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AIM: To assess whether there is a possible causal link between the intake of cheese and the risk of diabetic retinopathy (DR) utilizing a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. METHODS: The research data were obtained from summary statistics of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Genetic loci closely related to cheese intake were extracted as instrumental variables (IVs), and DR was the outcome variable. The data were extracted from individuals of European ethnicity. The data of cheese intake consisted of 451 486 samples with 9 851 867 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), while the DR data consisted of 206 234 samples with 16 380 446 SNPs. Sixty-one genetic loci closely related to cheese intake were selected as IVs. MR analysis was performed by inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method and MR-Egger regression respectively. The causal relationship between cheese intake and DR was evaluated using odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Egger-intercept test was used to test horizontal pleiotropy and sensitivity analysis was performed by leave-one-out test. RESULTS: The P value of the IVW method was less than 0.05, indicating a significant negative correlation between cheese intake and DR. MR-Egger regression showed that the intercept was 0.01 with a standard error of 0.022, and a P-value of 0.634, indicating no evidence of horizontal pleiotropy affecting the IVs related to the exposure factors. Besides, heterogeneity tests confirmed the absence of heterogeneity, and the “leave-one-out” sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the results were stable. CONCLUSION: Cheese intake is causally negatively correlated with the occurrence of DR, and cheese intake could reduce the risk of DR.

ABSTRACTDuring the light curing process, the high transmittance of fused quartz leads to overcuring of the paste, thereby affecting its forming precision. To address this issue, aniline black dye was incorporated into the SiO2f/SiO2 ceramic paste to enhance its ultraviolet light absorption. The impact of modifying agent on paste viscosity and the influence of sintering temperature on ceramic microstructure and properties were investigated. The results demonstrated that by adding the black dye, the dimensional deviation rate of SiO2f/SiO2 composite ceramic decreased to less than 8.0%. The optimal sintering temperature was determined as 900°C, resulting in a maximum flexural strength of 21.9 MPa at room temperature and 25.5 MPa at 600°C respectively. However, with further increase in temperature, flexural strength declined due to cristobalite formation. Additionally, dielectric properties were examined and it was found that the main failure mechanisms of the fibers in the SiO2f/SiO2 composite ceramic were fiber fracture and fiber pull-out.

Abstract With the rapid growth of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology, the performance and privacy of IoV terminals (IoVT) have become increasingly important. This paper proposes a federated learning model for IoVT classification using connection records (FLM-ICR) to address privacy concerns and poor computational performance in analyzing users' private data in IoV. FLM-ICR, in the horizontally federated learning client-server architecture, utilizes an improved multi-layer perceptron and logistic regression network as the model backbone, employs the federated momentum gradient algorithm as the local model training optimizer, and uses the federated Gaussian differential privacy algorithm to protect the security of the computation process. The experiment evaluates the model's classification performance using the confusion matrix, explores the impact of client collaboration on model performance, demonstrates the model's suitability for imbalanced data distribution, and confirms the effectiveness of federated learning for model training. FLM-ICR achieves the accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, and F1 score of 0.795, 0.735, 0.835, 0.75, and 0.782, respectively, outperforming existing research methods and balancing classification performance and privacy security, making it suitable for IoV computation and analysis of private data.

In order to reveal the differences in the biosynthesis and metabolism of the major bioactive composition in sea buckthorn berry pulp during ripening, non-targeted metabolomics based on ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) was used to analyze the metabolites of sea buckthorn berry pulp from two strains at different developmental stages (green and orange pulp). The results showed that the four sample groups had significant metabolic differences. A total of 124 significantly differential metabolites were detected among the four groups based on variable importance in the projection (VIP) > 1 and t-test P < 0.05, including organic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, flavonoids and secondary metabolites. According to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, 15, 7 and 4 significantly differential metabolites associated with lipid, flavonoid and serotonin metabolism were identified, respectively, and eight significantly differential metabolites involved in anticancer function were selected. The significant up-regulation of phosphatidylcholine (PC) (16:0/16:0) and glycerophosphocholine could be the reason for the high accumulation of lipids in sea buckthorn berry pulp. The significant upregulation of isorhamnetin was key for the high flavonoid content in sea buckthorn berry pulp. Relatively high contents of N-acetylserotonin, capecitabine, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and other bioactive composition involved in anticancer function were shown in sea buckthorn berry pulp during its development. These results provide a scientific basis for revealing the metabolic mechanism of bioactive composition of sea buckthorn berries and developing related functional products.

