Purpose: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a challenge for adolescents in China. This study aimed to explore the relationship between academic anxiety and self-esteem ...in Chinese candidates preparing for the college entrance examination during the COVID-19 pandemic and to examine the mechanism of mediating effect of self-regulated learning ability. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 293 college entrance examination candidates (including 170 females) from two middle schools in China using a voluntary, web-based, and anonymous questionnaire implemented via the Questionnaire Star app during COVID-19 prevalence in 2020. Results: This study found that 1) students in the high and low academic anxiety groups had different levels of self-regulated learning ability and self-esteem, 2) the academic anxiety, self-regulated learning ability, and self-esteem levels of students were significantly correlated and 3) after controlling the two independent variables of gender and subject type, academic anxiety had a significant negative predictive effect on self-esteem, and self-regulated learning ability played a mediating role between academic anxiety and self-esteem, where the mediating effect was 18.6%. Conclusion: Based on the observations of the present study, self-regulated learning capacity was a mediator between academic anxiety and self-esteem. These findings suggest an underlying process by which low academic anxiety may increase self-esteem in candidates preparing for the college entrance examination by increasing self-regulated learning ability. Keywords: academic anxiety, self-esteem, self-regulated learning ability
Disinfection by-products (DBPs) are regulated in drinking water in a number of countries. This critical review focuses on the issues associated with DBP regulatory compliance, including methods for ...DBP analysis, occurrence levels, the regulation comparison among various countries, DBP compliance strategies, and emerging DBPs. The regulation comparison between China and the United States (US) indicated that the DBP regulations in China are more stringent based on the number of regulated compounds and maximum levels. The comparison assessment using the Information Collection Rule (ICR) database indicated that the compliance rate of 500 large US water plants under the China regulations is much lower than that under the US regulations (e.g. 62.2% versus 89.6% for total trihalomethanes). Precursor removal and alternative disinfectants are common practices for DBP regulatory compliance. DBP removal after formation, including air stripping for trihalomethane removal and biodegradation for haloacetic acid removal, have gained more acceptance in DBP control. Formation of emerging DBPs, including iodinated DBPs and nitrogenous DBPs, is one of unintended consequences of precursor removal and alternative disinfection. At much lower levels than carbonaceous DBPs, however, emerging DBPs have posed higher health risks.
Flavocoxid is a prescription medical food used to manage osteoarthritis (OA) symptoms. Safety concerns based on case reports raised an association with acute liver injury and hypersensitivity ...pneumonitis. We determined incidence rates (IR) of these safety events in a cohort of new users of flavocoxid and prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
MarketScan® claims data (2006–2017) was used to identify patients initiating flavocoxid or NSAIDs. Propensity score matching (1:2 ratio) was used to balance patient characteristics. Outcomes included hospitalization for hypersensitivity pneumonitis, liver injury, gastrointestinal bleeding, myocardial infarction, and acute kidney injury. Poisson regression was used to calculate IRs and Cox regression for calculating adjusted hazard ratios (aHR).
3,337 flavocoxid and 6,674 NSAID users met eligibility criteria. Before matching, flavocoxid users were older (mean 57 vs 51 years), had more polypharmacy (68% vs 29% taking ≥11 medications). After matching, characteristics were well balanced.
The rate of hypersensitivity pneumonitis was 1.1 (95% CI 0.0–5.9) per 1,000 PY for flavocoxid and 0.0 (95% CI 0.0–2.2) for NSAIDs. For hospitalized liver injury, it was 3.2 (95% CI 0.7–9.3) for flavocoxid and 2.4 (95% CI 0.7–6.1) for NSAIDs, aHR = 1.16, 95% CI 0.23–6.01. A lower rate of GI bleed was observed, IR: 5.3 (1.7–12.3) for flavocoxid and 10.2 (5.9–16.3) for NSAIDs, aHR 0.49 (0.18–1.68). There were no significant differences for MI or AKI.
The rate of hypersensitivity pneumonitis and liver injury associated with flavocoxid was low and minimally elevated compared to NSAIDs. Flavocoxid users had a significantly lower risk for hospitalized GI bleeding. The risk–benefit profile of flavocoxid may warrant reevaluation in light of these findings.
Dysphagia is relatively common in patients with Parkinson disease (PD) and can have a negative impact on their quality of life; therefore, it is imperative that its prevalence in PD patients is ...studied. The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence and clinical correlation of dysphagia in Chinese PD patients.
We recruited 116 Chinese PD patients. A videofluoroscopic study of swallowing (VFSS) was used to identify dysphagia. Assessments, including water drinking test, relative motor symptoms, non-motor symptoms (NMS) and quality of life, were performed to analyze the risks of dysphagia.
The prevalence of dysphagia was 87.1%. The comparison of demographic and clinical features between patients with and without dysphagia included sex, education level, disease course, Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE), Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), Question 6, 7 of the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS Part II), Hoehn-Yahr stage (H&Y), water drinking test, 39-item Parkinson Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) and Non-Motor Symptoms Quest (NMSQ). We found significant correlations between dysphagia and age. Using age, disease course, and H&Y stage as the independent variable in our regression analysis for assessing the risk factors of dysphagia in PD patients, age and H&Y stage displayed a strong correlation as the risk factors. The risk of dysphagia in elderly PD patients is 1.078 times greater than that of younger PD patients. Also, the risk of dysphagia in PD patients of a greater H&Y staging is 3.260 times greater than that of lower staging PD patients.
