Peripheral nerve injury associated with JEV infection in high endemic regions, 2016-2020: a multicenter retrospective study in China.

Previously, we reported a cohort of Japanese encephalitis (JE) patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome. However, the evidence linking Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) infection and peripheral nerve injury (PNI) remains limited, especially the epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome significantly differ from traditional JE. We performed a retrospective and multicenter study of 1626 patients with JE recorded in the surveillance system of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, spanning the years 2016-2020. Cases were classified into type 1 and type 2 JE based on whether the JE was combined with PNI or not. A comparative analysis was conducted on demographic characteristics, clinical manifestations, imaging findings, electromyography data, laboratory results, and treatment outcomes. Among 1626 laboratory confirmed JE patients, 230 (14%) were type 2 mainly located along the Yellow River in northwest China. In addition to fever, headache, and disturbance of consciousness, type 2 patients experienced acute flaccid paralysis of the limbs, as well as severe respiratory muscle paralysis. These patients presented a greater mean length of stay in hospital (children, 22 years [range, 1-34]; adults, 25 years [range, 0-183]) and intensive care unit (children, 16 years [range, 1-30]; adults, 17 years [range, 0-102]). The mortality rate was higher in type 2 patients (36/230 [16%]) compared to type 1 (67/1396 [5%]). The clinical classification of the diagnosis of JE may play a crucial role in developing a rational treatment strategy, thereby mitigating the severity of the disease and potentially reducing disability and mortality rates among patients.

The Workability and Mechanical Performance of Fly Ash Cenosphere-Desert Sand Ceramsite Concrete: An Experimental Study and Analysis.

In order to alleviate the shortage of sand resources for construction, make full use of industrial waste and promote the development of green lightweight aggregate concrete in the desert and surrounding areas, this paper proposes a new lightweight ceramsite concrete, fly ash cenospheres and desert sand ceramsite concrete (FDCC). An orthogonal test was conducted to analyze the effects of the desert sand (DS) replacing ratio, fly ash cenosphere (FAC) replacing ratio and polymer emulsion (PLE) addition on the damage patterns, slump, apparent density and compressive strength of the FDCC. The results showed that the most influential factors for the slump, apparent density and compressive strength of the FDCC were the FAC replacing ratio, FAC replacing ratio and DS replacing ratio, respectively. Meanwhile, the PLE addition had little effect on the workability or mechanical performance of the FDCC. With the increase in the DS replacing ratio, the slump decreased rapidly and the compressive strength reached its peak value, increasing by 20.6% when the DS replacing ratio was 20%. With the increase in the FAC replacing ratio, the slump increased by 106%, the apparent density decreased gradually and the compressive decreased and then increased, reaching its lowest value when the FAC replacing ratio was 20%. According to the synthetic evaluation analysis, the optimum DS replacing ratio, FAC replacing ratio and PLE addition of the FDCC were 20%, 30% and 1%, respectively.

Semi-Supervised Contrastive Learning for Remote Sensing: Identifying Ancient Urbanization in the South-Central Andes.

Archaeology has long faced fundamental issues of sampling and scalar representation. Traditionally, the local-to-regional-scale views of settlement patterns are produced through systematic pedestrian surveys. Recently, systematic manual survey of satellite and aerial imagery has enabled continuous distributional views of archaeological phenomena at interregional scales. However, such "brute force" manual imagery survey methods are both time- and labor-intensive, as well as prone to inter-observer differences in sensitivity and specificity. The development of self-supervised learning methods (e.g., contrastive learning) offers a scalable learning scheme for locating archaeological features using unlabeled satellite and historical aerial images. However, archaeological features are generally only visible in a very small proportion relative to the landscape, while the modern contrastive-supervised learning approach typically yields an inferior performance on highly imbalanced datasets. In this work, we propose a framework to address this long-tail problem. As opposed to the existing contrastive learning approaches that typically treat the labeled and unlabeled data separately, our proposed method reforms the learning paradigm under a semi-supervised setting in order to fully utilize the precious annotated data (<7% in our setting). Specifically, the highly unbalanced nature of the data is employed as the prior knowledge in order to form pseudo negative pairs by ranking the similarities between unannotated image patches and annotated anchor images. In this study, we used 95,358 unlabeled images and 5,830 labeled images in order to solve the issues associated with detecting ancient buildings from a long-tailed satellite image dataset. From the results, our semi-supervised contrastive learning model achieved a promising testing balanced accuracy of 79.0%, which is a 3.8% improvement as compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.

Discussion on several statistical problems in establishing quality standards of standard decoctions.

