We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) threatens people’s lives, and they pay more attention to health than ever before. Medical workers and other members of society need to have knowledge of responding to medical emergencies, as does the public. With the improvement of the public’s health literacy, we will have more chances to prevent the development of the pandemic. The fifth-generation Pavilion of Health Emergency Experience (Wuhan, China) provides a new health interactive platform. It introduces advanced technology to present how these events happen, how they evolve, and how they are handled. With a deep understanding of the construction and structure of pavilions in this field both at home and abroad, we will know our limitations and make efforts to innovate. Therefore, we should make full use of the advanced technology of public health to benefit the people. And the fifth-generation pavilion deserves to generalize in other areas.
Text readability assessment aims to automatically evaluate the degree of reading difficulty of a given text for a specific group of readers. Most of the previous studies considered it as a classification task and explored a wide range of linguistic features to express the readability of a text from different aspects, such as semantic-based and syntactic-based features. Intuitively, when the external form of a text becomes more complex, individuals will experience more reading difficulties. Based on this motivation, our research attempts to separate the textual external form from the text and investigate its efficiency in determining readability. Specifically, in this paper, we introduce a new concept, namely textual form complexity, to provide a novel insight into text readability. The main idea is that the readability of a text can be measured by the degree to which it is challenging for readers to overcome the distractions of external textual form and obtain the text’s core semantics. To this end, we propose a set of textual form features to express the complexity of the outer form of a text and characterize its readability. Findings show that the proposed external textual form features can be used as effective evaluation indexes to indicate the readability of text. It brings a new perspective to the existing research and provides a new complement to the existing rich features.
Human alveolar echinococcosis is a hard-to-treat and largely untreated parasitic disease with high associated health care costs. The current antiparasitic treatment for alveolar echinococcosis relies exclusively on albendazole, which does not act parasiticidally and can induce severe adverse effects. Alternative, and most importantly, improved treatment options are urgently required. A drug repurposing strategy identified the approved antimalarial pyronaridine as a promising candidate against Echinococcus multilocularis infections. Following a 30-day oral regimen (80 mg kg−1 day−1), pyronaridine achieved an excellent therapeutic outcome in a clinically relevant hepatic alveolar echinococcosis murine model, showing a significant reduction in both metacestode size (72.0%) and counts (85.2%) compared to unmedicated infected mice, which revealed significantly more potent anti-echinococcal potency than albendazole treatment at an equal dose (metacestode size: 42.3%; counts: 4.1%). The strong parasiticidal activity of pyronaridine was further confirmed by the destructive damage to metacestode tissues observed morphologically. In addition, a screening campaign combined with computational similarity searching against an approved drug library led to the identification of pirenzepine, a gastric acid-inhibiting drug, exhibiting potent parasiticidal activity against protoscoleces and in vitro cultured small cysts, which warranted further in vivo investigation as a promising anti-echinococcal lead compound. Pyronaridine has a known drug profile and a long track record of safety, and its repurposing could translate rapidly to clinical use for human patients with alveolar echinococcosis as an alternative or salvage treatment.
A hybrid lattice Boltzmann and finite difference method is applied to study the influence of soluble surfactants on droplet deformation and breakup in simple shear flow. First, the influence of bulk surfactant parameters on droplet deformation in two-dimensional shear flow is investigated, and the surfactant solubility is found to influence droplet deformation by changing average interface surfactant concentration and non-uniform effects induced by non-uniform interfacial tension and Marangoni forces. In addition, the droplet deformation first increases and then decreases with Biot number, increases significantly with adsorption number $k$ and decreases with Péclet number or adsorption depth; and among the parameters, $k$ is the most influential one. Then, we consider three-dimensional shear flow and investigate the roles of surfactants on droplet deformation and breakup for different capillary numbers and viscosity ratios. Results show that in the soluble case with $k=0.429$, the droplet exhibits nearly the same deformation as in the insoluble case due to the balance between surfactant adsorption and desorption; upon increasing $k$ from 0.429 to 1, the average interface surfactant concentration is greatly enhanced, leading to significant increase in droplet deformation. The critical capillary number of droplet breakup $C{{a}_{cr}}$ is identified for varying viscosity ratios in clean, insoluble and soluble ($k=0.429$ and 1) systems. As the viscosity ratio increases, $C{{a}_{cr}}$ first decreases and then increases rapidly in all systems. The addition of surfactants always favours droplet breakup, and increasing solubility or $k$ could further reduce $C{{a}_{cr}}$ by increasing average interface surfactant concentration and local surfactant concentration near the neck during the necking stage.
