Explanation of hand, foot, and mouth disease cases in Japan using Google Trends before and during the COVID-19: infodemiology study

[Background] Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects common diseases, but its impact on hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is unclear. Google Trends data is beneficial for approximate real-time statistics and because of ease in access, is expected to be used for infection explanation from an information-seeking behavior perspective. We aimed to explain HFMD cases before and during COVID-19 using Google Trends. [Methods] HFMD cases were obtained from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Google search data from 2009 to 2021 in Japan were downloaded from Google Trends. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between HFMD cases and the search topic “HFMD” from 2009 to 2021. Japanese tweets containing “HFMD” were retrieved to select search terms for further analysis. Search terms with counts larger than 1000 and belonging to ranges of infection sources, susceptible sites, susceptible populations, symptoms, treatment, preventive measures, and identified diseases were retained. Cross-correlation analyses were conducted to detect lag changes between HFMD cases and search terms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiple linear regressions with backward elimination processing were used to identify the most significant terms for HFMD explanation. [Results] HFMD cases and Google search volume peaked around July in most years, excluding 2020 and 2021. The search topic “HFMD” presented strong correlations with HFMD cases, except in 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. In addition, the differences in lags for 73 (72.3%) search terms were negative, which might indicate increasing public awareness of HFMD infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multiple linear regression demonstrated that significant search terms contained the same meanings but expanded informative search content during the COVID-19 pandemic. [Conclusions] The significant terms for the explanation of HFMD cases before and during COVID-19 were different. Awareness of HFMD infections in Japan may have improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continuous monitoring is important to promote public health and prevent resurgence. The public interest reflected in information-seeking behavior can be helpful for public health surveillance

Effects of Spermidine on Cell Proliferation, Migration, and Inflammatory Response in Porcine Enterocytes.

peer reviewed[en] BACKGROUND: Polyamines have been demonstrated to be beneficial to porcine intestinal development. Our previous study showed that putrescine mitigates intestinal atrophy in weanling piglets and suppresses inflammatory response in porcine intestinal epithelial cells, it is still unknown the role of spermidine in mediating putrescine function. OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to investigate the effect of spermidine on the proliferation, migration, and inflammatory response in porcine intestinal epithelial cells (IPEC-J2 cell line). METHODS: The effects of spermidine on proliferation and migration of IPEC-J2 cells were measured. Difluoromethyl ornithine (DFMO) and diethylglyoxal bis (guanylhydrazone) (DEGBG) were used to block the production of putrescine and spermidine, respectively. A cell inflammation model was established with lipopolysaccharides (LPS) stimulation. Gene expression and protein abundance were determined by real-time quantitative PCR and western blotting, respectively. RESULT: Spermidine significantly enhanced cell proliferation in DFMO (or/and) DEGBG treated IPEC-J2 cells (p 0.05). Similarly, spermidine but not putrescine significantly elevated the rate of migration in DEGBG treated IPEC-J2 cells (p < 0.05). Spermidine deprivation by DEGBG dramatically enhanced mRNA abundance of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-8, IL-6, and TNF-α (p < 0.05), and the addition of spermidine attenuated excessive expression of those inflammatory pro-inflammatory cytokines, moreover, spermidine but not putrescine suppressed the phosphorylation of NF-κB induced by DEGBG. Spermidine supplementation also significantly suppressed LPS-induced the expression of TNF-α. CONCLUSIONS: The present study highlights a novel insight that putrescine may be converted into spermidine to modulate cell proliferation, migration, and inflammatory response on porcine enterocytes

Nano α-FeOOH Modified Carbon Paste Electrode for Arsenic Determination in Natural Waters

A novel method for determination of inorganic arsenic in natural water, based on nano ferric hydroxides (FeOOH) preconcentration and electrochemistry detection has been developed. As the nano α-FeOOH could successfully act as the adsorbent and electrode matrix modifier, the method presents great potential in practical routine analysis of inorganic arsenic. With optimization of the experimental conditions, nano α-FeOOH modified carbon paste electrode (α-FeOOH@CPE) was obtained by mixing 0.03 g of nano α-FeOOH and 0.02 g graphite powder in n-eicosane as an adhesive and then embedding them in a Teflon tube. Cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry and high resolution transmission electron microscopy were used to check and confirm the presence of nano α-FeOOH on the carbon paste electrodes. According to the results, α-FeOOH@CPE showed a considerably higher response to As(III) in comparison with the bare CPE, indicating the α-FeOOH has well selective enrichment for As(III). The developed modified electrode showed a linear range of 1.0 × 10-8 ~ 2.0 × 10-5 mol·L-1 and detection limit of 5.0 nmol·L-1 (S/N = 3). The newly prepared carbon paste electrode was successfully applied for As(III) determination in Yangzonghai Lake water with RSD of less than 3.6 % (n = 3) and recovery in the range of 100.7 ~ 115.0 %. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.24.4.18499</p

Broad and strong memory CD4(+)and CD8(+)T cells induced by SARS-CoV-2 in UK convalescent individuals following COVID-19

