Effects of Clostridium butyricum and sodium butyrate on growth performance, immunity, and gut microbiota of mirror carp Cyprinus carpio fed with soybean meal based diet

This study investigated the effects of Clostridium butyricum (CB) and sodium butyrate (SB) on the growth performance, intestinal immune, and gut microbiota of mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio) fed with a high level of soybean meal. Three hundred sixty healthy carp fingerlings (∼3.74 g) were divided into eight dietary treatments with four replicates and ten fish per replicate. Which include basal diet (Control group, C0); C0 supplemented with three levels of CB, 3 × 107 cfu/kg (C1), 3 × 108 cfu/kg (C2), 3 × 109 cfu/kg (C3); three levels of SB, 500 mg/kg (S1), 1000 mg/kg (S2), 2 000 mg/kg (S3); and 3 × 108 cfu/kg CB+ 1 000 mg/kg SB (CS), respectively. In 8-week trial, the survival rate of all groups was 100%. Compared with C0, the Weight Gain, Feed Conversion Ratio, Protein Efficiency Ratio were not significantly different in all groups (P > 0.05). Crude protein and ether extract contents were increased significantly (P < 0.05) when supplemented with different levels of CB and SB, and ash content increased significantly in the CB groups (P < 0.05). Serum globulin increased and glucose decreased significantly (P < 0.05) in the CB and SB groups. The intestinal T-SOD and glutathione activity in the foregut, midgut, and hindgut were increased (P < 0.05), and villus height of foregut and midgut were higher in the CB and SB (P < 0.05). Protease activities in the foregut and midgut were significantly increased (P < 0.05) in the C2, C3, S2, and S3. The lipase activity of the C2 and C3 in foregut, midgut, and hindgut; S2, S3, and CS in the foregut; S3 in midgut were significantly increased (P < 0.05). The gut microbiota was modulated at the phylum and genera level by CB and SB administration. In summary, our results indicated that CB and SB could promote the whole body CP and EE content, intestine immunity, digestive enzyme activity, and intestinal morphology, and modulated gut flora in carp

Report of two cases of recurrent scalp dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans and literature review

Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) are rare malignant skin tumor, and scalp DFSP is even lesser than 5% of all DFSP, therefore, being seldom reported. We recently treated two cases of recurrent scalp DFSPs. One was a 38-year-old male, who accept lumpectomy for the first time; however, it recurred 9 months later. We then performed a wide excision resulting in no recurrence in the subsequent 4 years. Another patient was a 26-year-old female, who accept an in situ tumorectomy for the first time, and 2 years later; the recurrent mass became 9 × 9 cm in size. We gave her another operation, but only 3 months later local recurrence appeared. For the both cases, we collected their case histories, intraoperative findings, pathologic detections, and follow-up results, all of which may help the dermatologists to extend knowledge about this rare disease. Moreover, an exhaustive review of the literature is included with emphasis on diagnosis, different diagnosis and treatments

The Identification of Shaft Current Induced Defects on Rolling Bearings in Wind Turbine Generators

Rolling bearings are an important part of wind turbine systems. Shaft current induced damages are one of the main causes for bearing failures, which lead to considerable operation loss of wind turbine plants. In this paper, the characteristics of shaft current damages and their induced vibration responses are studied analytically. Then it suggests to use an emerging Modulation Signal Bispectrum (MSB) to detect and diagnose the incipient defects as MSB can suppress various noise and provide a sparse result that integrates particularly the fault modulator and the structural resonance carrier to highlight the fault effect. Finally, the detection and diagnosis results based on both simulated signals and experimental signals show the outstanding performance of MSB analysis in detecting common bearing faults. Especially, it can achieve a straightforward differentiation between the fatigue pitting defects and shaft current damages, whereas conventional envelope analysis cannot provide a separation between these two types

KGDM: A Diffusion Model to Capture Multiple Relation Semantics for Knowledge Graph Embedding

Knowledge graph embedding (KGE) is an efficient and scalable method for knowledge graph completion. However, most existing KGE methods suffer from the challenge of multiple relation semantics, which often degrades their performance. This is because most KGE methods learn fixed continuous vectors for entities (relations) and make deterministic entity predictions to complete the knowledge graph, which hardly captures multiple relation semantics. To tackle this issue, previous works try to learn complex probabilistic embeddings instead of fixed embeddings but suffer from heavy computational complexity. In contrast, this paper proposes a simple yet efficient framework namely the Knowledge Graph Diffusion Model (KGDM) to capture the multiple relation semantics in prediction. Its key idea is to cast the problem of entity prediction into conditional entity generation. Specifically, KGDM estimates the probabilistic distribution of target entities in prediction through Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM). To bridge the gap between continuous diffusion models and discrete KGs, two learnable embedding functions are defined to map entities and relation to continuous vectors. To consider connectivity patterns of KGs, a Conditional Entity Denoiser model is introduced to generate target entities conditioned on given entities and relations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that KGDM significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in three benchmark datasets

