To explore the clinical characteristics and prognosis of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV patients combined with cardiovascular disease （CVD).
A retrospective analysis was performed on 112 COVID-19 ...patients with CVD admitted to the western district of Union Hospital in Wuhan, from January 20, 2020 to February 15, 2020. They were divided into critical group (ICU,
=16) and general group (
=96) according to the severity of the disease and patients were followed up to the clinical endpoint. The observation indicators included total blood count, C-reactive protein (CRP), arterial blood gas analysis, myocardial injury markers, coagulation function, liver and kidney function, electrolyte, procalcitonin (PCT), B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), blood lipid, pulmonary CT and pathogen detection.
Compared with the general group, the lymphocyte count (0.74 (0.34, 0.94)×10
/L vs. 0.99 (0.71, 1.29)×10
/L,
=0.03) was extremely lower in the critical group, CRP (106.98 (81.57, 135.76) mg/L vs. 34.34 (9.55,76.54) mg/L,
<0.001) and PCT (0.20 (0.15,0.48) μg/L vs. 0.11 (0.06,0.20) μg/L,
<0.001) were significantly higher in the critical group. The BMI of the critical group was significantly higher than that of the general group (25.5 (23.0, 27.5) kg/m
vs. 22.0 (20.0, 24.0) kg/m
，
=0.003). Patients were further divided into non-survivor group (17, 15.18%) group and survivor group (95, 84.82%). Among the non-survivors, there were 88.24% (15/17) patients with BMI> 25.0 kg/m
, which was significantly higher than that of survivors (18.95% (18/95),
<0.001). Compared with the survived patients, oxygenation index (130 (102, 415) vs. 434 (410, 444),
<0.001) was significantly lower and lactic acid (1.70 (1.30, 3.00) mmol/L vs. 1.20 (1.10, 1.60) mmol/L,
<0.001) was significantly higher in the non-survivors. There was no significant difference in the proportion of ACEI/ARB medication between the critical group and the general group or between non-survivors and survivors （all
>0.05).
COVID-19 patients combined with CVD are associated with a higher risk of mortality. Critical patients are characterized with lower lymphocyte counts. Higher BMI are more often seen in critical patients and non-survivor. ACEI/ARB use does not affect the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 combined with CVD. Aggravating causes of death include fulminant inflammation, lactic acid accumulation and thrombotic events.
Improving the fatigue strength of 7075 alloy through aging Leng, L.; Zhang, Z.J.; Duan, Q.Q. ...
Materials science & engineering. A, Structural materials : properties, microstructure and processing,
12/2018, Letnik:
738
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In order to optimize the fatigue strength of 7075 Al alloy, the hardness, tensile and fatigue tests as well as the microstructure observation under different aging conditions were investigated. The ...result indicates that, with the aging time increasing, the precipitation spacing first decreases and then increases, which leads to the hardness and tensile strength first increasing and then decreasing. With the increase of yield strength, the fatigue strength increases first and then decreases, resulting in an optimization of fatigue strength. Especially, the specimen aged at 120 °C for 48 h with strength and elongation in middle of the three specimens exhibits the highest fatigue strength of 165 MPa. Considering the effect of yield strength on fatigue strength and fatigue damage, the causes for the parabolic variation of fatigue strength were analyzed.
Thin layers of in-plane anisotropic materials can support ultraconfined polaritons, whose wavelengths depend on the propagation direction. Such polaritons hold potential for the exploration of ...fundamental material properties and the development of novel nanophotonic devices. However, the real-space observation of ultraconfined in-plane anisotropic plasmon polaritons (PPs)-which exist in much broader spectral ranges than phonon polaritons-has been elusive. Here we apply terahertz nanoscopy to image in-plane anisotropic low-energy PPs in monoclinic Ag
Te platelets. The hybridization of the PPs with their mirror image-by placing the platelets above a Au layer-increases the direction-dependent relative polariton propagation length and the directional polariton confinement. This allows for verifying a linear dispersion and elliptical isofrequency contour in momentum space, revealing in-plane anisotropic acoustic terahertz PPs. Our work shows high-symmetry (elliptical) polaritons on low-symmetry (monoclinic) crystals and demonstrates the use of terahertz PPs for local measurements of anisotropic charge carrier masses and damping.
The phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling pathway plays an important role in cell survival and the development of cancer. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a critical ...inflammatory cytokine that was recently associated with tumorigenesis and that potently inhibits apoptosis. This may involve inhibition of p53-dependent genes, but the initiating molecular mechanism of how MIF controls survival/apoptosis is unknown. Here, we show that MIF prevents apoptosis and promotes tumor cell survival by directly activating the Akt pathway. MIF enhanced Akt activity in primary and immortalized fibroblasts (MEF and NIH/3T3), HeLa cervix carcinoma cells and various breast cancer cell lines. Activation was abolished by kinase inhibitors Ly294002 and PP2 and in Src/Yes/Fyn(SYF)(-/-) and CD74(-/-)(MEFs), while being enhanced in CD74-overexpressing MEFs, demonstrating that the MIF-induced Akt pathway encompasses signaling through the MIF receptor CD74 and the upstream kinases Src and PI3K. Akt was activated by exogenous rMIF and autocrine MIF action, as revealed by experiments in MIF(-/-)MEFs and antibody blockade. siRNA knockdown of CSN5/JAB1, a tumor marker and MIF-binding protein, showed that JAB1 controls autocrine MIF-mediated Akt signaling by inhibition of MIF secretion. Akt activation by MIF led to phosphorylation of the proapoptotic proteins BAD and Foxo3a. Apoptosis inhibition by MIF was functionally associated with Akt activation as it was abolished by overexpression of the Akt pathway inhibitor PTEN and occurred independently of p53. This was shown by studying DNA damage-induced apoptosis in fibroblasts, the Fas death pathway in HeLa cells that do not express functional p53, and etoposide-induced apoptosis in breast carcinoma cells expressing mutant p53. Importantly, dependence of breast cancer cell survival on MIF correlated with Akt activation and the PTEN status of these cells. Thus, MIF can directly promote cell survival through activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway and this effect is critical for tumor cell survival.
ABSTRACT
After 13 generations of divergent selection for abdominal fatness, 2 chicken lines (a fat line and a lean line) have been established. To clarify the cellular mechanism underlying the ...differences in fatness between the fat and lean lines, cellularity characteristics of the abdominal adipose tissues were analyzed during the first 7 wk of age by electron microscopy, proliferating cell nuclear antigen staining, and DNA content measurement. The abdominal fat percentage at 7 wk of age in the fat chicken line was 3.8 times that of the lean line, and was accompanied by a 1.3-fold increase in adipocyte diameter and a 2.4-fold increase in adipocyte number. The total cell number of the abdominal fat pad in the fat chicken line was 1.9 times that of the lean line at 7 wk of age. However, no significant difference was observed in the proliferation rate of stroma vascular fraction cells between the 2 chicken lines. These findings suggest that the divergently selected fat and lean chickens have different adipose tissue ontogeny.
Multi-scale YOLACT for instance segmentation Zeng, Jiexian; Ouyang, Huan; Liu, Min ...
Journal of King Saud University. Computer and information sciences,
November 2022, 2022-11-00, 2022-11-01, Letnik:
34, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The mainstream instance segmentation is a comprehensive computer vision task, which involves computer vision tasks such as image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation. Aiming at ...the Prototype mask for initial segmentation mask with incorrect segmentation, this paper uses YOLACT (You Only Look at CoefficienTs) as the benchmark, in order to improve the network performance in the interfernce situation by enhancing the response of prototype mask, the multi-scale YOLACT for instance segmentation (MS YOLACT) is proposed, which increases the accuracy of segmentation by designing a lightweight network structure. First, the image gets multi-scale features through the residual network and the feature pyramid network. Then, the deep up-sampling and shallow down-sampling in the multi-scale feature layer are realized respectively to the size required by the prototype mask branch input, and all the deep information that has been up-sampled is further learned by convolution. Finally, at the input end of the prototype mask branch, the deep information and the shallow information are sequentially merged in an additive manner to improve the response of the prototype mask, thereby improving the accuracy of the target's mask segmentation. The experimental results show that compared with the benchmark on COCO test-dev, when the speed is reduced by only 1 FPS, the overall segmentation accuracy reaches an improvement of 0.6, and the segmentation accuracy of small and large targets reaches an improvement of 0.4 and 0.7 respectively; the visualization results also show that the segmentation mask of MS YOLACT is more accurate. In addition, MS YOLACT has the advantages of higher speed and lower requirements on equipment.
