264 research outputs found

    Promoting Public Participation in Post-Disaster Construction through Wechat Platform

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    Purpose - How could memory, heritage and post-disaster construction integrated in practice? The purpose of this paper is to introduce our approach in public participation of reconstruction plan, after a raging fire destroyed part of the historic town of Shangri-la, China. Approach – We develop two kind of crowd sourcing platform to collect and also present memory of the vanishing streets which were distroyed completely by fire. One is on Wechat platform. Through secondary development on Wechat Platform, we built a public service account that allowed users to upload photos, hand-painted pictures, and text, all of the files can be saved automaticly in our database. The other platform in on web. The website is designed for users to upload photos based on location where they were taken. All the images collected from the two platforms can be open accessed viewed with location information, which had been sort out by volunteers. The wechat platform is also used to communicate and provide education and information of the historic town to promote awareness of the heritage value. Users can send text to the public account, without privacy risk. Findings – Spreading with help from a local non-government organization, the invations of the wechat public service account received amazing amount of attention, which, according to automatic web statistics, reached up to 40,000. About 150 people followed the Wechat public account. At last we received nearly 1000 photos and hand-painted pictures. About half of our users are from Shangrila local community, Their uploaded files including historical photos of the community, providing us local perspective with long period of concern. The other half users come from travlers from all over the world, mostly from China but also european people. Their photos and paintings also contribute to the memory construction. Implications –The widespread use of smart mobile devices can make individuals more active as participants of public fairs, with the premise of carefully designed infrastructure. In this way, new technologies may contribute to a people centred principle in our conservation and design process. Value – Our approach is so-called Volunteered Geographic Information(VGI)(Goodchild,2007) in collecting memory fragments for post-disaster construction. By convenience of uploading photos and texts from mobile devices, we successfully involved local people and travlers‘participation. The case might bring insight into the field of public participation practice

    A non-vanishing result on the singularity category

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    We prove that a virtually periodic object in an abelian category gives rise to a non-vanishing result on certain Hom groups in the singularity category. Consequently, for any artin algebra with infinite global dimension, its singularity category has no silting subcategory, and the associated differential graded Leavitt algebra has a non-vanishing cohomology in each degree. We verify the Singular Presilting Conjecture for singularly-minimal algebras and ultimately-closed algebras. We obtain a trichotomy on the Hom-finiteness of the cohomology of differential graded Leavitt algebras

    Weak-Light Image Enhancement Method Based on Adaptive Local Gamma Transform and Color Compensation

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    This article proposes a correction method for image enhancement models based on an adaptive local gamma transformation and color compensation inspired by the illumination reflection model. It is demonstrated that the proposed method adaptively reduces the influence of uneven illumination to avoid overenhancement and improves the visual effect of low-light images

    Genetic diversity and selection of three nuclear genes in Schistosoma japonicum populations

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    Background: The blood fluke, Schistosoma japonicum still causes severe disease in China, the Philippines and Indonesia. Although there have been some studies the molecular epidemiology of this persistent and harmful parasite, few have explored the possibility and implications of selection in S. japonicum populations. Methods: We analyzed diversity and looked for evidence of selection at three nuclear genes (SjIpp2, SjFabp and SjT22.6) in 13 S. japonicum populations. Results: SjT22.6 was found to exhibit high nucleotide diversity and was under positive selection in the mountainous region of mainland China. As a tegumental protein, its secondary and tertiary structure differed between S. japonicum strains from the mountainous and lakes regions. In contrast, SjIpp2 and SjFabp had relatively low levels of nucleotide diversity and did not show significant departure from neutrality. Conclusions: As a tegument-associated antigen-encoding gene of S. japonicum, SjT22.6 has high nucleotide diversity and appears to be under positive selection in the mountainous region of mainland China

    COVID-19 Epidemic Peer Support and Crisis Intervention Via Social Media

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    This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.This article describes a peer support project developed and carried out by a group of experienced mental health professionals, organized to offer peer psychological support from overseas to healthcare professionals on the frontline of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. This pandemic extremely challenged the existing health care systems and caused severe mental distress to frontline healthcare workers. The authors describe the infrastructure of the team and a novel model of peer support and crisis intervention that utilized a popular social media application on smartphone. Such a model for intervention that can be used elsewhere in the face of current global pandemic, or future disaster response

    Reporting of ethical considerations in clinical trials in Chinese nursing journals

