Amyloid light-chain cardiac amyloidosis is a progressive infiltrative disease characterized by the deposition of amyloid fibrils in the cardiac tissue, which can cause serious atrioventricular block ...requiring pacemaker implantation. Left bundle branch pacing has emerged as an alternative method for delivering physiological pacing to achieve electrical synchrony of the left ventricle. However, left bundle branch pacing in patients with amyloid light-chain cardiac amyloidosis has not been studied in detail. Therefore, in this study, we present a case of left bundle branch pacing in a patient with amyloid light-chain cardiac amyloidosis.
A 66-year-old male patient with amyloid light-chain cardiac amyloidosis presented with syncope for 1 month. Holter monitoring revealed intermittent third-degree atrioventricular block. Left bundle branch pacing was performed successfully. During the 1-year follow-up, it was observed that the left bundle branch capture threshold remained stable without any pacemaker-related complications or left ventricle systolic dysfunction, and there was no recurrence of syncope.
Left bundle branch pacing appears to be a safe and feasible option for patients with amyloid light-chain cardiac amyloidosis experiencing atrioventricular block.
An extraordinary heavy rain event caused by Typhoon Mangkhut occurred in the Yangtze River Delta region on 16 September 2018, with the maximum of 24-h accumulated rainfall at a single station ...reaching 297 mm. However, numerical models and subjective forecast failed to predict this typhoon remote rainstorm accurately. In this study, multiple observational data, an analysis dataset, and a trajectory model are used to analyze the causes of this severe rainstorm. The results show that the circulation situation provides a favorable large-scale background condition for the generation of the rainstorm. The coupling of the upper-level westerly jet and the low-level southerly jet is beneficial to the development of strong convections. In the rainstorm area there is a positive vorticity center connected to the main body of the typhoon. The cooling and humidifying effect of dry-cold air saturates the formerly unsaturated wet air, leading to the increase of precipitation. Besides, there is a lower-tropospheric moisture transport path connecting the typhoon and the rainstorm area, providing abundant moisture for the development of rainstorms. The backward trajectory simulation shows that the moisture mainly originates from the lower troposphere over the Philippine Sea, the southern South China Sea, and the sea south of the Philippines.
It has been reported that attending to stimuli in visual modality can spread to task-irrelevant but synchronously presented stimuli in auditory modality, a phenomenon termed the cross-modal spread of ...attention, which could be either stimulus-driven or representation-driven depending on whether the visual constituent of an audiovisual object is further selected based on the object representation. The stimulus-driven spread of attention occurs whenever a task-irrelevant sound synchronizes with an attended visual stimulus, regardless of the cross-modal semantic congruency. The present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether the stimulus-driven cross-modal spread of attention could be modulated by audio-visual emotional congruency in a visual oddball task where emotion (positive/negative) was task-irrelevant. The results first demonstrated a prominent stimulus-driven spread of attention regardless of audio-visual emotional congruency by showing that for all audiovisual pairs, the extracted ERPs to the auditory constituents of audiovisual stimuli within the time window of 200–300 ms were significantly larger than ERPs to the same auditory stimuli delivered alone. However, the amplitude of this stimulus-driven auditory Nd component during 200–300 ms was significantly larger for emotionally incongruent than congruent audiovisual stimuli when their visual constituents’ emotional valences were negative. Moreover, the Nd was sustained during 300–400 ms only for the incongruent audiovisual stimuli with emotionally negative visual constituents. These findings suggest that although the occurrence of the stimulus-driven cross-modal spread of attention is independent of audio-visual emotional congruency, its magnitude is nevertheless modulated even when emotion is task-irrelevant.
In the pig farming industry, it is recommended to avoid groups when treating individuals to reduce adverse reactions in the group. However, can this eliminate the adverse effects effectively? Piglets ...were assigned to the Rewarding Group (RG), the Punishing Group (PG), and the Paired Control Group (PCG). There were six replicates in each group, with two paired piglets per replicate. One piglet of the RG and PG was randomly selected as the Treated pig (TP), treated with food rewards or electric shock, and the other as the Naive pig (NP). The NPs in the RG and PG were unaware of the treatment process, and piglets in the PCG were not treated. The behavior and heart rate changes of all piglets were recorded. Compared to the RG, the NPs in the PG showed longer proximity but less contact behavior, and the TPs in the PG showed more freezing behavior. The percentage change in heart rate of the NPs was synchronized with the TPs. This shows that after sensory avoidance, the untreated pigs could also feel the emotions of their peers and their emotional state was affected by their peers, and the negative emotions in the pigs lasted longer than the positive emotions. The avoidance process does not prevent the transfer of negative emotions to peers via emotional contagion from the stimulated pig.
