Holocene climate change and anthropogenic activity records in Svalbard: a unique perspective based on Chinese research from Ny-Ålesund

Climate change in the Arctic region is more rapid than that in other areas owing to Arctic amplification. To better understand climate change and the driving mechanisms, long-term historical reconstructions throughout the Holocene and high-resolution records of the past few hundred years are required. Intense anthropogenic activities in the Arctic have had a great impact on the local environment. Here, we review the Holocene climate change record, responses of the ecosystems to climate change, and the anthropogenic impacts on the environment based mainly on Chinese research from Ny-Ålesund. Climate reconstruction studies from Svalbard have revealed several cold episodes during the Holocene, which are consistent with ice rafting events in the North Atlantic region and glacier activity from Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard. The ecosystem also showed corresponding responses to climate change, especially during the late Holocene. Over recent decades, anthropogenic activities have caused serious pollution and deterioration to the local environment in Svalbard in areas frequented by people. Greater environmental protection is therefore needed to reduce the anthropogenic impacts on the local environment

A Simple Graphene NH₃ Gas Sensor via Laser Direct Writing.

Ammonia gas sensors are very essential in many industries and everyday life. However, their complicated fabrication process, severe environmental fabrication requirements and desorption of residual ammonia molecules result in high cost and hinder their market acceptance. Here, laser direct writing is used to fabricate three parallel porous 3D graphene lines on a polyimide (PI) tape to simply construct an ammonia gas sensor. The middle one works as an ammonia sensing element and the other two on both sides work as heaters to improve the desorption performance of the sensing element to ammonia gas molecules. The graphene lines were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The response and recovery time of the sensor without heating are 214 s and 222 s with a sensitivity of 0.087% ppm-1 for sensing 75 ppm ammonia gas, respectively. The experimental results prove that under the optimized heating temperature of about 70 °C the heaters successfully help implement complete desorption of residual NH₃ showing a good sensitivity and cyclic stability

MimicPlay: Long-Horizon Imitation Learning by Watching Human Play

Imitation learning from human demonstrations is a promising paradigm for teaching robots manipulation skills in the real world. However, learning complex long-horizon tasks often requires an unattainable amount of demonstrations. To reduce the high data requirement, we resort to human play data - video sequences of people freely interacting with the environment using their hands. Even with different morphologies, we hypothesize that human play data contain rich and salient information about physical interactions that can readily facilitate robot policy learning. Motivated by this, we introduce a hierarchical learning framework named MimicPlay that learns latent plans from human play data to guide low-level visuomotor control trained on a small number of teleoperated demonstrations. With systematic evaluations of 14 long-horizon manipulation tasks in the real world, we show that MimicPlay outperforms state-of-the-art imitation learning methods in task success rate, generalization ability, and robustness to disturbances. Code and videos are available at https://mimic-play.github.ioComment: 7th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2023 oral presentation

Oral Administration of Alkylglycerols Differentially Modulates High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity and Insulin Resistance in Mice

Alkylglycerols (AKGs) from shark liver oil (SLO) were demonstrated to have strong potency to stimulate immune response. However, no study has been conducted on the effects of AKGs on diet-induced obesity and metabolic inflammatory disorder. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of two AKGs isoforms on obesity and insulin resistance in mice fed high-fat (HF) diet. Forty-eight C57BL/6 mice were divided into normal, HF, HF+20 mg/kg selachyl alcohol (SA), HF+200 mg/kg SA, HF+20 mg/kg batyl alcohol (BA), and HF+200 mg/kg BA groups. Body weight, fasting glucose, lipids, insulin and leptin levels, serum IL-1β, and TNF-α levels were compared among different groups. Our results showed that high-dose SA decreased body weight, serum triglyceride, cholesterol, fasting glucose level, insulin level, and serum leptin level of the HF fed mice, while high-dose BA increased fasting insulin level of the HF fed mice. Pretreatment of primary adipocytes with 10 μM SA or BA differentially modulates LPS-mediated MAPK and NF-κB signaling. Our study demonstrated that oral administration of AKGs has differential effects on HF-induced obesity and metabolic inflammatory disorder in mice

Research trends from 1992 to 2022 of acupuncture anesthesia: a bibliometric analysis

