Construction and optimization of Green Infrastructure Network in mountainous cities: a case study of Fuzhou, China.

Green infrastructure networks enhance the protection and improvement of urban ecological environments, augment the efficiency and quality of ecosystem services, and furnish residents with healthier and more comfortable living conditions. Although previous research has investigated the construction or optimization methods of green infrastructure networks, these studies have been relatively isolated and lacking in case studies for mountainous cities. In the development of green infrastructure, mountainous cities must specifically consider the impact of terrain on network construction. Taking Fuzhou, a mountainous city in China, as an example, this study constructs and optimizes the green infrastructure network by employing morphological spatial pattern analysis, connectivity analysis, the Minimum Cumulative Resistance model, and circuit theory. These methodologies increase the connectivity of the Green Infrastructure within the study area, thereby promoting the health of the local ecosystem and creating conducive circumstances for the city's sustainable development. The findings reveal that: (1) Green infrastructure in Fuzhou takes up 5366.38 ha, constituting 21.76% of the study area, primarily situated in the northwest and south; (2) Fuzhou's Green Infrastructure network comprises 10 hubs and 17 corridors with a hub area of 1306.98 ha, predominantly distributed in the mountains encircling the city, including Meifeng Mountain, Gaogai Mountain, and Qingliang Mountain; (3) Based on optimization, the circuit centrality index categorizes hub importance into three protection levels, pinpointing nine crucial protected areas in the corridors and 680 areas requiring enhancement, including 68 areas for first-level improvement, 149 areas for second-level improvement, and 463 areas for third-level improvement. This research offers a methodological reference for constructing and optimizing green infrastructure networks in mountainous cities, providing both theoretical and practical foundations for optimizing green infrastructure networks in Fuzhou City.

Multicomponent comprehensive confirms that erythroferrone is a molecular biomarker of pan-cancer.

All vertebrates organisms produce erythroferrone, a secretory hormone with structure-related functions during iron homeostasis. However, limited knowledge exists regarding the effect of this hormone on the occurrence and progression of cancer. To systematically and comprehensively identify the diverse implications of Erythroferrone (ERFE) in various malignant tumors, we conducted an in-depth analysis of multiple datasets, including the expression levels of oncogenes and target proteins, biological functions, and molecular characteristics. This analysis aimed to assess the diagnostic and prognostic value of ERFE in pan-cancer. Our findings revealed a significant elevation in ERFE expression across 20 distinct cancer types, with notable increases in gastrointestinal cancers. Utilizing the Cytoscape and STRING databases, we identified 35 ERFE-targeted binding proteins. Survival prognosis studies, particularly gastrointestinal cancers indicated by Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD), demonstrated a poor prognosis in patients with high ERFE expression (p < 0.001), consistently observed across various clinical subgroups. Furthermore, the ROC curve underscored the high predictive ability of EFRE for gastrointestinal cancer (AUC >0.9). Understanding the roles and interactions of ERFE in biological processes can also be aided by examining the genes co-expressed with ERFE in the coat and ranking the top 50 positive and negative genes. In the correlation analysis between the ERFE gene and different immune cells in COAD, we discovered that the expression of ERFE was positively correlated with Th1 cells, cytotoxic cells, and activated DC (aDC) abundance, and negatively correlated with Tcm (T central memory) abundance (P < 0.001). in summary, ERFE emerges as strongly associated with various malignant cancers, positioning it as a prospective biological target for cancer treatment. It stands out as a key molecular biomarker for diagnosing and prognosticating pancreatic cancer, also serves as an independent prognostic risk factor for COAD.

Platinum atomic clusters embedded in polyoxometalates-carbon black as an efficient and durable catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction.

Platinum-based catalysts are regarded as the Holy Grail of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). As a benchmark catalyst for HER, the commercial Pt/C catalyst has low Pt utilization efficiency and high cost, which hinders its commercialization. Atomic clusters-based catalysts show high efficiency of atom utilization and high performance toward electrocatalysis. Herein, an environmentally friendly preparation strategy is proposed to construct Pt atomic clusters on the polyoxometalates-carbon black (Pt-POMs-CB) support. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the Pt clusters can be stably anchored on the surface with the driving force arising from the charge transfer from Pt atoms to O atoms of the POMs. Benefiting from metal-support interaction, Pt atomic clusters embedded in silicotungstic acid-carbon black (Pt-STA-CB) exhibit excellent HER activity with an overpotential of 33.8 mV at 10 mA cm-2, and high mass activity is 1.62 A mg-1Pt at 33.8 mV, which is 5.4 times that of the commercial Pt/C. In addition, the catalyst displays high stability of 800 h at current density of 500 mA cm-2. It provides a platform for facile and low-cost preparation of stable Pt-based catalysts, which is crucial for their large-scale production and practical application in the industry.

An Improved BERT and Syntactic Dependency Representation Model for Sentiment Analysis.

