Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in Chinese adolescents

Since national figures on the occurrence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese adolescents are lacking, this study aims to estimate its prevalence and distribution among Chinese youngsters. The 2002 China National Nutrition and Health Survey is a nationally representative cross-sectional study. Applying the criteria for US adolescents, we estimated the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among 2761 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years. The prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese adolescents overall was 3·7% (10% in US adolescents). It was 35·2 %, 23·4% and 2·3% among adolescents who were overweight (BMI $95th percentile), at risk of overweight (BMI between 85th and 95th percentile) and normal weight (BMI below the 85th percentile), respectively. Urban boys had the highest rate (5·8$85th percentile and one or two parent(s) with metabolic syndrome, the prevalence was 46·4 %. A total of 96% of overweight adolescents had at least one and 74·1% overweight adolescents had at least two abnormalities of metabolic syndrome. Based on these figures, it is estimated that more than three million Chinese adolescents have metabolic syndrome. Both overweight and metabolic syndrome prevalence among adolescents are still relatively low in China, but the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among Chinese overweight adolescents is similar to those living in the USA

Phantom Inflation in Little Rip

We study the phantom inflation in little rip cosmology, in which the current acceleration is driven by the field with the parameter of state w < -1, but since w tends to -1 asymptotically, the rip singularity occurs only at infinite time. In this scenario, before the rip singularity is arrived, the universe is in an inflationary regime. We numerically calculate the spectrum of primordial perturbation generated during this period and find that the results may be consistent with observations. This implies that if the reheating happens again, the current acceleration might be just a start of phantom inflation responsible for the upcoming observational universe.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, discussion added, Appendix and refs. added, to be published in PL

Protection effect of taurine on nitrosative stress in the mice brain with chronic exposure to arsenic

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Arsenic exposure induces overproduction of reactive nitrogen species (RNS) in brain tissue and results in nucleic acid damage to the nerve cells. The 8-nitroguanine is one of the major products formed by the reaction of guanine, and ONOO^-, and has been used as a popular biomarker of nucleic acid damage due to RNS attacking. In the present study, we examined whether the administration of taurine can protect against nucleic acid damage of brain neurons by arsenic-induced RNS.</p> <p>Materials and methods</p> <p>Sixty mice (30 male and 30 female) weighing 19.5 ± 1.5 g were divided into 3 groups: (1) control group, (2) experimental group that received arsenic (As₂O₃), and (3) antagonistic group that received taurine with arsenic. Arsenic was administered for 60 days. 8-Nitroguanine expressions in brain neurons of mice were examined by the immunohistochemical method. Histopathological changes in brain tissues of mice were observed under light microscope and the immunohistochemistry method was used to investigate 8-nitroguanine expressions in cerebrum and cerebellum of mice.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the control group, no abnormal histopathological changes were observed in brain tissue of the mice. In brain tissue of the mice exposed to arsenic, histopathological results showed swells, evident vacuolar degeneration in cytoplasm, karyorrhexis and karyolysis. Relatively light pathological changes were observed in brain of the mice co-administered arsenic and taurine. Little or no expression of 8-nitroguanine in brain tissue was observed in controls. However, intensive expression of 8-nitroguanine was found in brain tissue of mice exposed to arsenic and it was mainly distributed in nucleus neighbouring the nuclear membrane, but a little in cytoplasm. A weak expression of 8-nitroguanine was observed in brain cells of mice co-administered arsenic and taurine.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The brain neurons may be the major target cells of arsenic neurotoxicity. Co-administration of arsenic and taurine can alleviate DNA damage of brain neurons caused by arsenic through the RNS signal pathway.</p

Language-Enhanced Session-Based Recommendation with Decoupled Contrastive Learning

