Effect of Mind Map Health Education Mode on Prevention of Pressure Ulcers.

Objective: This work aimed to develop a pressure ulcer prevention nursing and health education strategy by using mind map techniques, apply the strategy to critically ill inpatients, and evaluate its effect on preventing pressure ulcers in patients. Methods: A study population of 82 critically ill hospitalized patients received random assignments to the control group (routine nursing intervention, n = 41) and the observation group (mental map health education based on the control group, n = 20). Patients in each group were then compared for the incidence and knowledge of pressure ulcers before and after nursing intervention and health education. Results: The awareness rates of pressure ulcer knowledge in the control and observation groups were 78.85% and 94.21%, respectively. The awareness rates of prevention knowledge after intervention were 79.8% and 94.38%, respectively (P < .05). The proportion of patients with a high risk of pressure ulcers in the observation group was lower than that in the control group (P < .05). The proportion of patients with a mild risk of pressure ulcers in the observation group was higher than in the control group (P < .05). Stage I pressure ulcers in the control and observation groups were 12.3% and 3.65%, respectively (P < .05). The incidence of stage II and above pressure ulcers in the control group and the observation group were 25.8% and 20.1%, respectively (P < .05). Conclusions: The mind map health education model helped improve patients' cognition level of pressure ulcers and enhanced their awareness of active cooperation, significantly preventing pressure ulcers.

Construction of Probiotic Double-Layered Multinucleated Microcapsules Based on Sulfhydryl-Modified Carboxymethyl Cellulose Sodium for Increased Intestinal Adhesion of Probiotics and Therapy for Intestinal Inflammation Induced by Escherichia coli O157:H7.

The decreased number of viable bacteria and the ability of Bifidobacterium to adhere to and colonize the gut in the gastrointestinal environment greatly limit their efficacy. To solve this problem, thiolated carboxymethyl cellulose sodium (CMC) probiotic double-layered multinucleated microcapsules with Bifidobacterium adolescentis FS2-3 in the inner layer and Bacillus subtilis SN15-2 embedded in the outer layers were designed. First, the viable counts and release rates of microcapsules were examined by in vitro simulated digestion assays, and it was found that microcapsules were better protected from gastrointestinal digestion than the controls. Compared with free Bifidobacterium strains, double-layered multinucleated microcapsules have higher viable bacterial survival rates and storage stability. Second, through in vitro rheology, tensile tests, isotherm titration calorimetry, and adhesion tests, it was observed that thiolated CMC could enhance the strong interaction of Bifidobacterium with intestinal mucus and significantly promote the proliferation and growth of probiotics. Finally, double-layered multinucleated microcapsules containing B. adolescentis FS2-3 and B. subtilis SN15-2 modified with sulfhydryl-modified CMC were studied in the intestine. Alleviation of Escherichia coli O157:H7 induced intestinal inflammation. The results showed that microencapsulation could significantly increase the colon content of Bifidobacterium, relieve intestinal inflammation symptoms in mice with bacterial enteritis, and repair the intestinal microbiota disorder caused by inflammation. The probiotic double-layered multinucleated microcapsules prepared in this study can improve the survival rate of probiotics and promote proliferation, adhesion, and colonization of probiotics.

Effects of sucrose degradation product furfural on cyanidin-3-O-glucoside: Mechanism of action, stability, and identification of products in sugar solutions.

Anthocyanins are often affected by the sweetener sucrose during processing, which is closely related to its typical degradation product, furfural (Ff). However, the specific mechanism is unclear. In this study, Ff and cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (C3G) were used to explain the mechanism of the effect. The results showed that Ff destabilized anthocyanins by chemically reacting with C3G to generate three new adducts. Meanwhile, the color of the C3G solution changed from bright red to dark purple, and the value of the color difference (ΔE) increased significantly by 2.69. Furthermore, the new adducts were less stable than C3G and continued to promote the degradation of C3G when they coexisted with it. The above adducts were also detected in sugar solutions supplemented with C3G, and these adducts were more likely to accumulate under light storage conditions. These results provide a theoretical basis for reducing anthocyanin loss in food processing.

