Pain Management in Acute Pancreatitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials

Background: Pain management is an important priority in the treatment of acute pancreatitis (AP). Current evidence and guideline recommendations are inconsistent on the most effective analgesic protocol. This systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) aimed to compare the safety and efficacy of analgesics for pain relief in AP. Methods: A literature search was performed to identify all RCTs assessing analgesics in patients with AP. The primary outcome was the number of participants who needed rescue analgesia. Study quality was assessed using Jadad score. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) or weighted mean differences (WMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were analysed using a random-effects model. Results: Twelve studies comprising 699 patients with AP (83% mild AP) were analysed. The tested analgesics significantly decreased the need for rescue analgesia (3 studies, OR.36, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.60) vs. placebo or conventional treatment. The analgesics also improved the pain score [Visual Analogue Scale (Δ-VAS)] at 24 h (WMD 18.46, 0.84 to 36.07) and by the 3rd to 7th days (WMD 11.57, 0.87 to 22.28). Opioids vs. non-opioids were associated with a decrease in the need for rescue analgesia (6 studies, OR 0.25, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.86, p = 0.03) but without significance in pain score. In subgroup analyses, opioids were similar to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) regarding the primary outcome (4 studies, OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.24 to 1.32, p = 0.18). There were no significant differences in other clinical outcomes and rate of adverse events. Other studies, comparing epidural anaesthesia vs. patient-controlled analgesia and opioid (buprenorphine) vs. opioid (pethidine) did not show significant difference in primary outcome. Study quality issues significantly contributed to overall study heterogeneity. Conclusions: NSAIDs and opioids are equally effective in decreasing the need for rescue analgesia in patients with mild AP. The relative paucity of trials and high-quality data in this setting is notable and the optimal analgesic strategy for patients with moderately severe and severe AP still requires to be determined

Ethanol-sensing performance of tin dioxide octahedral nanocrystals with exposed high-energy {111} and {332} facets

National Natural Science Foundation of China [61376073]Tin dioxide octahedral nanocrystals with exposed high-energy {111} and {332} facets were hydrothermally synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and selected-area electron diffraction (SAED). Gas sensors were fabricated from the prepared SnO2 nanocrystals and applied to ethanol-sensing tests. Octahedral SnO2 {332} exhibited a maximum response of 2200 under an ethanol concentration of 800 ppm at 250 degrees C with a response time of 1.5 s and a recovery time of 32.5 s, whereas SnO2 {111} exhibited a maximum response of 179 at 360 degrees C with a response time of 9.5 s and a recovery time of 6.7 s. The sensing mechanisms responsible for SnO2 nanocrystals to ethanol vapor are discussed

Effects of Inflorescence Stem Structure and Cell Wall Components on the Mechanical Strength of Inflorescence Stem in Herbaceous Peony

Herbaceous peony (Paeonia lactiflora Pall.) is a traditional famous flower, but its poor inflorescence stem quality seriously constrains the development of the cut flower. Mechanical strength is an important characteristic of stems, which not only affects plant lodging, but also plays an important role in stem bend or break. In this paper, the mechanical strength, morphological indices and microstructure of P. lactiflora development inflorescence stems were measured and observed. The results showed that the mechanical strength of inflorescence stems gradually increased, and that the diameter of inflorescence stem was a direct indicator in estimating mechanical strength. Simultaneously, with the development of inflorescence stem, the number of vascular bundles increased, the vascular bundle was arranged more densely, the sclerenchyma cell wall thickened, and the proportion of vascular bundle and pith also increased. On this basis, cellulose and lignin contents were determined, PlCesA3, PlCesA6 and PlCCoAOMT were isolated and their expression patterns were examined including PlPAL. The results showed that cellulose was not strictly correlated with the mechanical strength of inflorescence stem, and lignin had a significant impact on it. In addition, PlCesA3 and PlCesA6 were not key members in cellulose synthesis of P. lactiflora and their functions were also different, but PlPAL and PlCCoAOMT regulated the lignin synthesis of P. lactiflora. These data indicated that PlPAL and PlCCoAOMT could be applied to improve the mechanical strength of P. lactiflora inflorescence stem in genetic engineering

Skywork: A More Open Bilingual Foundation Model

In this technical report, we present Skywork-13B, a family of large language models (LLMs) trained on a corpus of over 3.2 trillion tokens drawn from both English and Chinese texts. This bilingual foundation model is the most extensively trained and openly published LLMs of comparable size to date. We introduce a two-stage training methodology using a segmented corpus, targeting general purpose training and then domain-specific enhancement training, respectively. We show that our model not only excels on popular benchmarks, but also achieves \emph{state of the art} performance in Chinese language modeling on diverse domains. Furthermore, we propose a novel leakage detection method, demonstrating that test data contamination is a pressing issue warranting further investigation by the LLM community. To spur future research, we release Skywork-13B along with checkpoints obtained during intermediate stages of the training process. We are also releasing part of our SkyPile corpus, a collection of over 150 billion tokens of web text, which is the largest high quality open Chinese pre-training corpus to date. We hope Skywork-13B and our open corpus will serve as a valuable open-source resource to democratize access to high-quality LLMs

The Development and Use of Economic Value concerning Urban Landscape Plants in Shijiazhuang City in the Context of Ecological Civilization Construction

Many landscape plants have edible, medicinal, forage, industrial and other economic value, which has not been fully exploited. Effective development and utilization of the economic value of city landscape plant, conforms to the need of sustainable development and economical society, which is of great significance to the development of urban ecological civilization construction. In this paper, the landscape plant species in Shijiazhuang City and their economic value are investigated and analyzed, the principle and scheme of economic development and utilization of landscape plants in Shijiazhuang city value are put forward, which provides the reference for full and sustainable utilization of landscape plant resources in Shijiazhuang City

Analysis of Voltage Control Strategies for DC Microgrid with Multiple Types of Energy Storage Systems

Direct-current (DC) microgrids have gained worldwide attention in recent decades due to their high system efficiency and simple control. In a self-sufficient energy system, voltage control is an important key to dealing with upcoming challenges of renewable energy integration into DC microgrids, and thus energy storage systems (ESSs) are often employed to suppress the power fluctuation and ensure the voltage stability. In this paper, the performances of three voltage control strategies for DC microgrids are compared, including the proportion integration (PI) control, the fuzzy PI control and particle swarm optimization (PSO) PI control. Particularly, two kinds of ESSs including battery and advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage (AA-CAES) with different operational characteristics are installed in the microgrid, and their impacts on voltage control are investigated. The control performances are comprehensively compared under different control schemes, various scenarios of renewable energy fluctuations, participation in the control of the two ESSs or not, and different fault conditions. Additionally, the dynamic performances of the ESSs are exhibited. The results verify the validity of the control schemes and the feasibility of the configuration of the ESSs into the DC microgrid