Foodborne diseases are ongoing and significant public health concerns. This study analysed data obtained from the Foodborne Outbreaks Surveillance System of Wenzhou to comprehensively summarise the characteristics of foodborne outbreaks from 2012 to 2022. A total of 198 outbreaks were reported, resulting in 2,216 cases, 208 hospitalisations, and eight deaths over 11 years. The findings suggested that foodborne outbreaks were more prevalent in the third quarter, with most cases occurring in households (30.8%). Outbreaks were primarily associated with aquatic products (17.7%) as sources of contamination. The primary transmission pathways were accidental ingestion (20.2%) and multi-pathway transmission (12.1%). Microbiological aetiologies (46.0%), including Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Salmonella ssp., and Staphylococcus aureus, were identified as the main causes of foodborne outbreaks. Furthermore, mushroom toxins (75.0%), poisonous animals (12.5%), and poisonous plants (12.5%) were responsible for deaths from accidental ingestion. This study identified crucial settings and aetiologies that require the attention of both individuals and governments, thereby enabling the development of effective preventive measures to mitigate foodborne outbreaks, particularly in coastal cities.

Recent studies of viscous dissipation mechanisms in impacting droplets have revealed distinct behaviours between the macroscale and nanoscale. However, the transition of these mechanisms from the macroscale to the nanoscale remains unexplored due to limited research at the microscale. This work addresses the gap using the many-body dissipative particle dynamics (MDPD) method. While the MDPD method omits specific atomic details, it retains crucial mesoscopic effects, making it suitable for investigating the impact dynamics at the microscale. Through the analysis of velocity contours within impacting droplets, the research identifies three primary contributors to viscous dissipation during spreading: boundary-layer viscous dissipation from shear flow; rim geometric head loss; and bulk viscous dissipation caused by droplet deformation. This prompts a re-evaluation of viscous dissipation mechanisms at both the macroscale and nanoscale. It reveals that the same three kinds of dissipation are present across all scales, differing only in their relative intensities at each scale. A model of the maximum spreading factor (βmax) incorporating all forms of viscous dissipation without adjustable parameters is developed to substantiate this insight. This model is validated against three distinct datasets representing the macroscale, microscale and nanoscale, encompassing a broad spectrum of Weber numbers, Ohnesorge numbers and contact angles. The satisfactory agreement between the model predictions and the data signifies a breakthrough in establishing a universal βmax model applicable across all scales. This model demonstrates the consistent nature of viscous dissipation mechanisms across different scales and underscores the importance of integrating microscale behaviours to understand macroscale and nanoscale phenomena.

Binary nanodroplet collisions have received increasing attention, whilst the identification of collision outcomes and the viscous dissipation mechanism have remained poorly understood. Using molecular dynamics simulations, this study investigates binary nanodroplet collisions over wide ranges of Weber number (We), Ohnesorge number (Oh) and off-centre distances. Coalescence, stretching separation and shattering are identified; however, bouncing, reflexive separation and rotational separation reported for millimetre-sized collisions are not observed, which is attributed to the enhanced viscous effect caused by the ‘natural’ high-viscosity characteristics of nanodroplets. Intriguingly, as an intermediate outcome, holes form in retracting films at relatively high We, arising from the vibration and thermal fluctuation of the films. Due to the combined effects of inertial, capillary and viscous forces, binary nanodroplet collisions fall into the cross-over regime, so estimating viscous dissipation becomes extremely important for distinguishing outcome boundaries. Based on the criterion that stretching separation is triggered only when the residual off-centre kinetic energy exceeds the surface energy required for separation, the boundary equation between coalescence and stretching separation is established. Here, viscous dissipation is calculated by the extracted flow feature from simulations, showing that the ratio of viscous dissipation to the initial kinetic energy depends only on Oh, not on We. Because of complex viscous dissipation mechanisms, the same boundary equation in the cross-over regime has also not been satisfactorily revealed for macroscale collisions. Therefore, the proposed equation is tested for wide data sources from both macroscale and nanoscale collisions, and satisfying agreement is achieved, demonstrating the universality of the equation.

