The First Case of Ischemia-Free Kidney Transplantation in Humans

Background: Ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) has been considered an inevitable event in organ transplantation since the first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954. To avoid IRI, we have established a novel procedure called ischemia-free organ transplantation. Here, we describe the first case of ischemia-free kidney transplantation (IFKT). Materials and Methods: The kidney graft was donated by a 19-year-old brain-dead donor. The recipient was a 47-year-old man with end-stage diabetic nephropathy. The graft was procured, preserved, and implanted without cessation of blood supply using normothermic machine perfusion. Results: The graft appearance, perfusion flow, and urine production suggested that the kidney was functioning well-during the whole procedure. The creatinine dropped rapidly to normal range within 3 days post-transplantation. The levels of serum renal injury markers were low post-transplantation. No rejection or vascular or infectious complications occurred. The patient had an uneventful recovery. Conclusion: This paper marks the first case of IFKT in humans. This innovation may offer a unique solution to optimizing transplant outcomes in kidney transplantation

Development of Non-Destructive Testing Device for Plant Leaf Expansion Monitoring

This paper designs a plant leaf expansion pressure non-destructive detection device, aiming to promote plant leaf expansion pressure research and achieve precision irrigation. The design is based on leaf expansion pressure probe technology, which can effectively monitor the plant leaf expansion pressure by detecting the feedback of the leaf under constant pressure. In this paper, the stability of the sensor and the calibration model is tested. The calibration experiments showed that the coefficient of determination R2 of the sensor was over 0.99, the static test results showed that the range of the sensor was 0–300 kPa, and the fluctuation of the sensor was less than 0.2 kPa during the long-term stability test. The indoor comparison tests showed that there was a significant difference in the variation of leaf expansion pressure data between plants under drought conditions and normal conditions. The irrigation experiments showed that the leaf expansion pressure was very sensitive to irrigation. The correlation between the expansion pressure data and the environmental factors was analyzed. The correlation coefficient between expansion pressure and light intensity was found to be 0.817. The results of the outdoor experiments showed that there was a significant difference in the expansion pressure of plants under different weather conditions. The data show that the plant leaf expansion pressure non-destructive detection device designed in this paper can be used both as an effective means of detecting plant leaf expansion pressure and promoting the research of plant physiological feedback mechanisms and precision irrigation

Does right hemisphere compensate for the left in school-age children with large left middle fossa arachnoid cysts?

Abstract Background To assess the cognitive function changes and brain network neuroplasticity in school-age children having large (diameter > 5 cm) left middle fossa arachnoid cyst (MFACs). Methods Eleven patients and 22 normal controls (NC) between 6 and 14 years of age were included. The CNS Vital Signs (CNS VS) were administered for cognitive assessment. The differences of cognitive data and functional connectivity (FC) in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) were compared between the patient group and the NC group. The correlations between the altered FC and cognitive data in the patient group were assessed. Results Patient group had significantly poorer attention (including Complex Attention, Sustained Attention, Simple Attention, Cognitive Flexibility, and Executive Function) and memory function (Visual Memory and Working Memory) than the NC group (uncorrected p-value, p-unc < 0.05). Whole-brain local correlation (LCOR) analysis showed an extensively lower LCOR in the patient group (voxel threshold p-unc < 0.001, cluster-size threshold of false discovery rate adjusted p (p-FDR) < 0.001). Functional connectivity (FC) analysis showed that bilateral frontal and temporal lobes connectivity in the patient group was significantly lower than the NC group (p-FDR < 0.05). Seed-based FC analysis indicated that there was altered FC between the right temporal lobe and the left temporal-parietal/temporal-occipital area (p-FDR < 0.05). In the patient group, most of the altered FC had a negative correlation to the cognitive score, while the FC in the right temporal lobe-left temporal-occipital area positively correlated to Verbal/Visual Memory (r = 0.41–0.60, p-FDR < 0.05). In correlation analysis between clinical data and cognitive score, the only significant result was a low correlation between cyst size and Reaction Time (-0.30–-0.36, P-FDR < 0.05). Conclusions School-aged children with large left MFAC showed significantly lower cognitive performance primarily in attention and memory domains. Distinct from neuroplasticity in a unilateral brain lesion, compensation in the healthy hemisphere in MFAC patients was sparse

Towards Establishing Empirical Rainfall Thresholds for Shallow Landslides in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

Empirical rainfall thresholds for predicting rainfall-triggered shallow landslides are proposed for Guangzhou city, which is prone to widespread geological hazards during the annual flood season due to the subtropical monsoon climate and frequent tropical storms and typhoons. In this study, the cumulated event rainfall (E, in mm), the duration of rainfall event (D, in day) (E–D) thresholds, normalized cumulated event rainfall, and the duration of rainfall event (EMAP–D) thresholds were defined. Thresholds based on five lithological units were obtained at 5%, 20%, and 50% probability levels using quantile regression methods. More than two-thirds of the landslides occurred within units of intrusive rock. The 20-day cumulative rainfall of 97 mm integrating cumulative event rainfall and the duration of rainfall events (CED) is introduced into the three-dimensional spatial threshold. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves for the CED threshold and E–D threshold were 0.944 and 0.914, respectively, and the true-positive rate of the CED threshold with the same probability level was slightly lower than that of the E–D threshold, but the CED threshold false-positive rate was much better than the E–D threshold, which can significantly reduce false alarm rate since many non-triggering rainfalls were filtered out

Fractional Fourier Transform-Based Radio Frequency Interference Suppression for High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar

High-frequency surface wave radar (HF SWR) plays an important role in marine stereoscopic monitoring system. Nevertheless, the congestion of external radio frequency interference (RFI) in HF band degrades its performance seriously. In this article, two novel fractional Fourier transform (FRFT)-based RFI suppression approaches are proposed. One is based on the orthogonal projection of sequences from fractional Fourier domain, and the other is based on singular value decomposition (SVD) of Hankel matrix of sequences from fractional inverse-Fourier domain. Simulation and experimental data collected by HF SWR from Wuhan University were used to test the effectiveness as well as the application condition of the proposed RFI suppression algorithms. The FRFT-based orthogonal projection algorithm is practicable for suppressing stationary RFI with unvaried carrier frequency, while the FRFT-based SVD algorithm is applicable equally for mitigating nonstationary RFI with time-varying carrier frequency or occasional duration time. The processing results may provide useful guidelines for interference suppression of HF SWR, and inspiring the further application of the FRFT-based methods for signal processing

MXene Ti3C2 decorated g-C3N4/ZnO photocatalysts with improved photocatalytic performance for CO2 reduction

Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 is considered as a kind of promising technologies for solving the greenhouse effect. Herein, a novel hybrid structure of g-C3N4/ZnO/Ti3C2 photocatalysts was designed and fabricated to investigate their abilities for CO2 reduction. As demonstration, heterojunction of g-C3N4/ZnO can improve photogenerated carriers’ separation, the addition of Ti3C2 fragments can further facilitate the photocatalytic performance from CO2 to CO. Hence, g-C3N4/ZnO/Ti3C2 has efficiently increased CO production by 8 and 12 times than pristine g-C3N4 and ZnO, respectively. Which is ascribed to the photogenerated charge migration promoted by metallic Ti3C2. This work provides a guideline for designing efficient hybrid catalysts on other applications in the renewable energy fields