Hepatitis A in a Chinese Urban Population: The Spectrum of Social and Behavioural Risk Factors

Mäusezahl D (Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Socinstrasse 57, PO Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland), Cheng F, Zhang S Q and Tanner M. Hepatitis A in a Chinese urban population: The spectrum of social and behavioural risk factors. International Journal of Epidemiology 1996; 25: 1271-1279. Background Viral hepatitis is a major public health problem in China. Hepatitis A infections represent a substantial proportion of these, particularly in urban centres. Little is known about the social and behavioural factors in the urban household environment that influence the transmission of hepatitis A. Methods We conducted a register-based case-control study to investigate the risk factor patterns for hepatitis A in the general population of the City of Wuhan, in the PR China. Cases were selected from district-based health registers. One control, matched for sex and age, was identified from the case's neighbourhood. Home-based interviews combined with household observation were performed to obtain information on social, behavioural and economic risk factors and the household's indoor and outdoor environment. Analysis included conditional logistic regression. Results Hepatitis A infection was associated with a variety of social and household-related factors, like handwashing habits (after working in the garden: adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 8.24, 95% confidence interval [Cl] : 1.5-44.2, before food preparation: OR = 4.68, 95% Cl : 1.8-12.0; before eating: OR = 4.92, 95% Cl : 1.5-15.7), and the source of fresh vegetables (OR = 3.90, 95% Cl : 1.6-9.8). Hygiene in the kitchen and the household surroundings and the disposal of children's stools in vegetable gardens or refuse pits were significantly associated in the univariate analysis only. The lack of possession of luxury consumer items as a surrogate indicator for income was significantly associated with the disease (OR = 2.47, 95% Cl : 1.0-6.1). The study clearly established that exposure to health and hygiene education was less in the group of hepatitis A cases when compared to healthy controls (OR = 2.80, 95% Cl : 0.9-8.3). Conclusion The results of this study underline how social and behavioural factors are important determinants for hepatitis A in urban Chinese populations. These issues could be addressed by appropriate health and hygiene education targeted at high risk groups, and by strengthening existing procedures for monitoring and control of food hygien

Annexin A7 and Its Related Protein Suppressor of Death Domains Regulates Migration and Proliferation of Hca-P Cells

Objective: This study was to investigate whether annexin A7 (AnnexinA7, ANXA7) and its co-related protein tumor celldeath domain silencer [suppressor of death domains (SODD)] regulates the migratory phenotype of liver cancer cells.Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, expression of ANXA7 in Hca-P cells, PANXA7 downregulatedcells and PANXA7 unrelated sequence cells was detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chainreaction (PCR) at mRNA level and western blotting at protein level. Transwell migration and invasion assayswere performed to determine the migratory phenotype.Results: After inhibition of ANXA7 expression, expression of SODD protein was also significantly decreased (P<0.05).Transwell cell transfer experiments showed that number of tumor cells that penetrated into the cell membrane wassignificantly reduced after ANXA7 silencing (P<0.05). Transwell cell invasion assay showed that number of tumorcells penetrating into Matrigel was significantly reduced after ANXA7 down-regulation (P<0.05). The CCK8 assay wasmeasured at 0, 24 and 48 hours, and proliferation rate of PANXA7 lower weir cells was slower than that of Hca-P cellsand PANXA7 non-related sequence cells (P<0.05).Conclusion: SODD expression was decreased with the down-regulation of ANXA7. Down-regulating ANXA7 in Hca-Pcells decreased proliferation, migration and invasion of tumor cells

Physical and virtual carbon metabolism of global cities

Urban activities have profound and lasting effects on the global carbon balance. Here we develop a consistent metabolic approach that combines two complementary carbon accounts, the physical carbon balance and the fossil fuel-derived gaseous carbon footprint, to track carbon coming into, being added to urban stocks, and eventually leaving the city. We find that over 88% of the physical carbon in 16 global cities is imported from outside their urban boundaries, and this outsourcing of carbon is notably amplified by virtual emissions from upstream activities that contribute 33–68% to their total carbon inflows. While 13–33% of the carbon appropriated by cities is immediately combusted and released as CO₂, between 8 and 24% is stored in durable household goods or becomes part of other urban stocks. Inventorying carbon consumed and stored for urban metabolism should be given more credit for the role it can play in stabilizing future global climate

Physical and virtual carbon metabolism of global cities

Urban activities have profound and lasting effects on the global carbon balance. Here we develop a consistent metabolic approach that combines two complementary carbon accounts, the physical carbon balance and the fossil fuel-derived gaseous carbon footprint, to track carbon coming into, being added to urban stocks, and eventually leaving the city. We find that over 88% of the physical carbon in 16 global cities is imported from outside their urban boundaries, and this outsourcing of carbon is notably amplified by virtual emissions from upstream activities that contribute 33–68% to their total carbon inflows. While 13–33% of the carbon appropriated by cities is immediately combusted and released as CO2, between 8 and 24% is stored in durable household goods or becomes part of other urban stocks. Inventorying carbon consumed and stored for urban metabolism should be given more credit for the role it can play in stabilizing future global climate

Template Synthesis of Carbon Nanofibers Containing Linear Mesocage Arrays

Carbon nanofibers containing linear mesocage arrays were prepared via evaporation induced self-assembly method within AAO template with an average channel diameter of about 25 nm. The TEM results show that the mesocages have an elongated shape in the transversal direction. The results of N2 adsorption–desorption analysis indicate that the sample possesses a cage-like mesoporous structure and the average mesopore size of the sample is about 18 nm

Learned Smartphone ISP on Mobile GPUs with Deep Learning, Mobile AI & AIM 2022 Challenge: Report

The role of mobile cameras increased dramatically over the past few years, leading to more and more research in automatic image quality enhancement and RAW photo processing. In this Mobile AI challenge, the target was to develop an efficient end-to-end AI-based image signal processing (ISP) pipeline replacing the standard mobile ISPs that can run on modern smartphone GPUs using TensorFlow Lite. The participants were provided with a large-scale Fujifilm UltraISP dataset consisting of thousands of paired photos captured with a normal mobile camera sensor and a professional 102MP medium-format FujiFilm GFX100 camera. The runtime of the resulting models was evaluated on the Snapdragon's 8 Gen 1 GPU that provides excellent acceleration results for the majority of common deep learning ops. The proposed solutions are compatible with all recent mobile GPUs, being able to process Full HD photos in less than 20-50 milliseconds while achieving high fidelity results. A detailed description of all models developed in this challenge is provided in this paper