Bilayer t-J-J_{⊥} Model and Magnetically Mediated Pairing in the Pressurized Nickelate La_{3}Ni_{2}O_{7}.

The recently discovered nickelate superconductor La_{3}Ni_{2}O_{7} has a high transition temperature near 80 K under pressure, providing an additional avenue for exploring unconventional superconductivity. Here, with state-of-the-art tensor-network methods, we study a bilayer t-J-J_{⊥} model for La_{3}Ni_{2}O_{7} and find a robust s-wave superconductive (SC) order mediated by interlayer magnetic couplings. Large-scale density matrix renormalization group calculations find algebraic pairing correlations with Luttinger parameter K_{SC}≲1. Infinite projected entangled-pair state method obtains a nonzero SC order directly in the thermodynamic limit, and estimates a strong pairing strength Δ[over ¯]_{z}∼O(0.1). Tangent-space tensor renormalization group simulations elucidate the temperature evolution of SC pairing and further determine a high SC temperature T_{c}^{*}/J∼O(0.1). Because of the intriguing orbital selective behaviors and strong Hund's rule coupling in the compound, t-J-J_{⊥} model has strong interlayer spin exchange (while negligible interlayer hopping), which greatly enhances the SC pairing in the bilayer system. Such a magnetically mediated pairing has also been observed recently in the optical lattice of ultracold atoms. Our accurate and comprehensive tensor-network calculations reveal a robust SC order in the bilayer t-J-J_{⊥} model and shed light on the pairing mechanism of the high-T_{c} nickelate superconductor.

Chewing difficulties mediated association between edentulism and depressive symptoms among middle aged and older population.

BACKGROUND: Depression is a major health condition among the aging population. Previous studies indicated that edentulism was a risk factor for depression. The link between edentulism and depression has not been fully clarified. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to estimate whether chewing difficulties play a mediating role in the association between edentulism and depression among middle-aged and older populations with national cross-sectional data. METHODS: Data were obtained from the latest fourth wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The outcome variable was set as depression, which was measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-10). Independent and mediated variables were separately set as self-assessed edentulism and chewing difficulties. The nearest neighbour propensity score matching (PSM) method was used to construct a matching group to balance the basic characteristics of individuals with and without edentulism with minimised bias in the estimation. Causal mediation analysis was performed to estimate the degree of contribution of chewing difficulties to the association between edentulism and depression. Several sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the robustness of the primary result. RESULTS: A total of 15 853 individuals remained for analysis. After PSM, 809 individuals with edentulism and 2628 without edentulism remained for analysis. Among the matched individuals, the mean age was 66.3 ± 9.2 years, 58.5% were female, 78.8% lived in rural areas, 23.5% had edentulism, 51.1% had depressive symptoms, and 50.1% had chewing difficulties. Logistic regression results showed that a higher incidence of edentulism was associated with a higher rate of depression (OR: 1.39, 95% CI: 1.19-1.63) in the matching group. Causal mediation analysis results indicated that the average mediation effect of chewing difficulties on the association between edentulism and depression was 0.010 (95% CI: 0.005-0.015), and the average direct effect was 0.072 (95% CI: 0.036-0.11). The mediation proportion of chewing difficulties was 11.7% (95% CI: 0.079-0.21). CONCLUSION: A higher prevalence of edentulism was associated with a higher rate of depression among middle-aged and elderly populations. Chewing difficulties moderately mediated the association between edentulism and depression. Fundamental oral function should not be neglected to improve mental health among the aging population.

[Reflections on the Implications of the Developments in ChatGPT for Changes in Medical Education Models].

