The benefit of favorable venous outflow profiles is mediated through the reduced risk of intracranial hemorrhage in acute ischemic stroke patients undergoing endovascular treatment.

BACKGROUND: Favorable venous outflow (VO) has been recognized as an independent predictor of excellent clinical outcomes in acute ischemic stroke caused by anterior circulation large vessel occlusion (AIS-LVO) patients who received endovascular treatment (EVT). However, the reasons why VO affects clinical outcomes have not been fully explained. In this study, we aimed to identify the potential mediators of VO affecting prognosis. METHODS: We conducted a multicenter retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients with AIS-LVO who underwent EVT. Baseline computed tomographic angiography (CTA) was applied to assess VO by the Cortical Vein Opacification Score (COVES). The primary outcome was functional independence at 90 days (modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 0-2). Classifying subtypes of intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) to explore the relationship between ICH subtypes and VO. Multivariate logistic regression and causal mediation analyses were used to evaluate the relationship among VO, functional independence, and potential mediators. RESULTS: Among 860 AIS-LVO patients undergoing EVT, a total of 515 patients were included in the present study after strict screening. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, favorable VO profiles (defined as COVES 3-6) were significantly associated with a lower incidence of ICH (24.2% vs 46.9%, adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.48, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.30 to 0.77, P=0.002) and a higher proportion of functional independence (58.9% vs 15.0%, aOR 4.07, 95% CI 2.41 to 6.88, P<0.001). Mediation analysis showed that favorable VO profiles significantly reduced the incidence of parencuymal hematoma (PH) 2 accounting for 8.0% (95% CI 0.9% to 19.0%) of its beneficial effect on functional independence. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated the potential mediating effects of severe ICH for the beneficial effect of favorable VO on clinical prognosis among patients with AIS-LVO who underwent EVT.

iTRAQ-based protein profiling and functional identification of four genes involved in rice basal resistance against Magnaporthe oryzae in two contrasting rice genotypes.

Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is one of the most destructive rice diseases. Developing blast-resistant rice cultivars represents the most economical and environmentally friend strategy for managing the disease. In our previous study, an isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ)-based comparative protein quantification was carried out to investigate the resistance gene Piz-t gene-mediated resistance response to infection in two contrasting rice genotypes of the Piz-t transgenic Nipponbare line (NPB-Piz-t) and its wild-type Nipponbare (NPB). Here, from the comparisons of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) of NPB-Piz-t to the avirulent isolate KJ201 (KJ201-Piz-t)and the virulent isolate RB22 (RB22-Piz-t) with mock-treated NPB-Piz-t (Mock-Piz-t), NPB to the virulent isolate KJ201(KJ201-NPB) and RB22 (RB22-NPB) with mock-treated NPB (Mock-NPB), 1, 1, and 6 common DEPs were, respectively, identified at 24, 48 and 72 h post-inoculation (hpi) in the susceptible comparisons of RB22-Pizt/Mock-Piz-t, KJ201-NPB/Mock-NPB, and RB22-NPB/Mock-NPB, involving in gi|54,290,836 and gi|59,800,021 were identified in the resistance comparison KJ201-Piz-t/Mock-Piz-t at 48 and 72 hpi respectively. Moreover, four genes of Os01g0138900 (gi|54,290,836), Os04g0659300 (gi|59,800,021), Os09g0315700 (gi|125,563,186) or Os04g0394200 (gi|21,740,743) were knocked out or overexpressed in NPB using gene over-expression and CRISPR/Cas9 technology, and results verified that the Os01g0138900 obviously affected the rice blast resistance. Further, expression and targeted metabolomics analysis illuminated the resistance response of cysteine-containing substances as gi|59,800,021 under blast infection. These results provide new targets for basal resistance gene identification and open avenues for developing novel rice blast resistant materials.

The Association of the Spatial Location of Contrast Extravasation with Symptomatic Intracranial Hemorrhage after Endovascular Therapy in Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients.