Our results suggest that dysphagia is common in Chinese PD patients. Older patients or those in higher H&Y stages are more likely to experience dysphagia. There is no correlation between dysphagia and PD duration.
Linear friction welded joints of Ti2AlNb-based alloy were subjected to different solution and aging treatments. Relationships among solution and aging conditions, microstructural evolution and ...mechanical properties were investigated. The results indicate that the microstructures are very sensitive to solution conditions. In weld zone, the lath O precipitates at the grain boundaries when the joint is solution treated in O+B2 phase region, while the formation of lath α2 phase occurs in α2+B2+O phase region. In thermo-mechanically affected zone (TMAZ), aggregation of O phase and rim O phase resulted from further decomposition of α2 phase can be found during solution treatment. And after aging treatment, both weld zone and TMAZ are comprised of secondary acicular O phase within B2 grains. Solution and aging treatments have significantly enhanced the microhardness of weld zone due to the precipitation hardening of O phase and refined grain strengthening. After aging treatment, the tensile strength of the joints is further improved because of precipitation of secondary O phase, whereas, elongation is reduced due to the suppression of the hard deformation modes in fine acicular microstructures.
High-grain non-pelleted (HG) and high-grain pelleted (HP) diets are becoming prevalent for ruminant feeding in intensive farms. However, rare information is about their effect on sheep and the ...comparison between these two kinds of diets. The current study investigated how HG and HP diets affected the transcriptome profiles of rumen epithelium in Hu-lamb. Fifteen male Hu-lambs were assigned randomly to three groups (n = 5 for each group). Lambs in the control (CON), HG, and HP groups were fed with low-grain non-pelleted diet (30% grain), HG diet (70% grain), and HP diet (70% grain), respectively, for 42 days. All these lambs were slaughtered to collect ruminal epithelium samples for transcriptome analysis. Results showed both HG and HP diets obviously changed the transcriptome profiles, and 192, 319, and three differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified for CON_HG, CON_HP, and HG_HP comparisons, respectively. Clusters of orthologous group functional classification of CON_HG and CON_HP DEG datasets both showed the enrichments of DEGs in pathways involved in protein biogenesis and modification as well as energy production and conversion. Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway analysis of CON_HG and CON_HP DEG datasets both displayed the enrichments of DEGs in ribosome and oxidative phosphorylation. Almost all these DEGs involved in translation and ribosomal structure and biogenesis as well as oxidative phosphorylation were downregulated in the HG and HP groups compared to the CON group. Furthermore, CON_HP comparison demonstrated more DEGs related to these two pathways than CON_HG comparison. In conclusion, both HG and HP diets inhibited energy production and conversion as well as protein synthesis and modification in ruminal epithelium. HP diet showed lower growth benefits, induced severer rumen acidosis, and more seriously inhibited energy production and protein synthesis as compared to HG diet.
PANDAT is a software package for multicomponent phase diagram calculation. Given a set of thermodynamic parameters for all phases in a system and a set of user constraints, PANDAT automatically ...calculates the stable phase diagram without requiring either prior knowledge of the diagram or special user skills. The features of PANDAT are discussed and some application examples presented. In addition to PANDAT, its calculation engine, PanEngine, is also discussed.
Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is an important problem for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, current approaches to ILD case finding in real-world data have been evaluated only in ...limited settings and identify only prevalent ILD and not new-onset disease. Our objective was to develop, refine, and validate a claims-based algorithm to identify both prevalent and incident ILD in RA patients compared to the gold standard of medical record review.
We used administrative claims data 2006-2015 from Medicare to derive a cohort of RA patients. We then identified suspected ILD using variations of ILD algorithms to classify both prevalent and incident ILD based on features of the data that included hospitalization vs. outpatient setting, physician specialty, pulmonary-related diagnosis codes, and exclusions for potentially mimicking pulmonary conditions. Positive predictive values (PPV) of several ILD algorithm variants for both prevalent and incident ILD were evaluated.
We identified 234 linkable RA patients with sufficient data to evaluate for ILD. Overall, 108 (46.2%) of suspected cases were confirmed as ILD. Most cases (64%) were diagnosed in the outpatient setting. The best performing algorithm for prevalent ILD had a PPV of 77% (95% CI 67-84%) and for incident ILD was 96% (95% CI 85-100%).
Case finding in administrative data for both prevalent and incident interstitial lung disease in RA patients is feasible and has reasonable accuracy to support population-based research and real-world evidence generation.
During winters, the high-speed train travels in the northern of China is struck by to the snow, ice and coldness, massive snow accumulating on the bogies. To understand the cause of snow packing on ...the high-speed train’s bogies clearly, the 3-D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with a RNG double-equations turbulence model and a DPM discrete phase model were used to investigate the flow field carried snow particles in a single high-speed train bogie region and monitor the movement of snow particles. And, the numerical simulation was verified by the wind tunnel test. The results show that when air flows into the region, the airflow will rise and impact on the wheels, brakes, electromotors and other parts of bogie regions. The snow particles will follow the air, while the air direction changes sharply the particles will keep the movement due to the inertia. Afterwards, the snow packs on the bogie. In front of the bogies the streamlines of the air and the particle path lines are basically the same. However, due to the inertia of mass particles, the following characteristics of the snow particles with the air are not obvious in the bogie leeward side. Different structures of the end plates will affect the snow accumulation in the bogie regions.
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