Although both psychological resilience and social support are widely believed to be effective in alleviating post-traumatic psychiatric symptoms in individuals with traumatic events, there has been a lack of comparative analysis of their intervention effects on different post-traumatic psychiatric symptoms. Furthermore, previous studies have mostly failed to control for potential confounding effects caused by different traumatic events.
Aims
We used the novel network analysis approach to examine the differential moderating effects of psychological resilience and social support on post-traumatic psychiatric symptoms, controlling for the confounding effects of traumatic events.
Method
We recruited 264 front-line rescuers who experienced the same traumatic event. Quantified edge weights and bridge expected influence (BEI) were applied to compare the alleviating effects of psychological resilience and social support.
Results
Our study revealed distinct correlations in a sample of front-line rescuers: social support negatively correlates more with psychosomatic symptoms, notably fatigue in depressive networks and sleep disturbance in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) networks, whereas psychological resilience shows fewer such correlations. Quantitative analysis using BEI indicated that psychological resilience more effectively suppresses depressive and anxiety symptom networks, whereas social support more significantly inhibits PTSD symptom networks.
Conclusions
The current study represents the first attempt to examine the differential effects of psychological resilience and social support on post-traumatic outcomes in real-world emergency rescuers, controlling for the confounding effect of traumatic events. Our results can act as the theoretical reference for future precise and efficient post-trauma psychological interventions.
Music and language are unique communication tools in human society, where stress plays a crucial role. Many studies have examined the recognition of lexical stress in Indo-European languages using beat/rhythm priming, but few studies have examined the cross-domain relationship between musical and linguistic stress in tonal languages. The current study investigates how musical stress and lexical stress influence lexical stress recognition in Mandarin. In the auditory priming experiment, disyllabic Mandarin words with initial or final stress were primed by disyllabic words or beats with either congruent or incongruent stress patterns. Results showed that the incongruent condition elicited larger P2 and the late positive component (LPC) amplitudes than the congruent condition. Moreover, the Strong-Weak primes elicited larger N400 amplitudes than the Weak-Strong primes, and the Weak-Strong primes yielded larger LPC amplitudes than the Strong-Weak primes. The findings reveal the neural correlates of the cross-domain influence between music and language during lexical stress recognition in Mandarin.
Aging plays a crucial role in the mechanisms of the impacts of genetic and environmental factors on blood pressure and serum lipids. However, to our knowledge, how the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the correlation between blood pressure and serum lipids changes with age remains to be determined. In this study, data from the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR) were used. Resting blood pressure, including systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and fasting serum lipids, including total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TGs) were measured in 2378 participants (1189 twin pairs). Univariate and bivariate structural equation models examined the genetic and environmental influences on blood pressure and serum lipids among three age groups. All phenotypes showed moderate to high heritability (0.37–0.59) and moderate unique environmental variance (0.30–0.44). The heritability of all phenotypes showed a decreasing trend with age. Among all phenotypes, SBP and DBP showed a significant monotonic decreasing trend. For phenotype-phenotype pairs, the phenotypic correlation (Rph) of each pair ranged from −0.04 to 0.23, and the additive genetic correlation (Ra) ranged from 0.00 to 0.36. For TC&SBP, TC&DBP, TG&SBP and TGs&DBP, both the Rph and Ra declined with age, and the Ra difference between the young group and the older adult group is statistically significant (p < .05). The unique environmental correlation (Re) of each pair did not follow any pattern with age and remained relatively stable with age. In summary, we observed that the heritability of blood pressure was affected by age. Moreover, blood pressure and serum lipids shared common genetic backgrounds, and age had an impact on the phenotypic correlation and genetic correlations.
OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Glioblastoma (GBM) patients face a poor prognosis. Glioma stem cells (GSCs), a chemo resistant GBM subpopulation, possess enhanced DNA repair and elevated levels of epigenetic modifier KDM1A. This study aims to establish the significance of KDM1A in DNA repair and determine the potential of novel KDM1A inhibitor NCD38 to enhance TMZ efficacy in GSCs. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Patient derived GSCs were obtained via IRB-approved protocol from patient samples at UT Health San Antonio. KDM1A knockdown and knockout cells were generated by transduction of validated KDM1A-specific shRNA or gRNA, respectively. Brain bioavailability of KDM1A inhibitor NCD38 was established using LS-MS/MS. Effect of combination of KDM1A knockdown, knockout, or inhibition with TMZ was studied using cell viability, neurosphere, and self-renewal assays. Mechanistic studies were conducted using CUT&Tag-seq, RNA-seq, immunofluorescence, comet, Western blotting, RT-qPCR, homologous recombination (HR) or non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) DNA repair reporter assays. In vivo efficacy of KDM1A knockdown or inhibitor alongside TMZ treatment was determined using orthotopic murine GBM models. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: KDM1A knockdown, knockout, or inhibition increased efficacy of TMZ in reducing cell viability and self-renewal of GSCs. Pharmacokinetic studies demonstrated KDM1A inhibitor NCD38 is readily brain penetrable. CUT&Tag-seq studies revealed KDM1A is enriched at DNA repair gene promoters. RNA-seq studies suggest KDM1A inhibition reduces DNA double strand break repair gene expression, with these findings validated using RT-qPCR and Western blotting. Knockdown, knockout, or inhibition of KDM1A attenuated HR and NHEJ-mediated DNA repair capacity. Immunofluorescence and comet assay support findings of increased DNA damage in NCD38/TMZ combination treated GSCs. Importantly, KDM1A knockdown or inhibition enhanced efficacy of TMZ and significantly improved survival of orthotopic GBM tumor-bearing mice. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show compelling evidence that KDM1A is essential for DNA repair in GSCs and that KDM1A inhibition sensitizes GBM to TMZ via attenuation of DNA repair pathways. These findings suggest combination of KDM1A inhibitor NCD38 with TMZ could serve as a promising novel therapeutic strategy that can be translated to improve GBM patient outcomes.
It is crucial to understand the genetic mechanisms and biological pathways underlying the relationship between obesity and serum lipid levels. Structural equation models (SEMs) were constructed to calculate heritability for body mass index (BMI), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and the genetic connections between BMI and the four classes of lipids using 1197 pairs of twins from the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR). Bivariate genomewide association studies (GWAS) were performed to identify genetic variants associated with BMI and lipids using the records of 457 individuals, and the results were further validated in 289 individuals. The genetic background affecting BMI may differ by gender, and the heritability of males and females was 71% (95% CI [.66, .75]) and 39% (95% CI [.15, .71]) respectively. BMI was positively correlated with TC, TG and LDL-C in phenotypic and genetic correlation, while negatively correlated with HDL-C. There were gender differences in the correlation between BMI and lipids. Bivariate GWAS analysis and validation stage found 7 genes (LOC105378740, LINC02506, CSMD1, MELK, FAM81A, ERAL1 and MIR144) that were possibly related to BMI and lipid levels. The significant biological pathways were the regulation of cholesterol reverse transport and the regulation of high-density lipoprotein particle clearance (p < .001). BMI and blood lipid levels were affected by genetic factors, and they were genetically correlated. There might be gender differences in their genetic correlation. Bivariate GWAS analysis found MIR144 gene and its related biological pathways may influence obesity and lipid levels.
A pedagogical agent (PA) is a computerized humanlike onscreen image whose purpose is to guide the learner’s attention and facilitate learning. In this chapter, the main findings from research on pedagogical agents are reviewed and a meta-analysis is used to reveal the specific role of PAs on learning outcomes, yielding an effect size of g = .45 on transfer performance and g = .23 on retention performance. We also examine explanations for why PAs could have a positive effect on learning performance based on social agency theory, the embodiment principle, and the signaling principle. In addition, this chapter summarizes the main moderating variables for the effect of PAs, including characteristics of the learner such as the learner's prior knowledge, characteristics of the learning environment such as the subject matter, and characteristics of the PA such as voice and gesture.