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    Background: It is acknowledged that publishers now require all primary research papers to demonstrate that they have obtained ethical approval for their research. Objectives: To assess the rate of reporting of ethical approval in clinical trials in core nursing journals in mainland China. Research design: A retrospective observational study. Participants: All clinical trials published in all of the 12 core nursing periodicals from 2016 edition China Science and Technology Journal Citation Report (core version) between 2013 and 2016 were retrieved by hand to explicate rate of reporting ethical approval and informed consent. Ethical considerations: The study did not require approval from the research ethics committee as it did not involve human subjects or records. Results: In total, 40,278 papers were published in 12 nursing periodicals between 2013 and 2016. Out of these, 9488 (23.6%) focused on clinical trials. Informed consent obtained from patients or the legally authorized representative was reported in 51.8% of clinical trials. Notably, only 27.4% of clinical trials reported that they had obtained written consent. Furthermore, 25.9% of clinical trials described ethical approval; however, the rate of reporting informed consent and ethical approval in these 12 nursing journals in China during 4 years from 2013 to 2016 improved markedly, with 38.1%, 44.0%, 59.0% and 66.6%, respectively (p<0.001), and 17.6%, 21.9%, 28.6% and 35.8%, respectively (p<0.001). In addition, both reporting informed consent and reporting written informed consent had a positive significant correlation with the reporting ethical approval (p<0.05 or p<0.01). Conclusion: Chinese scientific nursing journals have improved the rate of reporting informed consent and ethical approval in clinical trials during the last 4 years. However, it should be noted that nearly half of clinical trials still did not report either ethical approval or whether informed consent was obtained. Efforts from editors, researchers, sponsors and authors are needed to ensure the transparency of ethical scrutiny and adherence to ethical guidelines in publishing clinical trials in Chinese nursing journals

    Identification of Novel Biallelic TLE6 Variants in Female Infertility With Preimplantation Embryonic Lethality

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    Preimplantation embryonic lethality is a rare cause of primary female infertility. It has been reported that variants in the transducin-like enhancer of split 6 (TLE6) gene can lead to preimplantation embryonic lethality. However, the incidence of TLE6 variants in patients with preimplantation embryonic lethality is not fully understood. In this study, we identified four patients carrying novel biallelic TLE6 variants in a cohort of 28 patients with preimplantation embryonic lethality by whole-exome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis, accounting for 14.29% (4/28) of the cohort. Immunofluorescence showed that the TLE6 levels in oocytes from patients were much lower than in normal control oocytes, suggesting that the variants result in the lower expression of the TLE6 protein in oocytes. In addition, a retrospective analysis showed that the four patients underwent a total of nine failures of in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection attempts, and one of them became pregnant on the first attempt using donated oocytes. Our study extends the genetic spectrum of female infertility caused by variants in TLE6 and further confirms previously reported findings that TLE6 plays an essential role in early embryonic development. In such case, oocyte donation may be the preferred treatment

    Novel HYDIN variants associated with male infertility in two Chinese families

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    IntroductionInfertility is a major disease affecting human life and health, among which male factors account for about half. Asthenoteratozoospermia accounts for the majority of male infertility. High-throughput sequencing techniques have identified numerous variants in genes responsible for asthenoteratozoospermia; however, its etiology still needs to be studied.MethodIn this study, we performed whole-exome sequencing on samples from 375 patients with asthenoteratozoospermia and identified two HYDIN compound heterozygous variants, a primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD)-associated gene, in two unrelated subjects. H&amp;E staining, SEM were employed to analyze the varies on sperm of patients, further, TEM was employed to determine the ultrastructure defects. And westernblot and immunostaining were chose to evaluate the variation of structural protein. ICSI was applied to assist the mutational patient to achieve offspring.ResultWe identified two HYDIN compound heterozygous variants. Patient AY078 had novel compound heterozygous splice variants (c.5969-2A&gt;G, c.6316+1G&gt;A), altering the consensus splice acceptor site of HYDIN. He was diagnosed with male infertility and PCD, presenting with decreased sperm progressive motility and morphological abnormalities, and bronchial dilatation in the inferior lobe. Compared to the fertile control, HYDIN levels, acrosome and centrosome markers (ACTL7A, ACROSIN, PLCζ1, and Centrin1), and flagella components (TOMM20, SEPT4, SPEF2, SPAG6, and RSPHs) were significantly reduced in HYDIN-deficient patients. Using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), the patient successfully achieved clinical pregnancy. AY079 had deleterious compound heterozygous missense variants, c.9507C&gt;G (p. Asn3169Lys) and c.14081G&gt;A (p. Arg4694His), presenting with infertility; however, semen samples and PCD examination were unavailable.DiscussionOur findings provide the first evidence that the loss of HYDIN function causes asthenoteratozoospermia presenting with various defects in the flagella structure and the disassembly of the acrosome and neck. Additionally, ICSI could rescue this failure of insemination caused by immobile and malformed sperm induced by HYDIN deficiency
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