Predictive values of carotid high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging for large embolus shedding in carotid artery stenting.

BACKGROUND: Embolus shedding is one of the important complications in carotid artery stenting (CAS). Carotid high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (HR-MRI) is often used to directly reflect important biological characteristics, such as plaque size and composition, as well as the structure of the carotid artery wall. The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive values of carotid HR-MRI for large embolus shedding in CAS. METHODS: In total, 195 patients with carotid stenosis were enrolled. Preoperative carotid HR-MRI was performed to define the nature of the carotid plaques. CAS was performed in all patients, and intraoperative embolic protection devices were used to collect the shed emboli. According to the diameter and number of shed emboli, the patients were divided into the small-embolus group (group X) and largeembolus group (group Y). Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the risk factors of large embolus shedding. RESULTS: Group Y included 58 patients, and group X included 137 patients. Age, stenosis length, smoking, and ≥3 transient cerebral ischemic attacks were risk factors for large embolusshedding. Two cases of shed large emboli developed from stable plaques, and 56 cases of large emboli developed from vulnerable plaques. When vulnerable plaques were associated with more risk factors, the incidences of large embolus shedding in cases with vulnerable plaques combined with 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 risk factors were 44 % (4/9), 68.1% (15/22), 72.2% (13/18), 76.5% (13/17), and 84.6% (11/13), respectively. DISCUSSION: Carotid HR-MRI can predict the incidence of large embolus shedding in CAS.

Increased Level of Thrombomodulin is Associated with Endothelial Injury in Patients with Sepsis-Induced Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation.

BACKGROUND: The coagulation cascade and inflammatory processes target damage in endothelial cells in sepsis-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). This study aimed to measure levels of the molecular marker of endothelial injury, thrombomodulin, in patients with sepsis-induced DIC and to investigate potential relationships with poor clinical outcomes. METHODS: From October 2017 to October 2018, 45 patients with sepsis-induced DIC were recruited at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, in China. Concentrations of thrombomodulin and other routine coagulation and inflammatory factors were quantified. RESULTS: Thrombomodulin was present in the plasma of non-survivors at significantly higher levels than in the plasma of survivors (9.30 ± 1.56 vs. 5.54 ± 0.29 TU/mL, p < 0.05). Thrombomodulin showed an area under the curve of 0.87 for predicting mortality. The hazard function curve showed significantly higher mortality risk in patients with high thrombomodulin. Multiple linear regression demonstrated a positive correlation of plasma thrombomodulin with the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score (ß-coefficient = 0.610, p = 0.042). Logistic regression showed that thrombomodulin level was an independent risk factor for poor prognosis (OR 1.963, 95% CI 1.006 - 3.829). The nomogram based on thrombomodulin level and SOFA score revealed that an initial death risk probability can be established for patients with sepsis-induced DIC without further testing. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated plasma thrombomodulin is associated with poor clinical outcomes in sepsis-induced DIC; therefore, a high plasma thrombomodulin level may be a useful prognostic factor.

The α2-Plasmin Inhibitor-Plasmin Complex is a Potential Biomarker of Venous Thromboembolism in Orthopedic Trauma Patients.

BACKGROUND: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common complication in orthopedic trauma patients. Accurate prediction of individual thrombosis risk is important in determining whether prophylactic treatment with anticoagulants is necessary. In this study, we screened for biomarkers that could be used as predictors of VTE risk and evaluated their efficacy and benefit in treating orthopedic traumatic patients. METHODS: A total of 683 patients with orthopedic trauma were consecutively enrolled between January 2017 and June 2018 at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University. Demographic and clinical information was collected, and VTE risk was assessed using the Caprini risk assessment score. The concentrations of PIC, coagulation parameters and other routine biochemical markers were quantified. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to identify potential biomarkers which were significantly different between patients who developed VTE and those who did not. Correlation between individual parameters was assessed using Pearson's correlation. A nomogram model was constructed to predict VTE risk using a combination of biomarkers, and a decision curve analysis was performed to assess the net benefit of using each biomarker. RESULTS: Patients with VTE had significantly higher levels of PIC (p = 0.037) and DD (p = 0.042) than those without, even after adjusting for confounding factors. PIC and DD levels increased in a stepwise fashion with increasing VTE risk and were the markers most strongly associated with Caprini score (PIC, r = 0.408; DD, r = 0.474; p < 0.001). In decision curve analysis, PIC levels provided greater net benefit than the Caprini score or DD level across patients with various bleeding risks. CONCLUSIONS: Plasma PIC levels are a useful biomarker of VTE risk and can be used to determine whether pharmaco-prophylaxis is needed in orthopedic trauma patients.

