Effect of C-type natriuretic peptide and amiodarone in Chinese patients with arrhythmia

Purpose: To compare the effect of C-type natriuretic peptide and amiodarone in Chinese patients with arrhythmia. Method: Chinese men and women aged 18 to 65 years with premature ventricular complexes (PVCs), were administered C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) - test group or amiodarone (study group) in ratio of 1:1 for 96 h. Patients in CNP group received infusion of synthetic human CNP (10 pmol/kg/min) for an initial 2 h, and then for 30 min every day until discharge. Patients in amiodarone group received initial dose of 1000 mg over the first 24 h. Change in PVCs from baseline was the primary efficacy endpoint. Secondary efficacy endpoint includes: change in PVCs-related symptom scores from baseline, change in ejection fraction of left ventricle (LV), end‑diastolic diameter of LV, and cardiac events as composite outcome (CCE). The effect of both treatments on hemodynamic and electrocardiography parameters, and safety were evaluated. Data from 200 patients were analyzed. Results: The CNP showed significantly greater decrease in the number of PVCs when compared to amiodarone (p < 0.005). Moreover, CNP was superior in alleviating PVCs- related symptoms when compared to amiodarone (p < 0.005). A similar trend of favorable effect of CNP was observed for other endpoints. Conclusion: The C-type natriuretic peptide offers significantly greater benefits of suppressing PVCs and related symptoms, and demonstrates significantly greater improvement of cardiac function and clinical outcome. Thus, CNP can be considered for further investigation as a suitable alternative in the management of ventricular arrhythmia with PVC among Chinese patients

A Single Microorganism Epitope Attenuates the Development of Murine Autoimmune Arthritis: Regulation of Dendritic Cells via the Mannose Receptor

A single epitope of Leishmania analog of the receptors for activated C kinase (LACK) from Leishmania major, the polypeptide LACK156–173, is recognized by Vβ4+/Vα8+ T cells, and activate these cells that drives the subsequent T helper (Th)2 response. This study was undertaken to investigate the therapeutic potential of the LACK156–173 epitope in murine autoimmune arthritis models. To explore the influence of the LACK156–173 epitope on murine collagen antibody-induced arthritis, as well as its immunological mechanism, we vaccinated or treated mice with a LACK156–173 epitope expression plasmid or polypeptide. The effect of LACK156–173 epitope was then evaluated by clinical scores, histopathology, and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis. Using flow cytometry, we measured the subsets and maturity of CD11c+ dendritic cells (DCs), as well as T cell polarization, in co-culture experiments. We also measured cytokine gene expression and production. The murine macrophage-like cell line RAW264.7 was used to identify the receptor for the epitope. Vaccination or treatment of the mice with the LACK156–173 epitope expression plasmid or polypeptide ameliorated the severity of arthritis. qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the LACK156–173 epitope improved the balance of effector T cells in synovial tissue compared to that in untreated arthritis controls. Toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 expression was diminished by LACK156–173. The epitope also influenced T cell polarization by regulating the differentiation, maturation, and functions of CD11c+ DCs and upregulating Jagged1 ligand expression. Blocking the mannose receptor (MR) significantly attenuated LACK156–173 epitope-induced macrophage activation. Our data indicate that vaccination or treatment with a single microorganism epitope, LACK156–173, is a highly efficient therapy for murine autoimmune arthritis. The therapeutic effects are mediated by the regulation of the differentiation, maturation, and functions of DCs via MR, resulting in the upregulation of Jagged1 expression and Th2 cell polarization. Our results demonstrate the therapeutic potential of the LACK156–173 epitope in rheumatoid arthritis

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Blow-up of solutions to a class of Kirchhoff equations with strong damping and nonlinear dissipation

Abstract The initial boundary value problem of a class of Kirchhoff equations with strong damping and nonlinear dissipation is considered. By modifying Vitillaro’s argument, we prove a blow-up result for solutions with positive and negative initial energy respectively

