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Purpose: To explore the effects of kiwifruit peel polyphenols (KPP) on the antioxidant capacity of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stressed Caco-2 cells. Methods: The viability of Caco-2 cells in different treatment groups was determined by the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial membrane potential by fluorescence spectrophotometry, the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), and the contents of glutathione (GSH) and malonaldehyde (MDA) by spectrophotometry, the gene expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (Keap1), NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1), superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) and SOD2 by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and the protein expression levels of Nrf2, Keap1, and NQO1 by Western blot. Results: Compared with the LPS group, cell viability was elevated after 50 µg/mL KPP intervention (P < 0.05); the levels of ROS and MDA were decreased to 1.82 ± 0.28 and 5.08 nmol/mg (P < 0.05), respectively; mitochondrial membrane potential, SOD activity and GSH content were increased to 1.84 ± 0.10, 52.57 U/mg and 69.46 µmol/g (P < 0.05), respectively. Meanwhile, KPP intervention increased the gene and protein expression of Nrf2 and NQO1 (P < 0.05) and decreased Keap1 gene and protein expression (P < 0.05). Conclusion: KPP can enhance the antioxidant capacity of Caco-2 cells through the Keap1/Nrf2/NQO1 signaling pathway, thereby alleviating the cellular damage caused by LPS stress.

Objective To explore the effect of case-based leaning (CBL) combined with mind mapping in anesthesia practice teaching using high-fidelity human patient simulation. Methods Totally 20 undergraduate interns of anesthesiology in grade 2018 were randomly divided into control group and observation group, with 10 students in each group. The control group adopted CBL combined with high-fidelity human patient simulation teaching mode, while the observation group adopted CBL combined with mind map in high-fidelity human patient simulation teaching mode. After the teaching, the teaching effects of the two groups were compared by examination, reaction time of complications and questionnaire. Results The theoretical basic scores and case analysis scores in the observation group were higher than those in the control group (92. 14±2. 81 vs. 89. 89±1. 32) and (92. 03 ± 2. 75 vs. 89. 23 ± 1. 42), with statistically significant differences (P

Background: Our previous study reported that histamine H2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) exposure was associated with decreased mortality in critically ill patients with heart failure (HF) through the same pharmacological mechanism as β-blockers. However, population-based clinical study directly comparing the efficacy of H2RAs and β-blockers on mortality of HF patients are still lacking. This study aims to compare the association difference of H2RAs and β-blockers on mortality in critically ill patients with HF using the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database (MIMIC-III).Methods: Study population was divided into 4 groups: β-blockers + H2RAs group, β-blockers group, H2RAs group, and Non-β-blockers + Non-H2RAs group. Kaplan–Meier curves and multivariable Cox regression models were employed to evaluate the differences of all-cause mortalities among the 4 groups. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to increase comparability of four groups.Results: A total of 5593 patients were included. After PSM, multivariate analyses showed that patients in H2RAs group had close all-cause mortality with patients in β-blockers group. Furthermore, 30-day, 1-year, 5-year and 10-year all-mortality of patients in β-blockers + H2RAs group were significantly lower than those of patients in β-blockers group, respectively (HR: 0.64, 95%CI: 0.50–0.82 for 30-day; HR: 0.80, 95%CI: 0.69–0.93 for 1-year mortality; HR: 0.83, 95%CI: 0.74–0.93 for 5-year mortality; and HR: 0.85, 95%CI: 0.76–0.94 for 10-year mortality, respectively).Conclusion: H2RAs exposure exhibited comparable all-cause mortality-decreasing effect as β-blockers; and, furthermore, H2RAs and β-blockers had additive or synergistic interactions to improve survival in critically ill patients with HF.

In this paper, we research a (2+1)-dimensional variable-coefficient Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation in fluid dynamics and plasma physics. The lump, lump-soliton and lump-periodic solutions are derived based on the variable-coefficient polynomial function method. The effect of variable coefficients on the amplitude and velocity of solitons is analyzed and shown by some 3D graphs, contour plots and density graphs.

