Anxiety, depression, psychological stress and coping style in medical postgraduates in southeastern China when restricted to commuting between the campus and hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundAs the COVID-19 epidemic was gradually brought under control, a new autumn semester began in 2020. How was the mental health of postgraduates as they experienced quarantine at home, only commuting between the school and hospital?MethodsThe research was conducted in a cross-sectional online survey in October 2020. The data were collected from 1,645 medical postgraduates (master’s and doctoral students) by using the demographic information questionnaire, the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), the Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), the Questionnaire on Psychological Stressors of Postgraduates (QPSP), the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ) and the Social Support Rate Scale (SSRS). One-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation were used to explore the relationships among anxiety, depression, psychological stressors, social support and coping style. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to assess the mediation model.ResultsAmong the total of 1,645 medical postgraduates, 21.6% (n = 356) had self-rated depression symptoms, and 9.4% (n = 155) had self-rated anxiety symptoms. The main disturbances they experienced were employment, academic and interpersonal pressure. The master of third grade students had the highest employment pressure, and the master of second grade students had the highest academic and interpersonal pressure. Negative coping played a negative mediating role and social support played a positive mediating role in the relationships between perceived stress and anxiety (β = 0.027, P < 0.01; β = 0.124, P < 0.01) and depression (β = 0.016, P < 0.01; β = 0.193, P < 0.01).ConclusionMedical postgraduates in China restricted to studies on campus and in the hospital experienced psychological distress. Our results suggest that providing employment and learning guidance, while strengthening social support and guiding positive coping may be effective at improving the mental health of the medical graduate students, mediating their perceived stress and negative emotions

Combined treatment of UVA and antibiotics

The presence of antibiotics in the environment and their subsequent impact on the development of multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria has raised concerns globally. Consequently, much research is focused on a method to produce a better disinfectant. We have established a disinfectant system using UVA-LED that inactivates pathogenic bacteria. We assessed the bactericidal efficiency of a combination of UVA-LED and antibiotics against Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Combined use of antibiotic drugs and UVA irradiation was more bactericidal than UVA irradiation or antibacterial drugs alone. The bactericidal synergy was observed at low concentrations of each drug that are normally unable to kill the bacteria. This combination has the potential to become a sterilization technology

A 56–161 GHz Common-Emitter Amplifier with 16.5 dB Gain Based on InP DHBT Process

This paper presents a broadband amplifier MMIC based on 0.5 µm InP double-heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology. The proposed common-emitter amplifier contains five stages, and bias circuits are used in the matching network to obtain stable high gain in a broadband range. The measurement results demonstrate a peak gain of 19.5 dB at 146 GHz and a 3 dB bandwidth of 56–161 GHz (relative bandwidth of 96.8%). The saturation output power achieves 5.9 and 6.5 dBm at 94 and 140 GHz, respectively. The 1 dB compression output power is −4.7 dBm with an input power of −23 dBm at 94 GHz. The proposed amplifier has a compact chip size of 1.2 × 0.7 mm2, including DC and RF pads

Preparation and Recognition Characteristics of Thymopentin Molecularly Imprinted Polymers on SiO

A computer simulation approach was developed to screen functional monomers for the rational design of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). The proposed approach is based on a comparison of the binding energy of complexes, which are formed by the interaction between a template molecule and various functional monomers. According to the results of theoretical calculations, MIPs using thymopentin (TP5) as a template were prepared by a solution polymerization method, in which 2-methylacrylamide, N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide and poly(methylacrylic acid)/SiO 2 were used as the functional monomer, cross-linker and support, respectively. Solid-phase extraction experiments were performed, and static and dynamic binding properties of the synthesized MIP (i.e. TP5-MIP) for TP5 were studied. Results show that TP5-MIP exhibits excellent binding affinity and specific selectivity for the template molecule (i.e. TP5)

Weak fault detection based on amplification-compression function and sparse spike deconvolution

Weak fault detection is still a hotspot in these years. The key of this work is to enhance the ratio of signal to noise (SNR). Then a new extraction method of weak fault impact based on amplification algorithm is proposed. Since the fault impact is related to bigger derivative, the amplification function combined with the derivative of the vibration signal is used to amplify the amplitude of the impact. Then Sparse Spike Deconvolution (SSD) which has been widely used in earthquake for impact detection is able to extract small impact from the signal processed by amplification function. Then, in order to enhance the periodicity of fault impacts, the compression function is used to compress the amplitude of bigger impacts according to different scales. At last, the experiment result shows that the proposed method is more effective than the common envelope analysis

Differential Mucosal Microbiome Profiles across Stages of Human Colorectal Cancer