Ever since its official launch, Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, or ChatGPT, a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has attracted much attention from the education community. ChatGPT can play an important role in the field of medical education, with its potential applications ranging from assisting teachers in designing individualized teaching scenarios to enhancing students' practical ability for solving clinical problems and improving teaching and research efficiency. With the developments in technology, it is inevitable that ChatGPT, or other generative AI models, will be thoroughly integrated in more and more medical contexts, which will further enhance the efficiency and quality of medical services and allow doctors to spend more time interacting with patients and implement personalized health management. Herein, we suggested that proactive reflections be made to figure out the best way to cultivate health professional in the context of New Medical Education, to help more medical professionals enhance their understanding of developments in artificial intelligence, and to make preparations for the challenges that will emerge in the new round of technological revolution. Medical educators should focus on guiding students to make proper use of AI tools in the appropriate context, thereby prevening abuse or overreliance caused by a lack of discrimating ability. Teachers should focus on helping medical students make improvements in clinical reasoning skills, self-directed learning, and clinical practical skills. Teachers should stress the importance for medical students to understand the philosophical implications of the mind-body unity concept, holistic medical thinking, and systematic medical thinking. It is important to enhance medical students' humanistic qualities, cultivate their empathy and communication skills, and continually enhance their ability to meet the requirements of individualized precision diagnosis and treatment so that they will better adapt to the future developments in medicine.

[Differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and global developmental delay based on machine learning and Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale]. / åŸºäºŽæœºå™¨å­¦ä¹ å’Œå„¿ç«¥ç¥žç»å¿ƒç†è¡Œä¸ºæ£€æŸ¥é‡è¡¨é‰´åˆ«å­¤ç‹¬ç—‡è°±ç³»éšœç¢å’Œå ¨é¢å‘è‚²è¿Ÿç¼“å„¿ç«¥çš„ç ”ç©¶.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the efficacy and required indicators of Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale-Revision 2016 (CNBS-R2016) in the differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and global developmental delay (GDD). METHODS: A total of 277 children with ASD and 415 children with GDD, aged 18-48 months, were enrolled as subjects. CNBS-R2016 was used to assess the developmental levels of six domains, i.e., gross motor, fine motor, adaptive ability, language, social behavior, and warning behavior, and a total of 13 indicators on intelligence age and developmental quotient (DQ) were obtained as the input features. Five commonly used machine learning classifiers were used for training to calculate the classification accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of each classifier. RESULTS: DQ of warning behavior was selected as the first feature in all five classifiers, and the use of this indicator alone had a classification accuracy of 78.90%. When the DQ of warning behavior was used in combination with the intelligence age of warning behavior, gross motor, and language, it had the highest classification accuracy of 86.71%. CONCLUSIONS: Machine learning combined with CNBS-R2016 can effectively distinguish children with ASD from those with GDD. The DQ of warning behavior plays an important role in machine learning, and its combination with other features can improve classification accuracy, providing a basis for the efficient and accurate differential diagnosis of ASD and GDD in clinical practice.

Flexible and simple telecentric camera calibration method.

The measurement accuracy of telecentric imaging technique straightforwardly depends on the calibration of the telecentric camera. We present a flexible and simple calibration method based on a telecentric imaging model and orthogonality of rotation matrix. First, we use the orthogonality of rotation matrix to solve the magnification. Second, the external parameters are solved by the imaging model, and the ambiguity of sign is solved. Finally, we use the LM nonlinear optimization method to solve the distortion parameters. Experimental results show that the reprojection error is 0.7 pixels, which represents the actual dimension of 6.37 µm. In addition, the standard measuring block and real objects are measured, and the results verify the measurement accuracy and robustness of the proposed method.

Association between using social media WeChat and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older people: findings from a national survey.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to assess the characteristics and health status of a study sample using social media WeChat and to identify the association between social media usage and depressive symptoms among people aged 45 and older in China. METHODS: Data were drawn from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Depressive symptoms were measured by the 10-item form of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-10). The propensity score matching method (PSM) was performed to balance the characteristics of WeChat users and non-WeChat users. Multilevel logistic regression was used to test the association between the incidence of depressive symptoms and WeChat usage by introducing covariates step by step. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to estimate the robustness of the primary findings. RESULTS: A total of 5415 matching cases out of 11,338 total sample were used in this study to generate the final analysis. A multilevel logistic regression model showed that a significantly lower incidence of depression was related to WeChat usage after adjusting for all possible covariates (OR: 0.76, 95% CI: 0.62-0.94). The most popular WeChat functions used by the study population were watching news (80.4%), posting Moment messages (75.5%), chatting with friends (66.0%), and watching videos (65.2%). The sensitivity analysis yielded similar findings to the primary analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Using social media WeChat showed an association with lower depressive symptoms among people aged ≥45 and older in our study sample. Further studies need to be explored on the promotion and education of social media WeChat usage, targeting the improvement of mental health-related issues through social network connections.