BackgroundAcupuncture anesthesia is a significant technical development that originated in China in 1958 and was introduced to the West in the early 1970s. Due to its relative novelty, it has been the subject of intense scrutiny and contestation. Since the early 1970s, the use of acupuncture as a complementary treatment for opioid analgesics has been accepted. Research on acupuncture anesthesia has helped to reduce clinical opioid abuse. However, only a few articles have focused on previous publications that reflect the trend of the study, the main investigators, reciprocal collaboration, and other information in this field. In view of this, we utilized bibliographic analysis methods to objectively analyze current trends and research hotspots in this field, aiming to provide a foundation and reference for future studies.MethodsThe Web of Science database was searched for publications related to acupuncture anesthesia between 1992 and 2022. The CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used to analyze the annual publications, authors, Co-cited authors, and their countries (regions) and institutions, co-occurrence keywords, burst keywords, Co-citation references and Co-citation journals.ResultsA total of 746 eligible publications were retrieved from the database for the analysis, including 637 articles and 109 reviews. And the trend of annual publications continued to grow. Aashish J. Kumar, Daniel I. Sessler, Baoguo Wang, and Paul F. White published the most papers in this field (7), and all authors, had a very low centrality (<0.01). China (252) and the University of California System (21) were the most productive country (region) and institution, respectively, while the United States (0.62) and University of California System (0.16) had the highest centrality. After removing keywords related to the search strategy, the three most frequent were pain (115), electroacupuncture (109), and stimulation (91). The six most recent burst keywords were recovery, transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation, systematic review, quality, general anesthesia, and surgery. Wang et al.’s article had the highest co-citation count (20), whereas Zhang et al.’s articles had the highest centrality (0.25). The Journal of Anesthesia and Analgesia was the most influential one (408 co-citations).ConclusionThis research provides valuable information for the study of acupuncture anesthesia. In recent years, frontier topics in acupuncture anesthesia research have been the promotion of perioperative rehabilitation, anesthesia management, and quality improvement

Secondary infection with Streptococcus suis serotype 7 increases the virulence of highly pathogenic porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus in pigs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and <it>Streptococcus suis </it>are common pathogens in pigs. In samples collected during the porcine high fever syndrome (PHFS) outbreak in many parts of China, PRRSV and <it>S. suis </it>serotype 7 (SS7) have always been isolated together. To determine whether PRRSV-SS7 coinfection was the cause of the PHFS outbreak, we evaluated the pathogenicity of PRRSV and/or SS7 in a pig model of single and mixed infection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Respiratory disease, diarrhea, and anorexia were observed in all infected pigs. Signs of central nervous system (CNS) disease were observed in the highly pathogenic PRRSV (HP-PRRSV)-infected pigs (4/12) and the coinfected pigs (8/10); however, the symptoms of the coinfected pigs were clearly more severe than those of the HP-PRRSV-infected pigs. The mortality rate was significantly higher in the coinfected pigs (8/10) than in the HP-PRRSV- (2/12) and SS7-infected pigs (0/10). The deceased pigs of the coinfected group had symptoms typical of PHFS, such as high fever, anorexia, and red coloration of the ears and the body. The isolation rates of HP-PRRSV and SS7 were higher and the lesion severity was greater in the coinfected pigs than in monoinfected pigs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>HP-PRRSV infection increased susceptibility to SS7 infection, and coinfection of HP-PRRSV with SS7 significantly increased the pathogenicity of SS7 to pigs.</p

SRT1720 Alleviates ANIT-Induced Cholestasis in a Mouse Model

Intrahepatic cholestasis is a kind of clinical syndrome along with hepatotoxicity which caused by intrahepatic and systemic accumulations of bile acid. There are several crucial generating factors of the pathogenesis of cholestasis, such as inflammation, dysregulation of bile acid transporters and oxidative stress. SIRT1 is regarded as a class III histone deacetylase (HDAC). According to a set of researches, SIRT1 is one of the most important factors which can regulate the hepatic bile acid metabolism. SRT1720 is a kind of activator of SIRT1 which is 1000 times more potent than resveratrol, and this paper is aimed to study its protective influence on hepatotoxicity and cholestasis induced by alpha-naphthylisothiocyanate (ANIT) in mice. The findings revealed that SRT1720 treatment increased FXR and Nrf2 gene expressions to shield against hepatotoxicity and cholestasis induced by ANIT. The mRNA levels of hepatic bile acid transporters were also altered by SRT1720. Furthermore, SRT1720 enhanced the antioxidative system by increasing Nrf2, SOD, GCLc, GCLm, Nqo1, and HO-1 gene expressions. In conclusion, a protective influence could be provided by SRT1720 to cure ANIT-induced hepatotoxicity and cholestasis, which was partly through FXR and Nrf2 activations. These results indicated that SIRT1 could be regarded as a therapeutic target to cure the cholestasis