The isolation of anthocyanin monomers from blueberry pomace and their radical-scavenging mechanisms in DFT study.

This study explored the isolation of anthocyanin monomers using a medium- and high-pressure separation technique as a means to increase the added value of a by-product of the blueberry juice industry. Six anthocyanin monomers were isolated with a purity of 95% and identified as mono-galactoside, glucoside, and isomers of delphinidin, malvidin, and even malvidin-3-O-arabinoside, malvidin-3-(6″-acetyl)-O-glucoside by LC-MS and 1H NMR. Following the conformation search, the computer calculation manifested the active sites of six anthocyanins (C4'-OH) and their stabilities based on the structural and energy parameters. The DPPH tests demonstrated that delphinidin glycoside's free radical scavenging ability (89.93 ± 2.03 % and 86.50 ± 3.16 %) was significantly higher than that of malvidin (80.39 ± 1.30 % and 81.02 ± 0.45 %), and that malvidin's capacity was improved by conjugation arabinoside (87.48 ± 2.39 %) and acetylated glucoside (88.39 ± 1.37 %), which was compatible with the computer calculation.

Extraction, purification, structural characterization, and antioxidant activity of a novel polysaccharide from Lonicera japonica Thunb.

A novel water-soluble polysaccharide (HEP-4) with a molecular weight of 1.98 × 105Da was extracted from honeysuckle. Structural characterization was performed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography, Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectrum, nucleus magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra, and scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that HEP-4 is primarily composed of mannose, rhamnose, galacturonic acid, glucose, galactose, and arabinose with a mole ratio of 6.74:1.56:1.04:14.21:4.31:5.4, and the major types of the glycosidic bond types of HEP-4 were 1-α-D-Glcp, 1,4-ß-D-Glcp, 1-ß-D-Arap, 1,3,4-ß-D-Arap, and 1,3,6-ß-D-Manp. The results of bioactivity experiments revealed that HEP-4 had antioxidant in vitro. In addition, HEP-4 inhibited H2O2-induced oxidative damage and increased the activity of HepG2 cells by reducing MDA levels and inhibiting ROS production. Meanwhile, HEP-4 significantly enhanced the activities of GSH-Px and CAT, indicating that HEP-4 exerts a protective effect on H2O2-induced oxidative stress. These results indicate that HEP-4 could be a potential natural antioxidant.

Dynamic Knowledge Distillation with Noise Elimination for RGB-D Salient Object Detection.

RGB-D salient object detection (SOD) demonstrates its superiority in detecting in complex environments due to the additional depth information introduced in the data. Inevitably, an independent stream is introduced to extract features from depth images, leading to extra computation and parameters. This methodology sacrifices the model size to improve the detection accuracy which may impede the practical application of SOD problems. To tackle this dilemma, we propose a dynamic knowledge distillation (DKD) method, along with a lightweight structure, which significantly reduces the computational burden while maintaining validity. This method considers the factors of both teacher and student performance within the training stage and dynamically assigns the distillation weight instead of applying a fixed weight on the student model. We also investigate the issue of RGB-D early fusion strategy in distillation and propose a simple noise elimination method to mitigate the impact of distorted training data caused by low quality depth maps. Extensive experiments are conducted on five public datasets to demonstrate that our method can achieve competitive performance with a fast inference speed (136FPS) compared to 12 prior methods.

Enhanced antibacterial behavior of a novel Cu-bearing high-entropy alloy.