Effects of early preventive dental visits and its associations with dental caries experience: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: Limited information is known about preventive dental visits (PDVs) before seven years of age among children in China. This study aimed to examine the early PDV rate, identify the impact of PDV on dental caries and untreated dental caries, and explore the factors related to PDV among Chinese sampled children under seven years old. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in five selected primary health care facilities in Chengdu, China, from May to August 2021. Parent-child dyads during regular systematic medical management were recruited to participate. Children's dental caries were identified through dental examinations and documented as decayed, missing and filled teeth index (dmft) by trained primary care physicians. Dental-related information was collected through a questionnaire. Zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression was used to test the effect of early PDV on the dmft value, and logistic regression was used to analyse impact factors on the early PDV. RESULTS: A total of 2028 out of 2377 parent-child dyads were qualified for analysis. Half of the children (50.4%) were male, with a mean age of 4.8 years. Among all the children, 12.1% had their first dental visit for preventive purposes, 34.4% had their first dental visit for symptomatic purposes, and more than half had never visited a dentist. The results showed that a lower dmft value (adjusted OR: 0.69, 95% CI: 0.48-0.84), a higher rate of caries-free (aOR: 6.5, 95% CI: 3.93-10.58), and a lower rate of untreated dental caries (aOR: 0.40, 95% CI: 0.21-0.76) were associated with early PDV utilization. Children who had a higher rate of PDV were positively associated with living in a family with better parental behaviours (aOR: 2.30, 95% CI: 1.71-3.08), better parental oral health perception (aOR: 1.23, 95% CI: 1.06-1.32), fathers who had no untreated caries (aOR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.47-0.97), families with higher socioeconomic status (aOR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.04-1.16), and dental health advice received from well-child care physicians (aOR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.08-2.00). CONCLUSIONS: Early PDV was associated with a lower rate of dental caries prevalence and untreated dental caries among sampled children younger than seven in Western China. Underutilization and social inequities existed in PDV utilization. Public health strategies should be developed to increase preventive dental visits and eliminate social disparities that prevent dental care utilization.

Predictive and prognostic value of v-set and transmembrane domain-containing 1 expression in monocytes for coronary artery disease.

The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between v-set and transmembrane domain-containing 1 (VSTM1) expression and incidence of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). A total of 310 patients were divided into a non-acute coronary syndrome (non-ACS) group (containing the stable angina group, and the asymptomatic coronary artery diseaseand other patients group) and an ACS group (containing unstable angina and acute myocardial infarction patients). Monocytic VSTM1 expression levels (assessed via average fluorescence intensity derived from antibody binding to VSTM1) in each group were detected and analyzed. The cut-off value of monocytic VSTM1 expression to predict the onset of ACS and MACE was confirmed. VSTM1 expression in monocytes from the ACS group was lower than that of the non-ACS group. The incidence of MACEs in the high VSTM1-expression group was much less than that of those in the low VSTM1 expression group at the 1 year follow-up stage. VSTM1 expression had an independent-inversed association with increased incidence of MACE and ACS. VSTM1 expression in monocytes may help to predict the occurrence of ACS in patients with CHD, and moreover it may provide the means to evaluate MACE prognosis during CHD patient follow-up.

[Routine Epidemic Prevention and Control and Treatment Process Reengineering of Outpatient Dental Care].

