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Background Since the number of chronic disease patients is increasing, relevant prevention and treatment services have become important long-term tasks for primary care institutions. However, problems in the provision of primary care services seriously affect the perception of such services in residents, especially chronic disease patients. Objective To understand chronic disease patients' assessment of the quality of primary care services, providing evidence for improving the quality of chronic disease management services in primary care. Methods A survey was conducted between July and August, 2020 with chronic disease patients (n=630) selected from primary care settings in Guangdong's Chaozhou by use of multistage stratified random sampling. The Primary Care Assessment Tool-Adult Simplified Version (PCAT-AS) (consists of 10 domains, including first contact accessibility, coordination, ongoing, comprehensiveness, community orientation and other 5 domains) was used in the survey for understanding chronic disease patients' assessment of the quality of primary care services. Multiple linear regression was adopted to identify factors potentially associated with the PCAT-AS score. Results Altogether, 553 cases (87.8%) who returned responsive questionnaires were enrolled for analysis. The average total PCAT-AS score for all respondents was (95.88±13.44) . The top three domains ranked in terms of average standardized score were comprehensiveness (services needed) (7.89) , first contact accessibility (7.72) , and first contact utilization (7.58) , and the bottom three-ranked domains were coordination (referrals) (5.61) , community orientation (6.11) and patient and family centeredness (6.40) . Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that higher total PCAT-AS score was associated with living in urban areas in contrast to rural areas〔b (95%CI) =-6.983 (-10.598, -3.368) 〕, senior high school and higher education level instead of junior high school and lower education level〔b (95%CI) =4.046 (0.966, 7.125) 〕, permanent residents without the local hukou in contrast to those with local hukou〔b (95%CI) =-5.360 (-9.517, -1.202) 〕, good self-rated health instead of relatively poor self-rated health〔b (95%CI) =-4.962 (-8.438, -1.486) 〕 or poor self-rated health〔b (95%CI) =-7.787 (-12.789, -2.786) 〕, having a contracted family doctor instead of having no contracted family doctor〔b (95%CI) =4.686 (2.508, 6.865) 〕, first choosing a community health center for treating common diseases instead of a village clinic〔b (95%CI) =-5.865 (-9.951, -1.779) 〕 or a district/county-level hospital or tertiary hospital〔b (95%CI) =-6.061 (-11.330, -0.792) 〕, 4-6 primary care visits instead of 1-3 primary care visits〔b (95%CI) =5.876 (3.367, 8.384) or 7 or more primary care visits instead of 1-3 primary care visits〔b (95%CI) =9.045 (6.512, 11.579) 〕, and high satisfaction with primary care services instead of fair satisfaction〔b (95%CI) =-2.844 (-4.817, -0.870) 〕 or dissatisfaction〔b (95%CI) =-10.418 (-17.050, -3.786) 〕. Conclusion Overall, Chaozhou chronic disease patients reported a sound level of treatment experience in primary care. Specifically, they reported good primary care experience in three domains, including comprehensiveness, first contact accessibility and first contact utilization, but poor experience in community orientation, and coordination (including information systems and referrals) . However, urban patients reported better primary care experience than rural patients. So continued efforts are needed to strengthen primary care performance in rural areas.

A containerized edge data center (CEDC) is a critical node of the 5G telecommunication network. It is essential to maintain the functionality of CEDCs during and after earthquakes. A probabilistic seismic resilience assessment framework was developed to evaluate the postearthquake functionality and seismic resilience of a CEDC. Five subsystems ensure the CEDC's functionality: the structural, power distribution, air conditioning, computing, and monitoring subsystems. The subsystems' normal operation depends on several components. The functional relationships between the components of the five subsystems were analyzed. Fault tree models of the five subsystems were developed, and success path analysis was used to establish a state tree model of the CEDC. The seismic fragility and repair models of the CEDC's fundamental components were obtained from numerical analysis and data from the literature. State tree analysis and Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to quantify the postearthquake residual functionality and generate seismic resilience curves for the CEDC. The effects of different resilience improvement strategies were evaluated and incorporated into the proposed framework. A CEDC case study was conducted to demonstrate the proposed framework's feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyamide 6 (PA6) and stabilized PA6 with two different thermal stabilizers, (ie, metal salts CuI/KI and hindered amine KYN818 [l,3-benzendicarboxamide,N, N'-bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidinyl)]) were separately prepared by melt blending and then aged for different time. The effects of aging temperature and aging time on crystallization behaviors of PA6 and stabilized PA6 were systematically investigated by differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction. The variations of melting temperature, crystallinity and 2[theta] values suggest that aging under high temperature will accelerate the formation of crystals initially and then the degradation of molecular chains. The yellowness index and maximum decomposition temperature of stabilized PA6 are higher than that of PA6, which is dominated by different aging mechanisms and properties of stabilizers. In addition, the viscosity of all systems is increased at the preliminary stage, which is caused by the crosslinking network and the post-polycondensation. The results of dynamic mechanical analysis showed that the glass transition temperature ([T.sub.g]) decreases because the degradation of molecular chains during the aging process. Moreover, the carbonyl index for stabilized PA6 is lower than PA6, indicating the degradation is hindered by stabilizers. A comparison of the stabilization performance between CuI/KI and KYN818 was investigated to differentiate the long-term stabilizing efficiency. KEYWORDS hindered amine, metal salts, physical properties, polyamide 6, thermal-oxidative aging, 1 | INTRODUCTION Polycaprolactam (polyamide 6, PA6) is an important engineering thermoplastic which is widely used in the automotive, aerospace, and other industrial fields due to its excellent mechanical properties, [...]