Session-based recommendation techniques aim to capture dynamic user behavior by analyzing past interactions. However, existing methods heavily rely on historical item ID sequences to extract user preferences, leading to challenges such as popular bias and cold-start problems. In this paper, we propose a hybrid multimodal approach for session-based recommendation to address these challenges. Our approach combines different modalities, including textual content and item IDs, leveraging the complementary nature of these modalities using CatBoost. To learn universal item representations, we design a language representation-based item retrieval architecture that extracts features from the textual content utilizing pre-trained language models. Furthermore, we introduce a novel Decoupled Contrastive Learning method to enhance the effectiveness of the language representation. This technique decouples the sequence representation and item representation space, facilitating bidirectional alignment through dual-queue contrastive learning. Simultaneously, the momentum queue provides a large number of negative samples, effectively enhancing the effectiveness of contrastive learning. Our approach yielded competitive results, securing a 5th place ranking in KDD CUP 2023 Task 1. We have released the source code and pre-trained models associated with this work

SU6668 suppresses proliferation of triple negative breast cancer cells through down-regulating MTDH expression

BACKGROUND: The multiple tyrosine kinase inhibitors SU6668 have a promising therapeutic effect on the progression of hematological malignancies and some solid tumors. Here, we determined its effect on triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells and explored the potential molecular mechanism. METHODS: In this study, MDA-MB-231 cells were treated with SU6668 (15 μM, 30 μM) for 72 h and the change of proliferation was examined by MTT and tablet cloning. DNA ploidy was detected by flow cytometric analysis with PI staining. Double-label immunofluorescence method was used to detect the expression and distribution of MTDH proteins. VEGFR2, HIF-1α, MTDH, E-cadhrein, and SMA expressions were detected by Western bolt assay. RESULTS: This study showed that SU6668 inhibited the proliferation and induced polyploidization of MDA-MB-231 cells in a dose dependent form. SU6668 exposure increased the distribution of MTDH in cytoplasm and decreased its distribution in nuclei. After the treatment of SU6668, VEGFR2, HIF-1α, MTDH and SMA proteins were down-regulated, while E-cadhrein was up-regulated in MDA-MB-231 cells. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, SU6668 exposure maybe induces polyploidization, inhibit EMT and influence the expression of MTDH, which suppresses the proliferation in TNBC cells. MTDH is a key signal protein in downstream of VEGF/HIF-1αpathway in MDA-MB-231 cells, which may be used as the potential target in the treatment of TNBC

Magnon-bandgap controllable artificial domain wall waveguide

In this paper, a magnon-bandgap controllable artificial domain wall waveguide is proposed by means of micromagnetic simulation. By the investigation of the propagation behavior and dispersion relationship of spin waves in artificial domain wall waveguides, it is found that the nonreciprocal propagation of spin waves in the artificial domain walls are mainly affected by the local effective exchange field, and the magnon bandgap can be controlled by changing the maximum value of the effective exchange field. In addition, it is observed that the artificial domain wall waveguides are structurally more stable than the natural domain wall waveguides under the same spin wave injection conditions, and the magnon bandgap of the artificial domain wall waveguides can be adjusted by its width and magnetic anisotropy parameters. The bandgap controllable artificial domain wall scheme is beneficial to the miniaturization and integration of magnon devices and can be applied to future magnonic technology as a novel frequency filter

Phase Control on Surface for the Stabilization of High Energy Cathode Materials of Lithium Ion Batteries.

The development of high energy electrode materials for lithium ion batteries is challenged by their inherent instabilities, which become more aggravated as the energy densities continue to climb, accordingly causing increasing concerns on battery safety and reliability. Here, taking the high voltage cathode of LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 as an example, we demonstrate a protocol to stabilize this cathode through a systematic phase modulating on its particle surface. We are able to transfer the spinel surface into a 30 nm shell composed of two functional phases including a rock-salt one and a layered one. The former is electrochemically inert for surface stabilization while the latter is designated to provide necessary electrochemical activity. The precise synthesis control enables us to tune the ratio of these two phases, and achieve an optimized balance between improved stability against structural degradation without sacrificing its capacity. This study highlights the critical importance of well-tailored surface phase property for the cathode stabilization of high energy lithium ion batteries