30 research outputs found

    Effectiveness of psychoeducational interventions on psychological distress and health-related quality of life among patients with maintenance hemodialysis: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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    To examine the effectiveness of psychoeducational interventions on depression, anxiety, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) for people undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (MHD). This review used systematic review and meta-analysis as the research design. Nine databases, including PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CINAHL Complete, Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang, VIP, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, were searched from the inception to the 8th of July 2023. Two reviewers independently identified randomized controlled trials (RCT) examining the effects of psychoeducational interventions on MHD patients. Fourteen studies involving 1134 MHD patients were included in this review. The results of meta-analyses showed that psychoeducational intervention had significant short-term (p = 0.01, I2 = 91%; 481 participants), and medium-term (1–3 m) (SMD: −0.29, 95% CI: −0.50 to −0.08, p = 0.01, I2 = 49%; 358 participants) on anxiety in MHD patients, but the effects could not be sustained at longer follow-ups. Psychoeducational interventions can also have short-term (p 2 = 65%; 711 participants) and medium-term (1–3 m) (SMD: −0.42, 95% CI: −0.76 to −0.09, p = 0.01, I2 = 69%; 489 participants) effects in reducing depression levels in MHD patients. Psychoeducational interventions that use coping strategies, goal setting, and relaxation techniques could enhance the QOL in MHD patients in the short term (p = 0.02, I2 = 86%; 241 participants). Psychoeducational interventions have shown great potential to improve anxiety, depression, and quality of life in patients with MHD at the short- and medium-term follow-ups. Trial registration number: CRD42023440561.</p

    Low-Cost Chemical-Responsive Adhesive Sensing Chips

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    Chemical-responsive adhesive sensing chip is a new low-cost analytical platform that uses adhesive tape loaded with indicator reagents to detect or quantify the target analytes by directly sticking the tape to the samples of interest. The chemical-responsive adhesive sensing chips can be used with paper to analyze aqueous samples; they can also be used to detect and quantify solid, particulate, and powder analytes. The colorimetric indicators become immediately visible as the contact between the functionalized adhesives and target samples is made. The chemical-responsive adhesive sensing chip expands the capability of paper-based analytical devices to analyze solid, particulate, or powder materials via one-step operation. It is also a simpler alternative way, to the covalent chemical modification of paper, to eliminate indicator leaching from the dipstick-style paper sensors. Chemical-responsive adhesive chips can display analytical results in the form of colorimetric dot patterns, symbols, and texts, enabling clear understanding of assay results by even nonprofessional users. In this work, we demonstrate the analyses of heavy metal salts in silica powder matrix, heavy metal ions in water, and bovine serum albumin in an aqueous solution. The detection is one-step, specific, sensitive, and easy-to-operate

    Uncertainty Quantification for Modern High-Dimensional Regression via Scalable Bayesian Methods

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    <p>Tremendous progress has been made in the last two decades in the area of high-dimensional regression, especially in the “large <i>p</i>, small <i>n</i>” setting. Such sample starved settings inevitably lead to models which are potentially very unstable and hence quite unreliable. To this end, Bayesian shrinkage methods have generated a lot of recent interest in the modern high-dimensional regression and model selection context. Such methods span the wide spectrum of modern regression approaches and include among others, spike-and-slab priors, the Bayesian lasso, ridge regression, and global-local shrinkage priors such as the Horseshoe prior and the Dirichlet–Laplace prior. These methods naturally facilitate tractable uncertainty quantification and have thus been used extensively across diverse applications. A common unifying feature of these models is that the corresponding priors on the regression coefficients can be expressed as a scale mixture of normals. This property has been leveraged extensively to develop various three-step Gibbs samplers to explore the corresponding intractable posteriors. The convergence of such samplers however is very slow in high dimensions settings, making them disconnected to the very setting that they are intended to work in. To address this challenge, we propose a comprehensive and unifying framework to draw from the same family of posteriors via a class of tractable and scalable two-step blocked Gibbs samplers. We demonstrate that our proposed class of two-step blocked samplers exhibits vastly superior convergence behavior compared to the original three-step sampler in high-dimensional regimes on simulated data as well as data from a variety of applications including gene expression data, infrared spectroscopy data, and socio-economic/law enforcement data. We also provide a detailed theoretical underpinning to the new method by deriving explicit upper bounds for the (geometric) rate of convergence, and by proving that the proposed two-step sampler has superior spectral properties. Supplementary material for this article is available online.</p

