Search

Global initiative for chronic obstructive lung disease (GOLD) 2024 report was released on November 13th, 2023. In general, the definition, diagnosis, assessment, and therapy of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are the same as GOLD 2023, with corresponding content added in ten aspects, including the expansion of the information about PRISm, a new section on hyperinflation, further clarification about pre-bronchodilator spirometry, a new section on screening for COPD in targeted populations, the update of blood eosinophil count, the update of interstitial lung abnormalities, the revision of the section on smoking cessation, the update of vaccination recommendations for people with COPD, the expansion of managing inhaled therapy, and the addition of pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation. The article introduces and interprets the new contents.

The aging of global research reactors has led to a serious shortage of target irradiation capacity for industrial production of 99Mo, as well as restrictions on the civilian use of high enriched uranium under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. This has forced the exploration of new production processes for 99Mo and the conversion of existing high enriched uranium targets to low enriched uranium targets. In the process of exploring new technologies and target conversion, it has caused a global shortage of medical 99Mo supply, endangering people’s health.The United States, Canada, and Europe are intensifying their exploration of new process technologies for the commercialization and stable supply of medical 99Mo, such as exploring irradiation targets with as accelerator particle beams, subcritical devices, small reactors, molten salt stacks, and solution stacks, using new materials and processes to prepare targets, and applying supercritical, ionic liquids, and new chromatographic columns to the preparation of 99Mo. The production of low enriched uranium targets is gradually replacing high enriched uranium targets. The photonuclear reaction process has matured, and processes such as low-power research reactors, subcritical devices, and particle beams can meet the needs of some local radioactive drugs and nuclear medicine. The active research on accelerator production technology is the development direction of future medical 99Mo production.

Background Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) is a lung disease caused by aspergillus sensitization, which is often misdiagnosed or missed diagnosis due to low prevalence, few case reports, and controversial diagnostic criteria, leading to inappropriate treatment and exacerbation of the disease. Previous studies have shown that ABPA is one of the etiologies of bronchiectasis, but its prevalence and clinical characteristics still remain to be studied. Objective To analyze the prevalence and clinical characteristics of ABPA in patients with bronchiectasis. Methods Outpatients or inpatients diagnosed with bronchiectasis and received examinations for peripheral blood eosinophilcount, serum total IgE and aspergillus-specific IgE at Peking University Third Hospital from January 2012 to September 2021 were retrospectively selected. The data including gender, age, smoking history, asthma/wheezing symptoma, laboratory indicators (peripheral blood eosinophil count, serum total IgE, aspergillus-specific IgE and IgG), chest CT (types of bronchiectasis, number oflobes involved), and pulmonary function indexes〔the first forced expiratory volume as a percentage of the predicted value (FEV1%pred), ratio of the first forced expiratory volume and forced vital capacity in percentage (FEV1/FVC) 〕was collected. The Smith score and the Bhalla score was used to evaluate the extent and the severity of bronchiectasis lesions, respectively. The included patients were divided into the ABPA group (n=10) and non-ABPA group (n=149) according to the combination of ABPA and analyzed for the cases with total serum IgE>60 U/mL, total serum IgE>500 U/mL, total serum IgE>1 000 U/mL, aspergillus-specific IgE>0.35 U/mL, and peripheral blood eosinophil count >0.5×109/L. Results In 159 patients with bronchiectasis, 10 cases met the diagnostic criteria of ABPA (6.29%, 10/159) with elevated aspergillus-specific IgE level (>0.35 U/mL), including 9 cases with aspergillus-specific IgE>1 000 U/mL and 1 case with aspergillus-specific IgE0.5×109/L, radiological bronchiectasis, positive serum aspergillus-specific IgG), of whom 7 cases had episodic wheezingsymptom and 9 cases with absolute peripheral blood eosinophil count>0.5×109/L. Aspergillus-specific IgG was detected in 5 of the 10 cases with ABPA, 4 of whom were positive. Chest CT findings showed central bronchiectasis and peripheral bronchiectasis in 6 and 4 of the 10 cases with ABPA, and cystic bronchiectasis were shown in all 10 cases. Compared with the non-ABPA group, the ABPA group showed a higher number of lung lobesinvolved, Smith score and Bhalla score (P

Previous meditation-related studies included considerably more women than men, potentially concealing gender differences in attention training effects. Here, we present a study exploring potential gender differences in short-term meditation training (MT) effects on performance in an attentional blink (AB) task with a balanced sampling of men and women. A total of 165 college students were randomized into three groups: MT, video game training (VGT), and control (CON). Participants completed a series of pre-intervention assessments, including the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (S-TAI), and self-reported mood, arousal level, and daily time spent playing video games. Participants then completed MT, completed VGT, or had no intervention (CON group). The MT and VGT sessions consisted of 4 days of 20 min of training per day. After training, participants re-rated their arousal state and emotional state, and then performed the AB task. Relative to the CON group, the MT or VGT groups showed a significantly reduced AB. Interestingly, regarding effects on AB performance, MT was more effective in women, whereas VGT was more effective in men. MT, but not VGT, decreased anxiety scores from before to after the intervention. The current results indicate that gender plays an important role in the benefits of attention training, and thus that clinicians should take gender into consideration when implementing meditation-based therapies., Author(s): Yuzheng Wang [sup.1] [sup.2] , Yahong Chen [sup.1] [sup.2] , Yuqi Sun [sup.1] [sup.2] , Ke Zhang [sup.3] , Ning Wang [sup.1] [sup.2] , Yabin Sun [sup.1] [sup.2] , [...]