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most severe global public health emergency in over a hundred years. We have collected and organized prevention and control information from China and other counties and used it as an important reference for designing routine epidemic prevention and control measures and treatment process reengineering of outpatient dental services. Suggestions are made in the following aspects: standard precaution is adopted for all patients based on situational risk assessment conducted by the medical staffs; transmission-based precautions are adopted in addition while caring for patients who are suspected of or have been confirmed of having infectious diseases, in which scenario, standard precautions may not be enough; regarding clinical services, the triage process should be further improved, clinical service delivery areas should be redesigned to maximize safe distances, minimally invasive dentistry procedures should be prioritized for treatment, and postponement of treatment should be recommended appropriately; infection prevention and control guidelines should be regularly updated and relevant trainings provided to the medical staffs accordingly; COVID-19 incidents associated with delivery of dental care should be documented and evaluated; it is also important to communicate with Chinese and international colleagues and stress research and professional training.

Identification of the potential prognostic genes of human melanoma.

The melanoma is one of the most dangerous forms of skin diseases. It may spread to other parts of the body and cause serious illness and death. Early detection and diagnosis are crucial. However, the systemic expression analysis for the different staging of melanoma is still lacking to date. In this study, we analyzed the gene expression profiles of the different staging of melanoma by the differential expression analysis and random forest analysis. First, the results of the principal component analysis showed that the clustering of primary tumor samples, normal samples, and pigment nevus samples got closer, while the clustering of tumor metastatic samples and normal samples was far away. Moreover, the gene expression of tumor metastasis stage and the initial stage had obvious differences. Almost 426 genes identified had differential expression. The functional enrichment of differentially expressed genes was associated with the epidermal cell differentiation, epidermis development, and the keratinocyte differentiation. Taken together, our findings identified the differentially expressed signatures between primary melanoma and metastatic melanoma. Our results would provide the potential mechanisms of melanoma.

HOTAIR promotes osteosarcoma development by sponging miR-217 and targeting ZEB1.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have drawn increasing attention because of the role which they play in various diseases, including osteosarcoma. So far, the function and mechanism of HOTAIR in osteosarcoma are unclear. In our study, we observed that HOTAIR was elevated accompanied with a decrease of miR-217 and an increase of ZEB1 in human osteosarcoma cells including U2OS, MG63, Saos-2, and SW1353 compared with human osteoblast cell line hFOB. In addition, the subsequent functional assay exhibited that silencing HOTAIR could significantly repress osteosarcoma cell growth, migration, invasion, and induce cell apoptosis capacity, which indicated that HOTAIR exerted an oncogenic role in osteosarcoma. Moreover, it was revealed by using bioinformatics analysis that HOTAIR can be targeted by microRNA-217 (miR-217). miR-217 has been recognized as a crucial tumor suppressive gene in cancers. We verified that mimics of miR-217 were able to suppress the osteosarcoma development. Furthermore, real-time quantitative PCR showed that HOTAIR siRNA increased miR-217 expression. Besides these, ZEB1 was identified as a downstream gene of miR-217 and we found that HOTAIR can mediate osteosarcoma progress by upregulating ZEB1 expression via acting as a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) via miR-217. Taken these together, our findings in this study indicated that HOTAIR/miR-217/ZEB1 axis, as a novel research point can provide new insights into molecular mechanism of osteosarcoma development.

WITHDRAWN: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Between Titanium Osteosynthesis and Biodegradable Osteosynthesis in Access Mandibulotomy for Oral Malignancy.

Available online April 7, 2018. This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal.

A survey on oral care practices for ventilator-assisted patients in intensive care units in 3A hospitals of mainland China.

Oral hygiene is a critical element of patient care, particularly among patients who need ventilator-assisted equipment. The objective of this study was to explore the current status of oral care practices, attitudes, education and knowledge among intensive care unit (ICU) nurses caring for ventilator-assisted patients in 3A hospitals in mainland China. To achieve this aim, an 18-item self-assessment questionnaire was mailed to head ICU nurses in 189 Grade 3A hospitals. Additional data were collected through in-person interviews at 38 ICUs throughout Sichuan, Shanxi, Jiangsu provinces, as well as Chongqing and Beijing. We found that most ICUs conducted oral examinations at patient admission, and that this care was largely provided by nurses. The most common oral care methods were foam swabs and mouth rinse containing antibiotics or disinfectants. Although the majority of ICUs provided continuing training for oral care, and most training was conducted by head nurses, the content and scope of training were not consistent among the hospitals in the study. The most popular sources of oral care knowledge were academic journals, Internet and professional books. Overall, it is clear that an evidence-based oral care standard manual is urgently needed for oral practice in ICUs in mainland China.

