Synthesis of a novel cost-effective double-ligand Zr-based MOF via an inverted modulator strategy towards enhanced adsorption and photodegradation of tetracycline.

Developing visible-light response photocatalysts with high activity and adsorption alongside sustainability is vitally important to environmental restoration. Here, we fabricated a novel metal organic framework (MOF) with cost-effective double-ligands (fumaric acid and 2-aminoterephthalic acid as ligand precursors, denoted as MA-MOF) via a facile solvothermal method. Specifically, crystalline [Zr6O4(OH)4(fumarate)6] (MOF-801) can be only formed with monocarboxylic acids as modulators. Therefore, in the construction of crystalline double-ligand MA-MOF, the absence of monocarboxylic acid modulators successfully prevents the formation of crystalline MOF-801. Instead, the crystalline double-ligand MA-MOF is formed. Properties of MA-MOFs including the surface area, porosity, charge transfer resistance, and energy level position can be adjusted via altering the ratio of ligands. The optimal sample, MA-MOF2 (prepared with a molar ratio of fumaric acid and 2-aminoterephthalic acid being 2:1), shows a total 94.6% removal of tetracycline via adsorption and photodegradation, far exceeding the corresponding single-ligand counterparts. This work proposes an innovative inverted modulator strategy for constructing double-ligand MOFs.

Deep Brain Stimulation for Advanced Parkinson Disease in Developing Countries: A Cost-Effectiveness Study From China.

BACKGROUND: The cost-effectiveness of deep brain stimulation (DBS) is more favorable than best medical treatment (BMT) for advanced Parkinson disease (PD) in developed countries. However, it remains unclear in developing countries, where the cost of DBS may not be reimbursed by health care system. OBJECTIVE: To model and evaluate the long-term cost-effectiveness of DBS for advanced PD in China from a patient payer perspective. METHODS: We developed a Markov model representing the clinical progress of PD to predict the disease progression and related medical costs in a 15-year time horizon. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and net benefit were used to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of DBS vs BMT. RESULTS: DBS treatment led to discounted total costs of ¥370 768 ($56 515.20) (95% CI, ¥369 621.53-371 914.88), compared with ¥48 808 ($7439.68) (95% CI, ¥48 502.63-49 114.21) for BMT, with an additional 1.51 quality-adjusted life years gained, resulting in an ICER of ¥213 544 ($32 549.96)/quality-adjusted life years (95% CI, ¥208 177.35-218 910.10). Sensitivity analysis showed that DBS-related cost has the most substantial impact on ICER. Nation-wide net benefit of BMT and DBS were ¥33 819 ($5154.94) (95% CI, ¥30 211.24-37 426) and ¥30 361 ($4627.85) (95% CI, ¥25 587.03-39 433.66), respectively. Patient demographic analysis showed that more favorable DBS cost-effectiveness was associated with younger age and less severe disease stage. CONCLUSION: DBS is cost-effective for patients with advanced PD over a 15-year time horizon in China. However, compared with developed countries, DBS remains a substantial economic burden for patients when no reimbursement is provided. Our findings may help inform cost-effectiveness-based decision making for clinical care of PD in developing countries.

Time to include burden of surgical injuries after disasters in the Global Surgery agenda? An assessment of DALYs and averted burden by surgery after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.

Unlike other disasters, injury rates after earthquakes are still on the rise at a global scale. With an estimated one million people injured by earthquakes in the last decade, the burden of injury is considerable. Importantly, the surgical procedures carried out by healthcare facilities are capable to avert part of this burden. Yet both burdens remain unquantified using understandable metrics. We explored in this analysis a method to calculate them using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), an internationally accepted measure expressing years of healthy life lost due to a health condition. We used data from a large standardised hospital database of earthquake-related injuries with complete information on International Classification of Diseases for injury and surgical procedures, sex and age information. DALYs and averted DALYs were calculated by injury types and per patient using disability weights available in the literature and expert opinion. We also suggested how DALYs might be further converted into an economic measure using approaches in the published literature. We estimated 10 397 DALYs as the earthquake surgical-injury burden produced in 1861 hospitalised patients treated in a single hospital (on average, 5.6 DALYs per patient). Our study also assessed that 4379 DALYs, or 2.4 DALYs per patient, were averted by surgery (42%). In economic terms, DALY losses amounted to US$36.1 million, from which US$15.2 million were averted by surgery in our case study. We urge to systematically estimate these impacts through improvements in the routine reporting of injury diagnoses and surgical procedures by health systems, potentially improving prevention policies and resource allocation to healthcare facilities.

An efficient study design to test parent-of-origin effects in family trios.