The extremely flammable cellulose macromolecules in cotton fabrics seriously affect their application in the field of flame retardancy. In this paper, the surface of cotton fabric was modified with citric acid, and then metal-organic framework (UiO-66), cationic starch (St) and polyphosphonitrile (PZS) microspheres containing the transition metal element Zr were sequentially deposited to prepare an efficient and economical cotton fabric. St-PZS double-impregnated cotton fabrics have better thermal stability, flame retardancy and mechanical properties. And the coating does not affect the whiteness and stiffness of the cotton fabric. The results of thermogravimetric analysis showed that cotton/UiO-66/2St-PZS had a higher residual char rate (25.34%) under N2 atmosphere, which was 200.1% higher than that of control cotton (8.28%). In addition, cotton/UiO-66/2St-PZS had a 46.6% reduction in peak heat release, a 31.7% reduction in total heat release, and a 35.3% reduction in the peak of CO2 production compared to control cotton. It is worth noting that the average gross calorific value is 63.3% lower than that of the control cotton, indicating that flame retardant cotton fabrics can effectively inhibit the production of flammable gases. In addition, the tensile strength and elongation at break of cotton/UiO-66/2St-PZS are 458.79 N and 11.04%, respectively. After 20 laundering cycles, the mechanical properties remained almost unchanged.

Objective The effectiveness of arthroscopic rotator cuff repair (ARCR) on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients remains a controversial topic. This study investigates the mid‐term outcomes of ARCR in RA patients and identifies the factors influencing clinical efficacy. Methods This retrospective study enrolled RA patients with small or medium rotator cuff tears (RCTs) between February 2014 and February 2019. Visual Analog Scale (VAS), American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES), and Constant–Murley scores were collected at each follow‐up time. Ultimately, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X‐ray were employed to assess rotator cuff integrity and progression of shoulder bone destruction, respectively. Statistical methods used two‐way repeated‐measures ANOVA or generalized estimation equations. Results A total of 157 patients were identified and divided into ARCR (n = 75) and conservative treatment (n = 82) groups. ARCR group continued to be divided into small tear (n = 35) and medium tear (n = 40) groups. At the final, all scores were better in ARCR group than in the conservative treatment group (p 0.05). Radiographic assessment of the final follow‐up demonstrated that the progression rate in the small tear group (8.57%) was significantly lower than that in the medium group (27.50%, p

The (EDTA)4− organic substituents were supplemented with alkaline silicates electrolyte, however in varying concentration to explore the microstructure, chemical composition and subsequent effects on the biodegradation of the PEO coated Mg AZ91 alloy. From surface analysis-, carried out through SEM, samples with zero-(EDTA)4− were found-, lacking pancake structural features; however, supplementing electrolyte with (EDTA)4−, bulky and layered pancakes were obtained with minimum cracks and minimum porosity for EDT-1. From the phase and inner layer analysis, it was found that EDTA can significantly alter the surface layers composition and could act as a passivation agent-; however, individual polycrystalline phases were not found to form. The hardness value obtained for EDT-1 was ∼909.69 HV, the highest value found here which occurs with the shallowest indents found in this study. In-vitro degradation analysis was carried out using potentiodynamic polarization at room temperature, cyclic polarization at RT and high fever conditions (HFT ∼40 °C). The corrosion potential for coated AZ91 was obtained as a positive value of ∼ 0.1 V, for the first time in the PEO research; however, the results were not supported by the cyclic polarization tests at room temperature and at HFT. The post corrosion microstructural analysis confirmed the effective role of EDTA up to 1.0 g·L−1 and revealed the formation of thin films during the forward polarization at HFT.

Energy storage devices can effectively balance the uncertain load and significantly reduce electricity costs in the community microgrids (C-MGs) integrated with renewable energy sources. Scheduling of energy storage is a multi-stage decision problem in which the decisions must be guaranteed to be nonanticipative and multi-stage robust (all-scenario-feasible). To satisfy these two requirements, this paper proposes a method based on a necessary and sufficient feasibility condition of scheduling decisions under the polyhedral uncertainty set. Unlike the most popular affine decision rule (ADR) based multi-stage robust optimization (MSRO) method, the method proposed in this paper does not require the affine decision assumption, and the feasible regions (the set of all feasible solutions) are not reduced, nor is the solution quality affected. A simple illustrative example and real-scale scheduling cases demonstrate that the proposed method can find feasible solutions when the ADR-based MSRO fails, and that it finds better solutions when both methods succeed. Comprehensive case studies for a real system are performed and the results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

