Ultrasound characteristics of the cervical vagus nerve in patients with type 2 diabetes and diabetic peripheral neuropathy

Introduction: Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) and autonomic neuropathy are commonly coexistent in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Current assessment tools for diabetic neuropathy remain complicated and limited. We aimed to investigate the sonographic changes of the cervical vagus nerve in DPN patients with T2DM. Material and methods: Patients with T2DM were divided into a DPN group (DPN, n = 44) and non-DPN controls (NDPN, n = 43) based on electromyogram results. Another 43 healthy controls (CON) were included. High-frequency ultrasound (HFU) of the vagus nerve was performed in all participants. Results: Compared with controls, the honeycomb structure of the vagus nerve in patients with T2DM decreased, p < 0.001. The DPN group had higher cross-sectional area (CSA) of the right vagus nerve than the NDPN group (1.60 ± 0.52 vs. 2.00 ± 0.57 mm2, p =0.001). Logistic regression showed that right vagus nerve CSA was a risk factor of DPN (odds ratio [OR] = 3.924, p = 0.002). Right vagus nerve CSA was positively correlated with diabetes duration (p = 0.003), and negatively correlated with the motor conduction velocity (MCV) of the ulnar, median, and common peroneal nerves (p < 0.001 for all), as well as the sensor conduction velocity (SCV) of the ulnar and median nerve (both p < 0.005). Conclusion: HFU shows thickening of the cervical vagus nerve in patients with DPN, which is a potential diagnostic feature of diabetic neuropathy

Evaluation of macrophage migration inhibitory factor as an imaging marker for hepatocellular carcinoma in murine models

Objective. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is considered as an important mediator in the pathogenesis of neoplasia. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether MIF could be used as a marker for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) detection. Material and methods. Biodistribution and whole-body autoradiography studies of 131I-labeled anti-MIF monoclonal antibody (McAb) and 131I-labeled control IgG were performed. The HCC-bearing mice were injected with 3.7 MBq of each agent and killed at 24, 48, and 72 h postinjection (p.i.). The organs, blood, and HCC tissues were removed from model mice, weighed, and counted using a gamma-counter. The expression of MIF mRNA and protein within HCC tissues was confirmed by RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry. Results. HCCs in model mice could be adequately visualized at 24 h p.i. The target-to-non-target (T/NT) ratios were 6.72 ± 1.09 (24 h), 9.85 ± 0.81 (48 h), and 12.31 ± 0.57 (72 h) for 131I-labeled anti-MIF McAb group, whereas in the control group of 131I-IgG, T/NT ratios were 4.65 ± 0.63 (24 h), 6.12 ± 0.60 (48 h), and 8.23 ± 0.35 (72 h) (p < 0.05). MIF mRNA expression was twofold higher in the HCC tissues than in the healthy liver tissues. MIF protein expression was much higher in the HCC tissues than in controls. Conclusions. Our findings suggested that 131I-anti-MIF McAb could be rapidly and specifically localized in tumors. Thus, MIF could be used as a marker for HCC tumor detection

Epidemiological and genomic analyses of human isolates of Streptococcus suis between 2005 and 2021 in Shenzhen, China

Streptococcus suis (S. suis) is an important food-borne zoonotic pathogen that causes swine streptococcosis, which threatens human health and brings economic loss to the swine industry. Three-quarters of human S. suis infections are caused by serotype 2. A retrospective analysis of human S. suis cases in Shenzhen, a megacity in China, with high pork consumption, between 2005 and 2021 was conducted to understand its genomic epidemiology, pathogen virulence, and drug resistance characteristics. The epidemiological investigation showed that human cases of S. suis in Shenzhen were mainly associated with people who had been in close contact with raw pork or other swine products. Whole-genome sequence analysis showed that 33 human isolates in Shenzhen were dominated by serotype 2 (75.76%), followed by serotype 14 (24.24%), and the most prevalent sequence types (STs) were ST7 (48.48%) and ST1 (39.40%). ST242 (9.09%) and ST25 (3.03%), which were rarely reported, were also found. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the Shenzhen human isolates had close genetic relatedness to isolates from Guangxi (China), Sichuan (China), and Vietnam. We found a new 82 KB pathogenicity island (PAI) in the serotype 2 isolate that may play a role in sepsis. Similarly, a serotype 14 isolate, containing 78 KB PAI, was isolated from a patient presenting with streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSLS) who subsequently died. Multi-drug resistance (MDR) was high in human isolates of S. suis from Shenzhen. Most human isolates were resistant to tetracycline, streptomycin, erythromycin, and clindamycin, and 13 isolates had intermediate resistance to penicillin. In conclusion, swine importation from Guangxi, Sichuan, and Vietnam should be more closely monitored, and the use of antibiotics limited to reduce the potential for antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