The aim of the present study was to compare the rate of preterm birth (PTB) and growth from birth to 18 years between twins conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and twins conceived by spontaneous conception (SC) in mainland China. The retrospective cohort study included 1164 twins resulting from IVF and 25,654 twins conceived spontaneously, of which 494 from IVF and 6338 from SC were opposite-sex twins. PTB and low birth weight (LBW), and growth, including length/height and weight, were compared between the two groups at five stages: infancy (0 year), toddler period (1–2 years), preschool (3–5 years), primary or elementary school (6–11 years), and adolescence (10–18 years). Few statistically significant differences were found for LBW and growth between the two groups after adjusting for PTB and other confounders. Twins born by IVF faced an increased risk of PTB compared with those born by SC (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 8.21, 95% confidence interval [CI] [3.19, 21.13], p < .001 in all twins and aOR 10.12, 95% CI [2.32, 44.04], p = .002 in opposite-sex twins). Twins born by IVF experienced a similar growth at five stages (0–18 years old) when compared with those born by SC. PTB risk, however, is significantly higher for twins conceived by IVF than those conceived by SC.
The objective of this study was to investigate how different obesity measures link to circulating metabolites, and whether the connections are due to genetic or environmental factors. A cross-sectional analysis was performed on follow-up survey data at the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR), which was conducted in four areas of China (Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan) in 2013. The survey collected detailed questionnaire information and conducted physical examinations, fasting blood sampling and untargeted metabolomic measurements among 439 adult twins. Linear regression models and bioinformatics analysis were used to examine the relation of obesity measures, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) with serum metabolite levels and related pathways. A co-twin control study was additionally conducted among 15 obesity-discordant monozygotic (MZ) pairs (intrapair BMI difference >3 kg/m2) to examine any differences in metabolites controlling for genetic factors. Eleven metabolites were associated with BMI, WC and WHR after controlling for genetic and shared environmental factors. Pathway analysis identified pathways such as phenylalanine metabolism, purine metabolism, valine, leucine and isoleucine biosynthesis that were associated with obesity. A wide range of unfavorable alterations in the serum metabolome was associated with obesity. Obesity-discordant twin analysis suggests that these associations are independent of genetic liability.
Echinococcus shiquicus is currently limited to the Qinghai–Tibet plateau, a large mountainous region in China. Although the zoonotic potential remains unknown, progress is being made on the distribution and intermediate host range. In this study, we report E. shiquicus within Gansu and Qinghai provinces in regions located not only around the central areas but also the southeast edge of the plateau and describe their genetic relationship with previous isolates from the plateau. From 1879 plateau pikas examined, 2.39% (95% CI 1.79–3.18) were infected with E. shiquicus. The highest prevalence of 10.26% (4.06–23.58) was recorded in Makehe town, Qinghai province. Overall the prevalence was marginally higher in Qinghai (2.5%, CI 1.82–3.43) than in Gansu (2%, CI 1.02–3.89). The cox1 and nad1 genes demonstrated high and low haplotype and nucleotide diversities, respectively. The median-joining network constructed by the cox1–nad1 gene sequences demonstrated a star-like configuration with a median vector (unsampled haplotype) occupying the centre of the network. No peculiar distinction or common haplotype was observed in isolates originating from the different provinces. The presence of E. shiquicus in regions of the southeast and northeast edges of the Qinghai–Tibet plateau and high genetic variation warrants more investigation into the haplotype distribution and genetic polymorphism by exploring more informative DNA regions of the mitochondrial genome to provide epidemiologically useful insight into the population structure of E. shiquicus across the plateau and its axis.
The Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR), initiated in 2001, has now become the largest twin registry in Asia. From 2015 to 2018, the CNTR continued to receive Chinese government funding and had recruited 61,566 twin-pairs by 2019 to study twins discordant for specific exposures such as environmental factors, and twins discordant for disease outcomes or measures of morbidity. Omic data, including genetics, genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics, and gut microbiome will be tested. The integration of omics and digital technologies in public health will advance our understanding of precision public health. This review introduces the updates of the CNTR, including study design, sample size, biobank, zygosity assessment, advances in research and future systems epidemiologic research.