As the southernmost part of the central segment of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt, the northern Alxa area is characterized by abundant Permian magmatism and records key information on the geological evolution of the Palaeo-Asian Ocean. This study reports new zircon U–Pb and Lu–Hf isotopic and whole-rock geochemical data of the early Permian (285–286 Ma) Huisentala gabbro and Huodonghaer diorites from the Zhusileng–Hangwula Belt in the northern Alxa area. The gabbro is characterized by high Al, Ca, Mg# and light rare-earth elements, and low K, P and high field strength elements (e.g., Ti, Nb and Ta). Furthermore, the gabbro shows heterogeneous zircon ϵHf(t) value (−2.5 to +2.6). The Huodonghaer diorites show high MgO (3.46–6.32 wt%), Mg# (49–58), Sr (408–617 ppm) and Ba (223–419 ppm), and low FeOT/MgO (1.27–1.83) and TiO2 (0.48–0.90 wt%), with geochemical features similar to the high-Mg andesite/diorite. They show radiogenic zircon ϵHf(t) values of +1.2 to +4.9 and high Th/Nb ratios. These features suggest that the Huisentala gabbro and the Huodonghaer diorites were derived from the partial melting of mantle peridotite that was metasomatized by subduction-related fluids and by subducted sediment-derived melts, respectively.

We describe an outbreak of echovirus 18 infection involving 10 patients in our neonatal intensive care unit (an attack rate of 33%). The mean age at the onset of illness was 26.8 days. Eighty percent were preterm infants. All were discharged home without sequelae. There were no differences in gestation age, birth weight, delivery mode, use of antibiotics, and parenteral nutrition between the enterovirus (EV) group and non-EV group, but the rate of breastfeeding was significantly higher in the EV group. Separation care and reinforcement of hand-washing seemed to be effective in preventing further spread of the virus. Visiting policy, hygiene practice, and handling of expressed breastmilk should be reinforced.

The laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of plate laser beam splitter (PLBS) coatings is closely related to the subsurface absorption defects of the substrate. Herein, a two-step deposition temperature method is proposed to understand the effect of substrate subsurface impurity defects on the LIDT of PLBS coatings. Firstly, BK7 substrates are heat-treated at three different temperatures. The surface morphology and subsurface impurity defect distribution of the substrate before and after the heat treatment are compared. Then, a PLBS coating consisting of alternating HfO2–Al2O3 mixture and SiO2 layers is designed to achieve a beam-splitting ratio (transmittance to reflectance, s-polarized light) of approximately 50:50 at 1053 nm and an angle of incidence of 45°, and it is prepared under four different deposition processes. The experimental and simulation results show that the subsurface impurity defects of the substrate migrate to the surface and accumulate on the surface during the heat treatment, and become absorption defect sources or nodule defect seeds in the coating, reducing the LIDT of the coating. The higher the heat treatment temperature, the more evident the migration and accumulation of impurity defects. A lower deposition temperature (at which the coating can be fully oxidized) helps to improve the LIDT of the PLBS coating. When the deposition temperature is 140°C, the LIDT (s-polarized light, wavelength: 1064 nm, pulse width: 9 ns, incident angle: 45°) of the PLBS coating is 26.2 J/cm2, which is approximately 6.7 times that of the PLBS coating deposited at 200°C. We believe that the investigation into the laser damage mechanism of PLBS coatings will help to improve the LIDT of coatings with partial or high transmittance at laser wavelengths.

Existing research examining the curvilinear relationship between network centrality and performance tends to focus on the information recipients’ perspective. Focusing on the information providers’ perspective, our study draws upon social exchange theory to demonstrate that the advice-giving centrality-performance relationship for information providers has an inverse U-shape due to decreasing benefits and increasing costs of maintaining more advice-giving ties. We further show that increasing advice-giving centrality increases the likelihood that individuals would become a hindrance to coworkers, as they become bottlenecks impeding efficient workflow. However, our study demonstrates that political skill enables them to overcome the interpersonal challenges associated with high advice-giving centrality. Specifically, individuals with high political skills can better convert advice-giving ties to resources that could assist their cooperation with coworkers, reducing the hindrance they impose. Overall, we provide insights into the trade-off between the benefits and costs of advice-giving ties from a social exchange perspective and examine political skill as an important mitigator of the downsides of large advice-giving networks – a key area that has been hitherto largely unexplored.