In order to further demonstrate the effectiveness of engineered cementitious composites (ECC) in repairing and strengthening the post-earthquake damaged structure, at the overall structural level, experimental and numerical comparative analysis of structural seismic performance before and after "retrofitted with ECC" is conducted in this paper. A 1:2-scale reinforced concrete frame is tested under cyclic reversed loading and a new ECC material's constitutive model is proposed in this paper for improving the accuracy and feasibility of numerical modelling. The modelling method and newly proposed constitutive model of ECC has been demonstrated to be workable and accurate. Based on numerical and experimental data, the increase of the average yielding displacement after the installation of ECC is relatively significant (80.4% to 156.4%), and the repairing method using ECC in post-earthquake damaged RC frame can restore and even exceed the original frame's load bearing capacity. Comparing the ultimate inter-story drift ratio, the ratio with ECC is about 31.0% higher, indicating that ECC has good deformation capacity and the usage of ECC is indeed an effective method to improve deformation capacity in repairing and strengthening post-earthquake damaged structures. The results confirm the effectiveness and superiority of retrofitting ECC in post-earthquake damaged structures for the reason that the repaired structure can reach the same level of seismic performance as the original structure. The "repairable" characteristic can be used in the design of earthquake resilient structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the brittle fracture mode of coupling beams with small span-depth ratio in RC frame-shear wall structure, a shape memory alloy (SMA) damper is installed into coupling beams in this study. The seismic performance of the structure is studied by numerical analysis. A planner 18-story frame-shear wall structure is utilized. SMA dampers are installed into coupling beams at each story. Static monotonic and cyclic loading are applied on the structure. Influence of two parameters of the coupling beam with SMA damper, the yield force ratio and the yield displacement ratio, on the nonlinear behavior of the whole structure is addressed. The analysis results indicate that the failure mode is remarkably affected by the yield force ratio. For the structures with the same yield displacement ratio, when their yield force ratio decrease, the dampers yield more early and deformation of the coupling beams is more easily to be concentrated in the dampers. At the same time, the structure has good re-centering ability. With the same yield force ratio, the increasing of yield displacement ratio results in the delay of SMA damper yielding and the concrete members damage early. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electromagnetic waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), namely, vortex beams, have a plethora of applications ranging from rotating microparticles to high‐capacity data transmissions, and it is a continuing trend in manipulating OAM with higher degrees of freedom. Here, an approach to control terahertz (THz) near‐field plasmonic vortex based on geometric and dynamic phase is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By locally tailoring the orientation angle (geometric phase) and radial position (dynamic phase) of aperture arrays embedded in an ultrathin gold film, the excited surface waves can be flexibly engineered to form both spin‐independent and spin‐dependent THz plasmonic vortex field distributions, resulting in multi‐degree of freedom for controlling OAM of THz surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). Arbitrary OAM values of THz plasmonic vortex and coherent superposition between two OAM states are investigated based on near‐field scanning terahertz microscopy (NSTM) system. The proposed approach provides unprecedented freedom to modulate THz near‐field plasmonic vortex, which will have potential applications in THz communications and quantum information processing. A novel ultrathin platform is proposed and experimentally demonstrated to realize the manipulation of terahertz (THz) near‐field orbital angular momentum (OAM). By locally tailoring the orientation angle and radial position of aperture arrays in a gold film, the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be flexibly engineered to form both spin‐independent and spin‐dependent THz plasmonic vortex field, resulting in multi‐degree of freedom for controlling OAM of THz SPPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This study aimed to examine the associations of FTO expression with prognosis, tumor microenvironment (TME), immune cell infiltration, immune checkpoint genes, and relevant signaling pathways in GC. Furthermore, the relationship between FTO and TGF-β was studied in GC., Methods: The mRNA expression and clinical survival data of GC samples were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas Stomach Adenocarcinoma (TCGA-STAD). TIMER2, TNM plot, and GEPIA database were used to analyze FTO expression. The associations of FTO with prognosis and clinicopathologic features were assessed using the Kaplan-Meier plotter and UALCAN database, respectively. The R software was employed to analyze its related signaling pathways and the associations with TME, immune cell infiltration, and immune checkpoint genes. GEPIA and ENCORI were used to examine the association of FTO with TGF-β expression. The SRAMP website was utilized to predict m6A modification of TGF-β. IHC, Western blot, and qPCR were used to analyze the expression levels of FTO and TGF-β in clinical gastric cancer tissue samples or gastric cancer cell lines. In addition, a m6A RNA methylation assay kit was used to determine m6A levels in gastric cancer cells., Results: FTO mRNA and protein levels were significantly elevated in GC compared to normal gastric tissues. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis suggested that upregulated FTO was associated with a worse prognosis in GC. Upregulated FTO was markedly correlated with differentiation degree, lymph node metastasis, and clinical TNM stage. GO and KEGG pathway analyses revealed that FTO-associated molecules were enriched in neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, calcium signaling, PI3k-Akt signaling, cAMP signaling pathways, and TGF-β signaling pathways, among others. The TME score was remarkably higher in the high-FTO group than in the low-FTO group. Furthermore, FTO expression had positive correlations with different types of immune cells and immune checkpoint genes. Moreover, FTO may regulate TGF-β in an m6A RNA modification manner in GC., Conclusion: FTO may become an independent predictive prognostic biomarker correlating with TME, immune cell infiltration, and immune checkpoint genes in gastric cancer and might influence GC progression by regulating TGF-β expression., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

Multicomponent reactions represent a powerful method for building complex molecules from structurally simple starting materials. Herein, we report a novel three-component radical-polar crossover reaction involving a tandem addition reaction of two different olefins, which is initiated by the selective addition of fluorosulfonyl radicals to alkyl alkenes. This tandem process provides facile and effective access to multiple functionalized aliphatic sulfonyl fluoride molecules. Further transformation of the products is also demonstrated.