Purpose/Objective(s)The aim of this study was to improve the accuracy of the clinical target volume (CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) segmentation for rectal cancer preoperative radiotherapy.Materials/MethodsComputed tomography (CT) scans from 265 rectal cancer patients treated at our institution were collected to train and validate automatic contouring models. The regions of CTV and OARs were delineated by experienced radiologists as the ground truth. We improved the conventional U-Net and proposed Flex U-Net, which used a register model to correct the noise caused by manual annotation, thus refining the performance of the automatic segmentation model. Then, we compared its performance with that of U-Net and V-Net. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), Hausdorff distance (HD), and average symmetric surface distance (ASSD) were calculated for quantitative evaluation purposes. With a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we found that the differences between our method and the baseline were statistically significant (P< 0.05).ResultsOur proposed framework achieved DSC values of 0.817 ± 0.071, 0.930 ± 0.076, 0.927 ± 0.03, and 0.925 ± 0.03 for CTV, the bladder, Femur head-L and Femur head-R, respectively. Conversely, the baseline results were 0.803 ± 0.082, 0.917 ± 0.105, 0.923 ± 0.03 and 0.917 ± 0.03, respectively.ConclusionIn conclusion, our proposed Flex U-Net can enable satisfactory CTV and OAR segmentation for rectal cancer and yield superior performance compared to conventional methods. This method provides an automatic, fast and consistent solution for CTV and OAR segmentation and exhibits potential to be widely applied for radiation therapy planning for a variety of cancers.

We developed a semiconductor photocatalyst, Pd–Pt alloy nanoparticle-loaded, Al-doped SrTiO3 (PdPt/STO:Al), for photoreduction of unsaturated carboxylic acids. Due to the cooperative STO:Al surface and Pd–Pt alloy nanoparticles, the catalyst dispersed in water provided highly redox-selective photoreduction against oxidative degradation of starting materials/products and against reductive evolution of H2, where minimal glycolic acid worked as an efficient electron-donating fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Depressive symptoms are most common non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD), which is often overlooked due to absence of rapid and objective diagnostic biomarkers. Electroencephalography (EEG)-based event-related potentials (ERPs) is commonly used to assess emotional processes. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in ERPs in PD patients exhibiting depressive symptoms and to provide a reliable biomarker for assisting in the diagnosis of PD with depressive symptoms. Methods: We conducted a case–control study involving 30 PD patients with (dPD group) or without depressive symptoms (nPD group) and 13 age matched healthy controls (HC). We recorded EEG of the patients during the emotional picture stimulation task and analyzed the difference in the early ERPs potentials (P1, N170, early posterior negativity) and their correlation with the severity of symptoms in PD patients. Results: Our results found that P1 amplitude in the occipital region of the dPD group in response to emotional faces was significantly higher than that of nPD and HC group, and it was positively correlated with severity of depressive symptoms in PD patients. Conclusion: Our study shows that facial expression-induced enhancement of P1 amplitude can be utilized as a rapid and objective indicator to screen for depressive symptoms in PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate warming and high-intensity human activities threaten the stability of alpine meadow ecosystems. The stability of the soil microbial community is crucial for maintaining ecological service function. However, the effects of warming and litter removal on microbial interactions, community-building processes, and species coexistence strategies remain unclear. In this study, we used a fiberglass open-top chamber to simulate global change, and moderate grazing in winter was simulated by removing above-ground litter from all plants in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, China, to investigate the effects of warming, litter removal, and interactions on soil microbial communities. The treatments included (1) warming treatment (W); (2) litter removal treatment (L); (3) the combined treatment (WL); and (4) control (CK). The results show that compared with the control treatment, warming, litter removal, and the combined treatments increased bacterial Shannon diversity but reduced fungal Shannon diversity, and warming treatment significantly changed the bacterial community composition. Warming, litter removal, and the combined treatments reduced the colinear network connectivity among microorganisms but increased the modularity of the network, and the average path distance and average clustering coefficient were higher than those in the control group. Stochastic processes played a more important role in shaping the microbial community composition, and soil–available phosphorus and soil ammonium contributed more to the βNTI of the bacterial community, while total phosphorus and NAG enzyme in the soil contributed more to the βNTI of the fungal community. Notably, litter removal counteracts the effects of warming on bacterial communities. These results suggest that litter removal may enhance bacterial community stability under warming conditions, providing insights for managing alpine meadow ecosystems in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]