Cervical Cancer Associated Biomarkers of Identify High Risk of Venous Thrombosis.

BACKGROUND: Our study aims to assess the validity of thrombotic biomarkers in estimation of venous thrombosis risk in cervical cancer patients. METHODS: A total of 134 cervical cancer patients treated in our hospital from September 2016 to November 2017 were selected. Coagulation markers were assayed using Sysmex CA 7000 and HISCL 5000. Baseline demographic and clinical data was then tracked. RESULTS: The levels of plasmin inhibitor-plasmin complex (PIC), thrombin-antithrombin complex (TAT), and D-dimer (DD) were higher in the venous thrombosis positive subgroup, and the increase in levels of PIC, TAT, and DD appears to increase according to their cumulative risk score. Spearman's analysis showed: There was significant positive correlation between the Padua score and the levels of PIC and DD (r = 0.459, 0.488). CONCLUSIONS: Generally, studies have confirmed that the levels of PIC and DD may be useful for identifying cervical cancer patients at particularly high risk of thrombosis. Cervical cancer patients who are older, post menopause, receiving surgery or chemotherapy appear to be susceptible to venous thrombosis.

Plasma Thrombomodulin Levels are Associated with Endothelial Injury in Patients with Bacterial Infections.

BACKGROUND: Endothelial injury is the key to the occurrence and development of bacterial infections. The aim of this study was to discuss the relationship between the molecular marker of endothelial damage, thrombomodulin (TM), and infectious disease severity, and prognosis. METHODS: From January 2017 to April 2018, 296 patients with bacterial infections and 163 controls were recruited from our hospital. The concentrations of thrombomodulin and other routine coagulation and inflammatory factors were quantified. RESULTS: Plasma levels of thrombomodulin were obviously increased in infection group compared with control group (8.30 (7.23 - 9.68) vs. 15.83 (10.60 - 22.20) TU/mL, p < 0.001) and logistic regression analysis showed that the thrombomodulin was an independent risk factor for bacterial infection (OR, 1.189 (1.079 - 1.311)). In the infection group, patients with elevated thrombomodulin levels (> 75th percentile of its distribution, n = 71) experienced a higher level of coagulation factors (p < 0.05) and inflammatory factors (p < 0.05) than patients with levels below this cutoff. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that there was a positive correlation among the plasma thrombomodulin and D-dimer, white blood cells, and procalcitonin (ß coefficient = 0.590, 0.220, and 0.208, p = 0.004, 0.027, and 0.025, respectively). With the increase of severity of disease, thrombomodulin levels gradually rose (13.58 ± 0.47 TU/mL vs. 25.07 ± 2.01 TU/mL vs. 31.34 ± 2.56 TU/mL, respectively, p < 0.001). Furthermore, there was an abnormal increase of plasma thrombomodulin in patients with bacterial infections and poor prognosis (p < 0.05). The area under curve of thrombomodulin as diagnosis for organ failure and non-survivor was 0.867 and 0.778, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Plasmatic level of thrombomodulin could be considered as a diagnostic tool for bacterial infections. An increase in thrombomodulin plasmatic level was associated with poor outcome.

Cyclic Depsipeptide BE-43547A2 : Synthesis and Activity against Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells.

