Conflicts of interest (COI) disclosure policies are critical to enhancing the integrity of research. However, it is unclear how Chinese medical journals interpret and enforce such policies.
The goal ...of this investigation is to determine the current status of COI disclosure policy enforcement in Chinese medical journals and to promote comprehensive COI policies.
In this cross-sectional study conducted from September 1st to October 29th 2017, journal instructions, websites and print issues of journals indexed by the Core Journals of China (version 2014), in the medical and health sector, were reviewed to identify whether COI disclosure policies existed and how complete these policies were.
Of 248 eligible journals, 78 (31%) mentioned COI policies; 9 (4%) applied standardized disclosure forms; 18 (7%) required disclosure statements in articles; 4 (2%) mentioned policy bases; none validated disclosed COIs; 2 (1%) mentioned how they dealt with breaches; 18 (7%) involved the management of disclosed COIs; and 62 (25%) and 55 (22%) noted financial and nonfinancial COIs, respectively. Seventy-eight journals (31%) mentioned COIs in research and authors' obligation towards disclosure; 2 (1%) and 6 (2%) mentioned family members' and institutional COIs, respectively. Twenty-two and 11 journals mentioned at least one form of financial and nonfinancial COI type in research, respectively. Seven journals (3%) required disclosure of the source of financial support in research, but no journals mentioned the amount of support. Seven (3%) and 12 (5%) journals mentioned COIs in the editorial process and peer-review, respectively. Clinical journals (45%) paid more attention to COI policies than non-clinical journals.
Approximately one-third of Chinese medical journals had COI policies, and of the journals that mentioned financial COIs most required nonfinancial COIs. However, the extent to which journals implemented COI policies was insufficient. There is a generic lack of standardized disclosure forms and management of COIs in most journals. The subject and details of COIs involved in the editorial and peer-review process received less attention than those in research.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The kidney is an important organ for maintaining normal metabolism and stabilising the internal environment, in which, the heterogeneity of cell types has hindered the progress in understanding the ...mechanisms underlying kidney disease. In recent years the application of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) in nephrology has developed rapidly. In this review, we summarized the technical platform related to scRNA-seq and the role of this technology in investigating the onset and development of kidney diseases, starting from several common kidney diseases (mainly including lupus nephritis, renal cell carcinoma, diabetic nephropathy and acute kidney injury), and provide a reference for the application of scRNA-seq in the study of kidney disease diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.
Bilayer graphene has been predicted to host a moiré miniband with flat dispersion if the layers are stacked at specific twist angles known as the ’magic angles’1,2. Recently, twisted bilayer graphene ...(tBLG) with a magic angle twist was reported to exhibit a correlated insulating state and superconductivity3,4, where the presence of the flat miniband in the system is thought to be essential for the emergence of these ordered phases in the transport measurements. Although tunnelling spectroscopy5–9 and electronic compressibility measurements10 in tBLG have found a van Hove singularity that is consistent with the presence of the flat miniband, a direct observation of the flat dispersion in the momentum space of such a moiré miniband in tBLG is still lacking. Here, we report the visualization of this flat moiré miniband by using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with nanoscale resolution. The high spatial resolution of this technique enabled the measurement of the local electronic structure of the tBLG. The measurements demonstrate the existence of the flat moiré band near the charge neutrality for tBLG close to the magic angle at room temperature.The flat electronic bands that are associated with ordered phases in twisted bilayer graphene at a magic twist angle have been imaged using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
Aiming at the problems of low detection accuracy and slow speed caused by the complex background of tea sprouts and the small target size, this paper proposes a tea bud detection algorithm ...integrating GhostNet and YOLOv5. To reduce parameters, the GhostNet module is specially introduced to shorten the detection speed. A coordinated attention mechanism is then added to the backbone layer to enhance the feature extraction ability of the model. A bi-directional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) is used in the neck layer of feature fusion to increase the fusion between shallow and deep networks to improve the detection accuracy of small objects. Efficient intersection over union (EIOU) is used as a localization loss to improve the detection accuracy in the end. The experimental results show that the precision of GhostNet-YOLOv5 is 76.31%, which is 1.31, 4.83, and 3.59% higher than that of Faster RCNN, YOLOv5 and YOLOv5-Lite respectively. By comparing the actual detection effects of GhostNet-YOLOv5 and YOLOv5 algorithm on buds in different quantities, different shooting angles, and different illumination angles, and taking F1 score as the evaluation value, the results show that GhostNet-YOLOv5 is 7.84, 2.88, and 3.81% higher than YOLOv5 algorithm in these three different environments.
