and the average daily gain of 0~6-month-old were higher in Nanyang cattle with the genotype BB than with the genotype AA (P<0.05).

In this paper, we report the long-range ordering effect observed in the electro-crystallization of Zn and ZnO from an ultrathin aqueous electrolyte layer of ZnSO4 . The deposition branches are regularly angled, covered with random-looking, scalelike crystalline platelets of ZnO. Although the orientation of each crystalline platelet of ZnO appears random, transmission electron microscopy shows that they essentially possess the same crystallographic orientation as the single-crystalline zinc electrodeposit underneath. Based on the experimental observations, we suggest that this unique long-range ordering effect results from an epitaxial nucleation effect in electrocrystallization.

The time-dependent characteristics of the second-harmonic generation of a short pulse are investigated theoretically. Transient coupled-wave equations are necessary to describe the time-dependent process of the second-harmonic generation of a short pulse. It is found that the fundamental waves experience both pulse broadening and compression with different waveform distortion during the frequency-doubling process. The pulse width of a frequency-doubled wave broadens monotonically along the crystal length. There is no phase distortion in the case of exact phase matching. Phase modulation (i.e., chirp) occurs only when there is phase mismatch and chirp can be determined by the phase mismatch.