Hepatic portal venous gas initially manifesting as severe shock: a case series

Hepatic portal venous gas is often referred to as the “sign of death” because it signifies a very poor prognosis if appropriate treatments are not promptly administered. The etiologies of hepatic portal venous gas are diverse and include severe complex abdominal infections, mesenteric ischemia, diving, and complications of endoscopic surgery, and the clinical manifestations are inconsistent among individual patients. Thus, whether emergency surgery should be performed remains controversial. In this report, we present three cases of hepatic portal venous gas. The patients initially exhibited symptoms consistent with severe shock of unknown etiology and were treated in the intensive care unit upon admission. We rapidly identified the cause of each individual patient’s condition and selected problem-directed intervention measures based on active organ support, antishock support, and anti-infection treatments. Two patients recovered and were discharged without sequelae, whereas one patient died of refractory infection and multiple organ failure. We hope that this report will serve as a valuable reference for decision-making when critical care physicians encounter similar patients

Association between Time of Day of Sports-Related Physical Activity and the Onset of Acute Myocardial Infarction in a Chinese Population.

OBJECTIVE:To investigate the association between the time of day of sports-related physical activity and the onset of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in a coronary artery disease (CAD) population in China. METHODS:Between February 2014 and March 2015, a total of 696 patients from Nanjing, China, who had CAD were studied and divided into two groups (Non-AMI and AMI groups). The work-related activity and sports-related physical activity information were obtained from a self-reporting predesigned patient questionnaire. RESULTS:Sports-related physical activity was associated with a lower risk of the onset of AMI, after adjusting the established and potential confounders, with an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 0.67 (95% CI, 0.47-0.94) compared with those who did not have any sports-related physical activity. A dose-response relationship was observed for intensity, duration, and frequency of sports-related physical activity. Further stratification analysis revealed that the protective effects of sports-related physical activity were significant in the morning and evening groups, and patients who exercised in the evening were at a lower risk of AMI than those doing sports-related physical activity in the morning. The adjusted ORs for doing sports-related physical activity in the morning and evening groups were 0.60(0.36-0.98) and 0.56(0.37-0.87), respectively, compared with inactivity (all P<0.05). On the occurrence of AMI, doing sports-related physical activity in the evening had an adjusted OR of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.54-1.64, P = 0.824) compared with in the morning group. CONCLUSIONS:Sports-related physical activity is associated with a lower risk of onset of AMI than inactivity in Chinese people. For CAD patients, we suggest they participate in sports-related physical activity of high intensity, long duration, and high frequency. Doing sports-related physical activity in the evening and in the morning have similar benefits on the prevention of the onset of AMI

Acute traumatic coma awakening by right median nerve electrical stimulation: a randomised controlled trial.

PURPOSE: Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to acute coma and may result in prolonged disorder of consciousness (pDOC). We aimed to determine whether right median nerve electrical stimulation is a safe and effective treatment for accelerating emergence from coma after TBI. METHODS: This randomised controlled trial was performed in 22 centres in China. Participants with acute coma at 7-14 days after TBI were randomly assigned (1:1) to either routine therapy and right median nerve electrical stimulation (RMNS group) or routine treatment (control group). The RMNS group received 20 mA, 300 μs, 40 Hz stimulation pulses, lasting 20 s per minutes, 8 h per day, for 2 weeks. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients who regained consciousness 6 months post-injury. The secondary endpoints were Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Full Outline of Unresponsiveness scale (FOUR), Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R), Disability Rating Scale (DRS) and Glasgow Outcome Scale Extended (GOSE) scores reported as medians on day 28, 3 months and 6 months after injury, and GCS and FOUR scores on day 1 and day 7 during stimulation. Primary analyses were based on the intention-to-treat set. RESULTS: Between March 26, 2016, and October 18, 2020, 329 participants were recruited, of whom 167 were randomised to the RMNS group and 162 to the control group. At 6 months post-injury, a higher proportion of patients in the RMNS group regained consciousness compared with the control group (72.5%, n = 121, 95% confidence interval (CI) 65.2-78.7% vs. 56.8%, n = 92, 95% CI 49.1-64.2%, p = 0.004). GOSE at 3 months and 6 months (5 [interquartile range (IQR) 3-7] vs. 4 [IQR 2-6], p = 0.002; 6 [IQR 3-7] vs. 4 [IQR 2-7], p = 0.0005) and FOUR at 28 days (15 [IQR 13-16] vs. 13 [interquartile range (IQR) 11-16], p = 0.002) were significantly increased in the RMNS group compared with the control group. Trajectory analysis showed that significantly more patients in the RMNS group had faster GCS, CRS-R and DRS improvement (p = 0.01, 0.004 and 0.04, respectively). Adverse events were similar in both groups. No serious adverse events were associated with the stimulation device. CONCLUSION: Right median nerve electrical stimulation is a possible effective treatment for patients with acute traumatic coma, that will require validation in a confirmatory trial