Work stress, life stress, and smoking among rural–urban migrant workers in China

Background Stimulated by rapid modernization and industrialization, there is massive rural–urban migration in China. The migrants are highly susceptible to smoking and mental health problems. This study examined the association between both perceived work stress and perceived life stress with smoking behavior among this group during the period of migration. Methods Participants (n = 1,595) were identified through stratified, multi-stage, systematic sampling. Smoking status separated non-smokers from daily and occasional smokers, and migration history, work stress, and life stress were also measured. Analyses were conducted using the Chi-square test and multiple logistic regression. Two models were utilized. The first was the full model that comprised sociodemographic and migration-related characteristics, as well as the two stress variables. In addressing potential overlap between life and work stress, the second model eliminated one of the two stress variables as appropriate. Results Overall smoking prevalence was 64.9% (95% CI: 62.4-67.2%). In the regression analysis, under the full model, migrants with high perceived life stress showed a 45% excess likelihood to be current smokers relative to low-stress counterparts (OR: 1.45; 95% CI: 1.05 – 2.06). Applying the second model, which excluded the life stress variable, migrants with high perceived work stress had a 75% excess likelihood to be current smokers relative to opposites (OR: 1.75; 95% CI: 1.26–2.45). Conclusions Rural–urban migrant workers manifested a high prevalence of both life stress and work stress. While both forms of stress showed associations with current smoking, life stress appeared to outweigh the impact of work stress. Our findings could inform the design of tobacco control programs that would target Chinese rural–urban migrant workers as a special population

Surface Charge Effects for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction on Pt(111) Using a Modified Grand-Canonical Potential Kinetics Method

Surface charges of catalysts have important influences on the thermodynamics and kinetics of electrochemical reactions. Herein, we develop a modified version of the grand-canonical potential kinetics (GCP-K) method based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations to explore the effect of surface charges on reaction thermodynamics and kinetics. Using the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) on the Pt(111) surface as an example, we show how to track the change of surface charge in a reaction and how to analyze its influence on the kinetics. Grand-canonical calculations demonstrate that the optimum hydrogen adsorption energy on Pt under the standard hydrogen electrode condition (SHE) is around -0.2 eV, rather than 0 eV established under the canonical ensemble, due to the high density of surface negative charges. By separating the surface charges that can freely exchange with the external electron reservoir, we obtain a Tafel barrier that is in good agreement with the experimental result. During the Tafel reaction, the net electron inflow into the catalyst leads to a stabilization of canonical energy and a destabilization of the charge-dependent grand-canonical component. This study provides a practical method for obtaining accurate grand-canonical reaction energetics and analyzing the surface charge induced changes

Shrimp Antiviral mja-miR-35 Targets CHI3L1 in Human M2 Macrophages and Suppresses Breast Cancer Metastasis

Virus infection can change host's metabolism, while tumorigenesis results from metabolic disorder. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), crucial regulatory factors overlaying transcriptional control mechanisms, can guide metabolic homeostasis. In terms of metabolic disorder, antiviral miRNAs may have anti-tumor activity. However, this issue has not been extensively investigated. In the present study, the results revealed that shrimp mja-miR-35, which showed antiviral activity in shrimp against white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) infection, could suppress the metastasis of breast cancer by targeting human CHI3L1 gene of M2 macrophages in a cross-phylum manner. Furthermore, the feed expressing shrimp mja-miR-35 had antiviral capacity in shrimp and anti-tumor activity in humans, leading to the simultaneous control of virus infection and tumor progression. Therefore, our findings indicated that the antiviral miRNAs derived from shrimp stress responses against virus infection might be an important source of human anti-tumor drugs and miRNAs could bridge the control of aquaculture diseases and the prevention of human tumors

A novel SWB antenna with triple band-notches based on elliptical slot and rectangular split ring resonators