General practice research focuses on a range of topics, such as patients' physical health and mental health, physicians' competencies and career motivation, quality of healthcare and physician-patient relationships and cooperation. However, these are not resolved well only using quantitative research which is still dominated in the field of general practice. In this case, qualitative method is often required, although it is considered to be subjective, and is mainly used to describe a phenomenon that is little known in a small sample. Mixed methods research, which incorporates qualitative and quantitative research and combines the advantages of both, can analyze specific problems more extensively and intensively, is suitable for studying complex problems, and for general practice research as an approach integrating clinical medicine and sociology. However, mixed methods research in general practice is still in its early phase in China, and the standardization of its design and implementation needs to be improved. For better elaborating the key points in the design and implementation of mixed methods research, we detailed a study using mixed methods, providing a reference for general practitioners to carry out mixed methods research.

Practitioners with years of mindfulness training (MT) have a reduced attentional blink (AB), relative to novices and non-practitioners. There is still a lack of evidence regarding the impact of relatively short-term intensive traditional MT on AB. Moreover, it is unknown which component(s) of mindfulness underlie mindfulness-associated reductions in AB. Eighty-nine Chinese subjects were randomized into a MT group (N = 44) and a control (CON) group (N = 45). The participants in the CON group were waitlisted for the opportunity to participate in the training program during the 8 weeks that the MT group underwent training. Before (pretest) and after (posttest) the MT program, the subjects completed the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Peace-of-mind questionnaire (POM), and an AB task. Ultimately, 73 participants (MT group/CON group: 35/38) completed the study. From the pretest to the posttest, the MT group exhibited increases in FFMQ scores (total scores, observing subscores, and non-reactivity subscores) and POM scores, as well as improved accuracy in the AB task and a reduction in the lag-1 sparing effect. Increases in T2 accuracy in the AB correlated with improved non-reactivity. These findings broaden our understanding of the association between mindfulness and AB, and support the supposition that the skill of mindful non-reactivity plays an important role in reducing AB., Author(s): Yuzheng Wang [sup.1] [sup.2] , Luchuan Xiao [sup.3] , Wenxiao Gong [sup.1] [sup.2] , Yahong Chen [sup.1] [sup.2] , Xiaoxiao Lin [sup.1] [sup.2] , Yabin Sun [sup.1] [sup.2] , [...]

Global initiative for chronic obstructive lung disease (GOLD) 2022 report was released on November 15, 2021. In general, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) diagnosis, assessment and individualized therapy are the same as GOLD 2021, with corresponding content added in ten aspects. The article introduces and interprets the new content.

The full Poincaré (FP) beam, encompassing all possible polarization states in its beam cross-section, has demonstrated advantages in various applications. However, conventional FP beams are typically considered as spatially fully coherent, rendering them sensitive to disturbances in the propagation path and susceptible to speckle effects. In this work, we propose an alternative approach to synthesize the optical beam with a FP polarization state through the spatial coherence engineering of a partially coherent beam. In this process, the FP polarization state is initially encoded into the spatial coherence structure of the beam source. We demonstrate that during the encoding process, the vector nature of the beam transitions from the FP polarization state to the spatial coherence structure of the source. However, during the propagation of the partially coherent beam, the vectorness reverts to the polarization state, resulting in the re-emergence of the encoded FP polarization in the output plane. We illustrate that the synthesized FP polarization state, achieved through spatial coherence engineering, is highly robust against obstructions in the propagation path. Furthermore, we examine the effect of the spatial coherence area of the beam on the quality of the recovered FP polarization state. The findings of this work can have valuable applications in optical trapping and optical imaging in complex environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical encryption strategies utilizing fully coherent light have been widely explored but often face challenges such as speckle noise and beam instabilities. In this work, we introduce a novel protocol for multi-channel optical information encoding and encryption using vectorial spatial coherence engineering of a partially coherent light beam. By characterizing the beam's spatial coherence structure with a 2 × 2 coherence matrix, we demonstrate independent control over the three components of the coherence Stokes vector. This allows for three-channel optical information encoding and encryption, with applications in color image representation. Unlike existing methods based on fully coherent light modulations, our approach utilizes a two-point dependent coherence Stokes vector, proving resilient to random noise in experimental scenarios. Our findings provide a robust foundation for higher-dimensional optical encoding and encryption, addressing limitations associated with partially coherent light in complex environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twist phase is a nontrivial second-order phase that only exists in a partially coherent beam. Such twist phase endows the partially coherent beam with orbital angular momentum (OAM) and has unique applications such as in super-resolution imaging. However, the manipulation and the detection of the twist phase are still far from easy tasks in experiment. In this work, we present a flexible approach to generate a famous class of twisted Gaussian Schell-model (TGSM) beam with controllable twist phase by the superposition of the complex field realizations using a single phase-only spatial light modulator. The precise control of the amplitude and phase of the field realizations allows one to manipulate the strength of the twist phase easily. In addition, we show that the twist factor, a key factor that determines the strength of twist phase and the amount of OAM, can be measured by extracting the real part of the complex degree of coherence of the TGSM beam. The experiment is carried out with the help of the generalized Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment as the generated TGSM beam obeys Gaussian statistics. The flexible control and detection of the twist phase are expected to find applications in coherence and OAM-based ghost imaging.