The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of diarrhea among under-five children in low-middle-income countries and identify the sociodemographic factors associated with it. Data of 36 ...countries in sub-Saharan Africa from demographic and Health Surveys (2006-2018) comprising 251 341 mother-child (singleton) dyads were analyzed to estimate the prevalence and various modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors of diarrhea. Occurrence of diarrhea during the last 2 weeks was the outcome variable which was measured by mothers’ observation of the condition. The overall prevalence of having diarrhea during last 2 weeks was 18.44% (19.12% among boys and 17.75% among girls). Boys had higher percentage of having diarrhea than girls in all countries except in Libya. The risk ratios of having diarrhea decreased progressively with higher wealth quintiles; the risks of were respectively 7% RR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.91; 0.97, 11% RR = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.86; 0.92 and 18% RR = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.78; 0.85 lower for households in the middle, richer and richest households. Rural residency was associated with lower risks RR = 0.95, 95% CI = 0.93; 0.98 and not having access to improved water RR = 1.05, 95% CI = 1.03; 1.08 and toilet facilities RR = 0.04, 95% CI = 1.01; 1.07 were associated with higher risks of diarrhea. Regarding children’s characteristics, higher age groups, birth order were associated with higher risks and female sex with lower risks. Children with mothers in the higher age groups and with above secondary level education had lower risks, and primary education had higher risks of diarrhea. Meta-analysis of 36 countries revealed a significantly negative association between wealth quintile and diarrhea (Odds ratio = 0.72, 95% CI = 0.69; 0.74). Findings indicate the presence of a significant wealth gradient in the burden of diarrheal diseases among under-five children in sub-Saharan Africa, and underscores the need for paying special attention to the marginalized communities when designing intervention programs.
Efficient antioxidant enzymatic system contributes to salt tolerance of plants
avoiding ROS over-accumulation. Peroxiredoxins are crucial components of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging ...machinery in plant cells, but whether they offer salt tolerance with potential for germplasm improvement has not been well addressed in wheat. In this work, we confirmed the role of a wheat 2-Cys peroxiredoxin gene
that was identified through the proteomic analysis.
overexpression enhanced the salt tolerance of wheat at both germination and seedling stages.
overexpression enhanced the tolerance to oxidative stress, promoted the activities of ROS scavenging enzymes, and reduced ROS accumulation under salt stress.
overexpression promoted the activity of ROS production associated NADPH oxidase, and the inhibition of NADPH oxidase activity abolished the role of
in salt and oxidative tolerance. Moreover, the inhibition of NADPH-thioredoxin reductase C activity erased the performance of
in the tolerance to salt and oxidative stress. The ectopic expression of
in Arabidopsis exhibited the same performance, showing the conserved role of 2-Cys peroxiredoxins in salt tolerance in plants.
overexpression enhanced the grain yield of wheat under salt stress but not the control condition, not imposing the trade-offs between yield and tolerance. Thus,
could be used for molecular breeding of wheat with superior salt tolerance.
Delivery methods are associated with postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) both in nulliparous and multiparous women. However, few studies have examined the difference in this association between nulliparous ...and multiparous women. This study aimed to explore the difference of maternal and neonatal characteristics and delivery methods between Chinese nulliparous and multiparous women, and then examine the differential effects of different delivery methods on PPH between these two-type women.
Totally 151,333 medical records of women who gave birth between April 2013 to May 2016 were obtained from the electronic health records (EHR) in a northern province, China. The severity of PPH was estimated and classified into blood loss at the level of < 900 ml, 900-1500 ml, 1500-2100 ml, and > 2100 ml. Neonatal and maternal characteristics related to PPH were derived from the same database. Multiple ordinal logistic regression was used to estimate associations.
Medical comorbidities, placenta previa and accreta were higher in the nulliparous group and the episiotomy rate was higher in the multiparous group. Compared with spontaneous vaginal delivery (SVD), the adjusted odds (aOR) for progression to severe PPH due to the forceps-assisted delivery was much higher in multiparous women (aOR: 9.32; 95% CI: 3.66-23.71) than in nulliparous women (aOR: 1.70; 95% CI: 0.91-3.18). The (aOR) for progression to severe PPH due to cesarean section (CS) compared to SVD was twice as high in the multiparous women (aOR: 4.32; 95% CI: 3.03-6.14) as in the nulliparous women (aOR: 2.04; 95% CI: 1.40-2.97). However, the (aOR) for progression to severe PPH due to episiotomy compared to SVD between multiparous (aOR: 1.24; 95% CI: 0.96-1.62) and nulliparous women (aOR: 1.55; 95% CI: 0.92-2.60) was not significantly different. The (aOR) for progression to severe PPH due to vacuum-assisted delivery compared to SVD in multiparous women (aOR: 2.41; 95% CI: 0.36-16.29) was not significantly different from the nulliparous women (aOR: 1.05; 95% CI: 0.40-2.73).