BACKGROUND: Contrast extravasation (CE) on brain non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) after endovascular therapy (EVT) is commonly present in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). Substantial uncertainties remain about the relationship between the spatial location of CE and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (sICH). Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate this association. METHODS: We performed a retrospective screening on consecutive patients with AIS due to LVO (AIS-LVO) who had CE on NCCT immediately after EVT for anterior circulation large vessel occlusion (LVO). We used the Alberta stroke program early CT Score (ASPECTS) scoring system to estimate the spatial location of CE. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to achieve the risk factors of sICH. RESULTS: In this study, 115 of 153 (75.1%) anterior circulation AIS-LVO patients had CE on NCCT. After excluding 9 patients, 106 patients were enrolled in the final analysis. In multivariate regression analysis, atrial fibrillation (AF) (adjusted OR [aOR] 6.833, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.331-35.081, P = 0.021) and CE-ASPECTS (aOR 0.602, 95% CI 0.411-0.882 P = 0.009) were associated with sICH. In subgroup analysis, CE at the internal capsule (IC) region was an independent risk factor for sICH (aOR 5.992, 95% CI 1.010-35.543 P < 0.05). These and conventional variables were incorporated as a predict model, with AUC of 0.899, demonstrating good discrimination and calibration for sICH in this study cohort. CONCLUSION: The spatial location of CE on NCCT immediately after EVT was an independent and strong risk factor for sICH in acute ischemic stroke patients.

Characterization of serum polyunsaturated fatty acid profile in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the digestive tract. The aetiology and pathogenesis of IBD are complex, which may lead to metabolic disorders. As a kind of metabolite, polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) is closely related to IBD. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the correlation between the serum PUFAs and the pathogenesis of IBD. Design: The study is a hospital-based case-control study. Methods: The serum free PUFAs of all participants, including 104 patients with IBD and 101 normal controls, were detected by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Results: Compared with the normal control, the levels of C18:2, α-C18:3 (ALA), ɤ-C18:3, C20:4 (AA), C20:5 (EPA), ω-3 C22:5, ω-6 C22:5 and C22:6 (DHA) PUFAs in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) were obviously decreased. However, in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), the levels of AA, EPA, ω-3 C22:5, ω-6 C22:5 and DHA were downregulated. The concentrations of seven PUFAs were significantly downregulated in the active CD group. In addition, four PUFAs had comparatively higher levels in the remission UC group. Conclusion: The present study revealed substantial differences in the levels of serum fatty acids between normal controls and patients with IBD. In detail, patients with CD were deficient in PUFAs, including the essential fatty acids. Moreover, as the disease activity aggravated, some PUFAs decreased dramatically.

Interlayer Link Prediction in Multiplex Social Networks Based on Multiple Types of Consistency Between Embedding Vectors.

Online users are typically active on multiple social media networks (SMNs), which constitute a multiplex social network. With improvements in cybersecurity awareness, users increasingly choose different usernames and provide different profiles on different SMNs. Thus, it is becoming increasingly challenging to determine whether given accounts on different SMNs belong to the same user; this can be expressed as an interlayer link prediction problem in a multiplex network. To address the challenge of predicting interlayer links, feature or structure information is leveraged. Existing methods that use network embedding techniques to address this problem focus on learning a mapping function to unify all nodes into a common latent representation space for prediction; positional relationships between unmatched nodes and their common matched neighbors (CMNs) are not utilized. Furthermore, the layers are often modeled as unweighted graphs, ignoring the strengths of the relationships between nodes. To address these limitations, we propose a framework based on multiple types of consistency between embedding vectors (MulCEVs). In MulCEV, the traditional embedding-based method is applied to obtain the degree of consistency between the vectors representing the unmatched nodes, and a proposed distance consistency index based on the positions of nodes in each latent space provides additional clues for prediction. By associating these two types of consistency, the effective information in the latent spaces is fully utilized. In addition, MulCEV models the layers as weighted graphs to obtain representation. In this way, the higher the strength of the relationship between nodes, the more similar their embedding vectors in the latent representation space will be. The results of our experiments on several real-world and synthetic datasets demonstrate that the proposed MulCEV framework markedly outperforms current embedding-based methods, especially when the number of training iterations is small.

Increasing diversity and biotic homogenization of lake plankton during recovery from acidification.