Contact infection of bacteria and viruses has been a critical threat to human health. The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 put forward urgent requirements for the research and development of the self-antibacterial materials, especially the antibacterial alloys. Based on the concept of high-entropy alloys, the present work designed and prepared a novel Co0.4FeCr0.9Cu0.3 antibacterial high-entropy alloy with superior antibacterial properties without intricate or rigorous annealing processes, which outperform the antibacterial stainless steels. The antibacterial tests presented a 99.97% antibacterial rate against Escherichia coli and a 99.96% antibacterial rate against Staphylococcus aureus after 24 h. In contrast, the classic antibacterial copper-bearing stainless steel only performed the 71.50% and 80.84% antibacterial rate, respectively. The results of the reactive oxygen species analysis indicated that the copper ion release and the immediate contact with copper-rich phase had a synergistic effect in enhancing antibacterial properties. Moreover, this alloy exhibited excellent corrosion resistance when compared with the classic antibacterial stainless steels, and the compression test indicated the yield strength of the alloy was 1015 MPa. These findings generate fresh insights into guiding the designs of structure-function-integrated antibacterial alloys.

Overexpression of Human Aspartyl (Asparaginyl) ß-hydroxylase in NSCLC: Its Diagnostic Value by Means of Exosomes of Bronchoalveolar Lavage.

The human aspartyl ß-hydroxylase (ASPH) is overexpressed in tumor tissues. Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) is a diagnostic procedure for infections and malignancies. The aim of this study was to investigate whether tumor exosomes carrying ASPH gene marker were present in bronchoalveolar fluid of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A tissue microarray analysis was applied to explore the expression of ASPH in different histologic NSCLC. The human NSCLC cell lines and normal bronchial cell lines were used to study exosomal ASPH exprerssion. A total of 27 NSCLC, 21 benign tumor, and 15 healthy controls underwent BAL. Immunohistochemistry was performed to study the ASPH expression in malignant and normal lung tissues. The expression characteristics of ASPH in different NSCLC and normal bronchial cells and pneumocytes were confirmed by cell blocks. A reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction was carried out to study the levels of exosomal ASPH expression. Immunohistochemical staining of tissue microarray demonstrated that overexpression of ASPH was found in NSCLC tissues including adenocarcinoma, large cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma, but absent in adjacent normal tissues. All NSCLC specimens exhibited high levels of ASPH immunoreactivity, while nonmalignant and normal lung tissues exhibited a very low level of expression. Overexpression of ASPH was found in exosomes from NSCLC cell lines but absent from the normal bronchial cell line NL-20. ASPH level from BAL exosomes was significantly increased in NSCLC patients compared with that from nonmalignant or health group. Our method of isolation of BAL exosomes was easily performed in the clinical laboratory. BAL exosomal ASPH can be a potential biomarker for NSCLC diagnosis.

Structural, rheological properties and antioxidant activities of polysaccharides from mulberry fruits (Murus alba L.) based on different extraction techniques with superfine grinding pretreatment.

The structural characteristics and biological activity of polysaccharides were influenced by different extraction methods. In this study, polysaccharides from mulberry fruits (Murus alba L., which were pre-treated with superfine grinding process) (MFP) were exacted using hot-water extraction (HWE), enzyme-assisted hot water extraction (EAHE), ultrasonic-assisted hot water extraction (UAHE), and high-speed shear homogenization-assisted hot water extraction (HSEHE). The extraction yield, structure, rheological properties and antioxidant activities of MFPs were investigated. MFP extracted using the HSEHE method have the highest extraction yields than other extraction methods. The smaller particle size of mulberry powder was found to improve the extraction yields. The MFPs were obtained by the combination between different extraction methods and superfine grinding pretreatment (through 100 mesh sieve) (MFP-HWE100, MFP-EAHE100, MFP-UAHE100, MFP-HSEHE100) showed the same levels of monosaccharide compositions and glycosyl linkages, However, these methods can produce MFP with different monosaccharide proportions, branching degree, different molecular weight, particle size and microstructure. MFP-HSEHE100 achieved the lowest molecular weight and particle size, which exhibited better thixotropy and antioxidant activities than other MFPs. This study identified that HSEHE was the most suitable extraction method for MFP.

Degradation of Tremella fuciformis polysaccharide by a combined ultrasound and hydrogen peroxide treatment: Process parameters, structural characteristics, and antioxidant activities.