Asymmetric total synthesis of the cyclic depsipeptide BE-43547A2 was achieved in 15 linear steps on a 350 mg scale in one batch. The synthesis features the highly diastereoselective construction of an α-hydroxy-ß-ketoamide through α-hydroxylation with a d.r. of up to 86:1. BE-43547A2 significantly reduces the percentage of pancreatic cancer stem cells (PCSCs) in Panc-1 cell cultures, and dramatically reduces the tumorsphere-forming capability of Panc-1 cells. An in vivo tumor-initiation assay, a gold standard for cancer stem cell assays, confirmed that BE-43547A2 can abolish the tumorigenesis of Panc-1 cells. The anti-PCSC activity of BE-43547A2 could make this depsipeptide scaffold a promising starting point for discovering new PCSC-targeting drugs.

Comparative Analysis of Bilateral Temporomandibular Joints in Patients With Unilateral Temporomandibular Joint Complaints Using Cone Beam Computed Tomography.

OBJECTIVE: This study was to determine if there was any temporomandibular joint (TMJ) indicator that was not statistically different in the controls but was with statistical difference between the bilateral sides in patients with unilateral TMJ complaints using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). METHODS: TMJ CBCT images of 123 patients were used to preliminarily determine the indicators suitable for the measuring method. TMJ CBCT image reconstruction was performed and 19 indicators were measured. Thirty-six patients without TMJ complaint were used as controls. These bilateral TMJs were analyzed by paired t test to find out the indicators without statistical significance in the control group. Fifty patients with TMJ complaints unilaterally were used to determine the indicators that showed no statistical difference in the control group and showed statistical difference in the unilateral TMJ complaints group. RESULTS: All measured values showed no difference statistically in the control group, except the radius value. In the group of unilateral TMJ complaints, sagittal 60° joint space was statistically different (P < 0.05); parallel 120° and sagittal 90° joint space were significantly different (P < 0.01); the rest of the measured values proved to be of no statistical difference. CONCLUSIONS: Sagittal 60° joint space, parallel 120°, and sagittal 90° joint space were suggested to be the indicators with statistical difference between symptomatic side and asymptomatic side in patients with unilateral TMJ complaints. Comparing with the asymptomatic side, there is a significant joint space increase in symptomatic side in the patients with unilateral TMJ complaint.

TIFA contributes to periodontitis in diabetic mice via activating the NF­κB signaling pathway.

Diabetic periodontitis (DP) refers to destruction of periodontal tissue and absorption of bone tissue in diabetic patients. Tumor necrosis factor receptor­associated factor (TRAF)­interacting protein with forkhead­associated domain (TIFA) as a crucial regulator of inflammation activates the NF­κB signaling pathway to regulate cell biological behavior. However, the function and mechanism of TIFA on DP suffer from a lack of research. In the present study, TIFA was upregulated in the periodontal tissue of a DP mouse model. In addition, the expression of TIFA in RAW264.7 cells was induced by high glucose (HG) culture and increased by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Porphyromonas gingivalis treatment in a time­dependent manner. Knockdown of TIFA significantly reduced the levels of inflammatory cytokines, including TNF­α, IL­6, IL­1ß and monocyte chemoattractant protein­1, in HG and LPS­induced RAW264.7 cells. The nuclear translocation of NF­κB p65 was induced by HG and LPS and was clearly suppressed by absence of TIFA. The expression of downstream factors Nod­like receptor family pyrin domain­containing 3 and apoptosis­associated speck­like protein was inhibited by silencing TIFA. Moreover, TIFA was increased by receptor activator of NF­κB (RANK) ligand (RANKL) in a concentration dependent manner. The expression of cathepsin K, MMP9 and nuclear factor of activated T cells cytoplasmic 1 was downregulated by depletion of TIFA. RANKL­induced osteoclast differentiation was inhibited by silencing of TIFA. Meanwhile, the decrease of TIFA blocked activation of the NF­κB pathway in RANKL­treated RAW264.7 cells. In conclusion, TIFA as a promoter regulates the inflammation and osteoclast differentiation via activating the NF­κB signaling pathway.

