Effects of different remifentanil doses on the stress reaction and BIS value of video laryngoscope-guided tracheal intubation

Purpose: To explore the affinity of different remifentanil doses for  intravenous anesthesia in video laryngoscope-guided tracheal intubation.Methods: Eighty patients who required anesthesia for elective non-ophthalmic surgery were included. They were divided into four groups (A, B, C and D) and received a different dose of either 1, 1.5, or 2 μg/kg remifentanil or a dose of 2 μg/kg fentanyl, respectively. An anesthetic state was achieved and maintained by administration of 3 - 5 mg/kg propofolum and 0.1 - 0.3 mg/kg remifentanil. The mean value of the various indices, including arterial pressure (MAP), bispectral index and heart rate (HR) wererecorded prior to anesthesia induction (T0), prior to intubation (T1),  instantly before intubation (T2), and at 1 (T3), 3 (T4) and 5 (T5) after the intubation. Cortisol concentration was measured at T0, T1 and T5.Results: Remifentanil (1 μg/kg) induced a moderate increase in HR and MAP at T3 compared with fentanyl. HR and MAP in the lower dose group were significantly higher than those in groups B and C at T3. Compared to T1, the concentrations of cortisol decreased after anesthesia and then significantly increased during tracheal intubation. Cortisol concentration in group B was the lowest at T5.Conclusion: The most effective concentrations of remifentanil are 1 and 1.5 μg/kg for anesthesia induction and tracheal intubation, respectively.Keywords: Remifentanil, Stress reaction, Bispectral index, Video laryngoscope, Tracheal intubatio

Observation of the 5p Rydberg states of sulfur difluoride radical by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization spectroscopy

Sulfur difluoride radicals in their ground state have been produced by a "laser-free" pulsed dc discharge of the SF$_{6}$/Ar gas mixtures in a supersonic molecular beam and detected by mass-selective resonance-enhanced multilphoton ionization (REMPI) spectroscopy in the wavelength range of 408 - 420 nm. Analyses of the (3 + 1) REMPI excitation spectrum have enabled identification of three hitherto unknown Rydberg states of this radical. Following the Rydberg state labeling in our previous work [see J. Phys. Chem. A 102, 7233 (1998)], these we label the K(5p$_{1}$) [$nu_{0-0}$ = 71 837 cm$^{-1}$, $omega_{1}^{'}$(a$_{1}$ sym str) = 915 cm$^{-1}$], L(5p$_{2}$) [$nu_{0-0}$ = 72 134 cm$^{-1}$, $omega_{1}^{'}$(a$_{1}$ sym str) = 912 cm$^{-1}$], and M(5p$_{3}$) [$nu_{0-0}$ = 72 336 cm$^{-1}$, $omega_{1}^{'}$(a$_{1}$ sym str) = 926 cm$^{-1}$] Rydberg states, respectively. [Origins, relative to the lowest vibrational level of the X$^{1}$A$_{1}$ ground state, and vibrational frequencies of the symmetric S-F stretching mode are suggested by the numbers in brackets.] Photofragmentation process of SF$_{2}$$^{+}$--SF$^{+}$ + F that relates to the REMPI spectrum was discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 1 table, 2 figure

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium Flows through the Manure Management Chain in China

The largest livestock production and greatest fertilizer use in the world occurs in China. However, quantification of the nutrient flows through the manure management chain and their interactions with management-related measures is lacking. Herein, we present a detailed analysis of the nutrient flows and losses in the “feed intake–excretion–housing–storage–treatment–application” manure chain, while considering differences among livestock production systems. We estimated the environmental loss from the manure chain in 2010 to be up to 78% of the excreted nitrogen and over 50% of the excreted phosphorus and potassium. The greatest losses occurred from housing and storage stages through NH₃ emissions (39% of total nitrogen losses) and direct discharge of manure into water bodies or landfill (30–73% of total nutrient losses). There are large differences among animal production systems, where the landless system has the lowest manure recycling. Scenario analyses for the year 2020 suggest that significant reductions of fertilizer use (27–100%) and nutrient losses (27–56%) can be achieved through a combination of prohibiting manure discharge, improving manure collection and storages infrastructures, and improving manure application to cropland. We recommend that current policies and subsidies targeted at the fertilizer industry should shift to reduce the costs of manure storage, transport, and application

Coverage Analysis for Cellular-Connected Random 3D Mobile UAVs with Directional Antennas

This letter proposes an analytical framework to evaluate the coverage performance of a cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network in which UAV user equipments (UAV-UEs) are equipped with directional antennas and move according to a three-dimensional (3D) mobility model. The ground base stations (GBSs) equipped with practical down-tilted antennas are distributed according to a Poisson point process (PPP). With tools from stochastic geometry, we derive the handover probability and coverage probability of a random UAV-UE under the strongest average received signal strength (RSS) association strategy. The proposed analytical framework allows to investigate the effect of UAV-UE antenna beamwidth, mobility speed, cell association, and vertical motions on both the handover probability and coverage probability. We conclude that the optimal UAV-UE antenna beamwidth decreases with the GBS density, and the omnidirectional antenna model is preferred in the sparse network scenario. What's more, the superiority of the strongest average RSS association over the nearest association diminishes with the increment of GBS density.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Letter

The impacts of service quality and customer satisfaction in the e-commerce context