In the study of modern optics, the work of terahertz metamaterial absorbers is mostly multi-band perfect absorbers and ultra-wideband perfect absorbers. In contrast, in practical applications, ...metamaterial absorbers with adjustable resonance frequency or amplitude play an essential role in many forms. Here, we firstly designed an ultra-wideband terahertz metamaterial perfect absorber, achieving over 99% perfect absorption in the 6.6-8.9 THz range. Secondly, based on the absorber, phase change material VO 2 was added to improve the structure, and three tunable terahertz metamaterial absorbers based on VO 2 were designed, respectively realizing broadband movement and conversion between broadband and multi-band. Also, the terahertz absorber with dynamic tuning characteristics can flexibly control the absorption performance, providing an excellent platform for the realization of terahertz filtering, modulation, and so on.
Freesia hybrida
is rich in flower colors with beautiful flower shapes and pleasant aroma. Flavonoids are vital to the color formation of its flowers. In this study, five
Freesia
cultivars with ...different flower colors were used to study on the level of accumulation of their flavonoids and expression of flavonoid-related genes and further explore new novel transcription factor (TF). Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography and VION ion mobility quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS) were used to determine the flavonoids. Combined with transcriptome sequencing technology, the molecular mechanism of the flavonoid metabolism difference in
Freesia
was revealed. A total of 10 anthoxanthin components and 12 anthocyanin components were detected using UPLC-Q-TOF-MS. All six common anthocyanin aglycones in high plants, including cyanidin, delphinidin, petunidin, peonidin, malvidin, and pelargonidin, were detected in
Freesia
at first time in this study. In orange, yellow, and white cultivars, anthoxanthins gradually decreased with the opening of the petals, while in red and purple cultivars, anthoxanthins first increased and then decreased. No anthocyanin was detected in yellow and white cultivars, while anthocyanins increased with the opening of the petals and reached their maximum at the flowering stage (S3) in other three cultivars. The correlation analysis revealed that the color of
Freesia
petals was closely related to the composition and content of anthoxanthins and anthocyanins. Petals of five cultivars at S3 were then selected for transcriptome sequencing by using the Illumina Hiseq 4000 platform, and a total of 100,539 unigenes were obtained. There were totally 5,162 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) when the four colored cultivars were compared with the white cultivar at S3. Comparing all DEGs with gene ontology (GO), KEGG, and Pfam databases, it was found that the genes involved in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway were significantly different. In addition, AP2, WRKY, and bHLH TF families ranked the top three among all differently expressed TFs in all DEGs. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) technology was used to analyze the expression patterns of the structural genes of flavonoid biosynthesis pathway in
Freesia
. The results showed that metabolic process was affected significantly by structural genes in this pathway, such as
CHS1
,
CHI2
,
DFR1
,
ANS1
,
3GT1
, and
FLS1
. Cluster analysis was performed by using all annotated WRKY and AP2 TFs and the above structural genes based on their relatively expression. Four novel candidate TFs of WRKY and AP2 family were screened. Their spatiotemporal expression patterns revealed that these four novel TFs may participate in the regulation of the flavonoid biosynthesis, thus controlling its color formation in
Freesia
petals.
Bacterial infection, excessive inflammation and damaging blood vessels network are the major factors to delay the healing of diabetic ulcer. At present, most of wound repair materials are passive and ...can't response to the wound microenvironment, resulting in a low utilization of bioactive substances and hence a poor therapeutic effect. Therefore, it's essential to design an intelligent wound dressing responsive to the wound microenvironment to achieve the release of drugs on-demand on the basis of multifunctionality. In this work, metformin-laden CuPDA NPs composite hydrogel (Met@ CuPDA NPs/HG) was fabricated by dynamic phenylborate bonding of gelatin modified by dopamine (Gel-DA), Cu-loaded polydopamine nanoparticles (CuPDA NPs) with hyaluronic acid modified by phenyl boronate acid (HA-PBA), which possessed good injectability, self-healing, adhesive and DPPH scavenging performance. The slow release of metformin was achieved by the interaction with CuPDA NPs, boric groups (B–N coordination) and the constraint of hydrogel network. Metformin had a pH and glucose responsive release behavior to treat different wound microenvironment intelligently. Moreover, CuPDA NPs endowed the hydrogel excellent photothermal responsiveness to kill bacteria of >95% within 10 min and also the slow release of Cu2+ to protect wound from infection for a long time. Met@ CuPDA NPs/HG also recruited cells to a certain direction and promoted vascularization by releasing Cu2+. More importantly, Met@CuPDA NPs/HG effectively decreased the inflammation by eliminating ROS and inhibiting the activation of NF-κB pathway. Animal experiments demonstrated that Met@CuPDA NPs/HG significantly promoted wound healing of diabetic SD rats by killing bacteria, inhibiting inflammation, improving angiogenesis and accelerating the deposition of ECM and collagen. Therefore, Met@CuPDA NPs/HG had a great application potential for diabetic wound healing.
