The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak was first declared in China in December 2019, and WHO declared the pandemic on 11 March 2020. A fast-rising number of confirmed cases has been ...observed in all continents, with Europe at the epicentre of the outbreak at this moment.Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and rights is a significant public health issue during the epidemics. The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is new to humans, and only limited scientific evidence is available to identify the impact of the disease COVID-19 on SRH, including clinical presentation and outcomes of the infection during pregnancy, or for persons with STI/HIV-related immunosuppression. Beyond the clinical scope of SRH, we should not neglect the impacts at the health system level and disruptions or interruptions in regular provision of SRH services, such as pre- and postnatal checks, safe abortion, contraception, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. Furthermore, other aspects merit attention such as the potential increase of gender-based violence and domestic abuse, and effects of stigma and discrimination associated with COVID-19 and their effects on SRH clients and health care providers. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the scientific community to generate sound clinical, epidemiological, and psycho-social behavioral links between COVID-19 and SRH and rights outcomes.
Aging is associated with many complex diseases. Reliable prediction of the aging process is important for assessing the risks of aging-associated diseases. However, despite intense research, so far ...there is no reliable aging marker. Here we addressed this problem by examining whether human 3D facial imaging features could be used as reliable aging markers. We collected 〉 300 3D human facial images and blood profiles well-distributed across ages of 17 to 77 years. By analyzing the morphological profiles, we generated the first comprehensive map of the aging human facial phenome. We identified quantitative facial features, such as eye slopes, highly associated with age. We constructed a robust age predictor and found that on average people of the same chronological age differ by ~ 6 years in facial age, with the deviations increasing after age 40. Using this predictor, we identified slow and fast agers that are significantly supported by levels of health indicators. Despite a close relationship between facial morphological features and health indicators in the blood, facial features are more reliable aging biomarkers than blood profiles and can better reflect the general health status than chronological age.
The effect of cooking frequency on hypertension is understudied. This study aimed to examine the effect of cooking on hypertension with a particular focus on gender differences.
The present study ...utilized cross-sectional data from China Kadoorie Biobank with a 512,891-population of China. Hypertension was identified by established diagnosis or by the 1999 WHO/ISH Guidelines for the Management of Hypertension on examination. Cooking frequency was obtained from a self-reported questionnaire and categorized as daily cooking, weekly or monthly cooking and never cooking. Multivariable logistic regression models were employed to examine the associations between cooking frequency and hypertension in men and women, respectively. Stratified analyses by demographic and socio-economic characteristics were conducted.
Men who ever cooked had higher odds of hypertension compared with those who never cooked (weekly or monthly cooking adjusted odds ratio (AOR): 1.05, 95% CI: 1.02-1.07; Daily cooking AOR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06-1.11), while protective effects of cooking against hypertension were observed in women (weekly or monthly cooking AOR: 0.94, 95% CI: 0.89-0.99; daily cooking AOR: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.92-0.99). Socio-economic status including occupation, household income, education and region could further modify the effect of daily cooking on hypertension among men and women, respectively.
The present study highlighted the effect of cooking on hypertension. We found the opposite trends in men and women with regards to the association between cooking and hypertension. Factors relating to socio-economic status such as education, household income and occupation could further modify the gender-specific effects. Interventions to reduce hypertension should consider the gender differences in food choice and psycho-social stress related to cooking.
