Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices about Hyperuricemia and Gout in Community Health Workers and Patients with Diabetes.

Hyperuricemia exhibits a high incidence among individuals with diabetes; however, the significance of hyperuricemia and gout is often underestimated. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of hyperuricemia and gout among community health workers and patients with diabetes. Two questionnaires were designed to investigate knowledge, attitudes, and practices of hyperuricemia and gout among community health workers and patients with diabetes in Chenghua District, Chengdu, from August 2021 to January 2022. A total of 709 community health workers were included, whose average score was 17.74/30. Approximately half of general practitioners (GPs) demonstrated knowledge regarding the target serum uric acid levels for hyperuricemia and gout. Only 11.2% of GPs were fully aware of the preferred medicine for acute gout. The majority of GPs (86.7%) demonstrated limited awareness regarding the contraindications associated with colchicine, while a significant proportion (65.1%) lacked knowledge about the specific classes of drugs that inhibit uric acid synthesis. Among the 508 patients with diabetes included in this survey, 32.3% demonstrated awareness of hyperuricemia, while 60.8% exhibited knowledge regarding gout. The average score attained by these individuals was recorded at 7.21 out of a total of 26 points. The majority of patients with diabetes (87.8%) held the mistaken belief that hyperuricemia definitely led to the development of gout. Almost 66% agreed that a massage or a hot compress could be used when acute gouty arthritis attacks. The knowledge rate of hyperuricemia and gout among community health workers was moderate, while it was low in patients with diabetes.

Intracellular Low Iron Exerts Anti-BK Polyomavirus Effect by Inhibiting the Protein Synthesis of Exogenous Genes.

BK polyomavirus (BKPyV) is a small double-stranded DNA virus and ubiquitous human pathogen that particularly affects immunocompromised individuals. Antiviral therapy for BKPyV is urgently needed. Intracellular irons have an important role in many viral infections, yet its contribution to BKPyV and replication has not been explored. In this study, we explored the interaction between BKPyV infection and intracellular iron and the inhibitory effect of iron depletion on BKPyV infection. By creating a low-intracellular-iron environment, we demonstrated that the iron-chelating-induced iron depletion inhibits BKPyV infection in primary renal tubular epithelial cells (RPTECs) and urinary bladder cancer cells (TCCSUP cells). Iron depletion exerts an inhibitory effect after BKPyV enters the nucleus, which might be due to the inhibition of the protein synthesis of exogenous genes in iron-depleted cells. Further exploration of the target proteins of iron-regulating viral infection could potentially be used to develop new strategies for urgently needed anti-BKPyV therapies. IMPORTANCE BKPyV poses a serious threat to the health of immunocompromised patients, and there are currently no curative drugs. Understanding the relationship between the virus and intracellular environment contributes to the discovery of antiviral targets. We demonstrate here that BKPyV is inhibited in cells with a low-iron environment. We also find that iron-chelating-induced iron depletion inhibits viral and exogenous protein synthesis. Further exploration of the target proteins of iron regulation could have great potential in developing new drugs against BKPyV and other viruses.

CDSP: A Solution for Privacy and Security of Multimedia Information Processing in Industrial Big Data and Internet of Things.

With the widespread nature of wireless internet and internet of things, data have bloomed everywhere. Under the scenario of big data processing, privacy and security concerns become a very important consideration. This work focused on an approach to tackle the privacy and security issue of multimedia data/information in the internet of things domain. A solution based on Cryptographical Digital Signal Processor (CDSP), a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) based platform combined with dedicated instruction extension, has been proposed, to provide both programming flexibility and performance. We have evaluated CDSP, and the results show that the algorithms implemented on CDSP all have good performance. We have also taped out the platform designed for privacy and security concerns of multimedia transferring system based on CDSP. Using TSMC 55 nm technology, it could reach the speed of 360 MHz. Benefiting from its programmability, CDSP can be easily expanded to support more algorithms in this domain.

A Processing-in-Memory Architecture Programming Paradigm for Wireless Internet-of-Things Applications.