Determining biodiversity responses to environmental change, such as acidification, is critical for ecosystem projections under future global change scenarios. Here, we analyzed three plankton communities of phytoplankton, crustaceans and rotifers in 28 lakes in the Adirondack Park, USA, during 1994-2012, and examined the spatiotemporal trends in their alpha and beta diversity during recovery from acidification. For all plankton assemblages, Shannon diversity increased towards recent years and high lake pH, and there was an increasing community dissimilarity with pH changes. The spatial mean Bray-Curtis dissimilarities across all lakes decreased over time for phytoplankton and rotifers leading to an increase in spatial homogenization. Such a homogenization cooccurred however with the overall increasing diversity in this region, which contrasts with the previous classic view that homogenization is mainly driven by loss of species and results in biodiversity loss. We further observed lower temporal mean beta diversity in low-pH lakes for crustaceans and rotifers, but not for phytoplankton. Generally, spatial and temporal mean beta diversity of the three taxonomic groups were primarily driven by lake-water ion variables, and rotifers were also constrained by nutrients and climate. Collectively, our results show how and why plankton community compositions vary over space along with acidification recovery, and further highlight the importance of spatiotemporal studies combined with long-term monitoring programs in assessing biodiversity change during the recovery of disturbed ecosystems.

Rapid removal of Cr(III) from high-salinity wastewater by cellulose-g-poly-(acrylamide-co-sulfonic acid) polymeric bio-adsorbent.

A cellulose-g-poly-(acrylamide-co-sulfonic acid) polymeric bio-adsorbent (CASA) was prepared by grafting copolymerization, and used to adsorb Cr(III) from leather wastewater. The SEM, XRD, FTIR, and XPS results showed that CASA contains many spherical particles and functional groups such as NH2, CO, and HSO3. The adsorption experiments revealed that CASA presented excellent adsorption performance for Cr(III) (274.69 mg/g of max adsorption capacity) from high-salinity wastewater, which was much better than other reported adsorbents with different structures. Meanwhile, adsorption equilibrium could be reached within 10 min due to the introduction of abundant sulfonic acid groups on its surface. In addition, the adsorption process followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, and the experimental data conformed to the pseudo-second-order kinetics model. Moreover, the main adsorption mechanisms include chelation, electrostatic interactions, and cation exchange, which provide an important theoretical basis for the removal of toxic inorganic pollutants from leather wastewater.

Exploring the construction and infiltration strategies of social bots in sina microblog.

Nowadays, millions of people use Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Twitter, Facebook and Sina Microblog, to express opinions on current events. The widespread use of these OSNs has also led to the emergence of social bots. What is more, the existence of social bots is so powerful that some of them can turn into influential users. In this paper, we studied the automated construction technology and infiltration strategies of social bots in Sina Microblog, aiming at building friendly and influential social bots to resist malicious interpretations. Firstly, we studied the critical technology of Sina Microblog data collection, which indicates that the defense mechanism of that is vulnerable. Then, we constructed 96 social bots in Sina Microblog and researched the influence of different infiltration strategies, like different attribute settings and various types of interactions. Finally, our social bots gained 5546 followers in the 42-day infiltration period with a 100% survival rate. The results show that the infiltration strategies we proposed are effective and can help social bots escape detection of Sina Microblog defense mechanism as well. The study in this paper sounds an alarm for Sina Microblog defense mechanism and provides a valuable reference for social bots detection.

Diagnostic and Clinical Significance of Serum Levels of D-Lactate and Diamine Oxidase in Patients with Crohn's Disease.

BACKGROUND: Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic intestinal inflammatory disease. An ideal laboratory marker that can predict the prognosis in terms of relapse of the disease is clinically desirable. METHODS: A total of 59 CD patients were enrolled in this study. Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was used to quantitatively detect the content of D-lactate (D-LA) and the diamine oxidase (DAO) levels in sera obtained from patients and 28 healthy controls. The correlation between these two biomarkers and disease activity scores was assessed. In addition, the ROC curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of these two biomarkers. RESULTS: The levels of D-LA in the serum of CD patients in the active stage and remission stage were 16.08 ± 4.8 mg/L and 11.16 ± 3.17 mg/L, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (t = 4.67, P < 0.001). DAO levels were significantly higher in patients with the active stage compared to controls. The levels of D-LA and DAO in CD patients were positively correlated with the disease activity (r = 0.68 and 0.53, respectively, P < 0.05). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) when CD activity was diagnosed with D-LA and DAO alone was 0.815 and 0.748, respectively. The diagnostic efficacy of the two biomarkers was not significantly different from that of the erythrocyte sedimentation (ESR) and hypersensitive C-reactive protein (CRP) (P > 0.05). However, the area under the curve was 0.861 (0.746, 0.937) when the diagnosis was performed using a combination of D-LA, DAO, CRP, and ESR, which was significantly higher than when CRP or ESR were tested alone (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: D-LA and DAO have a good prognostic value for CD activity. Rational combined use of biomarkers can significantly improve the diagnostic efficiency.