Disembedding and re-embedding: the online interaction mechanisms of divorced youth in China

IntroductionIn recent years, China’s divorce rates have remained high, especially in metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Shanghai, where rates reach up to 40%. Additionally, there has been a notable shift towards younger demographics in divorce cases. In a society that highly values marital harmony, divorce is often seen as a cultural transgression. Anthony Giddens’ theory of disembedding and re-embedding provides a useful framework for understanding these changes. This study addresses a gap in literature by focusing on the online social interactions of divorced Chinese youth, exploring their use of dating apps for emotional support and social reconnections.MethodsThis qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with 19 divorced young adults in China who engaged with dating apps such as Momo, Tantan, and Soul. Participants were recruited via Douban and Xiaohongshu. The interviews, conducted through WeChat voice calls and Tencent Meetings, lasted 45-70 minutes each. Data was analyzed using Nvivo12 to understand the disembedding and re-embedding processes in their online interactions, exploring themes such as motivations, self-presentation, and the transition from online to offline engagements.Results and discussionThe findings reveal that these individuals face societal challenges, biases, and the residual effects of past marriages, leading them to seek refuge in online environments to avoid stigmatization. In digital spaces, they cautiously engage, revealing a lack of confidence through selective self-disclosure. Their goals range from forming same-sex and opposite-sex friendships to seeking new romantic relationships, indicating a nuanced approach to remarriage and challenging stereotypes of dating app users. Re-engaging online, they discover social support and a sense of community, which aids in regaining confidence post-divorce, underscoring the complex interplay between societal influences and individual adaptation strategies in the digital age. The study highlights the unique challenges faced by this demographic, including maintaining anonymity and dealing with societal prejudices. Future research should consider a broader age range and gender differences to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the online behaviors and experiences of divorced individuals

Limited Query Graph Connectivity Test

We propose a combinatorial optimisation model called Limited Query Graph Connectivity Test. We consider a graph whose edges have two possible states (On/Off). The edges' states are hidden initially. We could query an edge to reveal its state. Given a source s and a destination t, we aim to test s-t connectivity by identifying either a path (consisting of only On edges) or a cut (consisting of only Off edges). We are limited to B queries, after which we stop regardless of whether graph connectivity is established. We aim to design a query policy that minimizes the expected number of queries. Our model is mainly motivated by a cyber security use case where we need to establish whether an attack path exists in a network, between a source and a destination. Edge query is resolved by manual effort from the IT admin, which is the motivation behind query minimization. Our model is highly related to monotone Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation (SBFE). There are two existing exact algorithms for SBFE that are prohibitively expensive. We propose a significantly more scalable exact algorithm. While previous exact algorithms only scale for trivial graphs (i.e., past works experimented on at most 20 edges), we empirically demonstrate that our algorithm is scalable for a wide range of much larger practical graphs (i.e., Windows domain network graphs with tens of thousands of edges). We propose three heuristics. Our best-performing heuristic is via reducing the search horizon of the exact algorithm. The other two are via reinforcement learning (RL) and Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS). We also derive an anytime algorithm for computing the performance lower bound. Experimentally, we show that all our heuristics are near optimal. The exact algorithm based heuristic outperforms all, surpassing RL, MCTS and 8 existing heuristics ported from SBFE and related literature

Improving Fairness of Graph Neural Networks: A Graph Counterfactual Perspective

Graph neural networks have shown great ability in representation (GNNs) learning on graphs, facilitating various tasks. Despite their great performance in modeling graphs, recent works show that GNNs tend to inherit and amplify the bias from training data, causing concerns of the adoption of GNNs in high-stake scenarios. Hence, many efforts have been taken for fairness-aware GNNs. However, most existing fair GNNs learn fair node representations by adopting statistical fairness notions, which may fail to alleviate bias in the presence of statistical anomalies. Motivated by causal theory, there are several attempts utilizing graph counterfactual fairness to mitigate root causes of unfairness. However, these methods suffer from non-realistic counterfactuals obtained by perturbation or generation. In this paper, we take a causal view on fair graph learning problem. Guided by the casual analysis, we propose a novel framework CAF, which can select counterfactuals from training data to avoid non-realistic counterfactuals and adopt selected counterfactuals to learn fair node representations for node classification task. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets show the effectiveness of CAF

