Structural equation models to analyze activity participation, trip generation, and mode choice of low-income commuters

Low-income commuters have distinct activity-travel characteristics from non-low-income commuters. This study examines low-income commuters' activity-travel pattern for a better understanding the mechanism of activity participation and travel behaviour based on the travel survey data collected in Nanjing, China. Structural equations modelling (SEM) methodology was adopted to estimate the complex relationships among socio-demographics, accessibility, activity participation, trip generation and mode choice. Results show that strong relationships do exist among socio-demographics, activity engagement and travel behavior. Specifically, we can understand travel behaviour better by including activity participation endogenously in the model. Furthermore, it allows us to better forecast how increasing any one type of activity will affect demand for other activities, as well as trip generation and mode choice. Lastly, the results reveal the effects of accessibility variables on activity participation and travel behaviour in which population density measure has more ubiquitous effects. Findings in this study might provide insightful policy implications for improving the travel environment of the low-income commuters

Investigation of the clinical features and therapeutic methods for the management of inflammatory lacrimal punctum diseases

Purpose: To establish if there are different classes of inflammatory lacrimal punctum diseases (ILPDs) and to examine the various strategies by which they can be managed therapeutically.Methods: Two hundred and fifty nine (259) patients with inflammatory punctum lacrimal disease were identified and used as subjects for this study. Each patient was carefully examined for evidence of morphology of lacrimal punctum which was confirmed mainly by lacrimal duct flushing and probing. Appropriate therapeutic managements were adopted for patients with other inflammatory conditions besides ILPD. The clinical effects of the various therapeutic strategies were documented. .Results: Eighty-seven (87) patients out of the 259 (32.53 %) suffered from acute or chronic conjunctivitis while 66 patients (5.61 %) suffered from inflammatory lacrimal passage diseases. Patients with both conjunctivitis and lacrimal passage inflammation, patients with dry-eye symptoms, patients with just one of the conditions, and patients with mere evidence of superior punctalacrimalis represented 13.15, 14.19, 14.53, and 33.91 %, respectively. Mere evidence of inferior punctalacrimalis, and presence of acute inflammation were seen in 48.76 and 13.49 % of the 259 patients, respectively, while those with chronic inflammation lasting for 2.97 ± 0.13 years, comprised 86.51 %. Antibiotic eye drops were used for acute inflammation, while chronic inflammation was treated with antibiotic eye drops, lacrimal punctum expansion, pus elimination, and punctum-sparing canaliculotomy. Both therapeutic methods produced satisfactory curative effects.Conclusion: The results show that satisfactory therapy of lacrimal punctum inflammation can be achieved if the right therapeutic agents and procedures are adopted based on clinical characteristics of the ILPD manifesting in the patient.Keywords: Lacrimal punctum, Inflammatory disease, Conjunctivitis, Dry-eye symptom

Modeling Travel Mode Choices in Connection to Metro Stations by Mixed Logit Models: A Case Study in Nanjing, China

Urban rail transit trips usually involve multiple stages, which can be differentiated in terms of transfers that may involve distinct access and egress modes. Most studies on access and egress mode choices of urban rail transit have separately examined the two mode choices. However, in reality, the two choices are temporally correlated. This study, therefore, has sequentially applied the mixed logit to examine the contributors of access and egress mode choices of urban metro commuters using the data from a recent survey conducted in Nanjing, China. 9 typical multimodal combinations constituted by 5 main access modes (walk, bike, electric bike, bus, and car) and 2 main egress modes (walk and bus) are included in the study. The result proves that the model is reliable and reproductive in analyzing access/egress mode choices of metro commuters. Estimation results prove the existence of time constraint and service satisfaction effect of access trip on commuters’ egress mode choice and reveal the importance of transfer infrastructure and environments that serve for biking, walking, bus riding, and car parking in commuter’s connection choice. Also, policy implications are segmentally concluded for the transfer needs of commuters in different groups to encourage the use of metro multimodal trips

Neuroprotective effect of arctigenin via upregulation of P-CREB in mouse primary neurons and human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells.

Arctigenin (Arc) has been shown to act on scopolamine-induced memory deficit mice and to provide a neuroprotective effect on cultured cortical neurons from glutamate-induced neurodegeneration through mechanisms not completely defined. Here, we investigated the neuroprotective effect of Arc on H89-induced cell damage and its potential mechanisms in mouse cortical neurons and human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. We found that Arc prevented cell viability loss induced by H89 in human SH-SY5Y cells. Moreover, Arc reduced intracellular beta amyloid (Aβ) production induced by H89 in neurons and human SH-SY5Y cells, and Arc also inhibited the presenilin 1(PS1) protein level in neurons. In addition, neural apoptosis in both types of cells, inhibition of neurite outgrowth in human SH-SY5Y cells and reduction of synaptic marker synaptophysin (SYN) expression in neurons were also observed after H89 exposure. All these effects induced by H89 were markedly reversed by Arc treatment. Arc also significantly attenuated downregulation of the phosphorylation of CREB (p-CREB) induced by H89, which may contribute to the neuroprotective effects of Arc. These results demonstrated that Arc exerted the ability to protect neurons and SH-SY5Y cells against H89-induced cell injury via upregulation of p-CREB

Global identification and functional prediction of cold-related lncRNAs in eggplant