Text representation of social media is an important task for users' sentiment analysis. Utilizing the better representation, we can accurately acquire the real semantic information expressed by online users. However, existing works cannot achieve the best results. In this paper, we construct and implement a sentiment analysis model based on the improved BERT and syntactic dependency. Firstly, by studying the word embeddings of BERT, we have ameliorated the embeddings representation. Attention mechanism is added to the word embeddings, sentence embeddings, and position embeddings. Secondly, we have exploited the dependency syntax analysis of the text, and the dependency relationship of different syntactic components will be obtained. For different syntactic components, the hierarchical attention mechanism is used to construct the phrase embeddings or block embeddings. Finally, we splice the syntactic blocks for sentiment analysis. Extensive experiments show that the proposed model has a stronger ability than the baselines on two standard data sets.

Analysis of the characteristics of patients with false-positive HIV screening assay results.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical characteristics of patients with false-positive human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening test results and provide a theoretical basis to interpret the results of HIV screening tests. METHODS: This retrospective study evaluated the incidence of false-positive results for HIV screening tests and characterized false-positive reactions during HIV screening in a large-scale study at Zhongshan Hospital, Xiamen University. RESULTS: False-positive HIV test results occurred for 264 of 275,263 (0.10%) serum samples. Although the incidence of a false-positive HIV screening result did not differ between male and female patients (screening χ2 = 1.194; P = 0.275), it increased with age (χ2 = 25.759; P < 0.01). False-positive reactions were associated with 16 disease categories, including 101 diseases, some of which have never been reported previously to be associated with false-positive HIV screening results. CONCLUSIONS: The occurrence of false-positive HIV screening test results may indicate underlying serious disorders. Characterization of patients with false-positive HIV screening test results can help identify potential diseases unrelated to HIV.

Gestational weight gain and risk of autism spectrum disorders in offspring: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

It has been revealed that gestational weight gain (GWG) influences the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the offspring, but the findings are inconsistent. The current study aimed to evaluate the relationship between GWG and risk of ASD in offspring. Four electronic databases were searched up to August 28 2018 to identify observational studies reporting the association between GWG and risk of ASD in the offspring. Nine studies which met the inclusion criteria were included in the systematic review. Finally, five studies with a total of 3793 children with ASD were included in the meta-analysis. The-results indicated that excessive GWG might increase the risk of ASD in offspring (p = .0008, OR = 1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09-1.38). More high quality cohort studies are needed to confirm this result. This research has the potential to inspire new research on ASD and promote efforts to design appropriate interventions against excessive GWG.Impact statementWhat is already known on this subject? It has been revealed that gestational weight gain (GWG) influences the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the offspring, but the findings are inconsistent.What the results of this study add? This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis on the association between GWG and ASDs in offspring. This study suggested that excessive GWG was associated with higher risk of ASD in offspring.What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? More high quality cohort studies are needed to confirm this result. This research has the potential to inspire new research on ASD and promote efforts to design appropriate interventions against excessive GWG.

Infection status of human parvovirus B19, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex Virus-1/2 in women with first-trimester spontaneous abortions in Chongqing, China.

BACKGROUND: Infection with Parvovirus B19 (B19V), Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Herpes Simplex Virus-1/2 (HSV-1/2) may cause fetal loses including spontaneous abortion, intrauterine fetal death and non-immune hydrops fetalis. Few comprehensive studies have investigated first-trimester spontaneous abortions caused by virus infections in Chongqing, China. Our study intends to investigate the infection of B19V, CMV and HSV-1/2 in first-trimester spontaneous abortions and the corresponding immune response. METHODS: 100 abortion patients aged from 17 to 47 years were included in our study. The plasma samples (100) were analyzed qualitatively for specific IgG/IgM for B19V, CMV and HSV-1/2 (Virion\Serion, Germany) according to the manufacturer's recommendations. B19V, CMV and HSV-1/2 DNA were quantification by Real-Time PCR. RESULTS: No specimens were positive for B19V, CMV, and HSV-1/2 DNA. By serology, 30.0%, 95.0%, 92.0% of patients were positive for B19V, CMV and HSV-1/2 IgG respectively, while 2% and 1% for B19V and HSV-1/2 IgM. CONCLUSION: The low rate of virus DNA and a high proportion of CMV and HSV-1/2 IgG for most major of abortion patients in this study suggest that B19V, CMV and HSV-1/2 may not be the common factor leading to the spontaneous abortion of early pregnancy.