An all-in-one therapeutic platform for the treatment of resistant Helicobacter pylori infection.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is a major cause of gastric diseases. Currently, bismuth-based quadruple therapy is widely adopted for eradicating H. pylori infection. However, this first-line strategy faces several challenges such as drug resistance, intestinal dysbacteriosis, and patients' poor compliance. To overcome these problems, an all-in-one therapeutic platform (CLA-Bi-ZnO2@Lipo) that composed of liposomes loading clarithromycin (CLA), Bi, and ZnO2 hybrid nanoparticles was developed for eradicating multidrug-resistant (MDR) H. pylori. The in vitro and in vivo results showed that CLA-Bi-ZnO2@Lipo could target the infection-induced inflammatory mucosa through liposome mediated nanoparticle-tissue surface charge interaction and quickly respond to the gastric acid environment to release CLA, Bi3+, Zn2+, and H2O2. By oral administration per day, the acid triggered decomposition of CLA-Bi-ZnO2@Lipo could significantly increase intragastric pH to 6 within 30 min; The released CLA, Zn2+, and H2O2 further exerted synergistical anti-bacterial effects in which a ∼2 order higher efficacy in reducing MDR H. pylori burden was achieved in comparison with standard quadruple therapy (p < 0.05); The released Zn2+ and Bi3+ could also alleviate mucosal inflammation. Most importantly, the CLA-Bi-ZnO2@Lipo exhibited superior biosafety and nearly no side effects on intestinal flora. Overall, this study developed a highly integrated and safe anti-MDR H. pylori agent which had great potential to be used as an alternative treatment for MDR H. pylori eradication.

Exogenous glutathione protected wheat seedling from high temperature and water deficit damages.

High temperatures (HT) and drought are two major factors restricting wheat growth in the early growth stages. This study investigated the role of glutathione (GSH) amendment (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 mM) to soil in mitigating the adverse effect of HT (33 °C, with 25 °C as a control), water regimes (60% of field capacity and control), and their combinations. HT decreased the length, project area, surface area, volume, and forks of the root, while drought had the reverse effect. Shoot length, leaf area, leaf relative water content, and shoot and root dry matter were significantly decreased by HT and drought, and their combined impact was more noticeable. GSH significantly promoted the root system, shoot growth, and leaf relative water content. The combined treatment reduced chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and total chlorophyll. However, 0.5 mM GSH raised chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and total chlorophyll by 28.6%, 41.4%, and 32.5%, respectively, relative to 0.0 mM GSH. At combined treatment, 0.5 mM GSH decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) by 29.5% and increased soluble protein content by 24.1%. GSH meaningfully enhanced the activity of superoxide dismutase, catalase, and ascorbate peroxide in different treatments. This study suggested that GSH could protect wheat seedlings from the adverse effects of HT and/or drought stresses.

Driving factors and decoupling analysis of natural gas consumption in major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.

Natural gas is regarded as the main transition energy under the carbon-neutral strategy and its main consumers are Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, accounting for 44.5% of world consumption in 2021. In order to investigate the effects of technology, industry, and regions on natural gas consumption, 12 major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries from three different country groups were selected in this paper to explore the consumption change. Firstly, the Logarithmetic Mean Divisia Index model is adopted to find out the driving factors. Then, the Tapio model is used to consider the decoupling state between natural gas consumption and economic growth. The results can be concluded as follows: (a) From 2000 to 2020, the technological progress effect has the biggest values of -148.86, followed by the industrial structure effect and the regional scale effect, with values of - 37.04 and 29.42, respectively. (b) From the perspective of industry view, these three effects have the largest impact on the secondary industry, followed by the tertiary industry and primary industry; (c) the regional scale effect has a positive effect on most countries, and the industrial structure effect and the regional scale effect have a negative effect on most countries; (d) the decoupling state vary differently in countries with different groups. Therefore, we concluded two policy recommendations for nature gas reduction: (a) Technological innovation is the most effective way for reducing natural gas consumption; (b) Industrial structure optimization can help save natural gas consumption.

TransWeaver: Weave Image Pairs for Class Agnostic Common Object Detection.