In this paper, a wideband antenna was designed for super-wideband (SWB) applications. The proposed antenna was fed with a rectangular tapered microstrip feed line, which operated over a SWB frequency range (1.42 GHz to 50 GHz). The antenna was implemented at a compact size with electrical dimensions of 0.16 ¿ × 0.27 ¿ × 0.0047 ¿ mm3, where ¿ was with respect to the lowest resonance frequency. The proposed antenna prototype was fabricated on a F4B substrate, which had a permittivity of 2.65 and 1 mm thickness. The SWB antenna exhibited an impedance bandwidth of 189% and a bandwidth ratio of 35.2:1. Additionally, the proposed antenna design exhibited three band notch characteristics that were necessary to eradicate interference from WLAN, WiMAX, and X bands in the SWB range. One notch was achieved by etching an elliptical split ring resonator (ESRR) in the radiator and the other two notches were achieved by placing rectangular split ring resonators close to the signal line. The first notch was tuned by incorporating a varactor diode into the ESRR. The prototype was experimentally validated with, with notch and without notch characteristics for SWB applications. The experimental results showed good agreement with simulated results.Postprint (published version

A Platoon Regulation Algorithm to Improve the Traffic Performance of Highway Work Zones

This paper presents a cooperative traffic control strategy to increase the capacity of non-recurrent bottlenecks such as work zones by making full use of the spatial resources upstream of work zones. The upstream area is divided into two zones: the regulation area and the merging area. The basic logic is that a large gap is more efficient in accommodating merging vehicles than several small and scattered gaps with the same total length. In the regulation area, a non-linear programming model is developed to balance both traffic capacity improvements and safety risks. A two-step solving algorithm is proposed for finding optimal solutions. In the merging area, the sorting algorithm is used to design lane changing trajectories based on the regulated platoons. A case study is conducted, and the results indicate that the proposed model is able to significantly improve work zone capacity with minor disturbances to the traffic

Alternating Deep Low Rank Approach for Exponential Function Reconstruction and Its Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Applications

Exponential function is a fundamental signal form in general signal processing and biomedical applications, such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging. How to reduce the sampling time of these signals is an important problem. Sub-Nyquist sampling can accelerate signal acquisition but bring in artifacts. Recently, the low rankness of these exponentials has been applied to implicitly constrain the deep learning network through the unrolling of low rank Hankel factorization algorithm. However, only depending on the implicit low rank constraint cannot provide the robust reconstruction, such as sampling rate mismatches. In this work, by introducing the explicit low rank prior to constrain the deep learning, we propose an Alternating Deep Low Rank approach (ADLR) that utilizes deep learning and optimization solvers alternately. The former solver accelerates the reconstruction while the latter one corrects the reconstruction error from the mismatch. The experiments on both general exponential functions and realistic biomedical magnetic resonance data show that, compared with the state-of-the-art methods, ADLR can achieve much lower reconstruction error and effectively alleviates the decrease of reconstruction quality with sampling rate mismatches.Comment: 14 page

Characterization of bortezomib-adapted I-45 mesothelioma cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bortezomib, a proteasome-specific inhibitor, has emerged as a promising cancer therapeutic agent. However, development of resistance to bortezomib may pose a challenge to effective anticancer therapy. Therefore, characterization of cellular mechanisms involved in bortezomib resistance and development of effective strategies to overcome this resistance represent important steps in the advancement of bortezomib-mediated cancer therapy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The present study reports the development of I-45-BTZ-R, a bortezomib-resistant cell line, from the bortezomib-sensitive mesothelioma cell line I-45. I-45-BTZ-R cells showed no cross-resistance to the chemotherapeutic drugs cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, and doxorubicin. Moreover, the bortezomib-adapted I-45-BTZ-R cells had decreased growth kinemics and did not over express proteasome subunit β5 (PSMB5) as compared to parental I-45 cells. I-45-BTZ-R cells and parental I-45 cells showed similar inhibition of proteasome activity, but I-45-BTZ-R cells exhibited much less accumulation of ubiquitinated proteins following exposure to 40 nm bortezomib. Further studies revealed that relatively low doses of bortezomib did not induce an unfolded protein response (UPR) in the bortezomib-adapted cells, while higher doses induced UPR with concomitant cell death, as evidenced by higher expression of the mitochondrial chaperone protein Bip and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-related pro-apoptotic protein CHOP. In addition, bortezomib exposure did not induce the accumulation of the pro-apoptotic proteins p53, Mcl-1S, and noxa in the bortezomib-adapted cells.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that UPR evasion, together with reduced pro-apoptotic gene induction, accounts for bortezomib resistance in the bortezomib-adapted mesothelioma cell line I-45-BTZ-R.</p