Health literacy and its associated factors among the population in two schistosomiasis-endemic villages in Jiangxi Province, China.

This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the levels of health literacy and the associated factors among the general population living in 2 schistosomiasis-endemic villages in Jiangxi Province, China. Multistage stratified random sampling was used to select participants, and a face-to-face survey was conducted from July to August 2021 to collect participants' socio-demographic characteristics and levels of overall health literacy (HL) and its 3 subscales: health literacy of basic knowledge and concepts (HL-BKC), health literacy of behavior and lifestyle (HL-BAL), and health literacy of health-related skills (HL-HRS). The Chi-square test and logistic regression models were used to assess the association between socio-demographic characteristics and low HL levels. The prevalence rates of low overall HL, HL-BKC, HL-BAL, and HL-HRS were 84.3%, 61.8%, 82.6%, and 86%, respectively. In addition, no significant differences (P > .05) were noted between the 2 villages regarding overall HL scores and the 3 subscales of health literacy scores. Older age (P < .001), occupation (P < .001), lower educational level (P < .001), and lower annual household income (P < .05) were associated with an increased risk of low HL. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that occupation as a student (OR = 32.289, 95% CI:1.965-530.462, P < .05) and fishermen (OR = 27.902, 95%CI:1.91-407.642, P < .05), lower education level (OR = 0.384, 95%CI:0.149-0.99, P < .05), older age (OR = 5.228, 95%CI:1.458-18.75, P < .001), and lower annual household income (OR = 0.452, 95%CI:0.24-0.851, P < .05) were independently associated with low HL. The prevalence of low HL is high among the population in the schistosomiasis-endemic villages of Jiangxi Province, China. Age, education level, occupation, and annual household income were all independent factors associated with HL levels. Health educational interventions to improve HL should be simultaneously conducted in health promotion work to reduce risky habits.

Application of Natural and Calcined Oyster Shell Powders to Improve Latosol and Manage Nitrogen Leaching.

Excessive N fertilizer application has aggravated soil acidification and loss of N. Although oyster shell powder (OSP) can improve acidic soil, few studies have investigated its ability to retain soil N. Here, the physicochemical properties of latosol after adding OSP and calcined OSP (COSP) and the dynamic leaching patterns of ammonium N (NH4+-N), nitrate N (NO3--N), and Ca in seepage, were examined through indoor culture and intermittent soil column simulation experiments. Various types of N fertilizer were optimized through the application of 200 mg/kg of N, urea (N 200 mg/kg) was the control treatment (CK), and OSP and COSPs prepared at four calcination temperatures-500, 600, 700, and 800 °C-were added to the latosol for cultivation and leaching experiments. Under various N application conditions, the total leached N from the soil followed ammonium nitrate > ammonium chloride > urea. The OSP and COSPs had a urea adsorption rate of 81.09-91.29%, and the maximum reduction in cumulative soil inorganic N leached was 18.17%. The ability of COSPs to inhibit and control N leaching improved with increasing calcination temperature. Applying OSP and COSPs increased soil pH, soil organic matter, total N, NO3--N, exchangeable Ca content, and cation exchange capacity. Although all soil enzyme activities related to N transformation decreased, the soil NH4+-N content remained unchanged. The strong adsorption capacities for NH4+-N by OSP and COSPs reduced the inorganic N leaching, mitigating the risk of groundwater contamination.

Impact of the National Wetland Park in the Poyang Lake Area on Oncomelania hupensis, the Intermediate Host of Schistoma japonicum.

In this study, we aimed to understand the influence of ecotourism on the distribution of Oncomelania hupensis and to provide a scientific basis for formulating effective snail control methods in tourism development areas. Poyang Lake National Wetland Park was selected as the pilot area, and sampling surveys were conducted based on comprehensive and detailed investigations of all historical and suspected snail environments according to map data to determine the snail distribution and analyze the impact of tourism development. The results showed that from 2011 to 2021, the positive rates of blood tests and fecal tests tended to decrease among residents of the Poyang Lake area. The positive rates of blood tests and fecal tests in livestock also tended to decrease. The average density of O. hupensis snails decreased, and no schistosomes were detected during infection monitoring in Poyang Lake. The local economy rapidly grew after the development of tourism. The development of ecotourism projects in Poyang Lake National Wetland Park increased the transfer frequency of boats, recreational equipment, and people, but it did not increase the risk of schistosomiasis transmission or the spread of O. hupensis snails. Prevention and monitoring only need to be strengthened in low-endemic schistosomiasis areas to effectively promote economic development due to tourism activities without affecting the health of residents.

Group theoretic particle swarm optimization for multi-level threshold lung cancer image segmentation.