ObjectivesDifferent countries and institutions around the world have debated whether lactating women should receive the COVID-19 vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic. In China, lactating is not a ...contraindication to vaccination, but many women are still hesitant to get vaccinated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of COVID-19 vaccination among lactating women and the related factors affecting vaccination.MethodsAn online cross-sectional survey involving 506 lactating women was conducted in southern China. We explored the related factors affecting COVID-19 vaccination of lactating women from three aspects: general information, knowledge–attitude–behaviour towards COVID-19 and its vaccine, and postpartum psychological state.ResultsA total of 432 lactating women completed the questionnaire, 198 of whom had received the COVID-19 vaccine. On the knowledge–attitude–behaviour questionnaire on COVID-19 and its vaccines, the vaccinated group scored higher than the unvaccinated group on both the three subdimensions of the questionnaire and the total score (p<0.01). The results of binary logistics regression analysis showed that mixed feeding (OR=2.68, 95% CI: 1.82 to 3.96), longer breastfeeding duration (OR=1.31, 95% CI: 1.16 to 1.49), better physical condition (OR=5.28, 95% CI: 1.82 to 15.32), higher attitude score of COVID-19 and its vaccine (OR=1.18, 95% CI: 1.10 to 1.27), and having a travel history in medium high-risk areas (OR=3.49, 95% CI: 1.46 to 8.37) were significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccination in lactating women. Having a master’s degree or above (OR=0.03, 95% CI: 0.01 to 0.30), and having higher anxiety score (OR=0.66, 95% CI: 0.54 to 0.81) and depression score (OR=0.84, 95% CI: 0.75 to 0.93) were inversely associated with COVID-19 vaccination in lactating women.Conclusion45.8% of lactating women were vaccinated against COVID-19. Education level, feeding methods, duration of breast feeding, travel history in medium high-risk areas, physical condition, attitude score of COVID-19 and its vaccine, anxiety symptom and depressive symptom score were associated with vaccination of lactating women. More interventions based on these factors were needed to reduce concerns for lactating women and increase their vaccination rates.
Abstract
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic alarmed the public and initiated the uptake of preventive measures. However, the manner in which the public responded to these announcements, ...and whether individuals from different provinces responded similarly during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, remains largely unknown. We used an interrupted time-series analysis to examine the change in Baidu Search Index of selected COVID-19 related terms associated with the COVID-19 derived exposure variables. We analyzed the daily search index in Mainland China using segmented log-normal regressions with data from Jan 2017 to Mar 2021. In this longitudinal study of nearly one billion internet users, we found synchronous increases in COVID-19 related searches during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent local outbreaks, irrespective of the location and severity of each outbreak. The most precipitous increase occurred in the week when most provinces activated their highest level of response to public health emergencies. Search interests increased more as Human Development Index (HDI) -an area level measure of socioeconomic status—increased. Searches on the index began to decline nationwide after the initiation of mass-scale lockdowns, but statistically significant increases continued to occur in conjunction with the report of major sporadic local outbreaks. The intense interest in COVID-19 related information at virtually the same time across different provinces indicates that the Chinese government utilizes multiple channels to keep the public informed of the pandemic. Regional socioeconomic status influenced search patterns.
With continuous improvements being made in science, technology, and production automation, robotics is becoming increasingly popular in the field of automation. Robotics has the potential to improve ...work efficiency, reduce production cost, protect humans from adverse conditions, and increase production scale. A three-dimensional (3D) printed amphibious spherical robot was designed to operate in various environments with a wide-range of complex conditions over a long period of time. The compact, fully waterproof design has the advantages of a reduced manufacturing time, high efficiency, good mobility, low noise, and reliable stability. This study considers how some of the more critical components of the robot, such as its leg brackets, circular middle plate, and spherical shell, respond to large dynamic stresses, shocks, and vibrations during operation; this can lead to reduced precision of the robot’s locomotion and may cause critical components to become damaged or fail. To design the robot with a more rigid structure and improved dynamic characteristics, 3D models of the critical components were constructed with SolidWorks. Using ANSYS WORKBENCH software, these models were incorporated into the robot design to determine the natural frequencies and the associated mode shapes of the first six orders. The procedure and analysis results are described in this paper. The fatigue life of these critical components was examined using the cyclic load spectrum and cyclic stress as a function of number of cycles to failure (
S
–
N
curve) of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic, the construction material for the robot. Finite element analysis was used for design optimization relevant to fatigue life, damage, safety, and fatigue sensitivity, and the weak areas in the components were identified. The approach described herein provides a theoretical basis for robotics design optimization.
