Validation of the children international IgA nephropathy prediction tool based on data in Southwest China

BackgroundImmunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN) is one of the most common kidney diseases leading to renal injury. Of pediatric cases, 25%–30% progress into end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in 20–25 years. Therefore, predicting and intervening in IgAN at an early stage is crucial. The purpose of this study was to validate the availability of an international predictive tool for childhood IgAN in a cohort of children with IgAN treated at a regional medical centre.MethodsAn external validation cohort of children with IgAN from medical centers in Southwest China was formed to validate the predictive performance of the two full models with and without race differences by comparing four measures: area under the curve (AUC), the regression coefficient of linear prediction (PI), survival analysis curves for different risk groups, and R2D.ResultsA total of 210 Chinese children, including 129 males, with an overall mean age of 9.43 ± 2.71 years, were incorporated from this regional medical center. In total, 11.43% (24/210) of patients achieved an outcome with a GFR decrease of more than 30% or reached ESKD. The AUC of the full model with race was 0.685 (95% CI: 0.570–0.800) and the AUC of the full model without race was 0.640 (95% CI: 0.517–0.764). The PI of the full model with race and without race was 0.816 (SE = 0.006, P < 0.001) and 0.751 (SE = 0.005, P < 0.001), respectively. The results of the survival curve analysis suggested the two models could not well distinguish between the low-risk and high-risk groups (P = 0.359 and P = 0.452), respectively, no matter the race difference. The evaluation of model fit for the full model with race was 66.5% and without race was 56.2%.ConclusionsThe international IgAN prediction tool has risk factors chosen based on adult data, and the validation cohort did not fully align with the derivation cohort in terms of demographic characteristics, clinical baseline levels, and pathological presentation, so the tool may not be highly applicable to children. We need to build IgAN prediction models that are more applicable to Chinese children based on their particular data

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Reactive Water Vapor Barrier Coatings Derived from Cellulose Undecenoyl Esters for Paper Packaging

Paper packaging materials have been widely applied in our daily life. To maintain the quality of packed goods as well as the mechanical property, there is a need to enhance the paper water vapor barrier function. Although long-chain cellulose esters with saturated aliphatic chains have been employed as barrier coatings due to their excellent hydrophobicity as well as film-forming properties, the coated unsaturated cellulose esters would be beneficial to design reactive materials to further enrich their functionalities, e.g., antibacterial performance. Herein, solutions of cellulose undecenoyl esters (CUEs) were bar-coated to base papers. Obvious coating films were formed on the paper surfaces from the coating grammage of 6.25 g m−2. The resulting CUE-coated papers displayed good mechanical performance, hydrophobicity, and water vapor barrier property (the barrier ratio up to 66.35%), and the best coating grammage was 11.62 g m−2. Additionally, the reactivity of the coated paper was evaluated by further immobilization of the antibacterial agent (polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride (PHGH)) using photo-click thiol-ene and condensation reaction. The generated paper exhibited good antibacterial and water vapor barrier performance. The obvious reactivity of our CUE-coated paper indicated the great possibility to design multi-functional paper packaging materials

The Study of Enzyme Hydrolysis Saccharification Process of Stems and Leaves of Banana

AbstractThe effects of enzyme dosage, substrate concentration, pH value, reaction temperature and reaction time on enzyme hydrolysis saccharification reaction of the stems and leaves of banana were studied. The result shows that the optimized conditions are: dosage of enzyme 0.06g/g oven dry material, substrate concentration 30g/L, pH value 5.0, reaction temperature 50°Cand reaction time 48h.Analyse the structure changes of the stems and leaves of banana before and after enzyme hydrolysis through X-ray. The result shows that the crystallinity of the stems and leaves of banana increases 10.64% after enzyme hydrolysis

Precipitation Mediates the Distribution but Not the Taxonomic Composition of Phytoplankton Communities in a Tributary of Three Gorges Reservoir