To improve the performance and efficiency of ordinary galloping energy harvesters (GEHs), this paper proposes a GEH with a striped bluff body. The fluid-structure coupling simulation of the bluff body and the oscillator of the energy harvester was carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics. The cloud diagram in the flow field, tip displacement at the tip of the beam, lifting and dragging force, and trace and frequency response of the harvester are analyzed. Simulation results show that the GEH with a striped bluff body has the characteristics of rising frequency and falling peak compared with the ordinary GEH, which can be locked at a fixed peak to form a stable periodic response. Experimental results show that the striped bluff body energy harvester displays better energy harvest performance. The output root mean square voltage can be increased by 119.2% at 2 m/s wind speed, which means that the galloping harvester with a striped bluff body has more stable dynamic characteristics and shows better energy harvest performance.

Abstract A secreted 50‐kDa metalloprotease from Serratia marcescens D15 was identified as rice protein hydrolase (SeMPase), which reached the highest proteolytic activity (477.3 U/ml) in basal medium with 1.5% rice protein (RP) at 35°C and 150 rpm for 48 h. SeMPase exhibited a highest catalytic number for RP (275.8 min−1, Kcat), which contained a highly conserved Zn2+‐binding (HEIGH) domain, Met‐turn (SLMSY), and Ca2+ binding domain (GGAGND). RP hydrolysates that prepared by SeMPase showed the highest content of oligopeptides at 72.3%, compared to 64.1% from neutrase, 63.0% from alcalase, 50.2% from trypsin, 47.1% from flavourzyme, and 2.41% from pepsin. Our results showed that cleavage sites of SeMPase exposed in RP are more than those of other proteases because both SeMPase cleavage sites and the amino acid composition of RP are rich in Leu, Val, Phe, Glu, and Ala. SeMPase has significant specificity for the preparation of oligopeptide‐enriched RP hydrolysates, which provides a new and highly valued option for industrial preparation of oligopeptide‐enriched protein hydrolysates.

In this paper, a piezoelectric energy harvester based on periodic one-dimensional acoustic black holes (ABH) is proposed to improve efficiency. The harvesting performance of the energy harvester with different ABH-structures was numerically simulated through the commercial software, COMSOL Multiphysics. Finally, an experimental platform was set up to test several energy harvester samples. The results show that the energy aggregation effect of the bilateral ABH beam is better than that of the traditional ABH beam. In the optimal impedance matching, the maximum output power of the energy harvester with bilateral ABH type 3 is 112 mW, which is 2.8 times that of the energy harvester with traditional ABH. The simulation and experimental results show that the energy harvesting efficiency of the proposed ABH is much higher than that of the energy harvester with traditional ABH. It is expected to make some contributions to the further development of lightweight wireless sensors, equipment service life, bearing fault diagnosis, and so on.

ObjectiveThe association between serum uric acid (UA) and spontaneous hemorrhagic transformation (HT) has been seldom studied, and the role of UA in spontaneous HT remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the sex-dependent association between UA and spontaneous HT in patients with ischemic stroke.MethodWe retrospectively included patients with ischemic stroke in a tertiary academic hospital between December 2016 and May 2020. Patients were included if they presented within 24 h after the onset of symptoms and did not receive reperfusion therapy. Spontaneous HT was determined by an independent evaluation of neuroimaging by three trained neurologists who were blinded to clinical data. A univariate analysis was performed to identify factors related to spontaneous HT. Four logistic regression models were established to adjust each factor and assess the association between UA and spontaneous HT.ResultsA total of 769 patients were enrolled (64.6% were male patients and 3.9% had HT). After adjusting the confounders with a P < 0.05 (model A) in the univariate analysis, the ratio of UA and its interquartile range (RUI) was independently associated with spontaneous HT in male patients (OR: 1.85; 95% CI: 1.07–3.19; P = 0.028), but not in female patients (OR: 1.39; 95% CI: 0.28–6.82; P = 0.685). In models B–D, the results remain consistent with model A after the adjustment for other potential confounders.ConclusionsHigher serum UA was independently associated with a higher occurrence of spontaneous HT in male patients who were admitted within 24 h after the stroke onset without receiving reperfusion therapy.