Effects of antipsychotics on bone mineral density and prolactin levels in patients with schizophrenia: a 12-month prospective study

Objective: Effects of conventional and atypical antipsychotics on bone mineral density (BMD) and serum prolactin levels (PRL) were examined in patients with schizophrenia.Methods: One hundred and sixty-three first-episode inpatients with schizophrenia were recruited, to whom one of three conventional antipsychotics (perphenazine, sulpiride, and chlorpromazine) or one of three atypical antipsychotics (clozapine, quetiapine, and aripiprazole)was prescribed for 12 months as appropriate. BMD and PRL were tested before and after treatment. Same measures were conducted in 90 matched healthy controls.Results Baseline BMD of postero-anterior L1–L4 range from 1.04 ± 0.17 to 1.42 ± 1.23, and there was no significant difference between the patients group and healthy control group. However, post-treatment BMD values in patients (ranging from 1.02 ± 0.15 to 1.23 ± 0.10) were significantly lower than that in healthy controls (ranging from 1.15 ± 0.12 to 1.42 ± 1.36). The BMD values after conventional antipsychotics were significantly lower than that after atypical antipsychotics. The PRL level after conventional antipsychotics (53.05 ± 30.25 ng/ml) was significantly higher than that after atypical antipsychotics (32.81 ± 17.42 ng/ml). Conditioned relevance analysis revealed significant negative correlations between the PRL level and the BMD values after conventional antipsychotics.Conclusion The increase of PRL might be an important risk factor leading to a high prevalence of osteoporosis in patients with schizophrenia on long-term conventional antipsychotic medication.<br/

Relationship between Google Trend and Daily Trend of New COVID-19 cases in the United States

This study is a statistical analysis examining the relationship between Google Trend and Daily Trend of the number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States using single term versus selecting 5 terms per day and taking time-lag into account. Google Trend was used to measure the interest of users in search terms over time during the pandemic of COVID-19. To make up for the lack of open datasets of search queries, tweets filtered by “COVID-19” related hashtags were used to generate top-5 terms per day according to term frequency on a 7-day moving average. Spearman correlation analysis was applied to examine the correlations between the two trends and examine the impact of time-lag. The results showed high correlation between the two trends by selecting 5 terms per day. Besides, taking time-lag into account improved the correlation between the difference of search interest and the number of new COVID-19 cases. The results indicate that it is important to account for the fact that covid-related language may change over time and time-lag should be considered as an important factor when conducting trend analysis. This study demonstrates the possibility of using Google Trend to predict future case trend of COVID-19 in areas with a large population of Web search users.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Higher-Order Weakly Generalized Epiderivatives and Applications to Optimality Conditions

The notions of higher-order weakly generalized contingent epiderivative and higher-order weakly generalized adjacent epiderivative for set-valued maps are proposed. By virtue of the higher-order weakly generalized contingent (adjacent) epiderivatives, both necessary and sufficient optimality conditions are obtained for Henig efficient solutions to a set-valued optimization problem whose constraint set is determined by a set-valued map. The imposed assumptions are relaxed in comparison with those of recent results in the literature. Examples are provided to show some advantages of our notions and results

Physical Properties and Biocompatibility of a Core-Sheath Structure Composite Scaffold for Bone Tissue Engineering In Vitro

Scaffolds play a critical role in the practical realization of bone tissue engineering. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a core-sheath structure composite scaffold possesses admirable physical properties and biocompatibility in vitro. A novel scaffold composed of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)/β-tricalcium phosphate (PLGA/β-TCP) skeleton wrapped with Type I collagen via low-temperature deposition manufacturing (LDM) was prepared, and bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) were used to evaluate cell behavior on the scaffold. PLGA/β-TCP skeleton was chosen as the control group. Physical properties were evaluated by pority ratio, compressive strength, and Young's modulus. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to study morphology of cells. Hydrophilicity was evaluated by water absorption ratio. Cell proliferation was tested by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay (MTT). Osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs was evaluated by alkaline phosphates activity (ALP). The results indicated that physical properties of the novel scaffold were as good as those of the control group, hydrophilicity was observably better (P < 0.01) than that of control group, and abilities of proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs on novel scaffold were significantly greater (P < 0.05) than those of control group, which suggests that the novel scaffold possesses preferable characteristics and have high value in bone tissue engineering

Boosted ab initio Cryo-EM 3D Reconstruction with ACE-EM

The central problem in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is to recover the 3D structure from noisy 2D projection images which requires estimating the missing projection angles (poses). Recent methods attempted to solve the 3D reconstruction problem with the autoencoder architecture, which suffers from the latent vector space sampling problem and frequently produces suboptimal pose inferences and inferior 3D reconstructions. Here we present an improved autoencoder architecture called ACE (Asymmetric Complementary autoEncoder), based on which we designed the ACE-EM method for cryo-EM 3D reconstructions. Compared to previous methods, ACE-EM reached higher pose space coverage within the same training time and boosted the reconstruction performance regardless of the choice of decoders. With this method, the Nyquist resolution (highest possible resolution) was reached for 3D reconstructions of both simulated and experimental cryo-EM datasets. Furthermore, ACE-EM is the only amortized inference method that reached the Nyquist resolution

The Organic Amendment Improve the Yield and Quality of Vegetable

Using biotechnology, we can change agricultural wastes into high‐quality organic fertilizers, which leads us in the direction of the development in modern agriculture and act as substitute to the chemical fertilizers. In this chapter, five types of technologies of organic amendment are elaborated. Each method can be selected based on the specific circumstance. The effects of the technology in the production are introduced and the principles of the technologies are explained in a simple manner

Estimating glycemic impact of cooking recipes via online crowdsourcing and machine learning

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Nonalcoholic fatty liver associated with impairment of kidney function in nondiabetes population

Background: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is associated with the increased burden of kidney. However, there is still no large population study to explore the potential relationship between NAFLD and mild kidney function damage (MKFD) after adjusted for confounding factors. This study is to test the hypothesis that NAFLD is associated with MKFD under controlling the effects of confoun-ding factors. Materials and methods: Levels of serum fasting glucose, creatinine, cholesterol, triglyceride, alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase were analyzed from 1412 Chinese Han adults. Questionnaire and physical examination were performed to explore the potential association of NAFLD with kidney function. Results: NAFLD was associated with impairment of kidney function. Multivariate-adjusted odds ratio illustrated that, compared to subjects with normal liver, NAFLD subjects had a significantly higher risk of MKFD with or without adjusted for blood glucose and other covariates (P = 0.041). Further results from multi-interaction analysis demonstrated that the underlying mechanisms linked NAFLD with im-paired kidney function may be that they share common risk factors and similar pathological proces-ses. Conclusions: The most striking finding of this study is that NAFLD is negatively associated with kidney function, in nondiabetic population. NAFLD and MKFD may share similar risk factors and/or pathological processes

Higher-Order Weakly Generalized Epiderivatives and Applications to Optimality Conditions

The notions of higher-order weakly generalized contingent epiderivative and higher-order weakly generalized adjacent epiderivative for set-valued maps are proposed. By virtue of the higher-order weakly generalized contingent adjacent epiderivatives, both necessary and sufficient optimality conditions are obtained for Henig efficient solutions to a set-valued optimization problem whose constraint set is determined by a set-valued map. The imposed assumptions are relaxed in comparison with those of recent results in the literature. Examples are provided to show some advantages of our notions and results