Learning-based TOA-UWB localization methods have been developed rapidly in recent years and achieve state-of-the-art localization results in complex scenes. However, they still suffer from two ...drawbacks: 1) biased measurements with large noise are not suppressed effectively, and 2) geometric information which is important for UWB localization is not considered. Thus, we propose two twofold strategies in this paper to overcome these issues: 1) A novel deep attention-based network is proposed. In this network, we introduce the transformer encoder to learn the weights of different ranging measurements, and thus suppress the adverse impact of the biased measurements. Meanwhile, the anchor positions including the geometric information are introduced into the network by an embedding module. 2) We present a novel learning strategy to train the proposed network. This learning strategy both considers the pre-collected ground-truth and the geometric constraints of UWB sensors. Through these two strategies, large measurement noise is further suppressed, while the geometric information and constraints are also developed for the proposed network. Therefore, the localization performance is improved. We build real-world experiments in a narrow and complex indoor scene to demonstrate the advantages of our proposed method compared to the state-of-the-art learning-based method.
Aggressive driving, amongst inappropriate driving behaviors, is largely responsible for leading to traffic accidents, which threatens both the safety and property of human beings. With the objective ...to reduce traffic accidents and improve road safety, effective and reliable aggressive driving recognition methods, which enables the development of driving behavior analysis and early warning systems, are urgently needed. Most recently, the research focus of aggressive recognition has shifted to the use of vehicle motion data, which has emerged as a new tool for traffic phenomenon explanation. As aggressive driving corresponds to sudden variations in data, they can be recognized based on the recorded vehicle motion data. In this paper, several kinds of anomaly recognition algorithms are studied and compared, using the motion data collected by the accelerometer and gyroscope of a smartphone mounted on the vehicle. Gaussian mixture model (GMM), partial least squares regression (PLSR), wavelet transformation, and support vector regression (SVR) are considered as the representative algorithms of statistical regression, time series analysis, and machine learning, respectively. These algorithms are evaluated by the three widely used validation metrics, including F 1 -score, precision, and recall. The empirical results show that GMM, PLSR, and SVR are promising methods for aggressive driving recognition. GMM and SVR outperform PLSR when only single-source dataset is used. The improvement of F 1 -score is almost 0.1. PLSR performs the best when multi-source datasets are used, and the F 1 -score is 0.77. GMM and SVR are more robust to hyperparameter. In addition, incorporating multi-source datasets helps improve the accuracy of aggressive driving behavior recognition.
Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the main stromal tumors of the digestive tract. Extragastrointestinal stromal tumors (EGISTs) typically originate outside the gastrointestinal tract; are ...not associated with the stomach or intestinal walls; and are mainly derived from the mesentery, peritoneum, posterior peritoneum, bladder, and scrotum. However, EGISTs from the prostate are rare. Here, we present a case of EGIST that passed off in the prostate of a 62-year-old man. The patient undergoes transrectal guided trans-perineal prostate puncture, and pathological reports suggest a GIST. Tumor cells are spindle-shaped, and no obvious neoplastic necrosis is seen in the sections. Immunohistochemical results are robustly positive for CD117, DOG-1, and CD34 expression. The patient had a good prognosis after treatment with imatinib, no recurrence and no metastases after six months of follow-up, and the prognosis was good. This article also provides a literature review and discussion of the treatment of EGISTs.
Abstract
Host−guest interactions are of central importance in many biological and chemical processes. However, the investigation of the formation and decomplexation of host−guest systems at the ...single-molecule level has been a challenging task. Here we show that the single-molecule conductance of organoplatinum(II) metallocycle hosts can be enhanced by an order of magnitude by the incorporation of a C
60
guest molecule. Mechanically stretching the metallocycle-C
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junction with a scanning tunneling microscopy break junction technique causes the release of the C
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guest from the metallocycle, and consequently the conductance switches back to the free-host level. Metallocycle hosts with different shapes and cavity sizes show different degrees of flexibility to accommodate the C
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guest in response to mechanical stretching. DFT calculations provide further insights into the electronic structures and charge transport properties of the molecular junctions based on metallocycles and the metallocycle-C
60
complexes.
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