Measuring the similarity of two images is of crucial importance in computer vision. Class agnostic common object detection is a nascent research topic about mining image similarity, which aims to detect common object pairs from two images without category information. This task is general and less restrictive which explores the similarity between objects and can further describe the commonality of image pairs at the object level. However, previous works suffer from features with low discrimination caused by the lack of category information. Moreover, most existing methods compare objects extracted from two images in a simple and direct way, ignoring the internal relationships between objects in the two images. To overcome these limitations, in this paper, we propose a new framework called TransWeaver, which learns intrinsic relationships between objects. Our TransWeaver takes image pairs as input and flexibly captures the inherent correlation between candidate objects from two images. It consists of two modules (i.e., the representation-encoder and the weave-decoder) and captures efficient context information by weaving image pairs to make them interact with each other. The representation-encoder is used for representation learning, which can obtain more discriminative representations for candidate proposals. Furthermore, the weave-decoder weaves the objects from two images and is able to explore the inter-image and intra-image context information at the same time, bringing a better object matching ability. We reorganize the PASCAL VOC, COCO, and Visual Genome datasets to obtain training and testing image pairs. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed TransWeaver which achieves state-of-the-art performance on all datasets.

Roles of human periodontal ligament stem cells in osteogenesis and inflammation in periodontitis models: Effect of 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3.

Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by Porphyromonas gingivalis and other bacteria, and human periodontal ligament stem cells (hPDLSCs) are a promising candidate for the treatment of periodontal supporting tissue defects. This study aimed to investigate the effect of 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25(OH)2VitD3] on osteogenic differentiation of hPDLSCs in an in vitro periodontitis model and whether it can improve inflammatory status. hPDLSCs were in vitro isolated and identified. After treatment with 1,25(OH)2VitD3 and ultrapure pure Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide (LPS-G), the viability of hPDLSCs was detected using Cell Counting Kit-8, the expressions of osteogenic markers and inflammatory genes using Western blotting and quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR), the levels of inflammatory factors in cells using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the fluorescence signal intensity of osteoblastic markers and inflammatory genes in cells using immunofluorescence assay. It was found that 1,25(OH)2VitD3 reversed the inhibition of hPDLSCs proliferation by LPS-G; LPS-G exhibited inhibitory effect on ALP, Runx2, and OPN expressions, and such inhibitory effect was significantly weakened when co-acting with 1,25(OH)2VitD3. Meanwhile, LPS-G upregulated the expressions of inflammatory genes IL-1ß and Casp1, whereas 1,25(OH)2VitD3 antagonized such an effect and improved the inflammatory status. In conclusion, 1,25(OH)2VitD3 can reverse the inhibitory effect of LPS-G on hPDLSCs proliferation and osteogenic differentiation and suppress LPS-G-induced upregulation of inflammatory gene expressions.

Impacts of Inherent Components and Nitrogen Fertilizer on Eating and Cooking Quality of Rice: A Review.

With the continuous improvement of living standards, the preferences of consumers are shifting to rice varieties with high eating and cooking quality (ECQ). Milled rice is mainly composed of starch, protein, and oil, which constitute the physicochemical basis of rice taste quality. This review summarizes the relationship between rice ECQ and its intrinsic ingredients, and also briefly introduces the effects of nitrogen fertilizer management on rice ECQ. Rice varieties with higher AC usually have more long branches of amylopectin, which leach less when cooking, leading to higher hardness, lower stickinesss, and less panelist preference. High PC impedes starch pasting, and it may be hard for heat and moisture to enter the rice interior, ultimately resulting in worse rice eating quality. Rice with higher lipid content had a brighter luster and better eating quality, and starch lipids in rice have a greater impact on rice eating quality than non-starch lipids. The application of nitrogen fertilizer can enhance rice yield, but it also decreases the ECQ of rice. CRNF has been widely used in cereal crops such as maize, wheat, and rice as a novel, environmentally friendly, and effective fertilizer, and could increase rice quality to a certain extent compared with conventional urea. This review shows a benefit to finding more reasonable nitrogen fertilizer management that can be used to regulate the physical and chemical indicators of rice grains in production and to improve the taste quality of rice without affecting yield.

Modeling the impact of nickel recycling from batteries on nickel demand during vehicle electrification in China from 2010 to 2050.