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•A metformin-laden CuPDA NPs composite hydrogel (Met@ CuPDA NPs/HG) was fabricated.•The hydrogel had a microenvironment response to release metformin intelligently.•The hydrogel eradicated bacteria by photothermal responsiveness and the slow release of Cu2+.•The hydrogel promoted vascularization and decreased the inflammation.•Met@ CuPDA NPs/HG had a significant promotion on diabetic infected wound healing.
The addition of fillers has become a common method of improving the performance of composites. Therefore, many types of fillers are commercially available while several other types are being ...investigated. The understanding of the effect of additives on the processing and product quality is crucial for manufacturing products economically and with the desired qualities. This study focuses on investigating the possible effects of graphene and fumed silica nanoparticle fillers on polymer processing and product properties. Three polymeric materials were processed with these two fillers via a Mini-Lab twin screw extruder to obtain a better dispersion, and then the properties of samples produced were explored with a number of different testing techniques (e.g., tensile testing, SEM, DSC and rheometer). The Young's modulus of amorphous materials was strongly affected by the filler content, while crystalline materials were not that sensitive to the filler content/level. The Young's modulus of polystyrene-based polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) with 8 wt% fillers at 200 °C and 50 rpm was found to be of approximately 1786 MPa. Also, as clearly recognized by the SEM images and one glass transition temperature (Tg) value rather than two Tg values, it can be ensured that the particles are finely dispersed within PNCs regardless the filler type/content. And then, the rheological results further confirmed that the properties of PNCs are affected by the filler content and set conditions, while the Tg of PNCs was mainly dependent on the matrix and have slightly influenced by the degree of filler dispersion. Moreover, the energy demand was also explored during all the experimental trials for possible comparison and indicated that the energy consumption increased with the filler content but the magnitude of increase was different with different polymer type.
Sialic acid-binding immunoglobulin-like lectin 15 (Siglec 15) is a novel immunomodulatory target and was identified as an immune suppressor in the tumor microenvironment. Accurate assessment of ...Siglec 15 expression levels is critical for cancer prognosis and treatment. In this work, a natural receptor-based immunoelectrochemical sensor is designed to mimic the interaction between Siglec 15 and DNAX-activation protein (DAP 12) in the cellular signal pathway. DAP 12 labeled with the electrochemical signal molecule Fc is recognized by Siglec 15 through specific interaction on the electrode surface and used as the signal reporter. Anti-Siglec 15 modified MNPs (MNPs-Ab) were used as the extraction agent for the magnetic extraction of target analytes in complex matrices. Free Anti-Siglec 15 will “squeeze out” the DAP 12-Fc to bind the Siglec 15 on the electrode surface, resulting a sensitive electrochemical signal change according to the Siglec 15 concentration in sample. Natural receptor-based competitive assay ensure the efficient binding between antibody and Siglec 15 and decrease the nonspecific interaction. Therefore, this simple natural receptor-based competitive assay with sensitivity and selectivity has potential for practical clinical application.
•A natural receptor-based biosensor is fabricated for the first time.•This method shows excellent specificity and selectivity for Siglec 15.•Siglec 15 can be measured in 1 pg/mL–100 ng/mL with a detection limit of 0.82 pg/mL.
Excitons are elementary optical excitation in semiconductors. The ability to manipulate and transport these quasiparticles would enable excitonic circuits and devices for quantum photonic ...technologies. Recently, interlayer excitons in 2D semiconductors have emerged as a promising candidate for engineering excitonic devices due to their long lifetime, large exciton binding energy, and gate tunability. However, the charge-neutral nature of the excitons leads to weak response to the in-plane electric field and thus inhibits transport beyond the diffusion length. Here, we demonstrate the directional transport of interlayer excitons in bilayer WSe
driven by the propagating potential traps induced by surface acoustic waves (SAW). We show that at 100 K, the SAW-driven excitonic transport is activated above a threshold acoustic power and reaches 20 μm, a distance at least ten times longer than the diffusion length and only limited by the device size. Temperature-dependent measurement reveals the transition from the diffusion-limited regime at low temperature to the acoustic field-driven regime at elevated temperature. Our work shows that acoustic waves are an effective, contact-free means to control exciton dynamics and transport, promising for realizing 2D materials-based excitonic devices such as exciton transistors, switches, and transducers up to room temperature.
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