Therapeutic efficacy of nutritional support by percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy in critically ill patients: A self-control clinical trial.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) is a procedure to provide enteral nutrition for critically ill patients. It is commonly used in clinical practice; however, the widespread use of PEG is controversial. Our objective was to evaluate the therapeutic effect of nutritional support by PEG in these critically ill patients. METHODS: A total of 64 critically ill patients including 41 males and 23 females (aged 23-84) were identified by the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II scoring system during September 2004 to June 2012. The nutritional status before and after PEG was mainly assessed by the tricep skinfold thickness and serum albumin level. The nutritional status and pathological condition were assessed at 4, 8 and 12 weeks before and after PEG feeding. The assessment was according to the classical method of the human nutritional status. Follow-up was performed at one month, three months and 1.5 year after gastrostomy. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 11.5 software. The incidence of inhalation pneumonia and gastroesophageal regurgitation was compared by chi square (χ2) test. P<0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Among the 64 patients, 9 patients died of their former diseases or related symptoms. Postoperative follow-up showed that both nutritional status and complications were improved after PEG in 55 patients (P<0.05). The serum albumin and tricep skinfold thickness levels were significantly increased. The incidence of hypoglycemia, hypocalcemia, hypokalemia and hyponatremia were lower than pre-operation. The frequencies of complications were significantly reduced. No severe complications occurred in any patient. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirmed that PEG was a good long-term route of nutritional supply with no serious complications for critically ill patients.

[Pretreatment of Aluminum-Lithium Alloy Sample and Determination of Argentum and Lithium by Spectral Analysis].

Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES), Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (FAAS) and Visible Spectrometry (VS) was applied for determination of Ag and Li in lithium-aluminium alloy standard sample and test sample, their respective advantages and disadvantages were compared, the excellent selectivity of ICP-OES was confirmed by analyses of certified standard sample. Three different sample digestion methods were compared and discussed in this study. It was found that the better accuracy would be obtained by digesting sample with chloroazotic acid while the content of Li was measured by FAAS, and it was better to digest sample with hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide while determining Ag and Li by ICP-OES simultaneously and determining Ag by FAAS and VS. The interference of co-existing elements and elimination methods was detailedly discussed. Ammonium hydroxide was added to adjust the sample solution into alkalescent and Al, Ti, Zr was precipitated by forming hydroxide precipitation, Mg and Cu was formed complex precipitation with 8-hydroxyquinoline in this condition, then the interference from matrix element to determinate Ag by FAAS was eliminated. In addition, phosphate was used to precipitate Ti to eliminate its interference for determination of Li by FAAS. The same treatment of determination for Ag by FAAS was used to eliminate the interference of matrix element for determination of Ag by VS, the excess of nitrate was added into sample and heated to release Ag+ from silver chloride complex, and the color of 8-hydroxyquinoline was eliminated because of decomposed by heating. The accuracy of analysis result for standard sample was conspicuously improved which confirms the efficient of the method to eliminate interference in this study. The optimal digestion method and eliminate interference method was applied to lithium-aluminium alloy samples. The recovery of samples was from 100.39% to 103.01% by ICP-OES determination for Ag, and from 100.42% to 103.01% by ICP-OES determination for Li. The recovery ranged from 95.91% to 99.98% by FAAS determination for Ag, and ranged from 98.04% to 99.98% for FAAS determination of Li. The recovery was from 98.00% to 101.00 by VS determination for Ag, the analysis results all meet the analysis requirement.

Initial partial response and stable disease according to RECIST indicate similar survival for chemotherapeutical patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

BACKGROUND: Stable disease (SD) has ambiguous clinical significance for patients according to the dominant Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST). The primary aims of the study were: (1) to clarify the clinical significance of SD by comparing the progression-free survival (PFS) of response and SD patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after the first two courses of the standard first-line platinum-based chemotherapy; (2) to explore the relationship between the percentage change in tumour size and PFS among initial SD patients, in order to provide some guidance for clinicians in deciding continuation/termination of the current treatment at a relative early time. METHODS: A total of 179 advanced NSCLC patients whose baseline CT image was available for review were included in the study. Another CT image was taken in the initial assessment after chemotherapy. A comparison of PFS between initial partial response (PR) and SD was used to determine whether significant differences exist. The relationship between the early percentage of change in tumour size of initial SD patients and their PFS was investigated. In addition, overall survival (OS), the secondary endpoint in this study, was investigated as well. RESULTS: Patients with initial PR are not significantly distinguished from those with initial SD when their PFS is concerned (median PFS 249 days [95% confidence interval, 187-310 days] versus 220 days [95% confidence interval, 191-248 days], p > 0.05). Their median OS was 364 days (95% confidence interval, 275-452 days) for the initial PR patients versus 350 days (95% confidence interval, 293-406 days) for the initial SD patients, which suggests no significant difference as well p > 0.05). In addition, all the initial SD patients enjoyed similar PFS and OS. CONCLUSIONS: Initial PR and SD enjoy similar PFS and OS for patients with advanced NSCLC. Within the initial SD subgroup, different percentages of tumour shrinkage or increase undergo similar PFS and OS. RECIST remains a reliable norm in assessing the effectiveness of chemotherapy for patients with advanced NSCLC before functional assessment has been integrated into the criteria.

Retrospective serological investigation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus antibodies in recruits from mainland China.

Different assays were used to analyze 1,621 serum specimens collected from military recruits from the People's Republic of China in 2002 for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus antibodies. The results demonstrated that the subjects either had rarely been exposed to the virus before the 2003 SARS outbreak or had not been exposed but the nucleocapsid protein cross-reacted with other antibodies in humans.