Since 2016, a number of studies have been published on standard decoctions used in Chinese medicine. However, there is little research on statistical issues related to establishing the quality standards for standard decoctions. In view of the currently established quality standard methods for standard decoctions, an improvement scheme is proposed from a statistical perspective. This review explores the requirements for dry matter yield rate data and index component transfer data for the application of two methods specified in "Technical Requirements for Quality Control and Standard Establishment of Chinese Medicine Formula Granules," which include the average value plus or minus three times the standard deviation ( X - ± 3 S D ) or 70% to 130% of the average value ( X - ± 30 % X - ). The square-root arcsine transformation method is used as an approach to solve the problem of unreasonable standard ranges of standard decoctions. This review also proposes the use of merged data to establish a standard. A method to judge whether multiple sets of standard decoction data can be merged is also provided. When multiple sets of data have a similar central tendency and a similar discrete tendency, they can be merged to establish a more reliable quality standard. Assuming that the dry matter yield rate and transfer rate conform to a binomial distribution, the number of batches of prepared slices that are needed to establish the standard decoction quality standard is estimated. It is recommended that no less than 30 batches of prepared slices should be used for the establishment of standard decoction quality standards.

[Quantitative chromatographic fingerprint analysis of Sanye Tangzhiqing Decoction based on quality by design concept].

In this work,a high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet( HPLC-UV) detection technology was used to establish fingerprint analysis method for Sanye Tangzhiqing Decoction following an analytical quality by design( AQb D) approach. Firstly,column temperature,flow rate,and gradient elution conditions were determined as the method parameters needing to be optimized. Then according to the results of definitive screening design,three critical method attributes( CMAs) were identified,including peak number,the percentage of common peak area to total peak area,and retention time of the last peak. A stepwise regression method was used then to build quantitative models between CMAs and method parameters. Probability-based design space was calculated and successfully verified using the experimental error simulation method. After the analysis conditions were optimized,the contents of six components,namely chlorogenic acid,paeoniflorin,rutin,hyperoside,quercetin-3-O-ß-D-glucuronide,and salvianolic acid B were simultaneously determined. There were 19 common peaks in the fingerprint and their common peak area accounted for 96% of the total peak area. Both fingerprint and quantitative analysis methods were validated applicable in methodology study,and they can be applied to determine new samples.

[Research on quality standards of standard decoction of Fructus Corni piece].

This study aims to develop the quality standards of Fructus Corni piece standard decoction. Morroniside and loganin were considered as index components. The content determination method of morroniside and loganin were developed. The fingerprint analysis method was also established. The standard decoctions of 15 batches of Fructus Corni pieces from Henan, Zhejiang, and Shaanxi were analyzed. The similarity values of fingerprint were all above 0.99. The transfer rates of morroniside were all higher than 100%. The quality evaluation indices of standard decoction were discussed. The transfer rate of an index component was not easy to be measured accurately and its concept was not rigorous. Therefore, index component yield was suggested as an evaluation index of standard decoction. Two methods for setting quality standards of standard decoctions, which were the ■ method and the ■ method, were compared. It was found that the standard range of ■ method was wider and more suitable for smaller sample size of standard decoction. The quality standards of Fructus Corni standard decoction were as follows, dry matter extraction ratio 37.48%-69.60%; morroniside yield 8.719-16.19 mg·g~(-1) piece; loganin yield 4.342-8.064 mg·g~(-1) piece.

[Value of mean platelet volume and Gensini score on predicting short-term outcome in acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction patient post emergency percutaneous coronary intervention].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the value of mean platelet volume (MPV) and Gensini score on predicting short-term prognosis of patients with acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) post emergency percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). METHODS: From September 2011 to June 2013, 102 consecutive hospitalized STEMI patients undergoing emergency PCI were included. All patients routine blood test was made immediately after admission, and Gensini score was calculated according to the results of coronary angiography. Incidence of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) during hospitalization and 6 months after PCI was observed. RESULTS: MPV, Gensini score and percent of coronary artery three vessel lesions were significantly higher in MACE patients than in patients without MACE(P < 0.05 or 0.01). Area under the curve (AUC) of MPV plus Gensini score for predicting in hospital MACE and at 6 months post PCI was 0.836 (95%CI:0.706-0.966, P = 0.003) and 0.718 (95%CI:0.571-0.866, P = 0.006) , respectively. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that incidence of without MACE at 6 months post PCI was significantly lower in patients with high MPV (>10.65 fl) than in patients with low MPV ( ≤ 10.65 fl) at admission (log-rank = 4.272, P = 0.039), and in patients with high Gensini score (>89) than in low Gensini score ( ≤ 89) (log-rank = 7.355, P = 0.007) at admission. CONCLUSIONS: High MPV and Gensini score are associated with lower MACE during hospitalization and at 6 months after PCI in acute STEMI patient. These two parameters could thus be used to predict short-term MACE in STEMI patients post PCI.