The widespread applications of the wireless Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the leading factors in the emerging of Big Data. Huge amounts of data need to be transferred and processed. The bandwidth and latency of data transfers have posed a new challenge for traditional computing systems. Under Big Data application scenarios, the movement of large scales of data would influence performance, power efficiency, and reliability, which are the three fundamental attributes of a computing system. Thus, changes in the computing paradigm are demanding. Processing-in- Memory (PIM), aiming at placing computation as close as possible to memory, has become of great interest to academia as well as industries. In this work, we propose a programming paradigm for PIM architecture that is suitable for wireless IoT applications. A data-transferring mechanism and middleware architecture are presented. We present our methods and experiences on simulation-platform design, as well as FPGA demo design, for PIM architecture. Typical applications in IoT, such as multimedia and MapReduce programs, are used as demonstration of our method's validity and efficiency. The programs could successfully run on the simulation platform built based on Gem5 and on the FPGA demo. Results show that our method could largely reduce power consumption and execution time for those programs, which is very beneficial in IoT applications.

Ultra-multiband absorption enhancement of graphene in a metal-dielectric-graphene sandwich structure covering terahertz to mid-infrared regime.

We investigate the absorption enhancement of an unstructured graphene sheet in a broad frequency range from terahertz (THz) to mid-infrared regime. Ultra-multiband graphene absorption enhancement is observed by integrating graphene in a metal-dielectric-graphene (MDG) sandwich structure for polarized waves. Multiple order Fabry-Perot (FP) resonances are demonstrated to be responsible for the multiband absorption. Furthermore, perfect absorption is realized by introducing the MDG structure on a metal reflector to suppress the transmission channel. In addition, the absorption peaks can be easily tuned by changing the doping level of graphene. This work may have potential for improving the performance of graphene based optoelectrical devices and can be regarded as a demonstration of a tunable broadband near-perfect metamaterial absorber.

Electromagnetic field hugely enhanced by coupling to optical energy focusing structure.

In this article, we introduce a new optical energy focusing structure consisting of a circular dielectric Bragg nanocavity and a circular metallic plasmonic lens. Via the hybridization of Bragg cavity modes and surface plasmon modes, optical energy is highly confined in the central region of the Bragg nanocavity under linearly polarized illumination. When either a bowtie nano-antenna (BNA) or a magnetic resonator (MR) is placed on this focusing structure, the energy can be high-efficiently coupled and focused into the BNA or MR. Simulations show that the electric field enhancement (|E|/|E0|) in the BNA and magnetic field enhancement (|H|/|H0|) in the MR can be more than 3000 and 200, respectively. This proposed hybrid dielectric-metallic structure opens a new avenue in energy focusing and transferring and provides opportunities for various applications, including single-molecule SERS, optical trapping, photolithography, fluorescent microscopy, magnetic sensors, etc.

More electromagnetic energy converged by the assembly of magnetic resonator and antennas.

The interaction of magnetic resonators connected by nano-antennas is studied for the first time. Compared to a simple magnetic resonator, the absorptance can be obviously much enhanced and more electromagnetic energy can be converged by the assembled magnetic resonator and nano-antennas (nano-strip). The nano-strip plays the role of both nano-antenna and phase tuner for propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). The interaction of localized surface plasmon resonance and propagating SPPs can remarkably be tuned by simply changing the width of nano-strips. When lattice coherence happens at the magnetic resonance, maximum enhancements of local field are achieved. This approach paves a new way for the design of a metamaterial based on magnetic resonators.

Coupled subwavelength gratings for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Dual subwavelength Ag gratings with a small gap of about 15 nm are demonstrated to provide a huge additional SERS enhancement, more than 10(3) fold in scattering efficiency over normal SERS on an Ag film due to the strong plasmon coupling, which is simulated by theoretical calculation. The simulation also shows the advantages of the coupled two-layer gratings over the one-layer grating for SERS measurement. Our study provides a promising and feasible way of structure design for extremely sensitive substrates of SERS.

SERS on periodic arrays of coupled quadrate-holes and squares.

We have set up a novel quasi-3D structure, periodic arrays of two-layer coupled quadrate-holes and squares. SERS measurements show that for 514 nm excitation the average enhancement factor of periodic arrays of the coupled structure over the normal Ag film can reach 4 x 10(2), much higher than the known experimental result for periodic arrays of nanoholes. The simulation shows that the SERS enhancement caused by the coupled two-layer structure is about 2.4 orders of magnitude higher than that of a simple one-layer structure, which verifies the advantages of the structure with two-layer coupled pairs of quadrate-holes and squares over the structure with one-layer nanoholes for SERS measurement.