Increasing evidence has shown that genes may cause prenatal, neonatal, and pediatric diseases depending on their parental origins. Statistical models that incorporate parent-of-origin effects (POEs) can improve the power of detecting disease-associated genes and help explain the missing heritability of diseases. In many studies, children have been sequenced for genome-wide association testing. But it may become unaffordable to sequence their parents and evaluate POEs. Motivated by the reality, we proposed a budget-friendly study design of sequencing children and only genotyping their parents through single nucleotide polymorphism array. We developed a powerful likelihood-based method, which takes into account both sequence reads and linkage disequilibrium to infer the parental origins of children's alleles and estimate their POEs on the outcome. We evaluated the performance of our proposed method and compared it with an existing method using only genotypes, through extensive simulations. Our method showed higher power than the genotype-based method. When either the mean read depth or the pair-end length was reasonably large, our method achieved ideal power. When single parents' genotypes were unavailable or parental genotypes at the testing locus were not typed, both methods lost power compared with when complete data were available; but the power loss from our method was smaller than the genotype-based method. We also extended our method to accommodate mixed genotype, low-, and high-coverage sequence data from children and their parents. At presence of sequence errors, low-coverage parental sequence data may lead to lower power than parental genotype data.

Pollination and seed dispersal of Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg (Thymelaeaceae): An economic plant species with extremely small populations in China.

Pollination and seed dispersal in angiosperms have long been investigated in order to understand the coevolution of plants and animals. However, the signals from flowers and/or seeds to attract pollinators and/or seed dispersers have received comparatively little attention. In this study, the pollination biology and seed dispersal of the vulnerable agarwood plant Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg, a traditional medicinal plant in China, was studied in its natural distribution range. The reproductive tactics of A. sinensis were studied in detail by employing various tests dealing with fruit set and also seed dispersal. Dynamic headspace extraction followed by GC-MS analysis was also performed in order to reveal the composition of floral scent. The results showed that noctuids and pyralids are the most effective pollinators of pollinator-dependent A. sinensis. The main compounds of the floral scent were (E, E)-α-Farnesene (61.9 ± 3.2%), trans-Ocimene (16.6 ± 1.2%), and Benzyl salicylate (4.6 ± 1.1%). The results obtained from seed dispersal experiments indicate that hornets are effective seed dispersers and they may play an important role in long-distance seed dispersal of A. sinensis. Based on our findings, we recommend several protection methods for this threatened agarwood plant in China.

Case study of building of conservation coalitions to conserve ecological interactions.

We engaged experts in various fields of study (pollination ecology, chemical ecology, and ethnobotany), invited community participation, and provided environmental education in an effort to conserve an endangered birthwort (Aristolochia delavayi) and a vulnerable pipevine swallowtail (Byasa daemonius). Scientists studied the uptake and sequestration of the secondary metabolites aristolochic acids from A. delavayi leaves by different stages of pipevine swallowtail as a defense mechanism; low fruit set of the myophilous A. delavayi due to pollinator limitation; and the emission of chemical signals that attract parasitic wasps by the prepupae of B. daemonius. The results of these studies were part of an education program delivered by personnel of non-governmental organizations. The program was devised to deliver information to the public about the health risks of consuming A. delavayi individuals (aristolochic-acid-associated cancers) and to establish a bridge between the public and scientific research. Following delivery of the program, the behavior of residents changed considerably. Community residents were involved in management activities, including participation in a program to promote understanding of ecological interactions between A. delavayi and B. daemonius; designing an in situ conservation site; monitoring A. delavayi and B. daemonius individuals; and promoting the natural fruit set of A. delavayi by scattering animal excrement to attract fly pollinators. The integration of scientific information and community participation appears to have resulted in an increase in abundance of threatened A. delavayi and B. daemonius populations. We believe the involvement of local people in conservation is necessary for successful species conservation.

Hospital stay as a proxy indicator for severe injury in earthquakes: a retrospective analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Earthquakes are the most violent type of natural disasters and injuries are the dominant medical problem in the early phases after earthquakes. However, likely because of poor data availability, high-quality research on injuries after earthquakes is lacking. Length of hospital stay (LOS) has been validated as a proxy indicator for injury severity in high-income settings and could potentially be used in retrospective research of injuries after earthquakes. In this study, we assessed LOS as an adequate proxy indicator for severe injury in trauma survivors of an earthquake. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted using a database of 1,878 injured patients from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Our primary outcome was severe injury, defined as a composite measure of serious injury or resource use. Secondary outcomes were serious injury and resource use, analysed separately. Non-parametric receiver operating characteristics (ROC) and area under the curve (AUC) analysis was used to test the discriminatory accuracy of LOS when used to identify severe injury. An 0.7

[Structure characteristics and health distance assessment of various disturbed communities of Korean pine and broadleaved mixed forest in Changbai Mountains].

Through samples investigation, this paper analyzed and classified the community structures of overcutting original forests, secondary birch forests and larch plantation forest under different disturbances. At the same time, some indexes which can reflect the integrity and stability of stand structure were selected. Health Distance (HD) method, a new idea, was attempted to assess ecosystem health of Korean pine and broadleaved mixed forest in Changbai Mountains. The results showed that the health degree was in order of original broadleaved stand (0.14) < structure switched stand (0.23) < structure reserved stand (0.32) < structure destroyed stand (0.33) < heavy disturbed stand (0. 44) < secondary birch stand (0.53) < larch plantations (0.68). Hopefully, it will be a helpful reference on the restoration of Korean pine and broadleaved mixed forest and on the regional forestry sustainable development.