Evaluation of oral Lanzhou lamb rotavirus vaccine via passive transfusion with CD4+/CD8+ T lymphocytes

AbstractLanzhou Lamb derived Rotavirus (RV) Vaccine (namely LLR) for children is only used in China. Since there were no reports on evaluation of LLR, even the data of phase IV clinical trial, we proceed the evaluation of LLR through focusing on T-cell to investigate whether LLR could induce the potential function involving in protection as a vaccine. Four groups of nude mice were transfused with CD4+/CD8+ T-cells isolated from LLR-immunized (primed) and LLR-unimmunized (naïve) mice via intraperitonea (i.p.) respectively. Consequently, the adoption mice were challenged with mice-origin wild rotavirus EDIM (Epizootic Diarrhea of Infant Mice) by intragastric administration. Series of fecal/serum samples were collected and viral shedding, then serum IgA/IgG and secreted IgA were assayed. Compared to the mice transfused with T lymphocytes from naïve mice, the nude mice transfused with CD4+ T lymphocytes from primed mice induce fecal and serum IgA increasing more rapidly, and have a shorter duration of virus shedding too. Whereas, no significant difference in virus clearance was found between the mice transfused with CD8+ T lymphocytes isolated from primed and naïve mice. Therefore, we cleared the distinct roles of transfused CD4+/CD8+ T lymphocytes for rotavirus clearance in nude mice, that the viral clearance conducted by CD4+ T lymphocytes. Meanwhile, it has ability to help induction of LLR specific immunogenicity. Comparing with the transfusion of cell from primed and naïve mice, LLR can induce CD4+ T lymphocytes memory which is a potential index to reflect the immunogenicity and protection, while CD8+ T lymphocytes remove rotavirus by CTL with little memory ability

A single-step preparation of carbohydrate functionalized monoliths for separation and trapping of polar compounds

A single-step copolymerization strategy was developed for the preparation of carbohydrate (glucose and maltose) functionalized monoliths using click reaction. Firstly, novel carbohydrate-functionalized methacrylate monomers were synthesized through Cu(I)-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (alkyne-azide reaction) of terminal alkyne with azide of carbohydrate derivatives. The corresponding carbohydrate functionalized monolithic columns were then prepared through a single-step in-situ copolymerization. The physicochemical properties and performance of the fabricated monolithic columns were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and nano-liquid chromatography. For the optimized monolithic column, satisfactory column permeability and good separation performance were demonstrated for polar compounds including nucleoside, phenolic compounds and benzoic acid derivatives. The monolithic column is also highly useful for selective and efficient enrichment of glycopeptides from human IgG tryptic digests. This study not only provided a novel hydrophilic column for separation and selective trapping of polar compounds, but also proposed a facile and efficient approach for preparing carbohydrate functionalized monoliths

Inflammation-related proteomics demonstrate landscape of fracture blister fluid in patients with acute compartment syndrome

BackgroundBlisters are tense vesicles or bullae that arise on swollen skin and are found in a wide range of injuries. As a complication of fracture, fracture blisters are considered soft tissue injuries, which often lead to adverse effects such as prolonged preoperative waiting time and increased risk of surgical site infection. However, our previous study found that in patients with acute compartment syndrome, fracture blisters may be a form of compartment pressure release, but the specific mechanism has not been revealed. Here, we mapped out the proteomic landscape of fracture blister fluid for the first time and compared its expression profile to cupping and burn blisters.MethodsFirst, fluid samples were collected from 15 patients with fracture blisters, 7 patients with cupping blisters, and 9 patients with burn blisters. Then, the expression levels of 92 inflammatory proteins were measured using the Olink Target 96 Inflammation panel. Protein profiles were compared across the three groups using Differential Protein Expression Analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA).ResultsFracture blisters had significantly higher levels of 50 proteins in comparison to cupping and 26 proteins in comparison to burn blisters. Notably, PCA showed fracture blisters closely resembled the protein expression profile of burn blisters but were distinct from the protein expression profile of cupping blisters.ConclusionOur study provides the first characterization of fracture blister fluid using proteomics, which provides a valuable reference for further analysis of the difference between blisters caused by fractures and those caused by other pathogenic factors. This compendium of proteomic data provides valuable insights and a rich resource to better understand fracture blisters