We give two characterisations of tracially nuclear C*-algebras. The first is that the finite summand of the second dual is hyperfinite. The second is in terms of a variant of the weak* uniqueness property. The necessary condition holds for all tracially nuclear C*-algebras. When the algebra is separable, we prove the sufficiency.
To investigate the impact of viral and bacterial co-infection in hospitalised children with Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (RMPP). Retrospective analysis of 396 children with RMPP in our hospital admitted between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2016 was performed. Nasal aspirate samples were collected for pathogen detection and clinical data were collected. We analysed clinical characteristics, lung imaging characteristics and pathogenic species among these children. Of the 396 RMPP cases, 107 (27.02%) had co-infection with other pathogen, with Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae and Staphylococcus aureus being the most common bacteria of infection and human bocavirus (HBoV), human rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus being the most common viruses of infection. Children with co-infection were younger than that with single infection (P = 0.010). Children with both virus and bacteria co-infection had been the youngest (P = 0.040). Children with co-infection had a longer fever process, higher leukocyte count, higher C-reactive protein compared with single infection (P < 0.05). Children with co-infection had a higher percentage of pnemothorax and diffuse large area of inflammation in chest X-ray manifestation compared with children with single infection (P < 0.05). S. pneumonia and HBoV was the leading cause of co-infection in RMPP. Co-infections led to more disease severity in children with RMPP compared with single infections.
The prevalence of overweight and obesity is growing rapidly in many countries. Socioeconomic inequalities might be important for this increase. The aim of this study was to determine associations of body mass index (BMI), overweight and obesity with educational level and marital status in Chinese twins. Participants were adult twins recruited through the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR), aged 18 to 79 years, and the sample comprised 10,448 same-sex twin pairs. Current height, weight, educational attainment, and marital status were self-reported. Regression analyses and structural equation models were conducted to evaluate BMI, overweight, and obesity associated with educational level and marital status in both sexes. At an individual level, both educational level and marital status were associated with higher BMI and higher risk of being overweight and obesity in men, while in women the effects of educational level on BMI were in the opposite direction. In within-Monozygotic (MZ) twin-pair analyses, the effects of educational level on BMI disappeared in females. Bivariate structural equation models showed that genetic factors and shared environmental confounded the relationship between education and BMI in females, whereas marital status was associated with BMI on account of significant positive unique environmental correlation apart in both sexes. The present data suggested that marital status and BMI were associated, independent of familiar factors, for both sexes of this study population, while common genetic and shared environmental factors contributed to education-associated disparities in BMI in females.
Obesity is associated with blood pressure (BP), but the associations between different obesity indicators and BP have not reached agreement. Besides, both obesity and BP are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Whether they share the same genetic or environmental etiology has not been fully understood. We therefore analyzed the relationship between different obesity indicators and BP components as well as the genetic and environmental contributions to these relationships in a Chinese adult twin sample. Twins aged 18–79 years (n = 941) were included in this study. Body mass index (BMI) was used as the index of general obesity, whereas waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) were used as the indicators of central obesity. BP components included systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Linear regression models and bivariate structural equation models were used to examine the relation of various obesity indicators with BP components, and genetic or environmental influences on these associations, respectively. A strong association of BP components with BMI—and a somewhat weaker association with WC, WHtR, and WHR—was found in both sexes, independent of familial factors. Of these phenotypic correlations between obesity indicators and BP components, 60–76% were attributed to genetic factors, whereas 24–40% were attributed to unique environmental factors. General obesity was most strongly associated with high BP in Chinese adult twins. There were common genetic backgrounds for obesity and BP, and unique environmental factors also played a role.
Dynamical system theory is applied to the integrable nonlinear wave equation ut±(u3–u2)x+(u3)xxx=0. We obtain the single peak solitary wave solutions and compacton solutions of the equation. Regular compacton solution of the equation correspond to the case of wave speed c=0. In the case of c≠0, we find smooth soliton solutions. The influence of parameters of the traveling wave solutions is explored by using the phase portrait analytical technique. Asymptotic analysis and numerical simulations are provided for these soliton solutions of the nonlinear wave equation.