Relationship between Perceived Social Support and Quality of Life among Kidney Transplant Recipients

Objective The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between perceived social support and quality of life (QOL) among recipients after kidney transplantation. Methods 210 kidney transplant recipients participated in this survey, and survey tools included the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) and the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form (SF-36). Results The mean scores of kidney transplant recipients for MSPSS three sub-scales family support, friend support, and significant others support were 6.18±0.90, 5.48±1.32, 5.65±1.05 respectively, while MSPSS total scale score was 5.77±0.91. The mean scores for SF-36 Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS) were 47.48±6.70, 48.40±9.65 respectively. Recipients’ PCS scores were correlated to significant others support sub-scale score and MSPSS total score significantly (P<0.05), while MCS scores were correlated to three sub-scales scales and total scale score (P<0.01). Conclusion Perceived social support of patients after kidney transplantation was significant related to their quality of life. The higher perceived social support was associated with the better quality of life

Lithium enrichment of the magmatic-hydrothermal fluid in albite-spodumene pegmatite from Lijiagou, Eastern Tibetan Plateau: Evidence from fluid inclusions

Albite-spodumene pegmatites, which are remarkable resources of Li worldwide, may experience both magmatic-hydrothermal transition and sub-solidus hydrothermal alteration during their formation and evolution. However, fluids involved in the different stages of the evolution of a spodumene-bearing pegmatitic systems are not well defined, especially at the magmatic-hydrothermal transition stage. In the Lijiagou deposit, western Sichuan Province, fluid inclusions of a typical albite-spodumene pegmatite were studied to determine the degree of magmatic-hydrothermal fluid Li enrichment and the potential for lithium mineral crystallization at the magmatic-hydrothermal transition stage. Micro-petrographic analyses identified different types of fluid inclusions of either primary, pseudo-secondary or secondary origin and inclusions containing devitrified silicate glass. The presence of these inclusions suggests that the pegmatite underwent both the magmatic-hydrothermal transition stage and a post-crystallization hydrothermal process over its evolution. The results of fluid inclusion LA-ICP-MS analyses show that the aqueous ± carbonic fluids represented by the pseudo-secondary type 1a and 1b inclusions carry significant amount of Li, with Na and Li predominating the cation budget of these pegmatitic fluids. The aqueous ± carbonic fluids exhibit typical magmatic-hydrothermal fluid compositional characteristics and exhibit high abundance of Li in this pegmatitic system at the magmatic-hydrothermal transition stage. The relative abundance of Li to Na and K lies within the uppermost range of those reported from lithium-cesium-tantalum pegmatite systems. This is consistent with the elevated incorporation of Li in pegmatitic quartz from the albite-spodumene pegmatite. The compositional characteristics of the fluids at the magmatic-hydrothermal transition stage may be used to imply the Li mineralization potential of the pegmatitic system

Experimental observation of highly anisotropic elastic properties of two-dimensional black arsenic

Anisotropic two-dimensional layered materials with low-symmetric lattices have attracted increasing attention due to their unique orientation-dependent mechanical properties. Black arsenic (b-As), with the puckered structure, exhibits extreme in-plane anisotropy in optical, electrical and thermal properties. However, experimental research on mechanical properties of b-As is very rare, although theoretical calculations predicted the exotic elastic properties of b-As, such as anisotropic Young's modulus and negative Poisson's ratio. Herein, experimental observations on highly anisotropic elastic properties of b-As were demonstrated using our developed in situ tensile straining setup based on the effective microelectromechanical system. The cyclic and repeatable load-displacement curves proved that Young's modulus along zigzag direction was ~1.6 times greater than that along armchair direction, while the anisotropic ratio of ultimate strain reached ~2.5, attributed to hinge structure in armchair direction. This study could provide significant insights to design novel anisotropic materials and explore their potential applications in nanomechanics and nanodevices.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Highly Anisotropic Elastic Properties of Suspended Black Arsenic Nanoribbons

