This study investigates the combined effects of chitooligosaccharide (COS) and florfenicol (FLO) on the inhibition of Escherichia coli in vitro, as well as the pharmacokinetic interactions between ...these compounds in healthy chickens. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of COS and FLO alone and the fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI) after combined treatment were determined using the broth microdilution method and checkerboard method, respectively. Additionally, we evaluated the pharmacokinetic interactions between the 2 types of COS and FLO in healthy chickens. Thirty chickens were randomly divided into 3 groups: Florfenicol group (30 mg/kg), COS J85 group (COS J85 20 mg/kg + florfenicol 30 mg/kg), COS H85 group (COS H85 20 mg/kg + florfenicol 30 mg/kg). Either FLO or COS was orally administered by gavage. The concentrations of FLO in chicken plasma were measured at different time points after the drug withdrawal using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and pharmacokinetic parameters were calculated by a compartmental method. The results showed that COS J85 and COS H85, when combined with FLO, had FICI values of 0.1875 to 0.75 and 0.3125 to 1, respectively, indicating good synergistic or additive effects against Escherichia coli. The pharmacokinetics of FLO alone and in combination with COS followed a 1-compartment model with first-order absorption and elimination. Furthermore, the pharmacokinetic analysis revealed that the elimination half-life (t1/2ke) of florfenicol was significantly increased in the COS H85 group compared to oral administration of florfenicol alone (P < 0.05). Other pharmacokinetic parameters did not show significant changes (P > 0.05), except between the 2 combined treatment groups, where statistical differences were observed for various parameters, excluding the area under the concentration-time curve from the time of dosing to infinity (AUC) and peak concentration (Cmax).
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The pathogenesis of vascular calcification in diabetic patients remains elusive. As an effective information transmitter, small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) carry abundant microRNAs (miRNAs) that ...regulate the physiological and pathological states of recipient cells. In the present study, significant up-regulation of miR-126-5p was observed in sEVs isolated from human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) stimulated with advanced glycation end-products (A-EC/sEVs). Intriguingly, these sEVs suppressed the osteogenic differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) by targeting BMPR1B, which encodes the receptor for BMP, thereby blocking the smad1/5/9 signalling pathway. In addition, knocking down miR-126-5p in HUVECs significantly diminished the anti-calcification effect of A-EC/sEVs in a mouse model of type 2 diabetes. Overall, miR-126-5p is highly enriched in sEVs derived from AGEs stimulated HUVECs and can target BMPR1B to negatively regulate the trans-differentiation of VSMCs both in vitro and in vivo.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Rational allocation of human resources for health is crucial for ensuring public welfare and equitable access to health services. Understanding medical students' job preferences could help develop ...effective strategies for the recruitment and retention of the health workforce. Most studies explore the relationship between extrinsic incentives and job choices through discrete choice experiments (DCEs). Little attention has been paid to the influence of intrinsic altruism on job choice. This study aimed to explore the heterogeneous preferences of medical students with different levels of altruism regarding extrinsic job attributes.
We conducted an online survey with 925 medical students from six hospitals in Beijing from July to September 2021. The survey combined job-choice scenarios through DCEs and a simulation of a laboratory experiment on medical decision-making behavior. Behavioral data were used to quantify altruism levels by estimating altruistic parameters based on a utility function. We fit mixed logit models to estimate the effects of altruism on job preference.
All attribute levels had the expected effect on job preferences, among which monthly income (importance weight was 30.46%, 95% CI 29.25%-31.67%) and work location (importance weight was 22.39%, 95% CI 21.14%-23.64%) were the most salient factors. The mean altruistic parameter was 0.84 (s.d. 0.19), indicating that medical students' altruism was generally high. The subgroup analysis showed that individuals with higher altruism levels had a greater preference for non-financial incentives such as an excellent work environment, sufficient training and career development opportunities, and a light workload. The change in the rate of the uptake of a rural position by individuals with lower levels of altruism is sensitive to changes in financial incentives.
Medical students' altruism was generally high, and those with higher altruism paid more attention to non-financial incentives. This suggests that policymakers and hospital managers should further focus on nonfinancial incentives to better motivate altruistic physicians, in addition to appropriate economic incentive when designing recruitment and retention interventions. Medical school administrations could attach importance to the promotion of altruistic values in medical education.
