IMPORTANCE: Evidence of whether severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), can be transmitted as an aerosol (ie, ...airborne) has substantial public health implications. OBJECTIVE: To investigate potential transmission routes of SARS-CoV-2 infection with epidemiologic evidence from a COVID-19 outbreak. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This cohort study examined a community COVID-19 outbreak in Zhejiang province. On January 19, 2020, 128 individuals took 2 buses (60 46.9% from bus 1 and 68 53.1% from bus 2) on a 100-minute round trip to attend a 150-minute worship event. The source patient was a passenger on bus 2. We compared risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection among at-risk individuals taking bus 1 (n = 60) and bus 2 (n = 67 source patient excluded) and among all other individuals (n = 172) attending the worship event. We also divided seats on the exposed bus into high-risk and low-risk zones according to the distance from the source patient and compared COVID-19 risks in each zone. In both buses, central air conditioners were in indoor recirculation mode. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction or by viral genome sequencing results. Attack rates for SARS-CoV-2 infection were calculated for different groups, and the spatial distribution of individuals who developed infection on bus 2 was obtained. RESULTS: Of the 128 participants, 15 (11.7%) were men, 113 (88.3%) were women, and the mean age was 58.6 years. On bus 2, 24 of the 68 individuals (35.3% including the index patient) received a diagnosis of COVID-19 after the event. Meanwhile, none of the 60 individuals in bus 1 were infected. Among the other 172 individuals at the worship event, 7 (4.1%) subsequently received a COVID-19 diagnosis. Individuals in bus 2 had a 34.3% (95% CI, 24.1%-46.3%) higher risk of getting COVID-19 compared with those in bus 1 and were 11.4 (95% CI, 5.1-25.4) times more likely to have COVID-19 compared with all other individuals attending the worship event. Within bus 2, individuals in high-risk zones had moderately, but nonsignificantly, higher risk for COVID-19 compared with those in the low-risk zones. The absence of a significantly increased risk in the part of the bus closer to the index case suggested that airborne spread of the virus may at least partially explain the markedly high attack rate observed. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this cohort study and case investigation of a community outbreak of COVID-19 in Zhejiang province, individuals who rode a bus to a worship event with a patient with COVID-19 had a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection than individuals who rode another bus to the same event. Airborne spread of SARS-CoV-2 seems likely to have contributed to the high attack rate in the exposed bus. Future efforts at prevention and control must consider the potential for airborne spread of the virus.
The multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problem with intuitionistic fuzzy information investigated in this paper is very useful for solving complicated decision problems under uncertain ...circumstances. Since experts have their own characteristics, they are familiar with some of the attributes, but not others, the weights of the decision makers to different attributes should be different. We derive the weights of the decision makers by aggregating the individual intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices into a collective intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix. The expert has a big weight if his evaluation value is close to the mean value and has a small weight if his evaluation value is far from the mean value. For the incomplete attribute weight information, we establish some optimization models to determine the attribute weights. Furthermore, we develop several algorithms for ranking alternatives under different situations, and then extend the developed models and algorithms to the MAGDM problem with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information. Numerical results finally illustrate the practicality and efficiency of our new algorithms.
The multiple attribute decision making (MADM) is widely used to rank alternatives with respect to multiple attributes. A new method for the multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) is ...proposed in this paper. In our method, linguistic terms are used during the whole evaluation process, the constrained fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is adopted to measure the relative importance of attributes, which is converted into the deterministic weight vector by using the extent analysis technique, the fuzzy TOPSIS is then used to rank the alternatives. With these improvements and other transformation skills, our new algorithm can better resolve the fuzzy information by decreasing its uncertain level, more scientific and accurate attribute weights can thus be obtained. More importantly, it can significantly reduce the computation amount and can provide more reasonable and robust ranking results. All these advantages are demonstrated by applying our new method to two supplier selection problems, typical complex MAGDM problems investigated extensively due to their practical importance. The sensitivity analysis and comparison with existing approaches sufficiently show the practicality, robustness and efficiency of our new algorithm, which can be applied to different kinds of complex MAGDM problems in reality.
