The role of immunometabolism in macrophage polarization and its impact on acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome

Lung macrophages constitute the first line of defense against airborne particles and microbes and are key to maintaining pulmonary immune homeostasis. There is increasing evidence suggesting that macrophages also participate in the pathogenesis of acute lung injury (ALI)/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), including the modulation of inflammatory responses and the repair of damaged lung tissues. The diversity of their functions may be attributed to their polarized states. Classically activated or inflammatory (M1) macrophages and alternatively activated or anti-inflammatory (M2) macrophages are the two main polarized macrophage phenotypes. The precise regulatory mechanism of macrophage polarization is a complex process that is not completely understood. A growing body of literature on immunometabolism has demonstrated the essential role of immunometabolism and its metabolic intermediates in macrophage polarization. In this review, we summarize macrophage polarization phenotypes, the role of immunometabolism, and its metabolic intermediates in macrophage polarization and ALI/ARDS, which may represent a new target and therapeutic direction

Arsenic, Fluoride and Iodine in Groundwater of China

Arsenicosis and fluorosis, two endemic diseases known to result from exposure to their elevated concentrations in groundwater of north China used by many rural households for drinking, have been major public health concerns for several decades. Over the last decade, a large number of investigations have been carried out to delineate the spatial distribution and to characterize the chemical compositions of high As and F groundwaters with a focus on several inland basins in north China. Findings from these studies, including improved understanding of the hydrogeological and geochemical factors resulting in their enrichments, have been applied to guide development of clean and safe groundwater in these endemic disease areas. Survey efforts have led to the recognition of iodine in groundwater as an emerging public health concern. This paper reviews the new understandings gained through these studies, including those published in this special issue, and points out the direction for future research that will shed light on safe guarding a long-term supply of low As and F groundwater in these water scarce semi-arid and arid inland basins of north China

Respiratory Fluoroquinolones Monotherapy vs. β-Lactams With or Without Macrolides for Hospitalized Community-Acquired Pneumonia Patients: A Meta-Analysis

Background: The choice of empirical antibiotic treatment for patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) who are admitted to non-intensive care unit (ICU) hospital wards is complicated by the limited availability of evidence. We systematically reviewed the efficacy and safety of strategies of empirical treatment with respiratory fluoroquinolone monotherapy and β-lactam with or without macrolide for non-ICU hospitalized CAP patients.Methods: We searched databases including PubMed, the Cochrane Library (Issue11, 2018), EMbase, China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), WanFang Data, VIP, and China Biology Medicine disc (CBMdisc) to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving the comparison of respiratory fluoroquinolone monotherapy and β-lactam with or without macrolide for the non-ICU hospitalized patients with CAP up to November 2018. Two reviewers independently screened literature according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. A meta-analysis was performed with the outcomes.Results: A total of 22 studies involving 6,235 patients were included. The results of the meta-analysis showed a non-significant trend toward an advantage to the respiratory fluoroquinolone in overall mortality (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.65–1.02). No significant difference was found between the two strategies in clinical success (the intention-to-treat population: RR 1.03, 95% CI 0.99–1.08; the clinically evaluable population: RR 1.03, 95% CI 0.999–1.055; the population in which it was unclear whether intention-to-treat or per-protocol analysis was used: RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.99–1.09), microbiological treatment success (RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.997–1.092), and length of stay (SMD −0.06, 95% CI −0.16 to 0.04). The advantage of respiratory fluoroquinolone was statistically significant on the drug-related adverse events (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.77–0.97).Conclusions: Current evidence shows that fluoroquinolone monotherapy has similar efficacy and favorable safety compared with β-lactam with or without macrolide for non-ICU hospitalized CAP patients. Since the limitation of region, quantity and quality of included studies, more RCTs with large scale and high quality are needed to verify the above conclusion

Adaptive Data Fusion Method of Multisensors Based on LSTM-GWFA Hybrid Model for Tracking Dynamic Targets

In preparation for the battlefields of the future, using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) loaded with multisensors to track dynamic targets has become the research focus in recent years. According to the air combat tracking scenarios and traditional multisensor weighted fusion algorithms, this paper contains designs of a new data fusion method using a global Kalman filter and LSTM prediction measurement variance, which uses an adaptive truncation mechanism to determine the optimal weights. The method considers the temporal correlation of the measured data and introduces a detection mechanism for maneuvering of targets. Numerical simulation results show the accuracy of the algorithm can be improved about 66% by training 871 flight data. Based on a mature refitted civil wing UAV platform, the field experiments verified the data fusion method for tracking dynamic target is effective, stable, and has generalization ability

Optically Non-Contact Cross-Country Skiing Action Recognition Based on Key-Point Collaborative Estimation and Motion Feature Extraction

Technical motion recognition in cross-country skiing can effectively help athletes to improve their skiing movements and optimize their skiing strategies. The non-contact acquisition method of the visual sensor has a bright future in ski training. The changing posture of the athletes, the environment of the ski resort, and the limited field of view have posed great challenges for motion recognition. To improve the applicability of monocular optical sensor-based motion recognition in skiing, we propose a monocular posture detection method based on cooperative detection and feature extraction. Our method uses four feature layers of different sizes to simultaneously detect human posture and key points and takes the position deviation loss and rotation compensation loss of key points as the loss function to implement the three-dimensional estimation of key points. Then, according to the typical characteristics of cross-country skiing movement stages and major sub-movements, the key points are divided and the features are extracted to implement the ski movement recognition. The experimental results show that our method is 90% accurate for cross-country skiing movements, which is equivalent to the recognition method based on wearable sensors. Therefore, our algorithm has application value in the scientific training of cross-country skiing

