The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2 virus) has been sustained in China since December 2019, and has become a ...pandemic. The mental health of frontline medical staff is a concern. In this study, we aimed to identify the factors influencing medical worker anxiety in China during the COVID-19 outbreak. We conducted a cross-sectional study to estimate the prevalence of anxiety among medical staff in China from 10 February 2020 to 20 February 2020 using the Zung Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to assess anxiety, with the criteria of normal (⩽49), mild (50-59), moderate (60-70) and severe anxiety (⩾70). We used multivariable linear regression to determine the factors (e.g. having direct contact when treating infected patients, being a medical staff worker from Hubei province, being a suspect case) for anxiety. We also used adjusted models to confirm independent factors for anxiety after adjusting for gender, age, education and marital status. Of 512 medical staff in China, 164 (32.03%) had had direct contact treating infected patients. The prevalence of anxiety was 12.5%, with 53 workers suffering from mild (10.35%), seven workers suffering from moderate (1.36%) and four workers suffering from severe anxiety (0.78%). After adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, education and marital status), medical staff who had had direct contact treating infected patients experienced higher anxiety scores than those who had not had direct contact (β value = 2.33, confidence interval (CI) 0.65-4.00; P = 0.0068). A similar trend was observed in medical staff from Hubei province, compared with those from other parts of China (β value = 3.67, CI 1.44-5.89; P = 0.0013). The most important variable was suspect cases with high anxiety scores, compared to non-suspect cases (β value = 4.44, CI 1.55-7.33; P = 0.0028). In this survey of hospital medical workers during the COVID-19 outbreak in China, we found that study participants experienced anxiety symptoms, especially those who had direct clinical contact with infected patients; as did those in the worst affected areas, including Hubei province; and those who were suspect cases. Governments and healthcare authorities should proactively implement appropriate psychological intervention programmes, to prevent, alleviate or treat increased anxiety.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Recently, studies have been published with inconsistent findings regarding whether ...sarcopenia is a risk factor for mortality in breast cancer patients. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to systematically assess and quantify sarcopenia as a risk factor for mortality in breast cancer patients.
In a systematic literature review of PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane CENTRAL Library, we searched for observational studies written in English (from database inception until April 30, 2019) that reported an association between sarcopenia and breast cancer in women who were 18 years or older.
A total of six studies (5497 participants) were included in this meta-analysis. Breast cancer patients with sarcopenia were associated with a significantly higher risk of mortality, compared to breast cancer patients without sarcopenia (pooled HR-hazard ratio = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.25-2.33, I
= 59.1%). In addition, the results of age subgroup analysis showed that participants younger than 55 years with sarcopenia had a lower risk of mortality than participants aged 55 years and older with sarcopenia (pooled HR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.24-1.72 versus pooled HR = 1.99, 95% CI: 1.05-3.78), whereas both have an increased risk of mortality compared to non-sarcopenic patients. Subgroup analyses regarding stage at diagnosis revealed an increased risk of mortality in non-metastatic patients compared to participants without sarcopenia (pooled HR = 1.91, 95% CI: 1.32-2.78), whereas the association was not significant in metastatic breast cancer patients. Other subgroup analyses were performed using different follow-up periods (> 5 years versus ≤5 years) and the results were different (pooled HR = 1.81, 95% CI: 1.23-2.65 versus pooled HR = 1.70, 95% CI: 0.80-3.62).
The present study found that sarcopenia is a risk factor for mortality among female early breast cancer patients. It is imperative that more research into specific interventions aimed at treating sarcopenia be conducted in the near future in order to provide evidence which could lead to decreased mortality rates in breast cancer patients.