[Backscattering Characteristics of Machining Surfaces and Retrieval of Surface Multi-Parameters].

For no cooperation target laser ranging, the backscattering properties of the long-range and real machined surfaces are uncertain which seriously affect the ranging accuracy. It is an important bottleneck restricting the development of no cooperation ranging technology. In this paper, the backscattering characteristics of three typical machining surfaces (vertidal milling processing method, horizontal milling processing method and plain grinding processing method) under the infrared laser irradiation with 1550 nm were measured. The relation between the surface nachining texture, incident azimuth, roughness and the backscattering distribution were analyzed and the reasons for different processing methods specific backscattering field formed were explored. The experimental results show that the distribution of backscattering spectra is greatly affected by the machined processing methods. Incident angle and roughness have regularity effect on the actual rough surface of each mode. To be able to get enough backscattering, knowing the surface texture direction and the roughness of machined metal is essential for the optimization of the non-contact measurement program in industry. On this basis, a method based on an artificial neural network (ANN) and genetic algorithm (GA), is proposed to retrieve the surface multi-parameters of the machined metal. The generalized regression neural network (GRNN) was investigated and used in this application for the backscattering modeling. A genetic algorithm was used to retrieve the multi-parameters of incident azimuth angle, roughness and processing methods of machined metal sur face. Another processing method of sample (planer processing method) was used to validate data. The final results demonstrated that the method presented was efficient in parameters retrieval tasks. This model can accurately distinguish processing methods and the relative error of incident azimuth and roughness is 1.21% and 1.03%, respectively. The inversion accuracy is high. It can reduce the impact of surface texture, the incident azimuth and incidence angle to the ranging scope. The experiments proved that the inversion of the surface parameters greatly broadened the ranging scope in no cooperation target laser ranging. Taking the Vertical milling sample with roughness Ra=6.3 microm for example, the measuring range can be increased by about 22 m when the incidence angle is increased in the incidence plane which is vertical to the surface texture. The study results of this paper have a certain reference value to the research of the backscattering of machined surface and its application in other areas.

[A Method for Selecting Self-Adoptive Chromaticity of the Projected Markers].

The authors designed a self-adaptive projection system which is composed of color camera, projector and PC. In detail, digital micro-mirror device (DMD) as a spatial light modulator for the projector was introduced in the optical path to modulate the illuminant spectrum based on red, green and blue light emitting diodes (LED). However, the color visibility of active markers is affected by the screen which has unknown reflective spectrum as well. Here active markers are projected spot array. And chromaticity feature of markers is sometimes submerged in similar spectral screen. In order to enhance the color visibility of active markers relative to screen, a method for selecting self-adaptive chromaticity of the projected markers in 3D scanning metrology is described. Color camera with 3 channels limits the accuracy of device characterization. For achieving interconversion of device-independent color space and device-dependent color space, high-dimensional linear model of reflective spectrum was built. Prior training samples provide additional constraints to yield high-dimensional linear model with more than three degrees of freedom. Meanwhile, spectral power distribution of ambient light was estimated. Subsequently, markers' chromaticity in CIE color spaces was selected via maximization principle of Euclidean distance. The setting values of RGB were easily estimated via inverse transform. Finally, we implemented a typical experiment to show the performance of the proposed approach. An 24 Munsell Color Checker was used as projective screen. Color difference in the chromaticity coordinates between the active marker and the color patch was utilized to evaluate the color visibility of active markers relative to the screen. The result comparison between self-adaptive projection system and traditional diode-laser light projector was listed and discussed to highlight advantage of our proposed method.