[Role of oxidized low-density lipoprotein in NF-κB signal pathway].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the effects of oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL) on P65, P50, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). METHODS: HUVECs were randomly divided into several groups as follows: the control group, the ox-LDL stimulated groups (different concentrations: 15, 30, 60, 120 µg/mL ox-LDL stimulation for 24 hours, and 30 µg/mL ox-LDL stimulation for different time periods: 12, 24, 48 hours), and the NF-κB inhibitor pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) intervention group (100 µmol/L PDTC pretreatment for 1 h before 30 µg/mL ox-LDL stimulation for 24 hours). Nucleoprotein was extracted to detect P65 and P50 protein expression of NF-κB signaling pathway by Western blotting, and the concentrations of TNF-α and IL-6 in cell supernatants were measured by ELISA. RESULTS: Western blotting showed that the expressions of P65 and P50 increased under the induction of ox-LDL in a time- and concentration-dependent manner, and the differences were statistically significant among groups (P < 0.05), while they were reduced significantly by PDTC intervention (P < 0.05). ELISA showed that the concentrations of TNF-α and IL-6 in the supernatants of HUVECs stimulated by ox-LDL for 24 hours were significantly higher than those in the control group, while they were reduced significantly by PDTC intervention. There were significant statistical differences among the different treated groups (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Ox-LDL can enhance the activity of NF-κB signaling pathway in a time- and concentration-dependent manner through increasing the expressions of TNF-α and IL-6.

[Values of matrix metalloproteinase-9 in early diagnosis and short-term prognosis of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the early diagnostic value of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) level on admission for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), explore the relationship between MMP-9 and global registry of acute coronary events (GRACE) scores and determine the values of MMP-9 in short-term prognosis of STEMI. METHODS: A total of 55 STEMI patients admitted into our hospital between September 2011 and February 2012 were recruited. There were early STEMI (≤ 4h of onset, n = 22) and late STEMI (> 4 h after onset, n = 33). Fifty subjects of coronary artery without significant stenosis after angiography were enrolled into a control group. The plasma levels of MMP-9 in venous blood were detected with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). And the GRACE risk score was used for risk assessment. The incidence of new or recurrent myocardial infarction, target vessel revascularization, cardiac death, heart failure (MACE) was recorded during a follow-up period of 6 months. RESULTS: The MMP-9 levels were significantly higher in patients with STEMI (P < 0.001), early STEMI (P < 0.001) and late STEMI (P < 0.001) than the control group. And no statistical differences existed between early STEMI and late STEMI (P > 0.05). The level of MMP-9 was positively correlated with the GRACE risk score. MACE occurred in 8 [14.5% (8/55)] patients during hospitalization and 17 [30.9% (17/55)] patients during follow-up. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed area under the curve (AUC) of on admission GRACE risk score and MMP-9 levels were 0.848 (95%CI 0.706 - 0.991, P = 0.002) and 0.766 (95%CI 0.575 - 0.957, P = 0.017) respectively. ROC curve analysis showed AUC of hospital discharge GRACE risk score and MMP-9 levels were 0.737 (95%CI 0.601 - 0.873, P = 0.005) and 0.711 (95%CI 0.565 - 0.856, P = 0.013) respectively. No statistical differences existed between GRACE risk score and MMP-9 levels for predicting the short-term risk of MACE (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The plasma level of MMP-9 has a higher diagnostic value for early STEMI. Positively correlated with the GRACE risk score, it is a predicator of short-term risk of MACE.

Residue depletion of tilmicosin in chicken tissues.

A high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with detection at 290 nm was modified and validated for the determination of tilmicosin residues in broiler chicken tissues. The limits of detection (LOD) of the method were 0.01 microg/g for muscle and 0.025 microg/g for liver and kidney. Average recoveries ranged from 80.4 to 88.3%. Relative standard deviation values ranged from 5.2 to 12.1%. Residue depletion of tilmicosin in broiler chickens was examined after dosing over a 5-day period by incorporation of the drug into drinking water at 37.5 and 75.0 mg/L. Tilmicosin concentrations in liver and kidney were highest on day 3 of medication and on day 5 in muscle, in both low- and high-dose groups. The residue levels in both groups were significantly higher in liver than in kidney or muscle. A minimum withdrawal time of 9 days was indicated for residue levels in muscle, liver, and kidney tissues below the maximum residue level (MRL).