Emerging evidences link gut microbiota to colorectal cancer (CRC) initiation and development. However, the CRC stage- and spatial-specific bacterial taxa were less investigated, especially in a Chinese cohort, leading to our incomplete understanding of the functional roles of gut microbiota in promoting CRC progression and recurrence. Here, we report the composition and structure of gut microbiota across CRC stages I, II and III, by analyzing the gut mucosal microbiomes of 75 triplet-paired samples collected from on-tumor, adjacent-tumor and off-tumor sites and 26 healthy controls. We observed tumor-specific pattern of mucosal microbiome profiles as CRC progressed and identified ten bacterial taxa with high abundances (>1%) as potential biomarkers for tumor initiation and development. Peptostreptococcus and Parvimonas can serve as biomarkers for CRC stage I. Fusobacterium, Streptococcus, Parvimonas, Burkholderiales, Caulobacteraceae, Delftia and Oxalobacteraceae can serve as biomarkers for CRC stage II, while Fusobacterium, Burkholderiales, Caulobacteraceae, Oxalobacteraceae, Faecalibacterium and Sutterella can serve as biomarkers for CRC stage III. These biomarkers classified CRC stages I, II and III distinguished from each other with an area under the receiver-operating curve (AUC) > 0.5. Moreover, co-occurrence and co-excluding network analysis of these genera showed strong correlations in CRC stage I, which were subsequently reduced in CRC stages II and III. Our findings provide a reference index for stage-specific CRC diagnosis and suggest stage-specific roles of Peptostreptococcus, Fusobacterium, Streptococcus and Parvimonas in driving CRC progression

An Adaptive Multiscale Gaussian Co-Occurrence Filtering Decomposition Method for Multispectral and SAR Image Fusion

Spectral information and backscatter information are both exclusively important bases for land cover classification, and these two kinds of information are found in multispectral images and SAR images, respectively. Therefore, the fusion of complementary information of multispectral and SAR images can effectively improve land cover classification accuracy. However, the existing fusion methods of multispectral and SAR images generally have some problems, such as insensitivity to edge information, serious interference by speckle noise, and unreasonable settings of fusion rules, which lead to unsatisfactory results of land cover classification. To solve this issue, a fusion method based on adaptive multiscale Gaussian co-occurrence filtering decomposition is proposed. Gaussian filtering and adaptive co-occurrence filtering are applied to the original image to smooth out speckle noise and interference edges within the textures while preserving edge information between textures. Through multi-scale spatial decomposition, the separation of detail information, edge information and basic information is realized, while multi-layer fusion of image features is performed. Finally, the fused image with low noise interference, clear boundary and uniform pixel convergence is generated. Experimental results show that the proposed method generally performs the best in eight evaluation indexes compared with ten other methods. The overall accuracy, average accuracy and Kappa coefficient of land cover classification are increased by 7.674%, 6.776%, and 0.098, respectively, compared with those of the original multispectral image in Area 1, and by 6.904%, 7.649%, and 0.089, respectively, compared with those of the original multispectral image in Area 2

Mass spectrometry and Monte Carlo method mapping of nanoparticle ligand shell morphology

Janus, patchy, stripe-like, or random arrangements of molecules within the ligand shell of nanoparticles affect many properties. Among all existing ligand shell morphology characterization methods, the one based on mass spectroscopy is arguably the simplest. Its greatest limitation is that the results are qualitative. Here, we use a tailor-made Monte Carlo type program that fits the whole MALDI spectrum and generates a 3D model of the ligand shell. Quantitative description of the ligand shell in terms of nearest neighbor distribution and characteristic length scale can be readily extracted by the model, and are compared with the results of other characterization methods. A parameter related to the inter-molecular interaction is extracted when this method is combined with NMR. This approach could become the routine method to characterize the ligand shell morphology of many nanoparticles and we provide an open access program to facilitate its use

Dietary fiber alleviates intestinal barrier dysfunction in post-trauma rats

Background: Damage to the intestinal barrier often occurs following severe trauma. It has been reported that enteral nutrition with dietary fiber (DF) could mitigate impairment of the intestinal barrier and might therefore be effective in clinical application; however, the conclusions from existing trials are controversial and the nature of the protective mechanism is far from clear. This study investigated the protective mechanism of dietary fiber on intestinal barrier in rats under bilateral closed femur fracture. Methods: Twenty-four Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into four groups: normal control without any manipulation, trauma control with normal feeding, DF and dietary fiber-free (NF) groups fed with Nutrison Fibre and Nutrison, respectively. The later two groups were further divided into 1, 4, 7 and 10 days post-trauma groups. Results: The trauma caused body weight decline, promoted bacterial translocation, and decreased immune function. The levels of portal vein endoxin in DF group was significantly lower than in NF group (p=0.013). Levers of both serum TNF-α and IL-6 on post-trauma day 10 showed no statistical differences between DF and NF groups. The incidence of bacterial translocation recovered to normal in DF group. Only secreted immunoglobulin a (sIgA) levels in DF group was higher than in NF group (p=0.005). Conclusion: Early enteral nutrition with dietary fiber could alleviate damage to intestinal barrier function and decreased the incidence of bacterial translocation caused by trauma and endotoxemia in rats under extra-abdominal trauma