PITX2c loss-of-function mutations responsible for congenital atrial septal defects.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common form of developmental anomaly and is the leading non-infectious cause of infant mortality. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that genetic risk factors are involved in the pathogenesis of CHD. However, CHD is a genetically heterogeneous disease and the genetic determinants for CHD in most patients remain unclear. In the present study, the entire coding region and splice junction sites of the PITX2c gene, which encodes a homeobox transcription factor crucial for normal cardiovascular genesis, was sequenced in 150 unrelated patients with various CHDs. The 200 unrelated control individuals were subsequently genotyped. The functional characteristics of the mutations were explored using a dual-luciferase reporter assay system. As a result, two novel heterozygous PITX2c mutations, p.H98Q and p.M119T, were identified in 2 unrelated patients with atrial septal defects, respectively. The variations were absent in 400 control chromosomes and the affected amino acids were completely conserved evolutionarily. The two variants were both predicted to be disease-causing by MutationTaster and PolyPhen-2, and the functional analysis revealed that the PITX2c mutants were consistently associated with significantly reduced transcriptional activity compared with their wild-type counterpart. These findings firstly link PITX2c loss-of-function mutations to atrial septal defects in humans, which provide novel insight into the molecular mechanism responsible for CHD, suggesting potential implications for the early prophylaxis and allele-specific treatment of CHD.

[Combined application of 2 micron microwave resection and laparoscopy in treatment of urinary tumor in patients after renal transplantation].

OBJECTIVE: To reduce the negative intervention for the transplant kidney and explore the optimal operational method for treating urinary tumor in patients after renal transplantation. METHODS: From March 2006 to March 2013, a total of 12 post renal transplantation patients with renal pelvis tumor/ureter tumor underwent operations. After the general anesthesia, the patient was placed in lithotomy position. The 2 micron microwave resection was performed, with the ureteral orifice as the center. After the ureteral wall section was resected, the resection was forwarded 6 cm. Then the patient was placed in lateral position. The laparoscopic radical nephrectomy was performed, and when this procedure was completed, the laparoscopy was converted to the other side to observe to the bladder side. Meanwhile, the operator pulled the ureter and maintained some tension, using the ultrasound knife to dissect the adjacent tissue and avoiding injuring the transplant kidney. With this method, the resected distal ureter and partial bladder were resected en bloc. In some condition, the uerteral tumor was tightly connected to the adjacent tissue, and the upper ureter failed to be removed completely, a short incision could be performed besides the musculus rectus abdominis. The Foley catheter had remained for 2 weeks after the operation. RESULTS: The 12 operations were successfully performed. The operation duration ranged from 110 to 290 minutes, and the bleeding volume was from 50 to 200 mL. Only one female patient developed secondary bleeding 18 hours after the operation, however, the secondary operation successfully stopped the bleeding. The mean hospital stay was 10.5 days. CONCLUSION: The combination use of 2 micron microwave resection and laparoscopy in the treatment of urinary tumor in patients after renal transplantation is effective, and has its advantages: lowering the risk of damaging the transplant kidney and easing the operation. Furthermore, this procedure is minimally invasive and safe. The patient could recover soon.

C-Alkylated flavonoids from the whole plants of Desmodium caudatum and their anti-TMV activity.