As the most common primary bone tumor, osteosarcoma has an improved survival rates with advancement of treatment methods. A higher rate of metastasis, however, leads to the aggravation of the ...disease. Studies have shown that some genes, namely osteosarcoma metastasis-related genes, participate in the process of tumor metastasis. The peripheral myelin protein 22 (PMP22) gene has recently been found to be abundantly expressed in the oncogenesis of osteosarcoma. Its detailed role and function in the tumor metastasis, however, remains unknown.
The recombinant retroviral plasmid pcDNA3.1-PMP22 was constructed and used to transfect osteosarcoma cells SOSP-M, whose cell proliferation was measured by MTT method. The formation of tumor cell colony, the cell migration and invasion were also measured. The signal transduction pathway MAPK was further analyzed by Western blotting.
The pcDNA3.1-PMP22 plasmid was confirmed to have a 305bp PMP22 fragment by EcoRI-XhoI dual digestion. Compared to the control group, osteosarcoma cell invasion was significantly facilitated by the transfection of pcDNA3.1-PMP22 plasmid (p<0.05). The recombinant plasmid also significantly potentiated the formation of tumor cell colony and increased the migration and invasion ability of tumor cells (p<0.05 in all cases). Phosphorylated p-ERK and p-P38 were also up-regulated by vector transfection (p<0.05).
Osteosarcoma metastasis-related gene PMP22 participates in the proliferation, invasion, migration and colony formation of osteosarcoma cells possibly via the MAPK signal transduction pathway, providing evidences for further investigation of metastatic mechanism of osteosarcoma.
Renal cell carcinoma (RCC), with high morbidity and mortality, is one of the top ten serious cancers. Due to limited therapies and little knowledge about the mechanism underlying RCC, overall ...survival of RCC patients is poor. UBE2C is a member of ubiquitin modification system and promotes carcinogenesis in cancer, but its role in RCC is unknown. Based on the TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) data, UBE2C was over-expressed in a total of 525 RCC tissues and displayed higher expression in advanced tissues (stage IV vs stage I, p<0.05). RT-qPCR and IHC analysis confirmed over-expression of UBE2C in 90 of clinical RCC tissues. Further, UBE2C was associated with clinical factors including TNM stage, gender, and pathological stage. And higher UBE2C expression predicted shorter overall survival and progression-free survival. Both univariate and multivariate COX analysis suggested UBE2C as a critical gene in RCC. Then GO and KEGG analysis showed that cell cycle and DNA replication pathways were two top signaling pathways affected by UBE2C. In vitro assay showed that knockdown of UBE2C in 786-O cells inhibited proliferation and migration significantly. Therefore, this study proves that UBE2C is an important gene in RCC and is essential to proliferation and migration of RCC.
Point cloud registration, as the first step for the use of point cloud data, has attracted increasing attention. In order to obtain the entire point cloud of a scene, the registration of point clouds ...from multiple views is necessary. In this paper, we propose an automatic method for the coarse registration of point clouds. The 2D lines are first extracted from the two point clouds being matched. Then, the line correspondences are established and the 2D transformation is calculated. Finally, a method is developed to calculate the displacement along the z-axis. With the 2D transformation and displacement, the 3D transformation can be easily achieved. Thus, the two point clouds are aligned together. The experimental results well demonstrate that our method can obtain high-precision registration results and is computationally very efficient. In the experimental results obtained by our method, the biggest rotation error is 0.5219o, and the biggest horizontal and vertical errors are 0.2319 m and 0.0119 m, respectively. The largest total computation time is only 713.4647 s.
Introduction
To explore the clinical efficacy of the enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program in terms of blood management for primary hip arthroplasty patients.
Method
Ninety cases of total ...hip arthroplasty in our hospital from October 2020 to January 2022 were selected as the research objects, 45 cases as the control group, and 45 cases as the ERAS group. The control group was given routine care after operation, while the ERAS group was given ERAS management. The leucocytes, haemoglobin, platelets, albumin, D-dimer, C-reactive protein (CRP), total length of stay (LOS), and estimated blood loss after operation were compared between the two groups.
Results
The results showed that the Hb, TPO, and Alb of the ERAS group before operation, one day and three days after operation were significantly higher than those of the control group (
P
< 0.05). The WBC, CRP, and D-dimer in ERAS group were significantly lower than those in the control group (
P
< 0.05). The LOS in ERAS group was significantly less than that in control group (
P
< 0.05).
