Sharing Economy in Local Energy Markets

With an increase in the electrification of end-use sectors, various resources on the demand side provide great flexibility potential for system operation, which also leads to problems such as the strong randomness of power consumption behavior, the low utilization rate of flexible resources, and difficulties in cost recovery. With the core idea of 'access over ownership', the concept of the sharing economy has gained substantial popularity in the local energy market in recent years. Thus, we provide an overview of the potential market design for the sharing economy in local energy markets (LEMs) and conduct a detailed review of research related to local energy sharing, enabling technologies, and potential practices. This paper can provide a useful reference and insights for the activation of demand-side flexibility potential. Hopefully, this paper can also provide novel insights into the development and further integration of the sharing economy in LEMs.</p

The microbiota continuum along the female reproductive tract and its relation to uterine-related diseases

Reports on bacteria detected in maternal fluids during pregnancy are typically associated with adverse consequences, and whether the female reproductive tract harbours distinct microbial communities beyond the vagina has been a matter of debate. Here we systematically sample the microbiota within the female reproductive tract in 110 women of reproductive age, and examine the nature of colonisation by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and cultivation. We find distinct microbial communities in cervical canal, uterus, fallopian tubes and peritoneal fluid, differing from that of the vagina. The results reflect a microbiota continuum along the female reproductive tract, indicative of a non-sterile environment. We also identify microbial taxa and potential functions that correlate with the menstrual cycle or are over-represented in subjects with adenomyosis or infertility due to endometriosis. The study provides insight into the nature of the vagino-uterine microbiome, and suggests that surveying the vaginal or cervical microbiota might be useful for detection of common diseases in the upper reproductive tract.Shenzhen Municipal Government of China [JCYJ20160229172757249, JCYJ20150601090833370]; Danish Strategic Research Council [2106-07-0021]; Ole Romer grant from Danish Natural Science Research Council; Solexa project [272-07-0196]SCI(E)ARTICLE

Dietary Modulation of Gut Microbiota Contributes to Alleviation of Both Genetic and Simple Obesity in Children

Gut microbiota has been implicated as a pivotal contributing factor in diet-related obesity; however, its role in development of disease phenotypes in human genetic obesity such as Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) remains elusive. In this hospitalized intervention trial with PWS (n = 17) and simple obesity (n = 21) children, a diet rich in non-digestible carbohydrates induced significant weight loss and concomitant structural changes of the gut microbiota together with reduction of serum antigen load and alleviation of inflammation. Co-abundance network analysis of 161 prevalent bacterial draft genomes assembled directly from metagenomic datasets showed relative increase of functional genome groups for acetate production from carbohydrates fermentation. NMR-based metabolomic profiling of urine showed diet-induced overall changes of host metabotypes and identified significantly reduced trimethylamine N-oxide and indoxyl sulfate, host-bacteria co-metabolites known to induce metabolic deteriorations. Specific bacterial genomes that were correlated with urine levels of these detrimental co-metabolites were found to encode enzyme genes for production of their precursors by fermentation of choline or tryptophan in the gut. When transplanted into germ-free mice, the pre-intervention gut microbiota induced higher inflammation and larger adipocytes compared with the post-intervention microbiota from the same volunteer. Our multi-omics-based systems analysis indicates a significant etiological contribution of dysbiotic gut microbiota to both genetic and simple obesity in children, implicating a potentially effective target for alleviation

Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of neuroinflammation and postoperative neurocognitive disorders in patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction Postoperative neurocognitive disorders (PNDs) are characterised by gradual cognitive decline or change occurring after anaesthesia and surgery, and they are common in patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery. The onset of PNDs has been associated with dementia or other types of neurocognitive disorders in later life. Moreover, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of neuroinflammation, including amyloid beta-40 peptide, amyloid beta-42 peptide, total tau protein, phosphorylated tau protein and neurofilament light chain, have been reported to be crucial in several high-quality clinical studies on PNDs. However, the role of these biomarkers in the onset of PNDs remains controversial. Therefore, this study aims to determine the association between CSF biomarkers of neuroinflammation and the onset of PNDs in patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery, which will provide novel insights for investigating PNDs and other types of dementia.Methods and analysis This systematic review and meta-analysis will be conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviewd and Meta-Analyses 2020 statement. Moreover, we will search MEDLINE (via OVID), EMBASE and the Cochrane Library without any language and date restrictions. Observational studies will be included. Two reviewers will independently perform the entire procedure, and disagreements will be settled by discussion between them and consultation with a third reviewer. Standardised electronic forms will be generated to extract data. The risk of bias in the individual studies will be evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. All statistical analyses will be performed using the RevMan software or the Stata software.Ethics and dissemination This study will include peer-reviewed published articles; thus, no ethical issues will be involved. Further, the final manuscript will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.PROSPERO registration number CRD42022380180

Novel prognostic gene signature for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma based on hypoxia

Abstract Background Currently, there is lack of marker to accurately assess the prognosis of patients diagnosed with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). This study aims to establish a hypoxia-related risk scoring model that can effectively predict the prognosis and chemotherapy outcomes of PDAC patients. Methods Using unsupervised consensus clustering algorithms, we comprehensively analyzed The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data to identify two distinct hypoxia clusters and used the weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to examine gene sets significantly associated with these hypoxia clusters. Then univariate Cox regression, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression and multivariate Cox regression were used to construct a signature and its efficacy was evaluated using the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) PDAC cohort. Further, the correlation between the risk scores obtained from the signature and carious clinical, pathological, immunophenotype, and immunoinfiltration factors as well as the differences in immunotherapy potential and response to common chemotherapy drugs between high-risk and low-risk groups were evaluated. Results From a total of 8 significantly related modules and 4423 genes, 5 hypoxia-related signature genes were identified to construct a risk model. Further analysis revealed that the overall survival rate (OS) of patients in the low-risk group was significantly higher than the high-risk group. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that the risk scoring signature was an independent factor for prognosis prediction. Analysis of immunocyte infiltration and immunophenotype showed that the immune score and the anticancer immune response in the high-risk were significantly lower than that in the low-risk group. Conclusion The constructed hypoxia-associated prognostic signature demonstrated could be used as a potential risk classifier for PDAC