A recently developed pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2 bursting in Wuhan, China, has quickly spread across the world. We report the clinical characteristics of 82 cases of death from COVID-19 in a ...single center. Clinical data on 82 death cases laboratory-confirmed as SARS-CoV-2 infection were obtained from a Wuhan local hospital's electronic medical records according to previously designed standardized data collection forms. All patients were local residents of Wuhan, and a large proportion of them were diagnosed with severe illness when admitted. Due to the overwhelming of our system, a total of 14 patients (17.1%) were treated in the ICU, 83% of deaths never received Critical Care Support, only 40% had mechanical ventilation support despite 100% needing oxygen and the leading cause of death being pulmonary. Most of the patients who died were male (65.9%). More than half of the patients who died were older than 60 years (80.5%), and the median age was 72.5 years. The bulk of the patients who died had comorbidities (76.8%), including hypertension (56.1%), heart disease (20.7%), diabetes (18.3%), cerebrovascular disease (12.2%), and cancer (7.3%). Respiratory failure remained the leading cause of death (69.5%), followed by sepsis/MOF (28.0%), cardiac failure (14.6%), hemorrhage (6.1%), and renal failure (3.7%). Furthermore, respiratory, cardiac, hemorrhagic, hepatic, and renal damage were found in 100%, 89%, 80.5%, 78.0%, and 31.7% of patients, respectively. On admission, lymphopenia (89.2%), neutrophilia (74.3%), and thrombocytopenia (24.3%) were usually observed. Most patients had a high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio of >5 (94.5%), high systemic immune-inflammation index of >500 (89.2%), and increased C-reactive protein (100%), lactate dehydrogenase (93.2%), and D-dimer (97.1%) levels. A high level of IL-6 (>10 pg/ml) was observed in all detected patients. The median time from initial symptoms to death was 15 days (IQR 11-20), and a significant association between aspartate aminotransferase (p = 0.002), alanine aminotransferase (p = 0.037) and time from initial symptoms to death was remarkably observed. Older males with comorbidities are more likely to develop severe disease and even die from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Respiratory failure is the main cause of COVID-19, but the virus itself and cytokine release syndrome-mediated damage to other organs, including cardiac, renal, hepatic, and hemorrhagic damage, should be taken seriously as well.
Summary
Cold stress severely affects plant growth and yield. C‐repeat binding factors (CBFs) play important roles in the response to cold stress. In the present study, we identified an R2R3‐MYB ...transcription factor (TF) MdMYB23 from apple (Malus × domestic) using transcriptome analyses, which was notably induced in response to cold stress. Transgenic apple calli and Arabidopsis with overexpression of MdMYB23 exhibited increased cold tolerance. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) and transient expression assays indicated that MdMYB23 directly bound to the promoters of MdCBF1 and MdCBF2 and activated their expression. MdMYB23 interacted with the promoter of MdANR, a key modulator of proanthocyanidin biosynthesis, and activated its expression to promote proanthocyanidin accumulation and reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging. MdBT2 was identified as an MdMYB23‐interacting protein using yeast two‐hybrid (Y2H), pull‐down, and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assays. MdBT2 repressed cold tolerance and proanthocyanidin accumulation by promoting the degradation of MdMYB23 protein. Our findings shed light on the functions of MYB TFs and underlying mechanism in the modulation of plant cold tolerance.
Significance Statement
An apple R2R3‐MYB TF MdMYB23 increases cold tolerance and proanthocyanidin accumulation by directly activating the expression of MdCBF1/2 and MdANR. MdBT2 represses cold tolerance and proanthocyanidin accumulation by promoting the degradation of MdMYB23 protein.
Following the first experimental realization of graphene, other ultrathin materials with unprecedented electronic properties have been explored, with particular attention given to the heavy group-IV ...elements Si, Ge and Sn. Two-dimensional buckled Si-based silicene has been recently realized by molecular beam epitaxy growth, whereas Ge-based germanene was obtained by molecular beam epitaxy and mechanical exfoliation. However, the synthesis of Sn-based stanene has proved challenging so far. Here, we report the successful fabrication of 2D stanene by molecular beam epitaxy, confirmed by atomic and electronic characterization using scanning tunnelling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, in combination with first-principles calculations. The synthesis of stanene and its derivatives will stimulate further experimental investigation of their theoretically predicted properties, such as a 2D topological insulating behaviour with a very large bandgap, and the capability to support enhanced thermoelectric performance, topological superconductivity and the near-room-temperature quantum anomalous Hall effect.
Aims
Inconclusive findings of lipid‐lowering medications (LLMs) on cancer survival benefit require more evidence. We tested the hypothesis that adherence to this drug is associated with reduced ...cancer‐specific mortality in a homogeneous population who had used this drug before cancer diagnosis.
Methods
The Australian Cancer Database was linked to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme database, and to the National Death Index (up to 2015). Medication adherence was calculated by proportion of days covered. Cox regression models with time‐varying covariates were used to derive multivariable‐adjusted cause‐specific hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the associations between adherence to LLMs, statins, lipophilic, and hydrophilic statins and cancer‐specific mortality.