We demonstrate an ultra-broadband high temporal contrast infrared laser source based on cascaded optical parametric amplification, hollow-core fiber (HCF) and second harmonic generation processes. In this setup, the spectrum of an approximately 1.8 μm laser pulse has near 1 μm full bandwidth by employing an argon gas-filled HCF. Subsequently, after frequency doubling with cascaded crystals and dispersion compensation by a fused silica wedge pair, 9.6 fs (~3 cycles) and 150 μJ pulses centered at 910 nm with full bandwidth of over 300 nm can be generated. The energy stability of the output laser pulse is excellent with 0.8% (root mean square) over 20 min, and the temporal contrast is >1012 at –10 ps before the main pulse. The excellent temporal and spatial characteristics and stability make this laser able to be used as a good seed source for ultra-intense and ultrafast laser systems.

In this study, we report the first complete mitochondrial genome of the tapeworm Nippotaenia mogurndae in the order Nippotaeniidea Yamaguti, 1939. This mitogenome, which is 14,307 base pairs (bp) long with an A + T content of 72.2%, consists of 12 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, two rRNA genes, and two non-coding regions. Most tRNAs have a conventional cloverleaf structure, but trnS1 and trnR lack dihydrouridine arms of tRNA. The two largest non-coding regions, NCR1 (220 bp) and NCR2 (817 bp), are located between trnY and trnS2 and between nad5 and trnG, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses of mitogenomic data indicate that N. mogurndae is closely related to tapeworms in the order Cyclophyllidea.

The parasite Fasciola hepatica is an important zoonotic parasite. The development of an animal model of F. hepatica's life cycle is critical for studying the biological characteristics of the parasite in snails and mammals. Eggs of F. hepatica of bovine origin were cultured, and metacercariae were obtained after infection of Galba pervia snails. The life cycle system of F. hepatica was initiated in 2 different animals by orally infecting rabbits, SD rats and Kunming mice with the metacercariae. The animals' survival after infection, parasite migration in the animals and pathological damage to the liver were observed. We discovered that rabbits died due to acute suppurative hepatitis 60–69 days after infection, and eggs were found in the feces on day 63 of infection. The liver of SD rats showed punctate lesions on day 3 of infection, and further changes occurred as the infection progressed. However, liver repair was observed at week 9. SD rats survived for more than a year after infection and continued the F. hepatica life cycle. The liver lesions in Kunming mice after infection were similar but more severe than those in SD rats. Death was observed on the 31st post-infection day. We discovered that while rabbits, SD rats and Kunming mice can all be used as animal models of F. hepatica, SD rats are more suitable experimental animals in terms of tolerance and pathological response.

Robotic systems are usually controlled to repetitively perform specific actions for manufacturing tasks. The traditional control methods are domain-dependent and model-dependent with cost of much human efforts. They cannot meet the new requirements of generality and flexibility in many areas such as intelligent manufacturing and customized production. This paper develops a general model-free approach to enable robots to perform multi-step object sorting tasks through deep reinforcement learning. Taking projected heightmap images from different time steps as input without extra high-level image analysis and understanding, critic models are designed to produce a pixel-wise Q value map for each type of action. It is a new trial to apply pixel-wise Q value-based critic networks to solve multi-step sorting tasks that involve many types of actions and complex action constraints. The experimental validations on simulated and realistic object sorting tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Qualitative results (videos), code for simulated and realistic experiments, and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/JiatongBao/DRLSorting

