Analysis of the spatial distribution and influencing factors of China national forest villages.

China national forest villages are the agents to promote rural greening and beautification, as well as further implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. It is of great significance to study their spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors. Therefore, taking 7586 China national forest villages as examples, the methods of nearest neighbor index, Tyson polygon, cold and hot spot analysis, and nuclear density index are used to study the spatial distribution characteristics of China national forest villages and their influencing factors. The results show that (1) since the nearest neighbor index is less than 1, and the Tyson polygon area variation coefficient is much greater than 64%, it is comprehensively determined that the distribution of China national forest villages belongs to agglomerated distribution. (2) The spatial clustering is characterized by "hot in the south and cold in the north." The hot spots are dominated by southern regions such as Sichuan, Hubei, and Jiangsu, and the cold spots are dominated by northern regions such as Heilongjiang, Jilin and Xinjiang. (3) The distribution characteristics of nuclear density have a strong correlation with the distribution characteristics of forest vegetation and urban agglomerations. Most high-density areas are located within the forest vegetation coverage. The first batch forms the Yangtze River Delta and Central Plains urban agglomerations high-density areas, and the second batch forms the Yangtze River Delta and Central Plains high-density areas. (4) Elevation, aspect, river, forest resources endowment, traffic, economic development level, and population size are important factors affecting the distribution of China national forest villages, and their distribution presents the characteristics of "low altitude, positive direction, near water, rich forest resources, convenient transportation, developed economy, and dense population." The research can provide reference for the evaluation and construction of China national forest villages and the implementation of village beautification and rural revitalization strategies in the future.

Dynamic evolution and trend prediction in coupling coordination between urban and rural space utilization efficiency based local and tele-coupling model.

Optimizing the pattern of territorial space utilization is one of the key tasks to achieve the sustainable development goals. With the accelerating rate of global urbanization, the understanding of territorial space utilization efficiency, role and potential is a prerequisite for alleviating contradictions in urban and rural space distribution. The city cluster is the main form of organization for urban development in future, so the study attempted to explore the urban and rural space utilization efficiency (URSUE) in Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration (CCEC) from coupling coordination degree (CCD) perspective. Considering the gradual increase in the trend of remote interactions between URSUE, we further introduced the Local and Tele-coupling coordination (LTCCD) model that takes into account interactive development relationship between different systems. The results of the study show that: In CCEC, the more economically developed cities indicated that urban spatial utilization efficiency lags behind rural spatial utilization efficiency; The LTCCD in the geographic center region will indicate a higher level but the LTCCD in the economic core cities is higher compared with their CCD level, especially in Chengdu City. This suggests that the LTCCD model is better able to take into account regional development correlations and spatial spillovers effect. This study attempts to explore several key issues of urban-rural spatial allocation in the process of urbanization development and to provide guidance for the territorial space utilization planning in urban agglomerations.

Risk assessment for sandwich vertebral fractures in the treatment of osteoporosis vertebral compression fractures using two methods of bone cement reinforcement.

PURPOSE: Bone cement augmentation surgery includes percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) and percutaneous kyphoplasty (PKP). In this study, we aimed to investigate the risk of sandwich vertebral fractures in the treatment of osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures via PVP and PKP. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analytical study and included 61 patients with osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures who underwent PVP and PKP at the Spinal Surgery Department of The Second Hospital of Liaocheng Affiliated with Shandong First Medical University from January 2019 to January 2022. These patients were divided into the following two groups by simple random sampling: group A (N = 30) underwent PVP treatment and group B (N = 31) underwent PKP treatment. The surgical time, fluoroscopy frequency, visual analog scale (VAS) score, amount of bone cement, the leakage rate of bone cement in intervertebral space, Cobb angle, and the incidence of fractures in both groups of sandwich vertebral were recorded after 1 year of follow-up. RESULTS: No statistically significant difference was found in terms of surgical time, fluoroscopy frequency, and VAS score between the two groups (P > 0.05). However, a statistically significant difference was found in terms of the amount of bone cement, the leakage rate of bone cement intervertebral space, Cobb angle, and the incidence of vertebral body fractures in both groups (P < 0.05). The amount of bone cement, the leakage rate of bone cement in intervertebral space, Cobb angle, and sandwich vertebral fractures were higher in Group A than in Group B. CONCLUSIONS: When PVP and PKP were performed to treat osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures, the sandwich vertebral exhibited a risk of fracture. PVP exhibited a greater relative risk than PKP, which may be due to the relatively larger amount of bone cement, higher rate of bone cement leakage in the intervertebral space, and larger Cobb angle.

Expression of miR-195 and its target gene Bcl-2 in human intervertebral disc degeneration and their effects on nucleus pulposus cell apoptosis.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression of miR-195 and its target gene Bcl-2 in intervertebral disc degeneration (IVDD) and its effect on nucleus pulposus (NP) cell apoptosis. METHODS: The expressions of miR-195 and Bcl-2 in NP tissues of IVDD patients were quantified by qRT-PCR and western blotting, respectively. NP cells were divided into blank group, TNF-α group, TNF-α + miR-NC group, TNF-α + siBcl-2 group, and TNF-α + miR-195 inhibitors + siBcl-2 group. Cell proliferation was detected by MTT assay, cell apoptosis evaluated by flow cytometry, and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) tested by JC-1 staining. Moreover, the function of miR-195 on IVDD in vivo was investigated using a puncture-induced IVDD rat model. RESULTS: IVDD patients had significantly increased miR-195 expression and decreased Bcl-2 protein expression in NP tissues. The expression of miR-195 was negatively correlated with the expression of Bcl-2 in IVDD patients. Dual-luciferase reporter gene assay indicated that Bcl-2 was a target gene of miR-195. In comparison with blank group, TNF-α group showed decreased cell proliferation and MMP, increased cell apoptosis, upregulated expression of miR-195, Bax, and cleaved caspase 3, and downregulated Bcl-2 protein, while these changes were attenuated by miR-195 inhibitors. Additionally, siBcl-2 can reverse the protective effect of miR-195 inhibitors on TNF-α-induced NP cells. Besides, inhibition of miR-195 alleviated IVDD degeneration and NP cell apoptosis in the rat model. CONCLUSION: MiR-195 was significantly upregulated in NP tissues of IVDD patients, and inhibition of miR-195 could protect human NP cells from TNF-α-induced apoptosis via upregulation of Bcl-2.