Forceps-assisted delivery and CS methods were found to increase the risk of severity of the PPH. The adverse effects were even greater for multiparous women. Episiotomy and the vacuum-assisted delivery, and SVD were similar to the risk of progression to severe PPH in either nulliparous or multiparous women. Our findings have implications for the obstetric decision on the choice of delivery methods, maternal and neonatal health care, and obstetric quality control.
The measurements from microwave sounding unit (MSU) on board different NOAA polar‐orbiting satellites have been extensively used for detecting atmospheric temperature trend during the last several ...decades. However, temperature trends derived from these measurements are under significant debate, mostly caused by calibration errors. This study recalibrates the MSU channel 2 observations at level 0 using the postlaunch simultaneous nadir overpass (SNO) matchups and then provides a well‐merged new MSU 1b data set for climate studies. The calibration algorithm consists of a dominant linear response of the MSU raw counts to the Earth‐view radiance plus a smaller quadratic term. Uncertainties are represented by a constant offset and errors in the coefficient for the nonlinear quadratic term. A SNO matchup data set for nadir pixels with criteria of simultaneity of less than 100 s and within a ground distance of 111 km is generated for all overlaps of NOAA satellites. The simultaneous nature of these matchups eliminates the impact of orbital drifts on the calibration. A radiance error model for the SNO pairs is developed and then used to determine the offsets and nonlinear coefficients through regressions of the SNO matchups. It is found that the SNO matchups can accurately determine the differences of the offsets as well as the nonlinear coefficients between satellite pairs, thus providing a strong constraint to link calibration coefficients of different satellites together. However, SNO matchups alone cannot determine the absolute values of the coefficients because there is a high degree of colinearity between satellite SNO observations. Absolute values of calibration coefficients are obtained through sensitivity experiments, in which the percentage of variance in the brightness temperature difference time series that can be explained by the warm target temperatures of overlapping satellites is a function of the calibration coefficient. By minimizing these percentages of variance for overlapping observations, a new set of calibration coefficients is obtained from the SNO regressions. These new coefficients are significantly different from the prelaunch calibration values, but they result in bias‐free SNO matchups and near‐zero contaminations by the warm target temperatures in terms of the calibrated brightness temperature. Applying the new calibration coefficients to the Level 0 MSU observations, a well‐merged MSU pentad data set is generated for climate trend studies. To avoid errors caused by small SNO samplings between NOAA 10 and 9, observations only from and after NOAA 10 are used. In addition, only ocean averages are investigated so that diurnal cycle effect can be ignored. The global ocean‐averaged intersatellite biases for the pentad data set are between 0.05 and 0.1 K, which is an order of magnitude smaller than that obtained when using the unadjusted calibration algorithm. The ocean‐only anomaly trend for the combined MSU channel 2 brightness temperature is found to be 0.198 K decade−1 during 1987–2003.
The operational Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) emissivity retrieval uses a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) regression emissivity product as a first guess for its retrieval ...over land. The NOAA approach is based on clear radiances that are simulated from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting forecast and a surface emissivity training data set. The same approach has also been applied to simulated Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) data. Resulted emissivity spectra and maps derived from AIRS and IASI will be presented and discussed.
Berry phase effects have significant influences on the electronic properties of condensed matter. In particular, the anomalous Hall conductivity has been recognized as an intrinsic property of the ...systems with non-zero Berry curvature. Here, we present the anomalous Hall effect observed in the non-magnetic material ZrTe5, which hosts a large Zeeman splitting with Landé g-factor of 26.49. The quantum oscillation analysis reveals non-linear band dispersion near the top of valence band in bulk band structure, and no Weyl node forms with applied magnetic field. The anomalous Hall conductivity reaches 129 Ω−1 cm−1 at 2 K, and shows weak temperature dependence. All these combined with theoretical analysis suggest that the anomalous Hall effect observed in ZrTe5 originates from the non-vanishing Berry curvature induced by combining large Zeeman splitting and strong spin–orbit coupling. Remarkably, the anomalous Hall resistivity reverses its sign from negative to positive at a hydrostatic pressure P = 1.3 GPa, which confirms that the anomalous Hall effect in ZrTe5 is highly related to the band structure-dependent Berry curvature. Our results have verified the anomalous Hall mechanism in ZrTe5 and offer a new platform to study the anomalous Hall effect.