China is promoting the production and use of electric vehicles (EVs) to achieve carbon neutrality. However, the shift will drive higher demand and tighter supply of nickel in China. We develop a stock-driven bottom-up dynamic substance flow analysis (SFA) model to simulate the demand trends of various EVs under 3 scenarios, the flow of nickel under 9 scenarios and the amount of recoverable nickel under 27 scenarios in China's EV industry from 2010 to 2050. The results indicate that China's current production capacity and primary reserves of nickel cannot meet the growing nickel demand, especially under the High EVs-LNCT scenarios, and closed-loop nickel recovery from EV batteries can effectively alleviate the demand-supply contradiction. In different scenarios, the annual recycling nickel could cover between 67.7 % and 96.6 % of the demand for EV batteries in 2050, and between 37.9 % and 58.1 % in terms of the cumulative quantity by 2050. When the low nickel battery technology is adopted and the recovery efficiency is rapidly improved, the recovered nickel would meet the demand for EV batteries to the highest degree. Therefore, sufficient attention should be paid to low-nickel battery technology and efficient recycling of spent EV batteries, which is of great significance to ensure the development of EV industry and the availability of nickel in China.

OPG gene-modified adipose-derived stem cells improve bone formation around implants in osteoporotic rat maxillae.

Background: Osteoporosis is a significant barrier to the use of dental implants in the elderly for the treatment of tooth defects. Adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) have demonstrated extensive potential for tissue repair and regeneration. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of ADSCs engineered to express high levels of osteoprotegerin (OPG) for the treatment of bone loss in implant dentistry caused by estrogen deficiency. Methods: A rat model of osteoporosis was established through double oophorectomy, and the rats were treated by gene modified cells Adv-OPG-ADSCs. The effects of the treatment on maxilla tissue changes were evaluated using HE staining and micro-CT. Additionally, ALP and TRAP staining were used to assess osteoblast and osteoclast alterations. Finally, the changes in related osteoblast and osteoclast indicators were measured by RT-qPCR, Western blot, and ELISA. Results: The successfully generated high-OPG-expressing ADSCs led to increase of cell viability, proliferation, and osteoblast differentiation. Treatment with Adv-OPG-ADSCs significantly ameliorated maxillary morphology, trabecular volume reduction, and bone mineral density decline in the model of estrogen-deficient maxillary implant dentistry. Furthermore, the treatment was beneficial to promoting the generation of osteoblasts and inhibiting the generation of osteoclast. Adv-OPG-ADSCs increased OPG, ALP, OCN, and Runx-2 expressions in the maxilla while suppressing RANKL expression, and also increased the concentration of COL I and PINP, as well as decreased the concentration of CTX-1. Conclusion: Adv-OPG-ADSCs promote the formation of osteoblasts and inhibit the generation of osteoclasts, thereby inhibiting bone absorption, facilitating bone formation, and promoting the repair of maxillary bone after dental implantation in the presence of osteoporosis-related complications, especially in the setting of estrogen deficiency, providing scientific basis for the application of Adv-OPG-ADSCs in the treatment of implant related osteoporosis.

MemBridge: Video-Language Pre-Training With Memory-Augmented Inter-Modality Bridge.

Video-language pre-training has attracted considerable attention recently for its promising performance on various downstream tasks. Most existing methods utilize the modality-specific or modality-joint representation architectures for the cross-modality pre-training. Different from previous methods, this paper presents a novel architecture named Memory-augmented Inter-Modality Bridge (MemBridge), which uses the learnable intermediate modality representations as the bridge for the interaction between videos and language. Specifically, in the transformer-based cross-modality encoder, we introduce the learnable bridge tokens as the interaction approach, which means the video and language tokens can only perceive information from bridge tokens and themselves. Moreover, a memory bank is proposed to store abundant modality interaction information for adaptively generating bridge tokens according to different cases, enhancing the capacity and robustness of the inter-modality bridge. Through pre-training, MemBridge explicitly models the representations for more sufficient inter-modality interaction. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach achieves competitive performance with previous methods on various downstream tasks including video-text retrieval, video captioning, and video question answering on multiple datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method. The code has been available at https://github.com/jahhaoyang/MemBridge.