The degradation effect of ultrasound (US)/hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on Tremella fuciformis polysaccharide (TFP) were studied. The main process parameters of degradation were evaluated and the structural changes and antioxidant activities of TFP before and after US/H2O2 were analyzed. The results showed that the degradation effect of US/H2O2 was significantly higher than that of US or H2O2 alone, and the degradation of TFP was dependent on the duration of its exposure to US, the ultrasonic amplitude, and the H2O2 and TFP concentrations. US/H2O2 reduced the molecular weight (from 8.14 × 105 Da to 1.27 × 104 Da) and particle size (from 710 nm to 182 nm) of the TFP within 50 min and narrowed its molecular weight and particle size distribution. High performance liquid chromatography, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Congo red results indicated that the treatment could break down the polysaccharide chains, hinder the aggregation, and improve the conformation flexibility of the TFP molecules without changing the primary structure and monosaccharide composition of TFP. Additionally, the degraded TFPs with low molecular weight exhibited a higher antioxidant activity than the original TFP. These findings suggest that the US/H2O2 treatment is a simple and effective method to prepare a TFP of low molecular weight and high bioactivity.

Efficient Er3+:4I11/2 → 4I13/2 radiative transition regulated by optimizing the sensitization mechanism.

A series of fluorophosphates glass codoped with active Er3+ ions and sensitizing ions of different systems were prepared to systematically study their sensitization effect in order to obtain efficient MIR luminescence. Differential scanning calorimetry curve indicates the favorable thermal stability of the glass host. A comprehensive analysis of the sensitization mechanism is given based on the synthesis considering the position and intensity of fluorescence emissions together with the lifetime of Er3+:4I13/2 active level. The results show two positive sensitization effects: the eliminating effect to the lower laser level of Er3+ active ions represented by Pr3+ ions reducing the lifetime of 4I13/2 energy level to a great extent; and improving the absorption efficiency of pumping source sensitized by Yb3+ ions. The paper has provided a mental knowledge for sensitization mechanism in rare earth multi-doped materials together with the aiming of promoting the MIR luminescence of Er3+ ions.

Enhanced UC and IR luminescence properties regulated by tight network structure in multicomponent glasses.

Lanthanide-doped optical functional glasses have received substantial attention in recent years owing to their excellent upconversion (UC) and infrared (IR) performance pumping when used in a semiconductor laser. In this study, the luminescence properties of Ho3+ ions were improved through the design of components used to modulate the microenvironment of the glass. To the best of our knowledge, this is a novel approach to enhancing the UC and IR emissions, and results in up to more than 130% improvement by regulating a tight network glass structure. Herein, the specific preparation design and investigations into the thermal, structural and luminescence properties are described, the results of which indicate that such ZnO-modified germanosilicate (SG-Zn) multicomponent glasses are promising candidates in the fields of biological security marking, optical communication, and 3D volumetric displays.

Enhancing the luminescence performance in germanosilicate glasses controlled by ZnF2.

Rare-earth-doped optical functional glasses have attracted great interest for their excellent luminous performance in the applications of optical communications and biomedical systems. To the best of our knowledge, it is demonstrated for the first time that more than seven times' enhancement of luminescence performance in the mid-infrared region (MIR) has been obtained in germanosilicate glasses controlled by ZnF2. Larger absorption and emission cross sections of the Ho3+: I65→I75 transition indicate that this kind of germanosilicate-zinc glass may provide high gain as a good medium for an efficient 2.85 µm laser system.

Gini index estimation for lifetime data.

Lifetime data is often right-censored. Recent literature on the Gini index estimation with censored data focuses on independent censoring. However, the censoring mechanism is likely to be dependent censoring in practice. This paper proposes two estimators of the Gini index under independent censoring and covariate-dependent censoring, respectively. The proposed estimators are consistent and asymptotically normal. We also evaluate the performance of our estimators in finite samples through Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, the proposed methods are applied to real data.