Laparoscopic surgery for intestinal obstruction in children due to water absorbing gel beads

Introductions: Super absorbent polymer gel bead (SAPGB) is increasingly available as toys for children. When ingested it swells by absorbs water and leads to acute intestinal obstruction. Diagnosis and surgery is challenging as its radiolucent, fragile and slippery. We present outcome of our innovative technique of stabilization and removal SAPGBs by laparoscopy minimal invasive surgery (lap-MIS). Methods: This retrospective analyse of outcome of lap-MIS in intestinal obstruction caused by ingestion of foreign body, the SAPGBs, in children who were managed at Children's Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University, China. The outcome variables included removal of SAPGBs, length of hospital stay and postoperative occurrence of anastomotic leak, wound infection, wound dehiscence, re-surgery, or mortality. Results: There were 15 children, male 9 (60%), average age 2 years, and duration of ingestion of SAPGBSs 1.5 days (range 2-4 days), parents gave history of accidental ingestion in 6 (40%). All children had uneventful postoperative recovery after lap-MIS removal of foreign body with no wound infection, anastomotic leak, re-surgery or mortality. Average hospital stay was 4 days (range 3 to 5 days). Conclusions: We had successful outcome lap-MIS with our innovative technique to stabilize and extract foreign bodies, the super water absorbent gel beads, ingested by children. Keywords: children, foreign body, gastrointestinal obstruction, laparoscopy minimal invasive surgery, super absorbent polymer gel bead

Advanced predication of geological anomalous body ahead of laneway using seismic tomography technique

Advanced predication of geological anomalous body (GAB) of laneway can provide scientific references for mine safety production. It refers to reveal the position, shape and size of GAB in advance. Seismic tomography technology (STT) can realize the prediction of GAB using tunnel surface waves. Tunnel Reflection Tomography (TRT) 6000 system, which is on the basis of STT, has the advantages of convenience and high reliability. In this paper, TRT6000 is introduced to forecast the GAB ahead of laneway in underground metal mine. The operation steps, data processing and notes about TRT6000 are detailed. The research results show that there are two water flowing fractures, separately located at around 50meters and 85meters ahead of laneway. And the prediction results match the actual situation well. Therefore, the seismic tomography technology improves the mine safety management, and the TRT6000 provides a new method for predicting GAB in advance

Unimodal late fusion for NIST i-vector challenge on speaker detection

Speaker detection is a very interesting machine learning task for which the latest i-vector challenge has been coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A simple late fusion approach for the speaker detection task on the i-vector challenge is presented. The approach is based on the late fusion of scores from the cosine distance method (the baseline) and the scores obtained from linear discriminant analysis. The results show that by adapting the simple late fusion approach, the framework can outperform the baseline score for the decision cost function on the NIST i-vector machine learning challenge

Epidemic clones, oceanic gene pools and eco-LD in the free living marine pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus

We investigated global patterns of variation in 157 whole genome sequences of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a free-living and seafood associated marine bacterium. Pandemic clones, responsible for recent outbreaks of gastroenteritis in humans have spread globally. However, there are oceanic gene pools, one located in the oceans surrounding Asia and another in the Mexican Gulf. Frequent recombination means that most isolates have acquired the genetic profile of their current location. We investigated the genetic structure in the Asian gene pool by calculating the effective population size in two different ways. Under standard neutral models, the two estimates should give similar answers but we found a thirty fold difference. We propose that this discrepancy is caused by the subdivision of the species into a hundred or more ecotypes which are maintained stably in the population. To investigate the genetic factors involved, we used 51 unrelated isolates to conduct a genome-wide scan for epistatically interacting loci. We found a single example of strong epistasis between distant genome regions. A majority of strains had a type VI secretion system associated with bacterial killing. The remaining strains had genes associated with biofilm formation and regulated by c-di-GMP signaling. All strains had one or other of the two systems and none of isolate had complete complements of both systems, although several strains had remnants. Further top-down analysis of patterns of linkage disequilibrium within frequently recombining species will allow a detailed understanding of how selection acts to structure the pattern of variation within natural bacterial populations

The workload change and depression among emergency medical staff after the open policy during COVID-19: a cross-sectional survey in Shandong, China

IntroductionIn the middle of December 2022, the Chinese government adjusted the lockdown policy on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a large number of infected patients flooded into the emergency department. The emergency medical staff encountered significant working and mental stress while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to investigate the workload change, and the prevalence and associated factors for depression symptoms among emergency medical staff after the policy adjustment.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional online survey of emergency medical staff who fought against COVID-19 in Shandong Province during January 16 to 31, 2023. The respondents’ sociodemographic and work information were collected, and they were asked to complete the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) then. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were applied to identify the potential associated factors for major depression.ResultsNine hundred and sixteen emergency medical personnel from 108 hospitals responded to this survey. The respondents’ weekly working hours (53.65 ± 17.36 vs 49.68 ± 14.84) and monthly night shifts (7.25 ± 3.85 vs 6.80 ± 3.77) increased after the open policy. About 54.3% of the respondents scored more than 10 points on the PHQ-9 standardized test, which is associated with depressive symptoms. In univariate analysis, being doctors, living with family members aged ≤16 or ≥ 65 years old, COVID-19 infection and increased weekly working hours after the open policy were significantly associated with a PHQ-9 score ≥ 10 points. In the multivariate analysis, only increased weekly working hours showed significant association with scoring ≥10 points.ConclusionEmergency medical staff’ workload had increased after the open policy announcement, which was strongly associated with a higher PHQ-9 scores, indicating a very high risk for major depression. Emergency medical staff working as doctors or with an intermediate title from grade-A tertiary hospitals had higher PHQ-9 scores, while COVID-19 infection and weekly working hours of 60 or more after the open policy were associated with higher PHQ-9 scores for those from grade-B tertiary hospitals. Hospital administrators should reinforce the importance of targeted emergency medical staff support during future outbreaks