Conspectus Understanding special stability of numerous ligand-protected gold nanoclusters has always been an active area of research. In the past few decades, several theoretical models, including ...the polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory (PSEPT), superatom complex (SAC), and superatom network (SAN), among others, have been developed for better understanding the stabilities and structures of selected ligand-protected gold nanoclusters. This Account overviews the recently proposed grand unified model (GUM) to offer some new insights into the structures and growth mechanism of nearly all crystallized and predicted ligand-protected gold nanoclusters. The main conceptual advancement of the GUM is identification of the duet and octet rules on the basis of the “big data” of 70+ reported ligand-protected gold nanoclusters. According to the two empirical rules, the cores of the gold nanoclusters can be regarded as being composed of two kinds of elementary blocks (namely, triangle Au3 and tetrahedron Au4), each having 2e closed-shell valence electrons (referred as Au3(2e) and Au4(2e)), as well as the secondary block (icosahedron Au13) with 8e closed-shell valence electrons (referred as Au13(8e)). The two elementary blocks (Au3(2e) and Au4(2e)) and the secondary block (Au13(8e)), from electron counting point of view, can be regarded as an analogy of the highly stable noble-gas atoms of He and Ne, respectively. In each elementary block, the Au atoms exhibit three different valence-electron states (i.e., 1e, 0.5e, and 0e), depending on the type of ligands bonded with these Au atoms. Such three valence-electron states are coined as three “flavors” of gold (namely, bottom, middle, and top “flavor”), a term borrowed from the quark model in the particle physics. Upon application of the duet and octet rules with accounting the three valence states of gold atoms, the Au3(2e), Au4(2e), and Au13(8e) blocks can exhibit 10 (denoted as Δ1–Δ10), 15 (denoted as T1–T15), and 91 (denoted as I1–I91) variants of valence states, respectively. When packing these blocks (with distinct electronic states) together, it forms the gold core of ligand-protected gold nanocluster. As such, the special stabilities of the ligand-protected gold nanoclusters are explained based on the local stability of each block. With GUM, rich and complex structures of ligand-protected gold nanoclusters have been analyzed through structure anatomy. Moreover, the growth of these clusters can be simply viewed as sequential addition of the blocks, rather than as addition of the gold atoms. Another useful application of the GUM is to analyze the structural isomerism. The three types of isomerism for the gold nanoclusters, i.e., core, staple, and complex isomerism, can be considered as an analogy of chain, point, and functional isomerism (known in organic chemistry), respectively. GUM can be applied to predict new clusters, thereby guiding experimental synthesis. Indeed, a number of ligand-protected gold nanoclusters with high stabilities were rationally designed based on the GUM.
The residue of imidacloprid in the nectar and pollens of the plants is toxic not only to adult honeybees but also the larvae. Our understanding of the risk of imidacloprid to larvae of the honeybees ...is still in a very early stage. In this study, the capped-brood, pupation and eclosion rates of the honeybee larvae were recorded after treating them directly in the hive with different dosages of imidacloprid. The brood-capped rates of the larvae decreased significantly when the dosages increased from 24 to 8000 ng/larva. However, there were no significant effects of DMSO or 0.4 ng of imidacloprid per larva on the brood-capped, pupation and eclosion rates. Although the sublethal dosage of imidacloprid had no effect on the eclosion rate, we found that the olfactory associative behavior of the adult bees was impaired if they had been treated with 0.04 ng/larva imidacloprid in the larval stage. These results demonstrate that a sublethal dosage of imidacloprid given to the larvae affects the subsequent associative ability of the adult honeybee workers. Thus, a low dose of imidacloprid may affect the survival condition of the entire colony, even though the larvae survive to adulthood.
A grand unified model (GUM) is developed to achieve fundamental understanding of rich structures of all 71 liganded gold clusters reported to date. Inspired by the quark model by which composite ...particles (for example, protons and neutrons) are formed by combining three quarks (or flavours), here gold atoms are assigned three 'flavours' (namely, bottom, middle and top) to represent three possible valence states. The 'composite particles' in GUM are categorized into two groups: variants of triangular elementary block Au
(2e) and tetrahedral elementary block Au
(2e), all satisfying the duet rule (2e) of the valence shell, akin to the octet rule in general chemistry. The elementary blocks, when packed together, form the cores of liganded gold clusters. With the GUM, structures of 71 liganded gold clusters and their growth mechanism can be deciphered altogether. Although GUM is a predictive heuristic and may not be necessarily reflective of the actual electronic structure, several highly stable liganded gold clusters are predicted, thereby offering GUM-guided synthesis of liganded gold clusters by design.
In this paper, a systematic research campaign on eighth-mode substrate integrated waveguide (EMSIW) filters is reported. The sizes of these EMSIW resonant cavities are only one-eighth or ...one-sixteenth of a conventional SIW resonant cavity. Two different coupling topologies, i.e., electric coupling and magnetic coupling, are employed between two EMSIW resonant cavities, which are analyzed theoretically via the response of the structure and the relationship between the cavities. Both coupling topologies enable structural variations that possess advantages and flexibility of the second-order EMSIW bandpass filters (BPFs) designing. By utilizing these basic coupling mechanisms, multilayer board technology, and other practical techniques, a class of triple-order SIW BPFs with the merits of compact size and high selectivity are demonstrated. Specifically, several triple-order EMSIW BPFs composed of pure EMSIW cavities or comprised by combining EMSIW and quarter-mode SIW cavities are simulated, fabricated, and measured for verification.
PDF
