Joint Association of Combined Healthy Lifestyle Factors and Hearing Loss with Cognitive Impairment in China.

BACKGROUND: Hearing loss and lifestyle factors have been associated with cognitive impairment. We aimed to explore the joint association of combined healthy lifestyle factors and hearing loss with cognitive impairment, which has been scarcely studied. METHODS: This baseline study used data from the CHOICE-Cohort study (Chinese Hearing Solution for Improvement of Cognition in Elders). Hearing loss was assessed by the better-ear pure-tone average (BPTA). A composite healthy lifestyle score was built based on never smoking, never drinking, regular physical activity, and balanced diet. Cognitive impairment was diagnosed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of less than 24. RESULTS: We included 17057 participants aged 60 years or older in China (mean age 69.8 [SD 6.2] years, 55.7% female). Among the participants, 48.3% (n=8234) had mild hearing loss, and 25.8% (n=4395) had moderate or greater hearing loss. The proportion of participants with healthy lifestyle scores of 0-1, 2, 3, and 4 was 14.9% (n=2539), 29.3% (n=5000), 37.4% (n=6386), and 18.4% (n=3132), respectively. 29.6% (n=5057) participants had cognitive impairment. When compared to those with normal hearing and healthy lifestyle (scores of 3-4), participants with hearing loss plus unhealthy lifestyle (scores of 0-2) exhibited approximately twofold increased risk of cognitive impairment (OR=1.92, 95% CI 1.70-2.18). Conversely, the risk was greatly attenuated by adherence to healthy lifestyle in individuals with hearing loss (OR=1.57, 95% CI 1.40-1.76). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrated adherence to a broad range of healthy lifestyle factors was associated with a significantly lower risk of cognitive impairment among participants with hearing loss.

Combination of suitable planting density and nitrogen rate for high yield maize and their source-sink relationship in Northwest China.

BACKGROUND: Increasing crop yield per unit area by increasing planting density is essential to ensure food security. However, the optimal combination of planting density and nitrogen (N) application for high-yielding maize and its source-sink characteristics need to be more clearly understood. RESULTS: A 2-year field experiment was conducted combining three planting densities (D1: 70 000 plants ha-1 ; D2: 100 000 plants ha-1 ; D3: 130 000 plants ha-1 ) and three nitrogen rates (N1: 150 kg hm-2 ; N2: 350 kg hm-2 ; N3: 450 kg hm-2 ). The results showed that increasing planting density significantly increased leaf area index and grain yield but negatively affected ear traits. The Richards model was used to fit the dynamic changes of dry matter accumulation of maize under different treatments, and the fitting results were good. Increasing planting density increased population yield while limiting the development of individual plants, bringing the period of rapid dry matter accumulation to an early end and accelerating leaf senescence. An appropriate nitrogen rate could prolong the period of rapid accumulation of dry matter in maize, and increase the 100-kernel weight. Increasing planting density enhanced post-silking dry matter accumulation to a lesser extent, and the source-sink relationship of the maize population gradually developed from sink limitation to source limitation with increasing planting density. CONCLUSION: The decrease in yield due to the insufficient source strength to meet the sink demand at too high densities was the reason that limited further improvement of the optimal planting density. An appropriate nitrogen rate facilitated the realization of yield potential at high density. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Chemical Characterization and Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Bufotenine by Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) and Density Functional Theory (DFT).

Bufotenine (5-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a natural tryptamine derivative with hallucinogenic activity. In this paper, we present novel chemical and molecular conformational analyses of bufotenine based on an experimental and theoretical approach integrating surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and density functional theory (DFT). For the first time, low concentrations of bufotenine in acetonitrile solutions were analyzed by SERS using two types of silver nanoparticle substrates synthesized via one- or two-step reduction processes. The vibrational characteristics of this molecule were verified by molecular dynamics simulations of Raman bands based on DFT. Here we demonstrate the potential of this integrated approach for the identification of bufotenine, a prominent hallucinogenic agent, establishing an innovative rapid and accurate sensing and characterization method of the identification of controlled substances at trace amounts.

RAVA: Region-Based Average Video Quality Assessment.

Video has become the most popular medium of communication over the past decade, with nearly 90 percent of the bandwidth on the Internet being used for video transmission. Thus, evaluating the quality of an acquired or compressed video has become increasingly important. The goal of video quality assessment (VQA) is to measure the quality of a video clip as perceived by a human observer. Since manually rating every video clip to evaluate quality is infeasible, researchers have attempted to develop various quantitative metrics that estimate the perceptual quality of video. In this paper, we propose a new region-based average video quality assessment (RAVA) technique extending image quality assessment (IQA) metrics. In our experiments, we extend two full-reference (FR) image quality metrics to measure the feasibility of the proposed RAVA technique. Results on three different datasets show that our RAVA method is practical in predicting objective video scores.

Carminic Acid Based Red Dye from Scale Insects Detected in Red Ruby-Crowned Kinglet Feathers by Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering.

In most birds, red feather color is linked to diet and attributed to carotenoids contained in plants and fruits. In the red crown feathers of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a new biopigment was identified based on carminic acid, the main coloring compound of cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) and other scale insects. This has revealed a potential new class of carminic acid-based biopigments, not previously identified in feathers. In this research, red crown feathers of a Ruby-crowned Kinglet were analyzed by surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) employing synthesized silver star-shaped colloids as the nanoplasmonic platform. Results indicated peaks at 450, 670, 1290-1312, 1355, 1410, 1570, 1620 cm-1 in the feather SERS spectra characteristic of carminic acid. SERS has proven to be an extremely sensitive, non-destructive technique for the identification of different feather biopigments, even at trace quantities and in the presence of other predominant coloring substances.