Precipitation is a driver of changes in the spatiotemporal distribution of phytoplankton communities. The ecological consequence of precipitation is important, but the underlying processes are not clear. Here we conducted an immediate prior- and after-event short-interval investigation in the Three Gorges Reservoir region, to test whether the short-term changes in the phytoplankton communities and functional groups could be predicted based on the precipitation level. We found that precipitation of moderate and high levels immediately changed the phytoplankton distribution and altered functional groups. According to structural equation model, the vertical velocity (λ = −0.81), light availability (Zeu/Zmix, λ = 0.47) and relative water column stability (RWCS, λ = 0.38) were important parameters for phytoplankton distribution during the precipitation event. Water quality did not directly affect phytoplankton distribution (λ = −0.11) and effects of precipitation on the water quality only lasted 1–2 days. The phytoplankton community was redistributed with some tolerance functional groups appearance, such as groups F, Lo, M and groups M, MP, TB, W1 appeared during- and after- precipitation event, respectively. We also found that mixing rather than flushing was the driving force for the decrease of phytoplankton biomass. Our study provided valuable data for reservoir regulation and evidence for predictions of phytoplankton during the precipitation events under different climate change scenarios.</jats:p

Absorbable Organic Halide (AOX) Reduction in Elemental Chlorine-Free (ECF) Bleaching of Bagasse Pulp from the Addition of Sodium Sulphide

A laboratory investigation was developed to confirm and to quantify the reductions in absorbable organic halide (AOX) discharge when sodium sulphide was added during elemental chlorine-free (ECF) bleaching of sugarcane bagasse pulp. After the chlorine dioxide bleaching stage, the pulp was sent directly into the extraction stage without washing. FTIR was employed to determine the breakage of chemical bonds in the pulp, and GC-MS was used to measure the composition of the bleaching effluent. The addition of sodium sulphide caused a reduction in AOX of up to 46.7%. The AOX reduction reached this maximum when the sodium sulphide was added 30 min after the start of the extraction stage and when the pH was higher than 12. FTIR spectroscopy showed that the phenolic lignin of the pulp was degraded by the sodium sulphide and that the syringyl lignin and C-O-C, C=O structure of the pulp holocellulose of the pulp was preserved during the extraction stage. The GC-MS showed that the chlorobenzene and chlorophenol contents decreased noticeably after the addition of sodium sulphide

Regulating Nutrients and Phytoplankton by Extending the Habitats of Periphyton in a Deep River-Type Reservoir

Eutrophication and phytoplankton blooms threaten the water quality of many reservoirs, especially deep ones. Periphyton is an important component of aquatic ecosystems that can compete with phytoplankton for light and nutrients. However, studies on the dynamics of periphyton development in deep reservoirs are rare. Here, the growth characteristics of periphyton on the artificial substrate (AS) in both open water and enclosures of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) are investigated. The development and relative importance of periphyton are analyzed. The results indicate that mass growth of periphyton is observed on the AS platforms after several weeks. A potential phosphorus limitation for periphyton development in the TGR is evidenced by the relatively high TN/TP ratio in the water column. The differences of phytoplankton biomass in two enclosures suggest the existence of interactions between phytoplankton and periphyton. The results indicate that the artificially loaded AS on the water surface of the deep reservoir leads to the redistribution of nutrients and light between phytoplankton and periphyton. The results are very encouraging because the use of AS for periphyton incubation is an economical and practical way to reduce the probability of phytoplankton blooms in deep reservoirs, especially when the nutrient loads cannot be reduced effectively in a short period

Precipitation Mediates the Distribution but Not the Taxonomic Composition of Phytoplankton Communities in a Tributary of Three Gorges Reservoir

Precipitation is a driver of changes in the spatiotemporal distribution of phytoplankton communities. The ecological consequence of precipitation is important, but the underlying processes are not clear. Here we conducted an immediate prior- and after-event short-interval investigation in the Three Gorges Reservoir region, to test whether the short-term changes in the phytoplankton communities and functional groups could be predicted based on the precipitation level. We found that precipitation of moderate and high levels immediately changed the phytoplankton distribution and altered functional groups. According to structural equation model, the vertical velocity (λ = −0.81), light availability (Zeu/Zmix, λ = 0.47) and relative water column stability (RWCS, λ = 0.38) were important parameters for phytoplankton distribution during the precipitation event. Water quality did not directly affect phytoplankton distribution (λ = −0.11) and effects of precipitation on the water quality only lasted 1–2 days. The phytoplankton community was redistributed with some tolerance functional groups appearance, such as groups F, Lo, M and groups M, MP, TB, W1 appeared during- and after- precipitation event, respectively. We also found that mixing rather than flushing was the driving force for the decrease of phytoplankton biomass. Our study provided valuable data for reservoir regulation and evidence for predictions of phytoplankton during the precipitation events under different climate change scenarios