Anisotropy, as an exotic degree of freedom, enables us to discover the emergent two-dimensional (2D) layered nanomaterials with low in-plane symmetry and to explore their outstanding properties and promising applications. 2D black arsenic (b-As) with puckered structure has garnered increasing attention these years owing to its extreme anisotropy with respect to the electrical, thermal, and optical properties. However, the investigation on mechanical properties of 2D b-As is still lacking, despite much effort on theoretical simulations. Herein, we report the highly anisotropic elastic properties of suspended b-As nanoribbons via atomic force microscope-based nanoindentation. It was found that the extracted Young's modulus of b-As nanoribbons exhibits remarkable anisotropy, which approximates to 72.2 +- 5.4 and 44.3 +- 1.4 GPa along zigzag and armchair directions, respectively. The anisotropic ratio reaches up to ~ 1.6. We expect that these results could lay a solid foundation for the potential applications of 2D anisotropic nanomaterials in the next-generation nanomechanics and optoelectronics.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Cohesive zone criterion for cracking along the Cu/Si interface in nanoscale components

Crack initiation and propagation along the Cu/Si interface in multilayered films (Si/Cu/SiN) with different thicknesses of the Cu layer (20 and 200 nm) are experimentally investigated using a nano-cantilever and millimeter-sized four-point bending specimens. To examine the cohesive zone model (CZM) criterion for interfacial delamination along the Cu/Si interface in nanoscale stress concentration, an exponential type of CZM is utilized to simulate the observed delamination processes using the finite element method. After the CZM parameters for the Cu/Si interface are calibrated by experiment, interface cracking in other experiments is predicted. This indicates that the CZM criterion is universally applicable for describing cracking along the interface regardless of specimen dimensions and film thickness which include the differences in plastic behavior and residual stress. The CZM criterion can also predict interfacial cracking along Cu/Si interfaces with different stress singularities

Compression-induced phase transition of GaN bulk from wurtzite phase to five-fold coordination hexagonal phase

The phase transformation of GaN bulk from the Wurtzite phase (WZ) to the hexagonal phase (HX) is studied by molecular dynamics simulation. The mechanical response and atomic structural evolution of transition are analyzed in detail. In addition, the loading rate effect on the phase transition is determined, that is, the phase transition ratio declines with a decrease of the strain rate. The WZ GaN bulk completely transforms into the HX phase in the case of compression at an ultrahigh strain rate. However, at a relatively slower strain rate, the HX phase of GaN partly nucleates and the untransformed regions are proved to be elastic deformed regions. Combined with an energy analysis, two atomic movement modes are recognized as the inducements for the phase transition and formation of elastic deformed regions. The first mode, which is responsible for the formation of elastic deformed regions, is an atomic sliding motion along the c {0001} planes. The second mode is a radial stretching atomic motion. The radial stretching motion, which requires a lot of energy, induces the WZ-HX phase transition. Moreover, the phase transition is affected drastically by the rise of temperature

Air dehumidification by membrane with cold water for manned spacecraft environmental control

The traditional condensation dehumidification method requires additional gas-liquid separation and water recovery process in the manned spacecraft humidity control system, which would increase weight and complexity of systems. A new membrane dehumidification with cold water is proposed, which uses water vapor partial pressure difference to promote water vapor transmembrane mass transfer for dehumidification. The permeability of the membrane was measured and the experimental results agree well with the theoretical calculations. Based on the simulation of dehumidification process of cold water-membrane, the influence of module structure and working condition on dehumidification performance was analyzed, which provided reference for the design of membrane module construct. It can be seen from the simulation and experiments that the cold water-membrane dehumidification can effectively reduce the thermal load of the manned spacecraft

Air dehumidification by membrane with cold water for manned spacecraft environmental control

The traditional condensation dehumidification method requires additional gas-liquid separation and water recovery process in the manned spacecraft humidity control system, which would increase weight and complexity of systems. A new membrane dehumidification with cold water is proposed, which uses water vapor partial pressure difference to promote water vapor transmembrane mass transfer for dehumidification. The permeability of the membrane was measured and the experimental results agree well with the theoretical calculations. Based on the simulation of dehumidification process of cold water-membrane, the influence of module structure and working condition on dehumidification performance was analyzed, which provided reference for the design of membrane module construct. It can be seen from the simulation and experiments that the cold water-membrane dehumidification can effectively reduce the thermal load of the manned spacecraft