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Background Bronchial asthma (BA) and obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) are two major chronic diseases affecting the health of children. OSAHS may aggravate BA, adding to the difficulties in BA control, and BA can lead to the occurrence or progression of OSAHS through various mechanisms, such a relationship between them has attracted increasing attention. Objective To explore the clinical features and influencing factors of children with BA complicated with OSAHS. Methods One hundred and nine children with BA who were admitted to Children's Asthma Center, Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital from September 2021 to August 2022 were selected, including 49 with OSAHS (BA with OSAHS group) and 60 without (simple BA group). The general clinical data, pulmonary function test results, and serum levels of inflammatory cytokines, 25-hydroxyvitamin D 〔25 (OH) D〕 and C-reactive protein (CRP) were collected. The clinical features were analyzed, and factors associated with OSAHS in BA were analyzed by multivariate Logistic regression. Results Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that obesity〔OR=4.803, 95%CI (1.011, 2.822) 〕, enlarged neck circumference〔OR=1.318, 95%CI (1.003, 1.732) 〕 and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) 〔OR=7.756, 95%CI (1.398, 43.045) 〕 were independent risk factors for OSAHS in BA children (P

Background The anti-inflammatory effects of budesonide (BUN) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) attenuate acute lung injury (ALI). The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of combination therapy consisting of BUN and NAC on ALI and the underlying mechanisms. Methods In vitro and in vivo models of ALI were generated by LPS induction. Western blotting was used to detect the expression levels of pyroptosis-related proteins and inflammation-related factors, and RT–qPCR was used to detect the expression of miR-381. Cell proliferation and apoptosis were detected by CCK-8 and flow cytometry, respectively. ELISA was used to detect the levels of inflammation-related factors. HE staining was used to detect lung injury. Results The results showed that LPS effectively induced pyroptosis in cells and promoted the expression of pyroptosis-related proteins (Caspase1, Gasdermin D and NLRP3) and inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β). The combination of BUN and NAC significantly alleviated LPS-induced pyroptosis and inflammation. In addition, the combination of BUN and NAC effectively promoted miR-381 expression. Transfection of miR-381 mimics effectively alleviated LPS-induced pyroptosis and inflammation, while transfection of miR-381 inhibitors had the opposite effect. miR-381 negatively regulates NLRP3 expression. Treatment with a miR-381 inhibitor or pc-NLRP3 reversed the effects of the combination of BUN and NAC. In a mouse model of ALI, the combination of BUN and NAC effectively improved lung injury, while treatment with a miR-381 inhibitor or pc-NLRP3 effectively reversed this effect. Conclusion Overall, this study revealed that BUN + NAC inhibits the activation of NLRP3 by regulating miR-381, thereby alleviating ALI caused by pyroptosis-mediated inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background In this retrospective study, we explore the clinical risk factors correlated to the prognosis of patients who suffered from central nervous system infection after a neurosurgical procedure. Methods The study included 113 patients diagnosed with a postoperative intracranial infection. Several factors with clinical relevance were identified and analyzed by univariate analyses. The risk factors that showed any significant difference between the cases were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analyses. Results Here we show that the duration of the drainage before infection (measured in days; Beta [B]: –0.113; odds ratio [OR]: 0.893; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.805–0.991; p = 0.033), the number of antibiotics used for the treatment (B: –1.470; OR: 0.230; 95% CI: 0.072–0.738; p = 0.013), and the number of leucocytes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF; B: –0.016; OR: 0.984; 95% CI: 0.970–0.998; p = 0.027) are risk factors for the prognosis of patients with an intracranial infection. In contrast, the duration of antibiotic treatment (measured in days; B: 0.176; OR: 1.193; 95% CI: 1.063–1.339; p = 0.003) turned out to be a positive factor for recovery from infection. Conclusions Our results suggest that early identification of the correlated risk factors can improve the prognosis of patients with intracranial infection after neurosurgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the accuracy of deep learning optical flow estimation based on encoder-decoder U-Net, a modified supervised deep optical flow learning network combined with attention mechanism is proposed, which consists of a contracting part and an expanding part. In contracting part, high-level feature information is ex-tracted using a series of convolutional layers, and spatial feature maps are then restored to full resolution by conducting successive deconvolution in expanding part. In this paper, attention mechanism is embedded in U-Net to learn inter-dependencies among the channels so that the channel-wise features can be weighted adaptively, which can enhance the performance of feature extraction. Meanwhile, the proposed network also combines dilated convolution to enlarge the receptive field without changing the size of convolutional kernel. Further, constancy constraints and smoothness constraints from variational method are also adopted so that priori knowledge can be used to improve the accuracy of optical flow estimation. Extensive experiments are conducted on synthesis image sequence datasets and the experi-mental results show the proposed network is effective for improving accuracy of deep learning optical flow estimation.

Limited charge separation/transport efficiency remains the primary obstacle of achieving satisfying photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting performance. Therefore, it is essential to develop diverse interfacial engineering strategies to mitigate charge recombination. Despite obvious progress having been made, most works only considered a single‐side modulation in either the electrons of conduction band or the holes of valence band in a semiconductor photoanode, leading to a limited PEC performance enhancement. Beyond this conventional thinking, we developed a novel coupling modification strategy to achieve a composite electrode with bidirectional carrier transport for a better charge separation, in which Ti2C3Tx MXene quantum dots (MQDs) and α‐Fe2O3 nanodots (FO) are anchored on the surface of ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) nanoplates, resulting in markedly improved PEC water splitting of pure ZIS photoanode. Systematic studies indicated that the bidirectional charge transfer pathways were stimulated due to MQDs as "electron extractor" and S−O bonds as carriers transport channels, which synergistically favors significantly enhanced charge separation. The enhanced kinetic behavior at the FO/MQDs/ZIS interfaces was systematically and quantitatively evaluated by a series of methods, especially scanning photoelectrochemical microscopy. This work may deepen our understanding of interfacial charge separation, and provide valuable guidance for the rational design and fabrication of high‐performance composite electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) has been considered a promising photoactive material in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting systems. However, the performance of BiVO4-based photoanodes is currently unsatisfactory, indicating the need for new architectural designs to improve their efficiency. In this paper, a porphyrin-phosphazene polymer (THPP-HCCP) was synthesized with a sizeable conjugated structure, and Ag particles were deposited on its surface as an organic–inorganic composite interface improvement layer. The deposition of the composite polymer film on BiVO4 resulted in a significant increase in photocurrent density, reaching up to 2.2 mA cm−2 (1.23 V vs. RHE), almost three times higher than pristine BiVO4, which benefits from the synergistic effect of Ag nanoparticles and porphyrin-phosphazene. Furthermore, photophysical and intensity-modulated photocurrent analysis demonstrated that the Ag–THPP-HCCP heterostructures could broaden the light-absorbing range and facilitate hole transfer to the semiconductor surface, resulting in an improved water oxidation process. The dynamic charge transport behavior of Ag–THPP-HCCP/BiVO4 was investigated using scanning photoelectrochemical microscopy, which showed that the rate constant (Keff) exhibits an almost 4-fold increase compared to pristine BiVO4, indicating a significant improvement in the transport of photogenerated holes. This experiment presents a novel strategy for designing high-efficiency polymer-based photoanodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]