A Design Method of Steering Gear Transmission Mechanism Based on Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization

Transmission device is a requisite part of the design of steering gear structure, the design process mainly aimed at transmission accuracy and structural stress characteristics and other objectives to optimize. In the traditional ways, the single objective optimization method does not have practical application value. Multi-objective optimization algorithm can be effectively applied to the structural design of steering gear by relying on its efficient and accurate search performance and convenient implementation method. In this paper, a new multi-level and multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm (MLMOPSO) is proposed, which adds boundary conditions to the hierarchical design model and performs multi-objective particle swarm optimization. The simulation results represent that compared with the traditional optimization algorithm, MLMOPSO has better optimization effect on linkage mechanism optimization. The optimization results have higher reference value in actual design and can be effectively applied to other engineering optimization problems, with strong robustness and generalization

Prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in healthy Chinese population: A system review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE:To comprehensively determine the prevalence of MRSA in healthy Chinese population, the influencing factors of MRSA colonization and its antibiotic resistance. METHODS:Articles that studied prevalence or influencing factors of MRSA carriage in healthy Chinese population were retrieved from PubMed, Ovid database, three Chinese electronic databases. The pooled prevalence of MRSA, its antibiotic resistance and influencing factors were analyzed by STATA12.0. RESULTS:37 studies were included. The pooled prevalence of MRSA was 21.2% (95% CI: 18.5%-23.9%), and the prevalence of S.aureus was 15% (95% CI: 10%-19%), with a significant heterogeneity (MRSA: I2 = 97.6%, P<0.001; S.aureus: I2 = 98.4%, P < 0.001). In subgroup analysis, the pooled prevalence of MRSA was 28% (95%CI: 10%-51%) for Livestock-related workers, 18% (95%CI: 11%-26%) for children, 20% (95%CI: 12%-29%) for healthcare workers, 7% (95%CI: 3%-13%) for community residents. The prevalence of MRSA in studies with oxacillin disk diffusion method (28%, 95%CI: 21%-35%) seemed higher than that with the mecA gene method(12%, 95%CI: 7%-19%). MRSA in studies conducted in Taiwan was more common than in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Similar results were found in meta-regression. Influencing factors for MRSA colonization were noted in seven eligible studies, they included younger age (OR: 3.54, 95% CI: 2.38-5.26; OR: 2.24, 95% CI: 1.73-2.9), attending day care centers (DCCs) (OR: 1.95, 95% CI: 1.4-2.72; OR: 1.53, 95% CI: 1.2-1.95), flu vaccination (OR:1.73, 95% CI: 1.28-2.35), using antibiotics within the past year (OR: 2.05, 95% CI:1.35-3.11), residing in northern Taiwan (OR: 1.45, 95% CI: 1.19-1.77), regular visits to health care facility (OR: 23.83, 95% CI: 2.72-209.01), household member working in health care facility (OR: 8.98, 95% CI:1.4-55.63), and contact with livestock (OR: 6.31, 95% CI: 3.44-11.57). Moreover, MRSA was found to be highly resistant to penicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin, and clindamycin, with a pooled resistance ratio of 100, 93, 88, and 75%, respectively. However, no resistance were noted to vancomycin. CONCLUSION:The pooled prevalence of MRSA was considerably high in health Chinese population. Additionally, these strains showed extreme resistance to penicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin and clindamycin. Public MRSA protection measures and the surveillance of MRSA should be strengthened to reduce the spread of MRSA among hospitals, communities, and livestock

Infrared Small Target Detection Method with Trajectory Correction Fuze Based on Infrared Image Sensor

Due to the complexity of background and diversity of small targets, robust detection of infrared small targets for the trajectory correction fuze has become a challenge. To solve this problem, different from the traditional method, a state-of-the-art detection method based on density-distance space is proposed to apply to the trajectory correction fuze. First, parameters of the infrared image sensor on the fuze are calculated to set the boundary limitations for the target detection method. Second, the density-distance space method is proposed to detect the candidate targets. Finally, the adaptive pixel growth (APG) algorithm is used to suppress the clutter so as to detect the real targets. Three experiments, including equivalent detection, simulation and hardware-in-loop, were implemented to verify the effectiveness of this method. Results illustrated that the infrared image sensor on the fuze has a stable field of view under rotation of the projectile, and could clearly observe the infrared small target. The proposed method has superior anti-noise, different size target detection, multi-target detection and various clutter suppression capability. Compared with six novel algorithms, our algorithm shows a perfect detection performance and acceptable time consumption

The association between osteopontin and tuberculosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

ObjectiveWe examined the data reported in the studies for comparison of osteopontin (OPN) levels in tuberculosis and healthy participants, and to discuss whether OPN could be extended to disease diagnosis, severity assessment and therapeutic effect monitering.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and WanFang databases. The pooled risk estimates were shown in standardized mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (CI) for OPN levels. The random effect model was used according to the test of heterogeneity among studies. Subgroup analyses and meta-regression models were performed to identify the possible sources of heterogeneity.Results17 retrospective studies with 933 tuberculosis participants and 786 healthy controls were finally included in this article. In the primary meta-analysis, higher serum/plasma OPN levels were found in tuberculosis patients (SMD = 2.58, 95%CI = 2.09~3.08, PConclusionsElevated serum/plasma OPN levels may be associated with an increased risk of tuberculosis, while further well-designed studies are needed. Moreover, OPN could be considered as a potential biomarker for tuberculosis surveillance and severity assessment