    Table_1_Identification of immune cell function in breast cancer by integrating multiple single-cell data.xlsx

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    Breast cancer has now become the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. It is a highly complex and heterogeneous disease that comprises distinct histological features and treatment response. With the development of molecular biology and immunology, immunotherapy has become a new field of breast cancer treatment. Identifying cell-type-specific genes critical to the immune microenvironment contributes to breast cancer treatment. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology could serve as a powerful tool to analyze cellular genetic information at single-cell resolution and to uncover the gene expression status of each cell, thus allowing comprehensive assessment of intercellular heterogeneity. Because of the influence of sample size and sequencing depth, the specificity of genes in different cell types for breast cancer cannot be fully revealed. Therefore, the present study integrated two public breast cancer scRNA-seq datasets aiming to investigate the functions of different type of immune cells in tumor microenvironment. We identified total five significant differential expressed genes of B cells, T cells and macrophage and explored their functions and immune mechanisms in breast cancer. Finally, we performed functional annotation analyses using the top fifteen differentially expressed genes in each immune cell type to discover the immune-related pathways and gene ontology (GO) terms.</p

    Complex extraction of sulfonate dyes from wastewater and the effect of dye structure on extraction performance

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    In this study, the influences of sulfonate dye structure on the extraction rate, the reaction mechanism, and the complex ratio were studied. The parent structure and the number of sulfonic acid groups of sulfonate dyes have a great effect on extraction performance, whilst the molecular weight has a small effect on extraction performance. The results indicate that the extraction rate of azo dyes remains above 80% at the aqueous-organic phase ratio of 7:1, but the extraction rate of two anthraquinone dyes decreases to 54.9% and 34.9%, respectively; and the fewer the number of sulfonic acid groups of the dye, the better the extraction performance under the condition of insufficient extractant, the extraction rate of Direct Grey D and Acid Red M is over 82%. A complete set of methods for determining the ratio of the extractant and the dye was determined using the distribution coefficient method. The interaction between Telon Yellow 4 R and trioctylamine is ionic association and hydrogen bonding association, and the complex ratio between the dye and the extractant is about 2:1. In summary, dye structure has a big impact on the extraction performance, which should be taken into account in actual application.</p

    Understanding Thread Properties for Red Blood Cell Antigen Assays: Weak ABO Blood Typing

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    “Thread-based microfluidics” research has so far focused on utilizing and manipulating the wicking properties of threads to form controllable microfluidic channels. In this study we aim to understand the separation properties of threads, which are important to their microfluidic detection applications for blood analysis. Confocal microscopy was utilized to investigate the effect of the microscale surface morphologies of fibers on the thread’s separation efficiency of red blood cells. We demonstrated the remarkably different separation properties of threads made using silk and cotton fibers. Thread separation properties dominate the clarity of blood typing assays of the ABO groups and some of their weak subgroups (A<sub><i>x</i></sub> and A<sub>3</sub>). The microfluidic thread-based analytical devices (μTADs) designed in this work were used to accurately type different blood samples, including 89 normal ABO and 6 weak A subgroups. By selecting thread with the right surface morphology, we were able to build μTADs capable of providing rapid and accurate typing of the weak blood groups with high clarity

    Mechanically Resistant and Sustainable Cellulose-Based Composite Aerogels with Excellent Flame Retardant, Sound-Absorption, and Superantiwetting Ability for Advanced Engineering Materials