Equilibrium and Kinetic Studies on Biosorption of Common Edible Macrofungi to Pb (II): a Comparative Study

In this work, we studied the natural bioaccumulation and biosorption of Pb(II) in several common edible macrofungi. They include the following species: Lentinus edodes, Pleurotus eryngii, Flammulina velutipes, Hypsizygus marmoreus, and Agrocybe cylindracea. The present analysis of Pb(II) revealed distinct capabilities of metal accumulation among individual species. Moreover, the natural concentrations of lead did not reach a health risk level when cultivated in uncontaminated soil. In the biosorption experiment by edible macrofungi, we found that the equilibrium data of living sporocarp (P. eryngii and H. marmoreus) and the homogenate of L. edodes and F. velutipes fit the Freundlich model well. Other data samples exhibited a better fit to the Langmuir model. The edible macrofungi showed a higher lead removal capacity than other biosorbents. Furthermore, the pseudo-second-order kinetics model exhibited the best fit to the the biosorption processes. The effectiveness of edible macrofungi as biosorbent for Pb(II) was confirmed.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Identification of Stripe Rust and Leaf Rust on Different Wheat Varieties Based on Image Processing Technology

The timely and accurate identification of stripe rust and leaf rust is essential in effective disease control and the safe production of wheat worldwide. To investigate methods for identifying the two diseases on different wheat varieties based on image processing technology, single-leaf images of the diseases on different wheat varieties, acquired under field and laboratory environmental conditions, were processed. After image scaling, median filtering, morphological reconstruction, and lesion segmentation on the images, 140 color, texture, and shape features were extracted from the lesion images; then, feature selections were conducted using methods including ReliefF, 1R, correlation-based feature selection, and principal components analysis combined with support vector machine (SVM), back propagation neural network (BPNN), and random forest (RF), respectively. For the individual-variety disease identification SVM, BPNN, and RF models built with the optimal feature combinations, the identification accuracies of the training sets and the testing sets on the same individual varieties acquired under the same image acquisition conditions as the training sets used for modeling were 87.18–100.00%, but most of the identification accuracies of the testing sets for other individual varieties were low. For the multi-variety disease identification SVM, BPNN, and RF models built with the merged optimal feature combinations based on the multi-variety disease images acquired under field and laboratory environmental conditions, identification accuracies in the range of 82.05–100.00% were achieved on the training set, the corresponding multi-variety disease image testing set, and all the individual-variety disease image testing sets. The results indicated that the identification of images of stripe rust and leaf rust could be greatly affected by wheat varieties, but satisfactory identification performances could be achieved by building multi-variety disease identification models based on disease images from multiple varieties under different environments. This study provides an effective method for the accurate identification of stripe rust and leaf rust and could be a useful reference for the automatic identification of other plant diseases

Security-enhanced Key Distribution Based on Chaos Synchronization Between Dual Path-injected Semiconductor Lasers

We propose and numerically demonstrate a novel secure key distribution scheme based on the chaos synchronization of two semiconductor lasers (SLs) subject to symmetrical double chaotic injections, which are outputted by two mutually-coupled semiconductor lasers. The results show that high quality chaos synchronization can be observed between two local SLs with suitable injection strength and identical injection time delays for Alice and Bob. On the basis of satisfactory chaos synchronization and a post-processing technology, identical secret keys for Alice and Bob are successfully generated with bit error ratio (BER) below the HD-FEC threshold of 3.8×10−3