Pyroptosis is a recently identified mechanism of programmed cell death related to Caspase-1 that triggers a series of inflammatory reactions by releasing several proinflammatory factors such as IL-1β and IL-18. The process is characterised by the rupture of cell membranes and the release of cell contents through the mediation of gasdermin (GSDM) proteins. GSDMD is an important member of the GSDM family and plays a critical role in the two pathways of pyroptosis. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a microvascular complication of diabetes and a major cause of end-stage renal disease. Recently, it was revealed that GSDMD-mediated pyroptosis plays an important role in the occurrence and development of DN. In this review, we focus on two types of kidney cells, tubular epithelial cells and renal podocytes, to illustrate the mechanism of pyroptosis in DN and provide new ideas for the prevention, early diagnosis and molecular therapy of DN.

In this paper, the generation of relativistic electron mirrors (REMs) and the reflection of an ultra-short laser off this mirrors are discussed, applying two-dimensional particle-in-cell (2D-PIC) simulations. REMs with ultra-high acceleration and expanding velocity can be produced from a solid nanofoil illuminated normally by an ultra-intense femtosecond laser pulse with a sharp rising edge. Chirped attosecond pulse can be produced through the reflection of a counter-propagating probe laser off the accelerating REM. In the electron moving frame, the plasma frequency of the REM keeps decreasing due to its rapidly expanding. The laser frequency, on the contrary, keeps increasing due to the acceleration of REM and the relativistic Doppler shift from the lab frame to the electron moving frame. Within an ultra-short time interval, the two frequencies will be equal in the electron moving frame, which leads the resonance between laser and REM. The reflected radiation near this interval and the corresponding spectra will be amplified due to the resonance. Through adjusting the arriving time of the probe laser, certain part of the reflected field could be selectively amplified or depressed, leading to the selectively adjusting of the corresponding spectra.

The clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19 were analysed to determine the factors influencing the prognosis and virus shedding time to facilitate early detection of disease progression. Logistic regression analysis was used to explore the relationships among prognosis, clinical characteristics and laboratory indexes. The predictive value of this model was assessed with receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, calibration and internal validation. The viral shedding duration was calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method, and the prognostic factors were analysed by univariate log-rank analysis and the Cox proportional hazards model. A retrospective study was carried out with patients with COVID-19 in Tianjin, China. A total of 185 patients were included, 27 (14.59%) of whom were severely ill at the time of discharge and three (1.6%) of whom died. Our findings demonstrate that patients with an advanced age, diabetes, a low PaO2/FiO2 value and delayed treatment should be carefully monitored for disease progression to reduce the incidence of severe disease. Hypoproteinaemia and the fever duration warrant special attention. Timely interventions in symptomatic patients and a time from symptom onset to treatment <4 days can shorten the duration of viral shedding.

Although prenatal exposure to high ambient temperatures were reported to be associated with preterm birth, limited research assessed the impact of weather-related extreme heat events (EHE) on birthweight, particularly by trimester. We, therefore, investigated the impact of prenatal EHE on birthweight among term babies (tLBW) by trimester and birthweight percentile. We conducted a population-based case–control study on singleton live births at 38–42 gestational weeks in New York State (NYS) by linking weather data with NYS birth certificates. A total of 22,615 cases were identified as birthweight <2500 gram, and a random sample of 139,168 normal birthweight controls was included. EHE was defined as three consecutive days with the maximum temperatures of ≥32.2 °C/90 °F (EHE90) and two consecutive days of temperatures ≥97th percentile (EHE97) based on the distribution of the maximum temperature for the season and region. We estimated odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) with multivariable unconditional logistic regression, controlling for confounders. Overall exposure to EHE97 for 2 d was associated with tLBW (OR 1.05; 95% CI 1.02, 1.09); however, the strongest associations were only observed in the first trimester for both heat indicators, especially when exposure was ≥3 d (ORs ranged: 1.06–1.13). EHE in the first trimester was associated with significant reduction in mean birthweight from 26.78 gram (EHE90) to 36.25 gram (EHE97), which mainly affected the 40th and 60th birthweight percentiles. Findings revealed associations between multiple heat indicators and tLBW, where the impact was consistently strongest in the first trimester.