This paper aims to explore several ways to construct a scientific and comprehensive early warning system (EWS) for local government debt risk in China. In order to achieve this goal, this paper ...studies the local government debt risk from multiple perspectives, i.e., individual risk, contagion risk, static risk and dynamic risk. Firstly, taking China's 30 provinces over the period of 2010~ 2018 as a sample, this paper establishes early warning indicators for individual risk of local government debt, and uses the network model to establish early warning indicators for contagion risk of local government debt. Then, this paper applies the criteria importance though intercrieria correlation (CRITIC) method and coefficient of variation method to obtain the proxy variable Ⅰ, which combines the above two risks. Secondly, based on the proxy variable Ⅰ, both the Markov-switching autoregressive (MS-AR) model and coefficient of variation method are used to obtain the proxy variable Ⅱ, which comprehensively considers the individual risk, contagion risk, static risk and dynamic risk of local government debt. Finally, machine learning algorithms are adopted to generalize the EWS designed in this paper. The results show that: (1) From different perspectives of local government debt risk, the list of provinces that require early warning is different; (2) The support vector machines can well generalize our EWS.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Hydrogel hybrids are one of the key factors in life activities and biomimetic science; however, their development and utilization are critically impeded by their inadequate adhesive strength and ...intricate process. In nature, barnacles can stick to a variety of solid surfaces firmly (adhesive strength above 300 kPa) using a hydrophobic interface, which inspires us to firmly combine hydrogels and polymers through introducing an adhesive layer. By spreading a hydrophobic liquid membrane directly, tough combination of a hydrogel and a polymer substrate could be achieved after one-step polymerization. The fracture energy of the hydrogel attached to the surface of polyvinyl chloride was up to 1200 J m–2 and the tensile strength reached 1.21 MPa. Furthermore, the adhesion samples with this method exhibit an antifatigue performance, having withstood large bends and twists. It should be pointed out that this approach can also be applied to a variety of complicated surfaces. This work may expand the application range of hydrogels and provides an inspiration for hydrogel adhesion.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
In user-generated content (UGC) platforms, content generators (i.e., posters) account for only a minority of users. The majority of users lurk, participating in information diffusion only and making ...no direct contributions to the platforms (i.e., diffusers). In this paper, we study diffusers’ reposting behavior in a UGC platform and compare it with that of posters. We find that diffusers generally behave similarly to posters in reposting. Both groups repost more when seeing more posts and encountering popular posts. Interestingly, their reposting behavior diverges under information redundancy, i.e., when more popular posts are seen in a dense network. Under this condition, diffusers show a much higher propensity to repost, which is (partially) driven by their lesser need for uniqueness (NFU). Overall, this study suggests an exquisite way for platforms to activate their lurking users and it sheds light on their value in generating word-of-mouth and in facilitating information diffusion. It also provides useful guidelines for firms to approach the right type of lurking users (i.e., diffusers in a dense network) by using the right method of stimulation (i.e., offering popular albeit redundant information) during product diffusion online.
Abstract
Background
Healthcare reforms in many countries have shown a movement from pure payment systems to mixed payment systems. However, there remains an insufficient understanding of how to ...design better mixed payment systems and how such systems, especially Diagnosis-Related-Group (DRG)-based systems, benefit patients. We therefore designed a controlled laboratory experiment to investigate the effects of fee-for-service (FFS), DRG, and mixed payment systems on physicians’ service provision.
Methods
A total of 210 medical students were recruited from Capital Medical University as subjects. They, in the role of physicians, were randomly divided into seven groups and chose the quantity of medical services for different patient types under pure FFS, pure DRG, or mixed payment schemes that included two FFS-based mixed payment schemes and three DRG-based mixed payment schemes. There were five rounds of each group of experiments, and each subject made 18 decisions per round. The quantity of medical services provided by subjects were collected. And relevant statistics were computed and analyzed by nonparametric tests and random effects model.
Results
The results showed that the physicians’ overprovision (underprovision) of services under FFS (DRG) schemes decreased under mixed payment schemes, resulting in higher benefit to patients under mixed payment schemes. Patients’ health conditions also affected physicians’ behavior but in different directions. Higher disease severity was associated with higher deviation of physicians’ quantity choices from the optimal quantity under DRG and DRG-based mixed payment schemes, while the opposite was found for FFS and FFS-based mixed payment schemes.
Conclusions
Mixed payment systems are a better way to balance physicians’ profit and patients’ benefit. The design of mixed payment systems should be adjusted according to the patient’s health conditions. When patients are in lower disease severity and resource consumption is relatively small, prospective payments or mixed systems based on prospective payments are more suitable. While for patients in higher disease severity, retrospective payments or mixed systems based predominantly on retrospective payments are better.
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CEKLJ, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The reciprocal degree resistance distance index of a connected graph G is defined as RDRG=∑u,v⊆VGdGu+dGv/rGu,v, where rGu,v is the resistance distance between vertices u and v in G. Let Un denote the ...set of unicyclic graphs with n vertices. We study the graph with maximum reciprocal degree resistance distance index among all graphs in Un and characterize the corresponding extremal graph.
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DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
For online quality control of car engine production, pneumatic measurement instrument plays an unshakeable role in measuring diameters inside engine block because of its portability and ...high-accuracy. To the limitation of its measuring principle, however, the working space between the pneumatic device and measured surface is too small to require manual operation. This lowers the measuring efficiency and becomes an obstacle to perform automatic measurement. In this article, a high-speed, automatic measuring system is proposed to take the place of pneumatic devices by using a laser-based measuring unit. The measuring unit is considered as a set of several measuring modules, where each of them acts like a single bore gauge and is made of four laser triangulation sensors (LTSs), which are installed on different positions and in opposite directions. The spatial relationship among these LTSs was calibrated before measurements. Sampling points from measured shaft holes can be collected by the measuring unit. A unified mathematical model was established for both calibration and measurement. Based on the established model, the relative pose between the measuring unit and measured workpiece does not impact the measuring accuracy. This frees the measuring unit from accurate positioning or adjustment, and makes it possible to realize fast and automatic measurement. The proposed system and method were finally validated by experiments.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Rare earth metals have strong affinity with O and S in molten steel. However, due to high density of rare earth inclusions close to that of molten steel, rare earth inclusions are not easy to float ...up and it is not conducive to take away O and S. In this paper, the influence of rare earth magnesium alloy on the evolution mechanism of inclusions and deoxidization and desulfurization in H13 steel was analyzed, and the thermodynamic calculation was developed. The research results indicate that the composite inclusions of low-density MgO attaching or wrapping on the surface of high-density Ce inclusions are formed after adding Ce–Mg alloy to H13 steel. Compared to Ce inclusions alone, composite inclusions have lower average density and larger diameter, so that they have a faster floating rate according to Stokes law and are easier to float up. Therefore, rare earth magnesium treatment is beneficial to effectively remove the impurity elements such as O and S in the steel.
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