Applications of dynamic simulation for source analysis of soil pollutants based on atmospheric diffusion and deposition model.

Existing receptor-model-based source apportionment methods failed to derive source contributions to accumulation of soil heavy metals (SHMs). In this research, a dynamics-simulation-based source apportionment approach (DSSA) was developed by integrating mathematical models of source release, diffusion and deposition pathway, and receptor accumulation, to quantify accumulative contributions of SHMs. The case study was carried out in a complex industrialized region in southeast China to investigate pollution situation of SHMs (Zn, Pb, Ni, As, Cd, and Cr). The results showed that SHMs distributions were affected by seasonal variation and near-surface meteorology, which could be sequenced by correlation coefficient as temperature (0.968) > humidity (0.552) > precipitation (0.389) > wind speed (0.386). The source categories and corresponding contribution rates were identified as: i) battery plant to Zn (72.32%) and Pb (71.73%), ii) traffic to Ni (64.55%), iii) traffic and agriculture to Cd (43.26%, 41.63%), iv) agriculture to As (75.30%) and Cr (60.05%), which was similar to the results of positive matrix factorization (PMF). Furthermore, DSSA could illustrate SHMs migration process from source to receptor. The uncertainty analysis further proved the distinct advantages of DSSA. The results of this research could predict pollutant enrichment and could provide new perspective for environment and public health management.

Seed priming improved salt-stressed sorghum growth by enhancing antioxidative defense.

Seed priming is regarded as a beneficial and effective method enhancing performance of plants grown under stress conditions. This study illustrated the effect of four seed priming agents (2% H2O2, 52 mM NaCl, 50 mM KCl, 250 mM MgSO4) on two sorghum cultivars (Canada sorghum CFSH-30 and sorghum '1230') grown in saline soils. Sorghum growth characteristics and biochemical parameters were investigated. Seed priming treatments alleviated the adverse effects of salt stress by decreasing MDA content and enhancing antioxidant enzymes (CAT, POD and SOD) activities and proline content, and hence increased sorghum fresh and dry weight. In terms of various parameters, sorghum '1230' was more suitable to be grown in saline soil, and 52 mM NaCl and 50 mM KCl were the optimum priming agents to improve the performance of salt-stressed sorghum.

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Autoantibodies for Diagnosis and Prognosis in Patients With Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyradiculoneuropathy.

Objectives: To review the available evidence on sensitivity and specificity of anti-NF155 antibody detection in diagnosing a specific subset of patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP) and to calculate the frequencies of different autoantibodies to paranodal proteins. Background: Diagnosis of CIDP relies on clinical and neurophysiologic criteria and lacks useful diagnostic biomarkers. A subset of CIDP patients exhibit atypical clinical phenotypes and impaired response to conventional treatments. These patients were reported as having autoantibodies targeting paranodal protein neurofascin isoform 155 (NF155), contactin-1 (CNTN1), and contactin-associated protein-1 (CASPR1). Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to summarize evidence on the diagnostic and prognostic value of these autoantibodies, especially for anti-NF155 antibody. Methods: We searched the following electronic bibliographic databases: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Web of Science. Eligible studies provided information to calculate the frequencies of anti-NF155 antibody and anti-CNTN1 antibody, the sensitivity and specificity of anti-NF155 antibody, and the incidence of improvement and deterioration among anti-NF155 antibody seropositive CIDP patients. Heterogeneity was assessed using Q and I 2 statistics. Results: The pooled frequency of anti-NF155 autoantibody across 14 studies was 7% [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.05-0.10] with high heterogeneity; the overall pooled sensitivity and specificity of anti-NF155 antibody for the diagnosis of a specific subgroup of CIDP patients were 0.45 (95% CI: 0.29-0.63) and 0.93 (95% CI: 0.86-0.97), respectively. Conclusions: For diagnosing of a specific subset of CIDP characterized by poor response to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), we found a moderate sensitivity and a high specificity. The anti-NF155 antibody test should be used as a confirmatory test rather than a screening test. Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO, identifier: CRD42020203385 and CRD42020190789.