The Value of Sacubitril and Valsartan in Adjuvant Treatment of Coronary Heart Disease and Heart Failure

Objective: To analyze the intervention effect of adjuvant sacubitril-valsartan therapy in patients with coronary heart disease and heart failure. Methods: A total of 89 patients with coronary heart disease and heart failure who were treated in our hospital in the past 3 years (January 2019-February 2022) were selected, and the clinical data were reviewed. 45 patients treated with conventional treatment + sacubitril and valsartan were used as the observation group, and the application values of the two groups were compared. Results: The improvement of various cardiac function levels in the observation group was better, the 6min walking distance was longer, and the adverse reaction rate was lower, and the difference was statistically significant compared with the control group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Sacubitril-valsartan has good effect in adjuvant treatment of coronary heart disease and heart failure, can effectively improve its cardiac function, improve exercise endurance, and has few adverse reactions, high safety, and definite clinical application value

Understanding the Heterogeneity in Decentralized Environmental Policies

This dissertation studies the heterogeneity in decentralized air pollution, water pollution, and transportation policies, and identifies implications for optimal policy design. The first chapter investigates whether states exhibit beggar-thy-neighbor and free-riding behaviors when implementing nonpoint-source (NPS) water pollution policies. I find that rivers within 30 km of state borders are less likely to be treated by more decentralized policies. Each behavior leads to a large deadweight loss. The second chapter conducts a large-scale study of the effectiveness of a variety of driving restriction policies in a variety of locations in China. I show that policy details and pollution concentration are the major factors that affect the actual and estimated effects of driving restriction policies, and also a potential explanation for earlier studies that showed driving restriction policies had little effect. In the third chapter, my co-author and I estimate time-varying and location-specific congestion costs across California's highways. We find that toll incidence increases with income. Black and Asian households bear more toll costs per day in location-based congestion tolls compared to white households.</p

Preparation of a Peptide-Modified Electrode for Capture and Voltammetric Determination of Endotoxin

Endotoxin is the major structural constituent of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, which is a great threat to human health. Herein, a sensitive electrochemical biosensor for the detection of endotoxin is established by recording the voltammetric responses of the peptide-modified electrode. The utilized peptide has a high affinity for the target endotoxin, which ensures the high selectivity of this method. After the capture of endotoxin on the electrode surface, a negatively charged layer is formed, and the electron-transfer process is significantly hindered because of the increased steric hindrance and the electrostatic repulsion. The declined electrochemical signal could be used to indicate the concentration of endotoxin. This method is simple but effective, which requires limited reagents. Another highlight of this method is its user-friendly operation. Moreover, its applicability in human blood plasma promises its great potential utility in the near future

Adaptive iterative decoding for expediting the convergence of unary error correction codes

Multimedia encoders typically generate symbols having a wide range of legitimate values. In practical mobile wireless scenarios, the transmission of these symbols is required to be bandwidth efficient and error resilient, motivating both source coding and channel coding. However, Separate Source and Channel Coding (SSCC) schemes are typically unable to exploit the residual redundancy in the source symbols, which cannot be totally reduced by finite-delay, finite-complexity schemes, hence resulting in a capacity loss. Until recently, none of the existing Joint Source and Channel Codes (JSCCs) were suitable for this application, since their decoding complexity increases rapidly with the size of the symbol alphabet. Motivated by this, we proposed a novel JSCC referred to as the Unary Error Correction (UEC) code, which is capable of exploiting all residual redundancy and eliminating any capacity loss, while imposing only a moderate decoding complexity. In this paper, we show that the operation of the UEC decoder can be dynamically adapted, in order to strike an attractive trade-off between its decoding complexity and its error correction capability. Furthermore, we conceive the corresponding Three Dimensional (3D) EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for controlling this dynamic adaptation, as well as the decoder activation order, when the UEC code is serially concatenated with a turbo code. In this way, we expedite iterative decoding convergence, facilitating a gain of up to 1:2 dB compared to both SSCC and to its non-adaptive UEC benchmarkers, while maintaining the same transmission bandwidth, duration, energy and decoding complexity

Self-assembly of copper and cobalt complexes with hierarchical size and catalytic properties for hydroxylation of phenol

A feasible and effective self-assembly method to synthesize different scale coordination polymers in highly dilute solution (from nanocrystals to microcrystals and to bulk crystals) without any blocking agent has been described. The growth of crystalline particles was controlled by removing the particles at different reaction times to interrupt the growth at the desired size. The nano and microscale particles show better catalytic conversions and selectivities in the hydroxylation of phenols than the bulk crystals

lncRNA-dependent mechanisms of androgen-receptor-regulated gene activation programs.