Results
From 2003 to 2013, 3 separate cohorts of 20 046, 11 719 and 6430 female patients with newly diagnosed breast, colorectal cancer, and melanoma respectively were identified. The 1‐year adherence was similar at 1‐year prediagnosis in the 3 cohorts, on average 82%. Each 10% increase in 1‐year adherence to LLMs was inversely associated with cancer‐specific mortality among women with breast cancer (fully adjusted HR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.91–0.93), colorectal cancer (fully adjusted HR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.91–0.93), or melanoma (fully adjusted HR = 0.97, 95% CI 0.94–1.00). The reductions in cancer‐specific mortality were more pronounced for women who adhered to lipophilic than hydrophilic statins in all 3 cancers albeit not statistically significant for melanoma.
Conclusion
Among LLM users, adherence to this drug is associated with a decrease in cancer‐specific mortality. If confirmed, LLMs could be considered as an adjuvant cancer therapy to improve prognosis in cancer survivors.
In data-driven prognostic methods, prediction accuracy of bearing remaining useful life (RUL) mainly depends on the performance of bearing health indicators, which are usually fused from some ...statistical features extracted from vibration signals. However, many existing bearing health indicators have the following two shortcomings: (1) many statistical features do not have equal contribution to construction of health indicators since the ranges of these statistical features are different; (2) it is difficult to determine a failure threshold since health indicators of different machines are generally different at a failure time. To overcome these drawbacks, a recurrent neural network based health indicator (RNN-HI) for RUL prediction of bearings is proposed in this paper. Firstly, six related-similarity features are proposed to be combined with eight classical time-frequency features so as to form an original feature set. Then, with monotonicity and correlation metrics, the most sensitive features are selected from the original feature set. Finally, these selected features are fed into a recurrent neural network to construct the RNN-HI. The performance of the RNN-HI is verified by two bearing data sets collected from experiments and an industrial field. The results show that the RNN-HI obtains fairly high monotonicity and correlation values and it is beneficial to bearing RUL prediction. In addition, it is experimentally demonstrated that the proposed RNN-HI is able to achieve better performance than a self organization map based method.
Recent experiments on FeSe films grown on SrTiO3 (STO) suggest that interface effects can be used as a means to reach superconducting critical temperatures (Tc) of up to 80 K (ref. ). This is nearly ...ten times the Tc of bulk FeSe and higher than the record value of 56 K for known bulk Fe-based superconductors. Together with recent studies of superconductivity at oxide heterostructure interfaces, these results rekindle the long-standing idea that electron pairing at interfaces between two different materials can be tailored to achieve high-temperature superconductivity. Subsequent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements of the FeSe/STO system revealed an electronic structure distinct from bulk FeSe (refs , ), with an energy gap vanishing at around 65 K. However, ex situ electrical transport measurements have so far detected zero resistance-the key experimental signature of superconductivity-only below 30 K. Here, we report the observation of superconductivity with Tc above 100 K in the FeSe/STO system by means of in situ four-point probe electrical transport measurements. This finding confirms FeSe/STO as an ideal material for studying high-Tc superconductivity.
A photocatalytic formal 3+2 cycloaddition of 2H‐azirines with alkynes has been achieved under irradiation by visible light in the presence of organic dye photocatalysts. This transformation provides ...efficient access to highly functionalized pyrroles in good yields and has been applied to the synthesis of drug analogues. A primary trial of photocascade catalysis merging energy transfer and redox neutral reactions was shown to be successful.
Photo(chemistry) op: A photocatalytic formal 3+2 cycloaddition of 2H‐azirines with alkynes has been established under the irradiation of visible light in the presence of an organic dye. This transformation provides efficient access to highly functionalized pyrroles in good yields and has been applied to the formal synthesis of an inhibitor for HMG‐CoA reductase.
Soil-borne fungal pathogens that cause crop disease are major threats to agriculture worldwide. Here, we identified a secretory polysaccharide deacetylase (PDA1) from the soil-borne fungus ...Verticillium dahliae, the most notorious plant pathogen of the Verticillium genus, that facilitates virulence through direct deacetylation of chitin oligomers whose N-acetyl group contributes to host lysine motif (LysM)-containing receptor perception for ligand-triggered immunity. Polysaccharide deacetylases are widely present in fungi, bacteria, insects and marine invertebrates and have been reported to possess diverse functions in developmental processes rather than virulence. A phylogenetics analysis of more than 5,000 fungal proteins with conserved polysaccharide deacetylase domains showed that the V. dahliae PDA1-containing subtree includes a large number of proteins from the Verticillium genus as well as the Fusarium genus, another group of characterized soil-borne fungal pathogens, suggesting that soil-borne fungal pathogens have adopted chitin deacetylation as a major virulence strategy. We showed that a Fusarium PDA1 is required for virulence in cotton plants. This study reveals a substantial virulence function role of polysaccharide deacetylases in pathogenic fungi and demonstrates a subtle mechanism whereby deacetylation of chitin oligomers converts them to ligand-inactive chitosan, representing a common strategy of preventing chitin-triggered host immunity by soil-borne fungal pathogens.
Generation of carbon‐metal species is extremely important in transition metal‐catalyzed organic synthesis. Among the various methods, 1,4‐metal migration is a very useful way to create new ...carbon‐metal species, which are not readily accessible via classic methods. This review summarized recent advances in transition metal‐catalyzed reactions, which involved one or more steps of 1,4‐metal migration. It focused mostly on the achievements in Pd and Rh‐catalyzed reactions, along with some of the remarkable results in Pt, Ir, Co, Fe‐involved transformations.
The 1,4‐metal migration is a very useful way to create new carbon‐metal species, which are pivotal in transition metal‐catalyzed transformations. This review summarized the recent advances in transition metal‐catalyzed reactions, which at least contained one step of 1,4‐metal migration.
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