Discussion
ERAS scheme can reduce the loss of blood and nutrients from surgery in patients. WBC, CRP, and D-dimer in ERAS group were significantly lower than those in the control group. Humane care from ERAS programs can relieve patients’ anxiety to some extent.
Conclusion
ERAS management contributes to the recovery of hip function in patients undergoing THA, reduces blood loss during peri-operative period, and reduces the effect of operation on blood system.
Abstract Background Prior research has highlighted the involvement of a transcriptional complex comprising C-terminal binding protein 2 (CtBP2), histone acetyltransferase p300, and nuclear factor ...kappa B (NF-κB) in the transactivation of proinflammatory cytokine genes, contributing to inflammation in mice with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Nonetheless, it remains uncertain whether the therapeutic targeting of the CtBP2-p300-NF-κB complex holds potential for ARDS suppression. Methods An ARDS mouse model was established using lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposure. RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) was performed on ARDS mice and LPS-treated cells with CtBP2, p300, and p65 knockdown. Small molecules inhibiting the CtBP2-p300 interaction were identified through AlphaScreen. Gene and protein expression levels were quantified using RT-qPCR and immunoblots. Tissue damage was assessed via histological staining. Key findings We elucidated the specific role of the CtBP2-p300-NF-κB complex in proinflammatory gene regulation. RNA-seq analysis in LPS-challenged ARDS mice and LPS-treated CtBP2-knockdown (CtBP2 KD ), p300 KD , and p65 KD cells revealed its significant impact on proinflammatory genes with minimal effects on other NF-κB targets. Commercial inhibitors for CtBP2, p300, or NF-κB exhibited moderate cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo, affecting both proinflammatory genes and other targets. We identified a potent inhibitor, PNSC928, for the CtBP2-p300 interaction using AlphaScreen. PNSC928 treatment hindered the assembly of the CtBP2-p300-NF-κB complex, substantially downregulating proinflammatory cytokine gene expression without observable cytotoxicity in normal cells. In vivo administration of PNSC928 significantly reduced CtBP2-driven proinflammatory gene expression in ARDS mice, alleviating inflammation and lung injury, ultimately improving ARDS prognosis. Conclusion Our results position PNSC928 as a promising therapeutic candidate to specifically target the CtBP2-p300 interaction and mitigate inflammation in ARDS management.
The first cases of human infection with the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus were identified in China in early 2013. This report describes findings for 139 persons with confirmed H7N9 virus infection ...through December 1, 2013.
The first identified cases of human infection with a novel influenza A(H7N9) virus occurred in eastern China during February and March 2013 and were characterized by rapidly progressive pneumonia, respiratory failure, the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and fatal outcomes.
1
We analyzed available data from field investigations to characterize the descriptive epidemiology of laboratory-confirmed cases of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus infection in humans that were reported to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) as of December 1, 2013. In this report, we summarize the epidemiologic findings of case investigations and follow-up monitoring of close contacts of . . .
The upper tropospheric water vapor is a key component of Earth's climate. Understanding variations in upper tropospheric water vapor and identifying its influencing factors is crucial for enhancing ...our comprehension of global climate change. While many studies have shown the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and global warming on water vapor, how they affect the upper tropospheric water vapor remains unclear. Long-term, high-precision ERA5 specific humidity data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) provided the data foundation for this study. On this basis, we successfully obtained the patterns of global warming (Independent Component 1, IC1) and ENSO (Independent Component 2, IC2) by employing the strategy of independent component analysis (ICA) combined with non-parametric optimal dimension selection to investigate the upper tropospheric water vapor variations and responses to ENSO and global warming. The results indicate that global warming and ENSO are the primary factors contributing to water vapor variations in the upper troposphere, achieving the significant correlations of 0.87 and 0.61 with water vapor anomalies respectively. Together, they account for 86% of the global interannual variations in water vapor. Consistent with previous studies, our findings also find positive anomalies in upper tropospheric water vapor during El Niño years and negative anomalies during La Niña years. Moreover, the influence extent of ENSO on upper tropospheric water vapor varies with the changing seasons.