BACKGROUND: Natural products are important sources of biopesticides to control plant virus, and flavonoids are identified as promising anti-tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) agents. Since Desmodium caudatum is a rich source of flavonoids, this study focuses on the discovery of the new anti-TMV active flavonoids from D. caudatum and their possible mode of action. RESULTS: Three new (compounds 1-3) and nine known (compounds 4-12) C-alkylated flavonoids were isolated from D. caudatum. To the best of our knowledge, the framework of 1-3 was reported in natural products for the first time. In addition, 1-3, 5, and 6 showed notable anti-TMV activity with inhibition rates in the range of 35.8-64.3% at a concentration of 50 µg/mL, and these rates are higher than that of positive control (with inhibition rates of 34.6% ± 2.8). In addition, the structure-activity relationship study revealed that the (pyrrol-2-yl)methyl moiety on flavone can significantly increases the activity. This result is helpful to find new anti-TMV inhibitors. CONCLUSION: C-Alkylated flavonoids showed potent activities against TMV with multiple modes of actions. The increase of defense-related enzyme activities, up-regulate the expression of defense related genes, down-regulate the expression of Hsp70 protein by inhibiting the related Hsp genes that are involved in tobacco resistance to TMV. By the actions mentioned earlier, the infection of TMV was influenced, thereby achieving the effects of control of TMV. The successful isolation of the earlier-mentioned flavonoids provide the new source of biopesticides to TMV proliferation, and also contribute to the utilization of D. caudatum. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Effect of the COVID-19 Mitigation Measure on Dental Care Needs in 17 Countries: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis.

Objectives: The effect of COVID-19 mitigation measures on different oral health care needs is unclear. This study aimed to estimate the effect of COVID-19 mitigation measures on different types of oral health care utilization needs and explore the heterogeneity of such effects in different countries by using real-time Internet search data. Methods: Data were obtained from Google Trends and other public databases. The monthly relative search volume (RSV) of the search topics "toothache," "gingivitis," "dentures," "orthodontics," and "mouth ulcer" from January 2004 to June 2021 was collected for analysis. The RSV value of each topics before and after COVID-19 was the primary outcome, which was estimated by regression discontinuity analysis (RD). The effect bandwidth time after the COVID-19 outbreak was estimated by the data-driven optimal mean square error bandwidth method. Effect heterogeneity of COVID-19 on dental care was also evaluated in different dental care categories and in countries with different human development index (HDI) rankings, dentist densities, and population age structures. Results: A total of 17,850 monthly RSV from 17 countries were used for analysis. The RD results indicated that advanced dental care was significantly decreased (OR: 0.63, 95% CI: 0.47-0.85) after the COVID-19 outbreak, while emergency dental care toothache was significantly increased (OR: 1.54, 95% CI: 0.99-2.37) 4 months after the COVID-19 outbreak. Compared to the countries with low HDI and low dentist density, the effect was much more evident in countries with high HDI and high dentist density. Conclusions: COVID-19 mitigation measures have different effects on people with various dental care needs worldwide. Dental care services should be defined into essential care and advanced care according to specific socioeconomic status in different countries. Targeted health strategies should be conducted to satisfy different dental care needs in countries.

Self-reported visual impairment and depression of middle-aged and older adults: The chain-mediating effects of internet use and social participation.

Background: Visual impairment (VI) is a strong predictor of depression in middle-aged and older adults. However, the underlying mechanisms and pathways have not been well characterized. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Internet use and social participation mediate the effects of self-reported VI on depression. Methods: The study used the fourth wave of cross-sectional data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, including 19,766 Chinese adults. Depression was assessed according to the CES-D 10 International Scale. Logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between self-reported VI and depression. While adjusting for relevant covariates, the PROCESS macro (model nos. 6 and 91) was used to assess the chain-mediating effects of Internet use and social participation. Results: A total of 17,433 respondents were included in this study. The CES-D 10 results showed that 7,327 middle-aged and older adults had depressive symptoms, of whom 39.5% were male and 10.2% were ≥75 years old. 32.1% of respondents self-reported VI. Regression analysis showed a positive association between VI and depression, while Internet use and social participation had a negative predictive effect on depression. In the mediation analysis, the social participation pathway contributed the most to the total effect, accounting for 52.69% of it. The proportion of Internet use is 37.72%. When these two mediators were considered together in the full model, they accounted for 9.58% of the total effect of VI on depression. Conclusion: Internet use and social participation were important mediators that mitigated the effects of VI on depression. Combined with previous evidence, online activities such as e-health and m-health can effectively promote disease monitoring and diagnosis, and various offline social participation activities can also play a role in regulating emotions. Therefore, Internet use and social participation factors may serve as relevant entry points for the development of intervention programs that may further improve the mental health of the visually impaired.