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical roles in plant development and stress responses. So far, identification of lncRNA in eggplant response to stresses has been limited and the role in mediating response to cold stress is yet to be characterized in eggplant. In this study, there is reported the first dataset of lncRNAs responsive to cold stress in the cold tolerant and sensitive eggplants using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). 227 and 225 differentially expressed (DE) lncRNAs were obtained in two genotypes with differential cold-tolerance. Functional characterization through gene ontology (GO) analysis indicated that target genes were particularly related to acyl-CoA dehydrogenase activity and pseudouridine synthase activity, which could result in the tolerant phenotypes. Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) showed that target genes in both sensitive and tolerant eggplants were mainly involved in cold responsive pathways such as oxidative phosphorylation, peroxisome, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, ubiquitin mediated proteolysis and so on. However, the enriched pathways obtained by enrichment analysis in cold-tolerant eggplant were different from those in cold-sensitive eggplant, which further indicated the reason for different tolerances. Our findings highlight the potential contributions of lncRNAs in regulating eggplant response to cold stress and difference in cold tolerance

Association of Blood Pressure With Stroke Risk, Stratified by Age and Stroke Type, in a Low-Income Population in China: A 27-Year Prospective Cohort Study

Association of stroke risk with new blood pressure criterion 2017 is unknown in China. We assessed the association between blood pressure (BP) values and stroke risk in a low-income population in Tianjin, China. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) values were categorized into five strata and strokes were recorded as stroke, ischemic stroke, and hemorrhagic stroke. Stroke risk was analyzed according to blood pressure stratum using Cox regression analysis. Overall, 4,017 residents (age, ≥18 years) were included in this prospective cohort study. Over a 27-year follow-up period (total, 86,515.78 person-years), 638 participants experienced first-ever strokes. The stroke risk was higher among individuals with SBPs ≥140 mmHg or DBPs ≥90 mmHg than among those with SBPs < 130 mmHg or DBPs < 80 mmHg (reference group), after adjusting for covariates. However, hemorrhagic stroke risk increased only in participants with SBPs ≥160 mmHg. The stroke risk increased for individuals < 65-years-old having BP values ≥130/80 mmHg and for individuals ≥65-years-old with BP values ≥160/90 mmHg. To reduce the stroke burden in China, target BP goals must be established for adults, with different targets for the middle-aged and the elderly segments of the population. These results are very important for guiding clinical practice and may be generalized to other developing countries experiencing rapid economic development and where transitions in the spectrum of prevalent diseases have occurred

Molecular Characterization of a Debilitation-Associated Partitivirus Infecting the Pathogenic Fungus Aspergillus flavus

The opportunistic human pathogenic fungus Aspergillus flavus is known to be infected with mycoviruses. In this study, we report a novel mycovirus A. flavus partitivirus 1 (AfPV1) that was originally isolated from the abnormal colonial morphology isolate LD-3-8 of A. flavus. AfPV1 has spherical virus-like particles about 40 nm in diameter, and three double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) segments (dsRNA1, 2, and 3 with lengths of 1.7, 1.4, and 1.1 kbp, respectively) were packaged in the virions. dsRNA1, dsRNA2, and dsRNA3 each contained a single open reading frame and potentially encoded 62, 42, and 32 kDa proteins, respectively. The dsRNA1 encoded protein shows similarity to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of partitiviruses, and the dsRNA2 product has no significant similarity to any other capsid protein (CP) in the GenBank databases, beside some homology with the hypothetical “capsid” protein of a few partitiviruses. The dsRNA3 encodes a protein with no similarity to any protein in the GenBank database. SDS-PAGE and polypeptide mass fingerprint-mass spectrum (PMF-MS) analyses indicated that the CP of the AfPV1 was encoded by dsRNA2. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the AfPV1 and relative viruses were found in an unclassified group inside the Partitiviridae family. AfPV1 seems to result in debilitation symptoms, but had no significant effects to murine pathogenicity. These findings provide new insights into the partitiviruses taxonomy and the interactions between viruses and A. flavus

Diagnosis and segmentation effect of the ME-NBI-based deep learning model on gastric neoplasms in patients with suspected superficial lesions - a multicenter study

BackgroundEndoscopically visible gastric neoplastic lesions (GNLs), including early gastric cancer and intraepithelial neoplasia, should be accurately diagnosed and promptly treated. However, a high rate of missed diagnosis of GNLs contributes to the potential risk of the progression of gastric cancer. The aim of this study was to develop a deep learning-based computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for the diagnosis and segmentation of GNLs under magnifying endoscopy with narrow-band imaging (ME-NBI) in patients with suspected superficial lesions.MethodsME-NBI images of patients with GNLs in two centers were retrospectively analysed. Two convolutional neural network (CNN) modules were developed and trained on these images. CNN1 was trained to diagnose GNLs, and CNN2 was trained for segmentation. An additional internal test set and an external test set from another center were used to evaluate the diagnosis and segmentation performance.ResultsCNN1 showed a diagnostic performance with an accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of 90.8%, 92.5%, 89.0%, 89.4% and 92.2%, respectively, and an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.928 in the internal test set. With CNN1 assistance, all endoscopists had a higher accuracy than for an independent diagnosis. The average intersection over union (IOU) between CNN2 and the ground truth was 0.5837, with a precision, recall and the Dice coefficient of 0.776, 0.983 and 0.867, respectively.ConclusionsThis CAD system can be used as an auxiliary tool to diagnose and segment GNLs, assisting endoscopists in more accurately diagnosing GNLs and delineating their extent to improve the positive rate of lesion biopsy and ensure the integrity of endoscopic resection