Low follistatin level is a causal risk factor for spontaneous abortion: a two-sample mendelian randomization study

BackgroundRecurrent pregnancy loss is a distressing event during pregnancy, and understanding its causal factors is crucial. Follistatin, a glycoprotein involved in folliculogenesis and embryogenesis, has been implicated as a potential contributor to the risk of spontaneous abortion. However, establishing a causal relationship requires rigorous investigation using robust methods.MethodsIn this study, we utilized mendelian randomization (MR), a powerful genetic epidemiological approach, to examine the causal relationship between follistatin levels and spontaneous abortion. We obtained instrumental variables strongly associated with follistatin levels from large-scale genome-wide association from the IEU database. The inverse variance weighting (IVW) method was taken as gold standard. We also performed sensitivity test to evaluate the robustness of our result.ResultsMR analysis revealed a significant causal relationship between low follistatin levels and spontaneous abortion (p = 0.03). Sensitivity analyses, including pleiotropy test, heterogeneity test, and leave-one-out analysis, all supported the robustness of our findings.ConclusionOur study provides compelling evidence supporting the causal relationship between low follistatin levels and increased risk of spontaneous abortion. These findings underscore the importance of follistatin in the etiology of spontaneous abortion and suggest potential preventive interventions. Modulating follistatin levels or relevant pathways could hold promise for reducing the incidence of spontaneous abortion and improving reproductive outcomes. The utilization of MRs strengthens the validity of our results by mitigating confounding and reverse causality biases. Further research is needed to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms and explore therapeutic strategies targeting follistatin levels

The active aging level of the rural older adults with disability in China: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundActive aging has been listed as an important indicator to measure the quality of life of the older adults and the construction of the senior care system. There is an imbalance between the supply and demand of senior care services for the disabled older adults in rural areas, and the quality of life needs to be improved.ObjectivesWe aimed to analyze the current situation of active aging and the influencing factors of the rural disabled older adults, in order to provide a reference basis for improving the quality of life of the rural disabled older adults.MethodsWe conducted a multicenter and cross-sectional study, using the Barthel Index Scale and Chinese version of the Active Aging Scale, to facilitate the selection of 304 rural older adults with disability in 26 villages under Henan Province for a questionnaire survey.ResultsThe mean score for the level of active aging of rural older adults with disability was 1.87 (SD 0.36), with the highest score for the dimension of being self-reliant (Mean2.29, SD 0.61) and lower scores for the dimension of active contribution to society (Mean 1.37, SD 0.55) and building up financial security (Mean 1.37, SD 0.57). The results of the multiple regression analysis showed higher levels of active aging among the disabled older adults with retirement pay, mild disability, and longer time per activity/rehabilitation exercise (p < 0.05).ConclusionActive aging of the rural disabled older adults is at a low level, with insufficient economic security and social participation. The national government should help improve the quality of primary health care in rural areas, build a friendly environment for senior communities, and improve policies to protect the welfare of the older adults, so as to collaboratively empower the disabled older adults in rural areas at three levels: health, participation, and protection

Current status and influencing factors of activation of older patients with chronic disease

ObjectiveWe aimed to investigate the status and influencing factors of activation of older patients with chronic disease.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study, using the general information questionnaire, Patient Activation Measure, the Chinese version of the e-Health Literacy Scale, and the Health Empowerment Scale for the Elderly with Chronic Disease. By the convenience sampling method, 289 older patients with chronic disease were selected from January to April 2023 in a Class A tertiary hospital in Zhengzhou.ResultsThe mean score of the Patient Activation Measure for older patients with chronic disease was 65.94 ± 13.35. The association of influencing factors such as religion, family income, health empowerment, e-health literacy, and patient activation was investigated.ConclusionThe patient activation of older patients with chronic disease was at a middle level. Patients without religion and from high-income families tended to have a higher level of patient activation. Improving health empowerment and e-health literacy levels promotes patient activation and enhances their self-health management ability

PrivateDroid: Private Browsing Mode for Android

Abstract—Private browsing mode is a privacy feature adopted by many modern computer browsers. With the increased use of mobile devices and escalating privacy concerns for mobile users, browser applications on mobile devices have also started incorporating private browsing mode. Even so, the use of private browsing mode is limited to the browser applications and cannot be applied directly on other third-party mobile applications. In this paper, we propose PrivateDroid, which provides a private browsing mode for third-party applications on the Android plat-form. First, we discuss three possible approaches of implementing mobile private browsing mode: code instrumentation, an extra sandbox, and a Linux container approach. Then, we implement PrivateDroid, which creates a new sandbox for every application in private mode and destroys the sandbox once the application is closed. After that, we evaluate usability, efficiency and security of the system with 25 popular Android applications. Our design considerations, implementation details, evaluation results, and challenges lay a foundation of private browsing mode on mobile platforms. Index Terms—Mobile Privacy, Private Browsing Mode I