Identity-based encryption (IBE) is a special asymmetric encryption method where a public encryption key can be an arbitrary identifier and the corresponding private decryption key is created by ...binding the identifier with a system’s master secret. In 2003 Sakai and Kasahara proposed a new IBE scheme, which has the potential to improve performance. However, to our best knowledge, the security of their scheme has not been properly investigated. This work is intended to build confidence in the security of the Sakai-Kasahara IBE scheme. In this paper, we first present an efficient IBE scheme that employs a simple version of the Sakai-Kasahara scheme and the Fujisaki-Okamoto transformation, which we refer to as SK-IBE. We then prove that SK-IBE has chosen ciphertext security in the random oracle model based on a reasonably well-explored hardness assumption.
Abstract Background Patient safety culture affects hospital safety and performance. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) is widely used to assess the safety culture in hospital and ...unit level. We aimed to assess strengths and weaknesses of surgical departments compared with others in county hospitals of China with HSOPSC. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 with a Chinese translation of HSOPSC being administered to 1500 staff from 19 county hospitals in Xiaogan city of Hubei province China. We compared the percentage of positive ratings and outcome dimensions (patient safety grade and number of events) between surgical departments and other departments with t tests and χ2 tests. We explored factors affecting overall perceptions of safety, frequency of events reported, and outcome variables with multiple linear regression, two-level multiple regression, or two-level ordered logistic regression analyses. Findings 1379 (92%) of participants completed the HSOPSC. 779 (56%) of respondents were from surgical departments. “Teamwork within units” and “organizational learning and continuous improvement” were strengths, and “staffing” and “non-punitive response to errors” were weaknesses in the surgical departments. The dimensions “non-punitive response to errors” (38·68% vs 40·61%, p=0·001), “supervisor/manager expectations and actions promoting patient safety” (69·42% vs 71·63%, p=0·013), and “hospital management support for patient safety” (61·83% vs 65·28%, p=0·027) in surgical units were lower than those in other units. Staff in surgical units reported more events than other units (mean 2·84 SD 0·93 vs 1·72 0·88, p=0·015); ratios of reported patient safety grades differed between surgical settings and others (p=0·010), with fewer respondents reporting patient safety grades as good or excellent in surgical units than in other departments. A clustering effect of hospital staff within hospitals existed for overall perceptions of safety, patient safety grade, and number of events reported. Four dimensions (“organizational learning and continuous improvement”, “supervisor/manager expectations and actions promoting patient safety”, “feedback and communication about errors”, and “hospital handoffs and transitions”) influenced patient safety grade and just “hospital handoff and transition” influenced events reporting in surgical units. Interpretation Strategies that include recruitment of more staff, improve use of reporting systems of adverse events, and build a non-punitive culture should be adopted in surgical units of county hospitals in China to improve the safety culture. Gaps remain in patient safety that need to be addressed. Funding Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission ( grant 20131577 ).
To investigate the effects of collagen cross-linking using glyceraldehyde on the biomechanical properties of the sclera and the axial elongation of form-deprived myopia in the guinea pig. Thirty-six ...guinea pigs were randomly assigned to four groups: FDM (form-deprived myopia); FDMG (form-deprived myopia treated with glyceraldehyde); FDMS (form-deprived myopia treated with 0.9% isotonic sodium chloride); and normal control (free of form-deprivation). FDM was achieved in the right eye using a latex facemask. The right eye in FDMG was treated with a posterior subtenon injection of 0.5 M glyceraldehyde; 0.9% isotonic sodium chloride was administered to the right eye in FDMS group using the same method. Axial length, refraction, and stress-strain of the sclera were measured at scheduled time points. The treated eyes were also examined histologically by light microscopy. It was found that glyceraldehyde treatment significantly increased the stiffness of the sclera in the FDM eyes and abnormalities have not been observed in the retina and optic nerve of the treated eyes. But the development of myopia was not affected.
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