DCTransformer: A Channel Attention Combined Discrete Cosine Transform to Extract Spatial–Spectral Feature for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Hyperspectral image (HSI) classification tasks have been adopted in huge applications of remote sensing recently. With the rise of deep learning development, it becomes crucial to investigate how to exploit spatial–spectral features. The traditional approach is to stack models that can encode spatial–spectral features, coupling sufficient information as much as possible, before the classification model. However, this sequential stacking tends to cause information redundancy. In this paper, a novel network utilizing the channel attention combined discrete cosine transform (DCTransformer) to extract spatial–spectral features has been proposed to address this issue. It consists of a detail spatial feature extractor (DFE) with CNN blocks and a base spectral feature extractor (BFE) utilizing the channel attention mechanism (CAM) with a discrete cosine transform (DCT). Firstly, the DFE can extract detailed context information using a series of layers of a CNN. Further, the BFE captures spectral features using channel attention and stores the wider frequency information by utilizing the DCT. Ultimately, the dynamic fusion mechanism has been adopted to fuse the detail and base features. Comprehensive experiments show that the DCTransformer achieves a state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in the HSI classification task, compared to other methods on four datasets, the University of Houston (UH), Indian Pines (IP), MUUFL, and Trento datasets. On the UH dataset, the DCTransformer achieves an OA of 94.40%, AA of 94.89%, and kappa of 93.92

Climate Adaptability Analysis on the Shape of Outpatient Buildings for Different Climate Zones in China Based on Low-Energy Target

Under the impact of COVID-19 and the needs for urban expansion, a large number of outpatient buildings have been rapidly constructed, but the problem of high energy consumption has always been ignored. There is a lack of research on the adaptability of building shape in different climate zones. Many studies have shown that a reasonable shape in the early stage of design can significantly reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Therefore, it helps if architects quickly select a reasonable shape that can effectively reduce energy consumption. This study summarized a number of outpatient building cases in China and proposed three typical building shapes: centralized-type (Shape-1), corridor-type (Shape-2), and courtyard-type (Shape-3). The Design Builder tool was used to simulate and analyze the typical building energy consumption in different climate zones. The simulation results show that Shape-2 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in severe cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 90°) should be chosen in cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in hot summer and cold winter zone; Shape-1 (angle: 60°) should be chosen in hot summer and warm winter zone; and Shape-1 or Shape-2 can be chosen in warm zone. The results of this study can provide suggestions for the energy saving design of outpatient buildings in China and other areas with similar conditions. The result can help architects make rapid shape selection in the early stage of design

Exponential Growth of Solution for a Class of Reaction Diffusion Equation with Memory and Multiple Nonlinearities

In this paper, we consider the initial boundary value problem of a class of reaction diffusion equation with memory and multiple nonlinearities. We show the exponential growth of solution with Lp-norm using a differential inequality

Climate Adaptability Analysis on the Shape of Outpatient Buildings for Different Climate Zones in China Based on Low-Energy Target

Under the impact of COVID-19 and the needs for urban expansion, a large number of outpatient buildings have been rapidly constructed, but the problem of high energy consumption has always been ignored. There is a lack of research on the adaptability of building shape in different climate zones. Many studies have shown that a reasonable shape in the early stage of design can significantly reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Therefore, it helps if architects quickly select a reasonable shape that can effectively reduce energy consumption. This study summarized a number of outpatient building cases in China and proposed three typical building shapes: centralized-type (Shape-1), corridor-type (Shape-2), and courtyard-type (Shape-3). The Design Builder tool was used to simulate and analyze the typical building energy consumption in different climate zones. The simulation results show that Shape-2 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in severe cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 90°) should be chosen in cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in hot summer and cold winter zone; Shape-1 (angle: 60°) should be chosen in hot summer and warm winter zone; and Shape-1 or Shape-2 can be chosen in warm zone. The results of this study can provide suggestions for the energy saving design of outpatient buildings in China and other areas with similar conditions. The result can help architects make rapid shape selection in the early stage of design