In this paper, an improved active stabilization strategy of the interface converters in microgrid applications is proposed on the basis of the passivity-based stability criterion (PBSC). As a ...critical part of AC and DC hybrid microgrids, the DC microgrid is taken as an example. In particular, a stabilization method with a proportional-integral (PI) controller and firstorder high-pass filter (HPF) is proposed to meet the passivity requirements of the overall control diagram with respect to the output voltage. Meanwhile, an output current feedback control loop is introduced to ensure the output impedance passivity. Moreover, a small-signal model of the parallel interface converter system is established to comprehensively study the influence of control parameters on the passivity of the converters. Based on the active stabilization method proposed in this study, by manipulating the control diagram of each interface converter, the passivity and stability of the DC microgrids with variable configuration can be guaranteed. Therefore, a generic and simplified design approach is realized. A simulation model with three interface converters is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink, and the effectiveness of the proposed passivity-based active stabilization algorithm is verified by using this simulation model.
The heat stress response of broilers will adversely affect the large-scale and welfare of the breeding of broilers. In order to detect the heat stress state of broilers in time, make reasonable ...adjustments, and reduce losses, this paper proposed an improved Cascade R-CNN (Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks) model based on visual technology to identify the behavior of yellow-feathered broilers. The improvement of the model solved the problem of the behavior recognition not being accurate enough when broilers were gathered. The influence of different iterations on the model recognition effect was compared, and the optimal model was selected. The final average accuracy reached 88.4%. The behavioral image data with temperature and humidity data were combined, and the heat stress evaluation model was optimized using the PLSR (partial least squares regression) method. The behavior recognition results and optimization equations were verified, and the test accuracy reached 85.8%. This proves the feasibility of the heat stress evaluation optimization equation, which can be used for reasonably regulating the broiler chamber.
Chemotherapy often faces some obstacles such as low targeting effects and drug resistance, which introduce the low therapeutic efficiency and strong side effects. Recent advances in nanotechnology ...allows the use of novel nanosystems for targeted drug delivery, although the chemically synthesized nanomaterials always show unexpected low biocompability. The emergence of exosome research has offered a better understanding of disease treatment and created novel opportunities for developing effective drug delivery systems with high biocompability. Moreover, RNA interference has emerged as a promising strategy for disease treatments by selectively knocking down or over-expressing specific genes, which allows new possibilities to directly control cell signaling events or drug resistance. Recently, more and more interests have been paid to develop optimal delivery nanosystems with high efficiency and high biocompability for drug and functional RNA co-delivery to achieve enhanced chemotherapy. In light of the challenges for developing drug and RNA co-delivery system, exosomes have been found to show very attractive prospects. This review aims to explore current technologies and challenges in the use of exosomes as drug and RNA co-delivery system with a focus on the emerging trends and issues associated with their further applications, which may contribute to the accelerated developments of exosome-based theraputics.
In this paper, an efficient approach to extract total flavonoids (TFs) from Selaginella involvens (Sw.) Spring using homogenate-ultrasound-assisted ionic liquid (IL) extraction (HUA-ILE) was first ...developed. The results indicated that EPyBF4 was selected as the suitable extractant. According to the single factor experiment and response surface methodology, the IL concentration of 0.10 mol/L, the extraction time of 160 s, the liquid/solid ratio of 13:1 mL/g, and the extraction power of 300 W were concluded as the best conditions. A yield of 8.48 ± 0.27 mg/g TF content was obtained. Compared with HUA ethanol extraction, ultrasound-assisted IL extraction, and percolation extraction, the TF content obtained by the HUA-ILE method could be increased by 2 to 4 times, and the extraction time could be reduced by 100 times. Furthermore, 16 compounds of the TF extract were finally identified through ultra-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry, among which 11 compounds were first discovered in S. involven. The contents of six biflavonoids in S. involven were determined simultaneously adopting high-performance liquid chromatography, including amentoflavone, hinokiflavone, bilobetin, ginkgetin, isoginkgetin, and heveaflavone. The TF extract in S. involven was proved to have potent antioxidant activity through the four antioxidant experiments. In conclusion, HUA-ILE was applied for the first time to exploit a green, efficient, and novel approach to extract TFs, and the research also provided promising prospects for applications of S. involven.
Nitrogen-polar (N-polar) III-nitride has natural advantages in the fabrication of electronic devices. In this work, unintentionally doped N-polar GaN films were grown on sapphire substrates by ...metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. By optimizing the growth parameters including growth temperature, pressure, and V/III ratio, N-polar GaN with a relatively high sheet resistivity of 3.6 × 105 Ω/sq was achieved. The secondary ion mass spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction measurement results demonstrate that the increased carbon impurity concentration is primarily responsible for the high resistivity. Moreover, N-polar GaN/Al0.25Ga0.75N heterojunctions were deposited on the high-resistivity N-polar GaN template. An extremely high-density two-dimensional electron gas of up to 1.12 × 1013 cm−2 was realized at the interface between the Al0.25Ga0.75N and the GaN. It is reasonably believed that the experimental results obtained here are beneficial for the development of high-performance N-polar GaN-based electronic devices.
Abstract
With the acceleration of industrialization and the rapid development of the global economy, carbon emissions are also increasing. With the global warming and rising sea levels, countless ...island nations are facing the risk of submerged land and residents on the island becoming EDPs. In order to provide new residences for EDPs, we will provide corresponding analysis recommendations.
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