Time to tackle clonorchiasis in China

Recent publication of the global epidemiology of clonorchiasis and its relationship with cholangiocarcinoma in the journal of Infectious Diseases of Poverty has stressed the importance of Clonorchis sinensis infection. To further demonstrate its threat on public health, especially in China, comparisons between clonorchiasis and hepatitis B are made in terms of epidemiology, clinical symptoms and carcinogenicity, disability, as well as changing trends. Furthermore, major problems and prioritized researches are argued, from basic biology to intervention. Imbalance between the majority of infected population and the minority of researches in China urges for more work from Chinese scientists and international cooperation

Observation on health quality of life before and after the injection of antiangiogenic drug in vitreous cavity to patients with wet age-related macular degeneration

AbstractObjectiveTo explore the vision related health quality-of-life before and after the injection of antiangiogenic drug in vitreous cavity to patients with wet-AMD.MethodsThe 2000 edition of Visual Functioning Questionnaire-25 issued by National Eye Institute is applied, and the VRQL evaluation is conducted on the initial diagnosed patients with wet-AMD before and after the injection of ranibizumab drugs in vitreous cavity.ResultsAmong the wet-AMD patients, patients with better distance visual acuity before the intravitreal injection get lower VFQ-25 score; while after the vitreous cavity injection, the VFQ-25 questionnaire score is related to the explanation and nursing of doctors and nurses towards patients, the better the nursing, the higher the score.ConclusionBefore vitreous cavity injection, the degree of distance visual acuity is an important factor affecting VRQL of wet-AMD patients, in addition, the explanation and nursing of doctors and nurses toward patients during pre-operation, intra-operation and post-operation of intravitreal injection are also the import factors affecting VROL

Layer‐by‐Layer Assembly Fabrication of Porous Boron Nitride Coated Multifunctional Materials for Water Cleaning

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138290/1/admi201700392-sup-0001-S1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138290/2/admi201700392_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138290/3/admi201700392.pd

Boron Nitride Colloidal Solutions, Ultralight Aerogels and Freestanding Membranes through One-Step Exfoliation and Functionalization

Manufacturing of aerogels and membranes from hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is much more difficult than from graphene or graphene oxides because of the poor dispersibility of h-BN in water, which limits its exfoliation and preparation of colloidal solutions. Here, a simple, one-step mechano-chemical process to exfoliate and functionalize h-BN into highly water-dispersible, few-layer h-BN containing amino groups is presented. The colloidal solutions of few-layer h-BN can have unprecedentedly high concentrations, up to 30 mg ml-1, and are stable for up to several months. They can be used to produce ultralight aerogels with a density of 1.4 mg cm-3, which is ~1,500 times less than bulk h-BN, and freestanding membranes simply by cryodrying and filtration, respectively. The material shows strong blue light emission under ultraviolet excitation, in both dispersed and dry state

Molecular pentaquark states with open charm and bottom flavors

We study the possibly-existing molecular pentaquark states with open charm and bottom flavors, {\it i.e.}, the states with the quark contents $c\bar{b}qqq$ and $b\bar{c}qqq$ ($q=u,d,s$). We investigate the meson-baryon interactions through the coupled-channel unitary approach within the local hidden-gauge formalism, and extract the poles by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation in coupled channels. These poles qualify as molecular pentaquark states, which are dynamically generated from the meson-baryon interactions through the exchange of vector mesons. We calculate their masses and widths as well as their couplings to various coupled channels. Our results suggest the existence of the $\Sigma_c^{(*)} B^{(*)}$ and $\Sigma_b^{(*)} \bar{D}^{(*)}$ molecular states with isospin $I=1/2$ as well as the $\Xi_c^{(\prime,*)} B^{(*)}$ and $\Xi_b^{(\prime,*)} \bar{D}^{(*)}$ molecular states with isospin $I=0$.Comment: 48 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, suggestions and comments welcom

A Survey on Visual Mamba

State space models (SSM) with selection mechanisms and hardware-aware architectures, namely Mamba, have recently shown significant potential in long-sequence modeling. Since the complexity of transformers’ self-attention mechanism is quadratic with image size, as well as increasing computational demands, researchers are currently exploring how to adapt Mamba for computer vision tasks. This paper is the first comprehensive survey that aims to provide an in-depth analysis of Mamba models within the domain of computer vision. It begins by exploring the foundational concepts contributing to Mamba’s success, including the SSM framework, selection mechanisms, and hardware-aware design. Then, we review these vision Mamba models by categorizing them into foundational models and those enhanced with techniques including convolution, recurrence, and attention to improve their sophistication. Furthermore, we investigate the widespread applications of Mamba in vision tasks, which include their use as a backbone in various levels of vision processing. This encompasses general visual tasks, medical visual tasks (e.g., 2D/3D segmentation, classification, image registration, etc.), and remote sensing visual tasks. In particular, we introduce general visual tasks from two levels: high/mid-level vision (e.g., object detection, segmentation, video classification, etc.) and low-level vision (e.g., image super-resolution, image restoration, visual generation, etc.). We hope this endeavor will spark additional interest within the community to address current challenges and further apply Mamba models in computer vision

Effect of Annealing Process on CH 3

The morphology of compact TiO2 film used as an electron-selective layer and perovskite film used as a light absorption layer in planar perovskite solar cells has a significant influence on the photovoltaic performance of the devices. In this paper, the spin coating speed of the compact TiO2 is investigated in order to get a high-quality film and the compact TiO2 film exhibits pinhole- and crack-free films treated by 2000 rpm for 60 s. Furthermore, the effect of annealing process, including annealing temperature and annealing program, on CH3NH3PbI3-XClX film morphology is studied. At the optimal annealing temperature of 100°C, the CH3NH3PbI3-XClX morphology fabricated by multistep slow annealing method has smaller grain boundaries and holes than that prepared by one-step direct annealing method, which results in the reduction of grain boundary recombination and the increase of Voc. With all optimal procedures, a planar fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate/compact TiO2/CH3NH3PbI3-XClX/Spiro-MeOTAD/Au cell is prepared for an active area of 0.1 cm2. It has achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 14.64%, which is 80.3% higher than the reference cell (8.12% PCE) without optimal perovskite layer. We anticipate that the annealing process with optimal compact TiO2 layer would possibly become a promising method for future industrialization of planar perovskite solar cells

Small molecules from natural products targeting the Wnt/β-catenin pathway as a therapeutic strategy.

The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is an evolutionarily conserved developmental signaling event that plays a critical role in regulating tissue development and maintaining homeostasis, the dysregulation of which contributes to various diseases. Natural products have been widely recognized as a treasure trove of novel drug discovery for millennia, and many clinical drugs are derived from natural small molecules. Mounting evidence has demonstrated that many natural small molecules could inhibit the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, while the efficacy of natural products remains to be determined. Therefore, this paper primarily reviews the targeting mechanism of natural small molecules for aberrant Wnt/β-catenin pathway that is intimately implicated in the pathogenesis of myriad diseases, such as cancers, renal diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and bone disorders. In addition, this review also highlights some natural products that have the potential to halt Wnt/β-catenin pathway, especially for porcupine, the receptors of Wnt ligands, β-catenin and β-catenin-dependent proteins. Additionally, a series of natural small molecules have shown good therapeutic effects against mutations of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, which may dramatically facilitate the development of natural products in Wnt/β-catenin pathway intervention