Actively implementing an evidence-based feeding guideline for critically ill patients (NEED): a multicenter, cluster-randomized, controlled trial

Background: Previous cluster-randomized controlled trials evaluating the impact of implementing evidence-based guidelines for nutrition therapy in critical illness do not consistently demonstrate patient benefits. A large-scale, sufficiently powered study is therefore warranted to ascertain the effects of guideline implementation on patient-centered outcomes. Methods: We conducted a multicenter, cluster-randomized, parallel-controlled trial in intensive care units (ICUs) across China. We developed an evidence-based feeding guideline. ICUs randomly allocated to the guideline group formed a local "intervention team", which actively implemented the guideline using standardized educational materials, a graphical feeding protocol, and live online education outreach meetings conducted by members of the study management committee. ICUs assigned to the control group remained unaware of the guideline content. All ICUs enrolled patients who were expected to stay in the ICU longer than seven days. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality within 28 days of enrollment. Results: Forty-eight ICUs were randomized to the guideline group and 49 to the control group. From March 2018 to July 2019, the guideline ICUs enrolled 1399 patients, and the control ICUs enrolled 1373 patients. Implementation of the guideline resulted in significantly earlier EN initiation (1.20 vs. 1.55 mean days to initiation of EN; difference − 0.40 [95% CI − 0.71 to − 0.09]; P = 0.01) and delayed PN initiation (1.29 vs. 0.80 mean days to start of PN; difference 1.06 [95% CI 0.44 to 1.67]; P = 0.001). There was no significant difference in 28-day mortality (14.2% vs. 15.2%; difference − 1.6% [95% CI − 4.3% to 1.2%]; P = 0.42) between groups. Conclusions: In this large-scale, multicenter trial, active implementation of an evidence-based feeding guideline reduced the time to commencement of EN and overall PN use but did not translate to a reduction in mortality from critical illness. Trial registration: ISRCTN, ISRCTN12233792. Registered November 20th, 2017

Actively implementing an evidence-based feeding guideline for critically ill patients (NEED): a multicenter, cluster-randomized, controlled trial.

BackgroundPrevious cluster-randomized controlled trials evaluating the impact of implementing evidence-based guidelines for nutrition therapy in critical illness do not consistently demonstrate patient benefits. A large-scale, sufficiently powered study is therefore warranted to ascertain the effects of guideline implementation on patient-centered outcomes.MethodsWe conducted a multicenter, cluster-randomized, parallel-controlled trial in intensive care units (ICUs) across China. We developed an evidence-based feeding guideline. ICUs randomly allocated to the guideline group formed a local "intervention team", which actively implemented the guideline using standardized educational materials, a graphical feeding protocol, and live online education outreach meetings conducted by members of the study management committee. ICUs assigned to the control group remained unaware of the guideline content. All ICUs enrolled patients who were expected to stay in the ICU longer than seven days. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality within 28 days of enrollment.ResultsForty-eight ICUs were randomized to the guideline group and 49 to the control group. From March 2018 to July 2019, the guideline ICUs enrolled 1399 patients, and the control ICUs enrolled 1373 patients. Implementation of the guideline resulted in significantly earlier EN initiation (1.20 vs. 1.55 mean days to initiation of EN; difference - 0.40 [95% CI - 0.71 to - 0.09]; P = 0.01) and delayed PN initiation (1.29 vs. 0.80 mean days to start of PN; difference 1.06 [95% CI 0.44 to 1.67]; P = 0.001). There was no significant difference in 28-day mortality (14.2% vs. 15.2%; difference - 1.6% [95% CI - 4.3% to 1.2%]; P = 0.42) between groups.ConclusionsIn this large-scale, multicenter trial, active implementation of an evidence-based feeding guideline reduced the time to commencement of EN and overall PN use but did not translate to a reduction in mortality from critical illness.Trial registrationISRCTN, ISRCTN12233792 . Registered November 20th, 2017