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    The production of cellulose-based aerogels from the conversion of cheap and rich precursors using environmentally friendly techniques is a very attractive subject in materials chemistry. In this work, we report a facile strategy to construct flame retardant, sound-adsorption, and mechanical enhancement cellulose-based composite aerogels by the incorporation of aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles (AH NPs) into cellulose gels via an in situ sol–gel process, followed by freeze-drying to coat AH NPs on cellulose composite aerogels (AH NPs@cellulose composite aerogels). The results demonstrated that the AH NP homogeneous dispersion within cellulose aerogels and the presence of AH NPs did not have a remarkable influence on the homogeneous porous structure of cellulose aerogels when compared with cellulose aerogels prepared from the NaOH/urea/thiourea solution. The prepared composite cellulose aerogels showed excellent flame retardancy, the peak of heat release rate (PHRR) of the composite aerogels decreased significantly from 280 W/g of the control sample to 22 W/g, and total heat release (THR) of the composite aerogels decreased remarkably from 13.2 kJ/g to 1.6 kJ/g. Moreover, the incorporation of AH NP composite aerogels exhibited remarkable mechanical properties, and the compressive strength of the composite aerogels increased significantly from 0.08 to 1.5 MPa. In addition, AH NP composite cellulose aerogels have excellent sound absorption at high frequencies with a maximum sound-absorption coefficient of 1. AH NP composite cellulose aerogels have strong water and oil affinity. After immersing the samples in mixed silica nanoparticles, heptadecafluorononanoic, and fluoroalkyl silane solutions, they became superantiwetting, with a water contact angle (CA) larger than 150° and oil CA larger than 140°. In summary, this study provides a facile strategy to rationally construct flame retardant, mechanically robust, highly efficient sound-adsorption, and superamphiphobic cellulose-based composite aerogels, which have promising applications in the future as green engineering materials

    DataSheet_1_Identification of candidate genes regulating seed oil content by QTL mapping and transcriptome sequencing in Brassica napus.zip

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    Increasing oil production is a major goal in rapeseed (Brassica napus) molecular breeding programs. Identifying seed oil content (SOC)-related candidate genes is an important step towards achieving this goal. We performed quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping of SOC in B. napus using a high-density SNP genetic map constructed from recombinant inbred lines and the Illumina InfiniumTM 60K SNP array. A total of 26 QTLs were detected in three years on A01, A03, A05, A06, A09, C01, C03 and C05, which accounted for 3.69%~18.47% of the phenotypic variation in SOC. Of these, 13 QTLs are reported here for the first time. 1713 candidate genes in the 26 QTLs confidence interval were obtained. We then identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the high- and low-SOC accessions, to narrow down our focus to 21 candidate genes (Y1-Y21) related to SOC, and we will focus on 11 (Y1-Y11) candidate genes that contribute to the formation of high-SOC. In addition to providing insight into the genetic basis of SOC in B. napus, the loci identified and candidate genes in this study can be used in molecular breeding strategies to increase SOC in this important seed crop.</p

    Sn<sup>4+</sup> Ion Decorated Highly Conductive Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> MXene: Promising Lithium-Ion Anodes with Enhanced Volumetric Capacity and Cyclic Performance

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    Two-dimensional transition metal carbide materials called MXenes show potential application for energy storage due to their remarkable electrical conductivity and low Li<sup>+</sup> diffusion barrier. However, the lower capacity of MXene anodes limits their further application in lithium-ion batteries. Herein, with inspiration from the unique metal ion uptake behavior of highly conductive Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> MXene, we overcome this impediment by fabricating Sn<sup>4+</sup> ion decorated Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> nanocomposites (PVP-Sn­(IV)@Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>) <i>via</i> a facile polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-assisted liquid-phase immersion process. An amorphous Sn­(IV) nanocomplex, about 6–7 nm in lateral size, has been homogeneously anchored on the surface of alk-Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> matrix by ion-exchange and electrostatic interactions. In addition, XRD and TEM results demonstrate the successful insertion of Sn<sup>4+</sup> into the interlamination of an alkalization-intercalated Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> (alk-Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>) matrix. Due to the possible “pillar effect” of Sn between layers of alk-Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> and the synergistic effect between the alk-Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> matrix and Sn, the nanocomposites exhibit a superior reversible volumetric capacity of 1375 mAh cm<sup>–3</sup> (635 mAh g<sup>–1</sup>) at 216.5 mA cm<sup>–3</sup> (100 mA g<sup>–1</sup>), which is significantly higher than that of a graphite electrode (550 mAh cm<sup>–3</sup>), and show excellent cycling stability after 50 cycles. Even at a high current density of 6495 mA cm<sup>–3</sup> (3 A g<sup>–1</sup>), these nanocomposites retain a stable specific capacity of 504.5 mAh cm<sup>–3</sup> (233 mAh g<sup>–1</sup>). These results demonstrate that PVP-Sn­(IV)@Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub> nanocomposites offer fascinating potential for high-performance lithium-ion batteries
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