Acceptance and associated factors of HIV testing among college students in China: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BackgroundAlthough HIV testing is helpful for early detection and treatment of HIV, its utilization rate is low among college students in China. Understanding the acceptance and associated factors of HIV testing is the key to improve the detection rate. The purpose of the systematic review was to examine the acceptance and associated factors of HIV testing (including HIV self-testing and HIV counseling and testing services) among college students in China.MethodsThis systematic review was reported following PRISMA guidelines 2020. Electronic sources such as PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI, CBM, Wanfang Database and VIP Database were searched for relevant studies published before September 2022. The tool by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) was used to assess quality for cross-sectional studies. The random-effects and fixed-effect model were employed to estimate the pooled proportions and associated factor of HIV testing acceptance. The Cochrane's Q statistic and I2 test were used to examine heterogeneity. All the quantitative meta analyses were conducted using STATA version 12 software.ResultsA total of 21 eligible studies with 100, 821 participants were included in the systematic review. The pooled acceptance rate of HIV testing was 68% (95% CI = 60, 76), and varies between regions in China. Male, heterosexual and urban college students had higher HIV testing acceptance. Gender, medical specialty, sexual education, sexual behavior, HIV/AIDS knowledge, perception HIV risk, and previous HIV testing were the factors associated with HIV testing acceptance.ConclusionThe review revealed that most of the college students intend to accept HIV detection, and the proportion of acceptance influenced by different factors. Therefore, the government and universities should implement targeted measures, improve HIV testing services, and promote HIV testing behavior.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42022367976

Properties of flame-retardant leaf fiber cement-based composites at high temperatures

Flame retardant modification of leaf fibers was carried out to solve the technical problem of poor fire resistance of plant fibers and improve the utilization rate of urban fallen leaves in building materials. The modification scheme adopts three flame retardants, i.e., ammonium polyphosphate (APP), magnesium hydroxide (MH), and aluminum hydroxide (ATH), and two covering layers, i.e., pure acrylic polymer lotion and water glass (Na2O · nSiO2) solution. The modified leaf fiber's combustion behavior and pyrolysis properties were tested and analyzed. The physical and mechanical characteristics, as well as the thermal insulation qualities, of leaf fiber cement-based composites (LFCC) were studied at high temperatures. The findings revealed that the three flame retardants had an effect on the chemical structure of leaf fibers. In comparison to leaf fibers without flame-retardant modification, flame-retardant-modified leaf fibers have a much greater thermal stability. and its LOI is greater than 27.0%, which is a fire-retardant material. Except for the sample with water glass as the modified cover layer, at high temperatures, the composite flame-retardant fiber LFCC's mass-loss rate is lower compared with fibers without flame-retardant modification or fibers modified with only one kind of flame-retardant. In the composite flame-retardant modified fiber LFCC, the samples with better strength at high temperature are those with ATH replacing 30% and 50% MH. The thermal conductivity of LFCC is negatively correlated with the range of temperature change

Physical Layer Encryption in CO-OFDM Employing Chaotic Mapping and Novel 3D 16-Ary Constellation

We propose a novel chaotic constellation scrambling scheme for physical layer security enhancement and transmission performance improvement in coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) system. A newly designed 3-D regular hexagon signal constellation is adopted, where both encryption dimensions are expanded and error performance is improved. The dynamic parameters of constellation scrambling are generated by the hybrid chaotic scheme that uses a combination of one 3-D hyper-chaotic Hénon mapping and two independent 1-D Logistic mappings, in which the achieved key space can reach up to 10 133 to enhance the security level of OFDM data encryption during transmission. Experimental verification of the proposed security-enhanced strategy is demonstrated in a 144 Gbps 16-quadrature-amplitude-modulation CO-OFDM system over 100-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). The experimental results prove that the proposed scheme could effectively enhance the system confidentiality and transmission performance, which suggests a scalable strategy for future physically secured CO-OFDM systems