Do the combination of multiparametric MRI-based radiomics and selected blood inflammatory markers predict the grade and proliferation in glioma patients?

PURPOSEWe aimed to explore whether multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiomics combined with selected blood inflammatory markers could effectively predict the grade and proliferation in glioma patients.METHODSThis retrospective study included 152 patients histopathologically diagnosed with glioma. Stratified sampling was used to divide all patients into a training cohort (n=107) and a validation cohort (n=45) according to a ratio of 7:3, and five-fold repeat cross-validation was adopted in the training cohort. Multiparametric MRI and clinical parameters, including age, the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and red cell distribution width, were assessed. During image processing, image registration and gray normalization were conducted. A radiomics analysis was performed by extracting 1584 multiparametric MRI-based features, and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) was applied to generate a radiomics signature for predicting grade and Ki-67 index in both training and validation cohorts. Statistical analysis included analysis of variance, Pearson correlation, intraclass correlation coefficient, multivariate logistic regression, Hosmer-Lemeshow test, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.RESULTSThe radiomics signature demonstrated good performance in both the training and validation cohorts, with areas under the ROC curve (AUCs) of 0.92, 0.91, and 0.94 and 0.94, 0.75, and 0.82 for differentiating between low and high grade gliomas, grade III and grade IV gliomas, and low Ki-67 and high Ki-67, respectively, and was better than the clinical model; the AUCs of the combined model were 0.93, 0.91, and 0.95 and 0.94, 0.76, and 0.80, respectively.CONCLUSIONBoth the radiomics signature and combined model showed high diagnostic efficacy and outperformed the clinical model. The clinical factors did not provide additional improvement in the prediction of the grade and proliferation index in glioma patients, but the stability was improved

Across two phylogeographic breaks: Quaternary evolutionary history of a mountain aspen (Populus rotundifolia) in the Hengduan Mountains

Biogeographical barriers to gene flow are central to plant phylogeography. In East Asia, plant distribution is greatly influenced by two phylogeographic breaks, the Mekong-Salween Divide and Tanaka-Kaiyong Line, however, few studies have investigated how these barriers affect the genetic diversity of species that are distributed across both. Here we used 14 microsatellite loci and four chloroplast DNA fragments to examine genetic diversity and distribution patterns of 49 populations of Populus rotundifolia, a species that spans both the Mekong-Salween Divide and the Tanaka-Kaiyong Line in southwestern China. Demographic and migration hypotheses were tested using coalescent-based approaches. Limited historical gene flow was observed between the western and eastern groups of P. rotundifolia, but substantial flow occurred across both the Mekong-Salween Divide and Tanaka-Kaiyong Line, manifesting in clear admixture and high genetic diversity in the central group. Wind-borne pollen and seeds may have facilitated the dispersal of P. rotundifolia following prevalent northwest winds in the spring. We also found that the Hengduan Mountains, where multiple genetic barriers were detected, acted on the whole as a barrier between the western and eastern groups of P. rotundifolia. Ecological niche modeling suggested that P. rotundifolia has undergone range expansion since the last glacial maximum, and demographic reconstruction indicated an earlier population expansion around 600 Ka. The phylogeographic pattern of P. rotundifolia reflects the interplay of biological traits, wind patterns, barriers, niche differentiation, and Quaternary climate history. This study emphasizes the need for multiple lines of evidence in understanding the Quaternary evolution of plants in topographically complex areas