Although recent studies have indicated roles of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in physiological aspects of cell-type determination and tissue homeostasis, their potential involvement in regulated gene transcription programs remains rather poorly understood. The androgen receptor regulates a large repertoire of genes central to the identity and behaviour of prostate cancer cells, and functions in a ligand-independent fashion in many prostate cancers when they become hormone refractory after initial androgen deprivation therapy. Here we report that two lncRNAs highly overexpressed in aggressive prostate cancer, PRNCR1 (also known as PCAT8) and PCGEM1, bind successively to the androgen receptor and strongly enhance both ligand-dependent and ligand-independent androgen-receptor-mediated gene activation programs and proliferation in prostate cancer cells. Binding of PRNCR1 to the carboxy-terminally acetylated androgen receptor on enhancers and its association with DOT1L appear to be required for recruitment of the second lncRNA, PCGEM1, to the androgen receptor amino terminus that is methylated by DOT1L. Unexpectedly, recognition of specific protein marks by PCGEM1-recruited pygopus 2 PHD domain enhances selective looping of androgen-receptor-bound enhancers to target gene promoters in these cells. In 'resistant' prostate cancer cells, these overexpressed lncRNAs can interact with, and are required for, the robust activation of both truncated and full-length androgen receptor, causing ligand-independent activation of the androgen receptor transcriptional program and cell proliferation. Conditionally expressed short hairpin RNA targeting these lncRNAs in castration-resistant prostate cancer cell lines strongly suppressed tumour xenograft growth in vivo. Together, these results indicate that these overexpressed lncRNAs can potentially serve as a required component of castration-resistance in prostatic tumours

Developing urban residential reference buildings using clustering analysis of satellite images

Built-up areas tend to comprise a variety of buildings with diverse and complex shapes, functions and construction characteristics. This variety is the source of significant challenges when calculating building energy use at the building stock level. Moreover, the process of developing stock models usually requires large amounts of data that are frequently scarce, nonexistent or at least not publicly available. Under these circumstances, defining a limited set of reference buildings representing the stock is useful to study the actual energy consumption and the potential effects of different energy conservation measures. This paper presents a new method for developing typical residential reference buildings at district level for bottom-up energy modeling purposes. By means of widely and freely available satellite images, an information database of building shapes is created and a clustering analysis of the geometrical features is performed to define a number of archetypes representative of the heating and cooling energy demand of the district. The method is tested and demonstrated through the case study of the Yuzhong District in Chongqing (China) by comparing the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of the archetypes derived in this way against detailed dynamic simulations. Results show very small differences in the estimated stock energy consumption (+0.03% in heating energy consumption and +2.97% in cooling energy consumption)

MGRO Recognition Algorithm-Based Artificial Potential Field for Mobile Robot Navigation

This paper describes a novel recognition algorithm which includes mean filter, Gaussian filter, Retinex enhancement method, and Ostu threshold segmentation method (MGRO) for the navigation of mobile robots with visual sensors. The approach includes obstacle visual recognition and navigation path planning. In the first part, a three-stage method for obstacle visual recognition is constructed. Stage 1 combines mean filtering and Gaussian filtering to remove random noise and Gauss noise in the environmental image. Stage 2 increases image contrast by using the Retinex enhancement method. Stage 3 uses the Ostu threshold segmentation method to achieve obstacle feature extraction. A navigation method based on the auxiliary visual information is constructed in the second part. The method is based on the artificial potential field (APF) method and is able to avoid falling into local minimum by changing the repulsion field function. Experimental results confirm that obstacle features can be extracted accurately and the mobile robot can avoid obstacles safely and arrive at target positions correctly

An outbreak of aseptic meningitis caused by coxsackievirus A9 in Gansu, the People's Republic of China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>An outbreak of aseptic meningitis occurred in Tianshui city of Gansu Province, the People's Republic of China, from March to June 2005. A total of 85 patients were clinical confirmed as aseptic meningitis in this outbreak.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CVA9 was mainly responsible for this outbreak supported by the clinical manifestations of the patients, epidemiological data of the outbreak, the results of RT-PCR and complete VP1 sequence determination, conventional neutralization assays, IgM serological assays, viral isolation and phylogenetics analysis. Through phylogenetic analysis and homogeneity analysis for partial VP1 gene, the nucleotide and amino acid homologies between Gansu isolates and former Chinese CVA9 strains were 88.2%-96.1% and 97.2%-99.2%, respectively. Multiple transmission chains of CVA9 occurred in different provinces or years in China. Moreover, in order to clarify the genotype of CVA9, Gansu CVA9 strains isolated in this outbreak were compared with other CVA9 isolates based on VP1/2A junction regions (genotyping region) and they might belong to a new genotype of CVA9, which could be assigned for genotype XIII,</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CVA9 was confirmed as the pathogen responsible for this outbreak. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that the CVA9 strains isolated in this outbreak might belong to a new genotype.</p