The mechanism of high mobility group box-1 protein and its bidirectional regulation in tumors

High-mobility group box-1 protein (HMGB1) is a nonhistone chromatin-related protein widely found in eukaryotic cells. It is involved in the transcription, replication, and repair of DNA to maintain nuclear homeostasis. It participates in cell growth, differentiation, and signal transduction. Recent studies showed that HMGB1 has a bidirectional regulatory effect on tumors by regulating TLR4/MYD88/NF-κB and RAGE/AMPK/mTOR signaling pathways. On the one hand, it is highly expressed in a variety of tumors, promoting tumor proliferation and invasion, while on the other hand, it induces autophagy and apoptosis of tumor cells and stimulates tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes to produce an anti-tumor immune response. At present, HMGB1 could be used as a target to regulate the drug resistance and prognostication in cancer. Clinical applications of HMGB1 in cancer need further in-depth studies

Whole Brain Mapping of Long-Range Direct Input to Glutamatergic and GABAergic Neurons in Motor Cortex

Long-range neuronal circuits play an important role in motor and sensory information processing. Determining direct synaptic inputs of excited and inhibited neurons is important for understanding the circuit mechanisms involved in regulating movement. Here, we used the monosynaptic rabies tracing technique, combined with fluorescent micro-optical sectional tomography, to characterize the brain-wide input to the motor cortex (MC). The whole brain dataset showed that the main excited and inhibited neurons in the MC received inputs from similar brain regions with a quantitative difference. With 3D reconstruction we found that the distribution of input neurons, that target the primary and secondary MC, had different patterns. In the cortex, the neurons projecting to the primary MC mainly distributed in the lateral and anterior portion, while those to the secondary MC distributed in the medial and posterior portion. The input neurons in the subcortical areas also showed the topographic shift model, as in the thalamus, the neurons distributed as outer and inner shells while the neurons in the claustrum and amygdala were in the ventral and dorsal part, respectively. These results lay the anatomical foundation to understanding the organized pattern of motor circuits and the functional differences between the primary and secondary MC

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Sustainable Developmental Evaluation of Foreign Trade Based on Emergy Analysis Method in Shenzhen City, China

The foreign trade sustainable development index system of Shenzhen City, including the three subsystems of environment, economy, and society, was constructed based on the theory of emergy analysis. The sustainable development of foreign trade in Shenzhen City from 2009 to 2016 was evaluated, and a detailed analysis of changes in the emergy of light and heavy industries was performed. The results showed that the scale of economy has been expanding, and the total volume of imports and exports has turned from a rise to a decline in 2013. The status of sustainable development is not optimistic. The transaction volume of energy is reduced, and the quality of people’s living environment is declining. The sustainable development of Shenzhen City is not perfect, but it is in a phase of gradual optimization. Moreover, the proportion of heavy industry in import and export trade is significantly higher than that of light industry, which has caused the outflow of energy to a certain extent. Therefore, to improve the level of foreign trade sustainable development, the efficiency of resource utilization must be improved. The import of energy products must be increased, the ability to cope with external interference must be strengthened, and the foreign trade industrial structure must be adjusted

Fabrication of Diatomite/Silicalite-1 Composites and Their Property for VOCs Adsorption

Adsorption technology is an effective method to remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this work, we prepared hierarchical porous materials using modified diatomite (Dt) as a support and nano-sized silicalite-1 (S-1) seeds as inorganic fillers, which were applied to adsorb volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The characterization of the composites indicated that S-1 was successfully coated onto the surface of modified Dt, and the best surface area of the composites was 398.8 m2/g, nearly 40 times as large as Dt. The adsorption capacities of Dt/S-1 composites for three probe VOCs (ethyl acetate, acetone, and toluene) were rather superior to Dt, and the composites had preferential adsorption selectivity for ethyl acetate. Effects of seeded zeolite contents and hydrothermal conditions for the adsorption capacity of composites were discussed in this paper. The composite seeded with 5 wt% S-1 zeolite, which was subsequently synthesized by hydrothermal reaction at 100 °C for four days, showed the maximum adsorption capacity (1.31 mmol/g for ethyl acetate). The pseudo second-order model provided a perfect fit to adsorption kinetics, while the Langmuir model agreed the best with the adsorption isotherms. In addition, the composites had selective adsorption to ethyl acetate among these three probes VOCs. The regeneration experiments were also carried out, and the adsorption efficiency of the adsorbents was still up to 67% after five adsorption⁻desorption cycles. The hierarchical porous Dt/S-1 composites have an excellent VOC adsorption performance, satisfactory selectivity, and recycling ability