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the e-commerce context, in particular from a triad view of customer-e-retailer-3PL (third party logistics) provider. A literature review is primarily used to determine the conceptual model and to develop the measurement scales. Data were collected through online questionnaire survey conducted in China. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data and test the proposed research hypotheses. The results indicate that both e-service quality and logistics service quality are strongly linked with customer satisfaction. The research results shown that practitioners (e-retailers) should not only focus on e-service quality, but also the logistics service quality. This research validates the proposed service quality framework with two dimensions (e-service quality and logistics service quality) in e-commerce context. Second, it highlights the impact path of service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty

Towards Text-to-SQL over Aggregate Tables

ABSTRACTText-to-SQL aims at translating textual questions into the corresponding SQL queries. Aggregate tables are widely created for high-frequent queries. Although text-to-SQL has emerged as an important task, recent studies paid little attention to the task over aggregate tables. The increased aggregate tables bring two challenges: (1) mapping of natural language questions and relational databases will suffer from more ambiguity, (2) modern models usually adopt self-attention mechanism to encode database schema and question. The mechanism is of quadratic time complexity, which will make inferring more time-consuming as input sequence length grows. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach named WAGG for text-to-SQL over aggregate tables. To effectively select among ambiguous items, we propose a relation selection mechanism for relation computing. To deal with high computation costs, we introduce a dynamical pruning strategy to discard unrelated items that are common for aggregate tables. We also construct a new large-scale dataset SpiderwAGG extended from Spider dataset for validation, where extensive experiments show the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method with 4% increase of accuracy and 15% decrease of inference time w.r.t a strong baseline RAT-SQL

China’s pig relocation in balance

In 2015, the Chinese government banned livestock production in some regions (called non-livestock production regions, NLPRs) to control surface water pollution near vulnerable water bodies. In total, 90,000 NLPRs had been established by 2017, covering a land area of 0.82 million km2 and shutting down 0.26 million pig farms1. As a consequence, the number of slaughtered pigs decreased by 46 million head yr–1 between 2014 and 2017. The NLPRs policy is globally unprecedented in terms of the geographical area and number of farms affected, as well as its implementation speed. The NLPRs policy has reduced pork self-sufficiency in some provinces by up to 40% (ref. 2). However, it is unclear which farms and regions may take over the market share

KIAA1199 promotes migration and invasion by Wnt/β-catenin pathway and MMPs mediated EMT progression and serves as a poor prognosis marker in gastric cancer

Background KIAA1199 was upregulated in diverse cancers, but the association of KIAA1199 with gastric cancer (GC), the biological role of KIAA1199 in GC cells and the related molecular mechanisms remain to be elucidated. Methods KIAA1199 expression was analysed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assay (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) in GC patient tissue. The small hairpin RNA (shRNA) was applied for the knockdown of endogenous KIAA1199 in NCI-N87 and AGS cells. MTT, colony formation, scratch wounding migration, transwell chamber migration and invasion assays were employed respectively to investigate the role of KIAA1199 in GC cells. The potential signaling pathway of KIAA1199 induced migration and invasion was detected. Results KIAA1199 was upregulated in GC tissue and was an essential independent marker for poor prognosis. Knockdown KIAA1199 suppressed the proliferation, migration and invasion in GC cells. KIAA1199 stimulated the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and the enzymatic activity of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) family members and thus accelerated the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) progression in GC cells. Conclusion These findings demonstrated that KIAA1199 was upregulated in GC tissue and associated with worse clinical outcomes in GC, and KIAA1199 acted as an oncogene by promoting migration and invasion through the enhancement of Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and MMPs mediated EMT progression in GC cell

Thyroid function and associated mood changes after COVID-19 vaccines in patients with Hashimoto thyroiditis

ContextSevere acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (COVID-19) vaccines may incur changes in thyroid functions followed by mood changes, and patients with Hashimoto thyroiditis (HT) were suggested to bear a higher risk.ObjectivesWe primarily aim to find whether COVID-19 vaccination could induce potential subsequent thyroid function and mood changes. The secondary aim was to find inflammatory biomarkers associated with risk.MethodsThe retrospective, multi-center study recruited patients with HT receiving COVID-19–inactivated vaccines. C-reactive proteins (CRPs), thyroid-stimulating hormones (TSHs), and mood changes were studied before and after vaccination during a follow-up of a 6-month period. Independent association was investigated between incidence of mood state, thyroid functions, and inflammatory markers. Propensity score–matched comparisons between the vaccine and control groups were carried out to investigate the difference.ResultsFinal analysis included 2,765 patients with HT in the vaccine group and 1,288 patients in the control group. In the matched analysis, TSH increase and mood change incidence were both significantly higher in the vaccine group (11.9% versus 6.1% for TSH increase and 12.7% versus 8.4% for mood change incidence). An increase in CRP was associated with mood change (p< 0.01 by the Kaplan–Meier method) and severity (r = 0.75) after vaccination. Baseline CRP, TSH, and antibodies of thyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO) were found to predict incidence of mood changes.ConclusionCOVID-19 vaccination seemed to induce increased levels and incidence of TSH surge followed by mood changes in patients with HT. Higher levels of pre-vaccine serum TSH, CRP, and anti-TPO values were associated with higher incidence in the early post-vaccine phase