The effects of obesity on reproduction have been widely reported in humans and mice. The present study was designed to compare the reproductive performance of lean and fat chicken lines, divergently ...selected for abdominal fat content. The following parameters were determined and analyzed in the two lines: (1) reproductive traits, including age at first egg and total egg numbers from generations 14 to 18, absolute and relative testicular weights at 7, 14, 25, 30, 45 and 56 weeks of age, semen quality at 30, 45 and 56 weeks of age in generation 18, and fertility and hatchability from generations 14 to 18; (2) reproductive hormones at 7, 14, 25, 30, 45 and 56 weeks of age in generation 18; (3) and the relative mRNA abundance of genes involved in reproduction at 7, 14, 25, 30, 45 and 56 weeks of age in generation 18. In females, birds in the lean line laid more eggs from the first egg to 40 weeks of age than the birds in the fat line. In male broilers, the birds in the lean line had higher absolute and relative testicular weights at 7, 14 and 25 weeks of age, but lower absolute and relative testicular weights at 56 weeks of age than the birds in the fat line. Male birds in the lean line had greater sperm concentrations and larger numbers of motile and morphologically normal sperms at 30, 45 and 56 weeks of age than the birds in the fat line. Fertility and hatchability were also higher in the lean line than in the fat line. Significant differences in the plasma levels of reproductive hormones and the expression of reproduction-associated genes were also found at different ages in the lean and fat birds, in both males and females. These results suggest that reproductive performance is better in lean birds than in fat birds. In view of the unique divergent lines used in this study, these results imply that selecting for abdominal fat deposition negatively affects the reproductive performance of birds.
The increasing incidence of myopia has become a global public health concern. Exploring the mechanisms underlying the onset and progression of myopia is crucial for prevention and control. This paper ...reviews the role of peripheral retinal defocus mechanisms in the development of myopia, with particular emphasis on the interaction between accommodation lag and peripheral retinal defocus, as well as the impact of optical intervention on myopia control effectiveness. In recent years, researchers have developed various optical tools for myopia prevention and control based on the peripheral retinal defocus theory, such as peripheral defocus spectacle lenses, orthokeratology lenses, and peripheral defocus soft contact lenses. This paper aims to provide clinicians with the latest research findings to deepen their understanding of the mechanisms involved in myopia development and to guide the future development and clinical application of myopia prevention and control products.
Abstract
Background
Genetic predisposition to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may contribute to its morbidity and mortality. Because cytokines play an important role in multiple phases of ...infection, we examined whether commonly occurring, functional polymorphisms in macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) are associated with COVID-19 infection or disease severity.
Aim
To determine associations of common functional polymorphisms in MIF with symptomatic COVID-19 or its severity.
Methods
This retrospective case–control study utilized 1171 patients with COVID-19 from three tertiary medical centers in the USA, Hungary and Spain, together with a group of 637 pre-pandemic, healthy control subjects. Functional MIF promoter alleles (-794 CATT5-8,rs5844572), serum MIF and soluble MIF receptor levels, and available clinical characteristics were measured and correlated with COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization. Experimental mice genetically engineered to express human high- or low-expression MIF alleles were studied for response to coronavirus infection.
Results
In patients with COVID-19, there was a lower frequency of the high-expression MIF CATT7 allele when compared to healthy controls 11% vs. 19%, odds ratio (OR) 0.54 0.41–0.72, P < 0.0001. Among inpatients with COVID-19 (n = 805), there was a higher frequency of the MIF CATT7 allele compared to outpatients (n = 187) (12% vs. 5%, OR 2.87 1.42–5.78, P = 0.002). Inpatients presented with higher serum MIF levels when compared to outpatients or uninfected healthy controls (87 ng/ml vs. 35 ng/ml vs. 29 ng/ml, P < 0.001, respectively). Among inpatients, circulating MIF concentrations correlated with admission ferritin (r = 0.19, P = 0.01) and maximum CRP (r = 0.16, P = 0.03) levels. Mice with a human high-expression MIF allele showed more severe disease than those with a low-expression MIF allele.
Conclusions
In this multinational retrospective study of 1171 subjects with COVID-19, the commonly occurring -794 CATT7MIF allele is associated with reduced susceptibility to symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection but increased disease progression as assessed by hospitalization. These findings affirm the importance of the high-expression CATT7MIF allele, which occurs in 19% of the population, in different stages of COVID-19 infection.
Highlights • We propose a hierarchical classification model to select day 3 embryos with high potential for development into blastocysts based on the severity and occurrence of abnormal divisions ...during the initial three embryo cleavages. • In a prospective observational study, the efficiency of this classification model was assessed and validated. • Cleavage patterns can predict the developmental potential of day 3 human embryos.
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