Background: Image segmentation is an important step during the processing of medical images. For example, for the computer aid diagnostic systems for lung cancer image analysis, the segmented regions of tumors would help doctors in early diagnosis to determine timely and appropriate treatment possibilities and thereby improve the survival rate of the patients. However, general clinical routines of manual segmentation for large number of medical images are very difficult and time consuming, which is the challenge we aim to tackle using our proposed method. Methods: A novel image segmentation method with evolutionary learning technique named Group Theoretic Particle Swarm Optimization is proposed. It can tackle multi-level thresholding optimization problem during the segmentation process and rebuild the search paradigm according to the solid mathematical foundation of symmetric group from four designable aspects, which are particle encoding, solution landscape, neighborhood movement and swarm topology, respectively. The Kapur's entropy of multi-level thresholds is assessed as the objective function. Results: In contrast to those conventional metaheuristics methods for lung cancer image segmentation, this newly presented method generates the best performance result among them. Experimental results show that its Kapur's entropy has the value of 9.07, which is 16% higher than the worst case. Computational time is acceptable at the cost of 173.730 seconds, average level of evaluation metrics [Kappa, Precision, Recall, F1-measure, intersection over union (IoU) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC)] is over 90%, and search process of multi-level threshold combination would finally converge in the later phase of iterations after 700. The ablation study indicates that all components are significant to the contributions of our proposed method. Conclusions: Group Theoretic Particle Swarm Optimization for multi-level threshold segmentation is an efficient way to split a medical image into distinct regions and extract tumor tissues regions from the background. It maintains the balanced relationship between diversification and intensification during the search process and helps clinicians to make the diagnosis more accurately. Our proposed method processes potential medical value and clinical meanings.

Effects of oyster shell powder on leaching characteristics of nutrients in low-fertility latosol in South China.

In this study, we analyzed the effect of oyster shell powder of different proportions on the nutrient leaching characteristics of latosol using an indoor soil column simulation test. Based on the optimized fertilizer application amount, we assessed five different amounts of oyster shell powder (0% (control, CK), 0.1% (T1), 0.2% (T2), 0.4% (T3), and 0.8% (T4)) and analyzed the intermittent and dynamic leaching characteristics of nutrients in the soil samples. The results indicated that the loss of nutrients in urea, superphosphate, and potassium chloride (due to leaching) increased linearly with the amount of fertilizer. By adding oyster shell powder, the leaching loss reduced by 23.90-57.25% for ammonium nitrogen, 6.31-10.07% for phosphorus, and 17.08-26.58% for potassium. However, the leaching loss for nitrate nitrogen increased by 2.5-5.8 times. In addition, the application of oyster shell powder to latosol provided acid adjustment and water retention enhancement, which increased the pH value of the soil by 3.77 (from pH 4.15 to 7.92) and reduced water loss by 2.52%. Thus, the application of oyster shell powder can reduce the acidity of the surface soil and retain water and fertilizer to a certain extent.

Spatial distribution of soil nutrients and evaluation of cultivated land in Xuwen county.

It is of great significance to promote the quantitative research of soil science and the implementation of precision agriculture. On this basis, taking Xuwen County as the research object, this paper comprehensively analyzed the soil characteristics of cultivated land in Xuwen County and clarify the soil nutrient content and spatial distribution characteristics of cultivated land in Xuwen County, this paper comprehensively applied the methods of geostatistics, geographic information system (GIS) and fuzzy mathematics, and referred to the cultivated land quality grade standard (GB/T 33469-2016), to analyze the soil characteristics and evaluate the soil fertility of this region. The results show that the optimal interpolation model of soil pH and available phosphorus (AP) is a Gaussian model, and the optimal interpolation model of soil organic matter (SOM), available nitrogen (AN) and available potassium (AK) is a J-Bessel model. In addition, the spatial correlation of AK is weak, whereas pH, SOM, AN and AP show moderate spatial correlation. The proportion of excellent, good, average, medium and poor comprehensive fertility index are 26.00%, 32.67%, 19.33%, 19.00% and 3.00%, respectively. The overall level of soil fertility in Xuwen County is above the average, and the fertility quality presents an obvious trend of high in the South and low in the North. Areas that above average fertility are mainly distributed in Maichen Town, Qujie Town, Nanshan Town and Chengbei Town. The results can provide theoretical basis for improving the utilization rate of chemical fertilizer, fine management of cultivated land and ecological environment in this region, which can help in decision-making of precision fertilization.

[Effects of different organic materials and their composting levels on soil microbial community].

In this paper, a pot experiment with tomato and different organic material amendment was installed in a greenhouse, and the diversity of soil microbial communities and their utilization pattern of amine, amino acid, carbohydrate, carboxylic acid, polymer and miscellaneous were assessed by Biolog method at 60 days after amendment. The results showed that organic material amendment could improve soil microbial community diversity. Fresh distiller grain amendment was a little bit better than its 10 days composting, and the composting level of cow manure had a significant positive or negative effect on the microbial diversity. Among the six carbon sources, the utilization of carbohydrate by soil microbial communities was the highest, and the microbial communities in soils amended with distiller grain had a significantly higher utilization of polymer, relative to those in soils amended with cow manure.