The development of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines and therapeutics will depend on understanding viral immunity. We studied T cell memory in 42 patients following recovery from COVID-19 (28 with mild disease and 14 with severe disease) and 16 unexposed donors, using interferon-γ-based assays with peptides spanning SARS-CoV-2 except ORF1. The breadth and magnitude of T cell responses were significantly higher in severe as compared with mild cases. Total and spike-specific T cell responses correlated with spike-specific antibody responses. We identified 41 peptides containing CD4+ and/or CD8+ epitopes, including six immunodominant regions. Six optimized CD8+ epitopes were defined, with peptide–MHC pentamer-positive cells displaying the central and effector memory phenotype. In mild cases, higher proportions of SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells were observed. The identification of T cell responses associated with milder disease will support an understanding of protective immunity and highlights the potential of including non-spike proteins within future COVID-19 vaccine design

Adaptive Control of Chemical Reactions in the Absence of Reaction Kinetics Information

In this thesis, we develop a passivity-based adaptive control framework for controlling nonlinear processes with uncertainty. The development of the method is motivated by the question whether we can control reaction systems without the knowledge of reaction kinetics. The proposed adaptive control framework incorporates the measurements’derivative information in order to estimate the uncertainty involved in output dynamics. The output dynamics is assumed to take a special control-affine structure, and by using the output’s derivative information we can avoid using internal state dynamics, which is not usually available. Passivity theory is applied for control and estimation designs and overall closed-loop stability is achieved. By extending the passivity-based control to systems with relative degree higher than one throughbackstepping, we can obtain cascade feedback schemes with PID controllers that overall control convergence is guaranteed. The proposed framework allows us to control reaction systems without knowing the reaction kinetics, and estimate unmeasured compositions by utilizing theavailable partially linear structure of internal dynamics. A reactor temperature control problem that usually has high relative degree is used to illustrate the applicationof passivity-based backstepping control, and results from industrial trials are presented

The Influence of Audio-Visual Interactions on Psychological Responses of Young People in Urban Green Areas: A Case Study in Two Parks in China

Audio-visual interactions in green spaces are important for mental health and wellbeing. However, the influence of audio-visual interactions on psychological responses is still less clear. This study introduced a new method, namely the audio-visual walk (AV-walk), to obtain data on the audio-visual context, audio-visual experiences, and psychological responses in two typical parks, namely Cloves Park and Music Park in Harbin, China. Some interesting results are as follows: First, based on Pearson&#8217;s correlation analysis, sound pressure level and roughness were significantly correlated with psychological responses in Cloves Park (p &lt; 0.05). Second, the results of stepwise regression models showed the impact intensity of acoustic comfort was 1.64&#8722;1.68 times higher than that of visual comfort on psychological responses of emotion dimension, while visual comfort was 1.35&#8722;1.37 times higher than acoustic comfort on psychological responses of cognition dimension in Music Park. In addition, an orthogonal analysis diagram explained the influence of audio-visual interactions on psychological responses of young people. The audio-visual context located beside the waterscape with a relatively higher level of acoustic and visual comfort was the most cheerful (2.60), relaxed (2.45), and energetic (2.05), while the audio-visual context close to an urban built environment tended to be both acoustically and visually uncomfortable, and the psychological state was decreased to the most depressed (&#8722;0.25), anxious (&#8722;0.75), fatigued (&#8722;1.13) and distracted (&#8722;1.13)

Effect of Long-Term Thermal Aging on Microstructure Evolution and Creep Deformation Behavior of a Novel 11Cr-3W-3Co Martensite Ferritic Steel

This paper focused on the microstructure evolution under different thermal aging times at 650 &deg;C and its effect on creep behavior in 11Cr-3W-3Co heat-resistant steel. After short-term thermal aging at 650 &deg;C (&gt;750 h), a Laves phase was found in the regions adjacent to the PAG boundaries, martensitic lath boundaries, and M23C6 carbides, and gradually swallowed adjacent M23C6 carbides with the aging time increased. Higher contents of Si and P are good promoters of the nucleation of the Laves phase during long-term aging. In addition, the coarsening behavior of the Laves phase, M23C6, and MX were investigated. As the aging time increases, the coarsening behavior among precipitated phases in the above-mentioned example exhibits remarkable variability, which is discussed in detail in this paper, and the evolution of the subgrain size was also analyzed in detail. The increasing rate of subgrain size is, in general, consistent with that of the M23C6 carbide size. The evolution of dislocation density in different aging times shows an obvious difference, and the decreasing rate of dislocation density is significantly affected by the precipitated phase after long-term aging time. The creep performance of the material decreases significantly as the aging time increases, which is closely related to the coarsening of the precipitates such as M23C6 carbides and subgrain during long-term aging

Occurrence dataset of birds in the Xinjizhou National Wetland Park, Nanjing, China

Xinjizhou National Wetland Park is located in Jiangning District, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. With diverse wetland landscape types, Xinjizhou National Wetland Park maintains high biodiversity all year around. Meanwhile, as an important hub on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, Xinjizhou National Wetland Park also occupies a core ecological position in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province. Therefore, carrying out systematic bird surveys and consequently understanding the distribution of birds and the seasonal variation of their communities can provide important insights for conservation. We conducted a one-year bird survey in the Xinjizhou National Wetland Park from 2021 to 2022 and provided occurrence datasets, including detailed species and geographic information.This dataset fills the knowledge gap in avian community composition for the Wetland Park and more importantly provides a basis to assess the conservation effectiveness of conservation measures taken in the Wetland Park.This occurrence dataset is the first public record of birds in Xinjizhou National Wetland Park. All data have been published on GBIF