Synthesis of new dendritic chiral binol ligands and their applications in enantioselective lewis acid catalyzed addition of diethylzinc to aldehydes

2002-2003 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

New decoupling zmethod for spiral phase array HTS coil

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Characteristics and health burden of the undiagnosed population at risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in China

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in China. However, identifying patients has proved challenging, resulting in widespread under-diagnosis of the condition. We examined the prevalence of COPD diagnosis and COPD risk among adults in urban mainland China, the factors associated with having a COPD diagnosis or COPD risk, and the healthcare resource use and health outcomes of these groups compared with controls. METHODS: Respondents to the 2017 National Health and Wellness Survey in China (n = 19,994) were classified into three groups: 'COPD Diagnosed', 'COPD Risk (undiagnosed)', and Control (unaffected), based on their self-reported diagnosis and Lung Function Questionnaire (LFQ) score. The groups were characterised by sociodemographic, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), productivity impairment, and healthcare resource use. Pairwise comparisons (t tests and chi-squared tests) and multivariable regression analyses were used to investigate factors associated with being at risk of, or diagnosed with, COPD. RESULTS: 3320 (16.6%) respondents had a suspected risk of COPD but did not report receiving a diagnosis. This was projected to 105.3 million people, or 16.9% of adult urban Chinese. Of these respondents with an identified risk, only 554 (16.7%) were aware of COPD by name. Relative to those without COPD, those with a risk of COPD (undiagnosed) had significantly greater healthcare resource use, lower productivity and lower HRQoL not only compared to those without COPD, but also compared to people with a COPD diagnosis. Factors associated with increased odds of being at risk of COPD were older age, smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight BMI, occasional exercise, higher comorbidities, asthma diagnosis, being female, lower education, not being employed, and living in a high pollution province (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: There is a substantial group of individuals, undiagnosed, but living with a risk of COPD, who have impaired HRQoL, lower productivity and elevated healthcare resource use patterns. Case-detection tools such as the LFQ may prove a quick and cost-effective approach for identifying these at-risk individuals for further definitive testing and appropriate treatment in China

Biomaterials for corneal bioengineering

© 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd. Corneal transplantation is an important surgical treatment for many common corneal diseases. However, a worldwide shortage of tissue from suitable corneal donors has meant that many people are not able to receive sight-restoring operations. In addition, rejection is a major cause of corneal transplant failure. Bioengineering corneal tissue has recently gained widespread attention. In order to facilitate corneal regeneration, a range of materials is currently being investigated. The ideal substrate requires sufficient tectonic durability, biocompatibility with cultured cellular elements, transparency, and perhaps biodegradability and clinical compliance. This review considers the anatomy and function of the native cornea as a precursor to evaluating a variety of biomaterials for corneal regeneration including key characteristics for optimal material form and function. The integration of appropriate cells with the most appropriate biomaterials is also discussed. Taken together, the information provided offers insight into the requirements for fabricating synthetic and semisynthetic corneas for in vitro modeling of tissue development and disease, pharmaceutical screening, and in vivo application for regenerative medicine

Vacuum Alignment in SUSY A4 Models

In this note we discuss the vacuum alignment in supersymmetric models with spontaneously broken flavour symmetries in the presence of soft supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking terms. We show that the inclusion of soft SUSY breaking terms can give rise to non-vanishing vacuum expectation values (VEVs) for the auxiliary components of the flavon fields. These non-zero VEVs can have an important impact on the phenomenology of this class of models, since they can induce an additional flavour violating contribution to the sfermion soft mass matrix of right-left (RL) type. We carry out an explicit computation in a class of SUSY A4 models predicting tri-bimaximal mixing in the lepton sector. The flavour symmetry breaking sector is described in terms of flavon and driving supermultiplets. We find non-vanishing VEVs for the auxiliary components of the flavon fields and for the scalar components of the driving fields which are of order m_{SUSY} x and m_{SUSY}, respectively. Thereby, m_{SUSY} is the generic soft SUSY breaking scale which is expected to be around 1 TeV and is the VEV of scalar components of the flavon fields. Another effect of these VEVs can be the generation of a mu term.Comment: 23 pages; added a new section on the relation to Supergravity; version accepted for publication in JHE

Development and application of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification method for rapid detection of Haemophilus parasuis

Haemophilus parasuis is the causative agent of Glässer’s disease that has received much attention recently, due to the increasing economic losses this disease inflicts upon the pig industry worldwide. In this study, loop-mediated isothermal amplification method (LAMP) methodology was designed for diagnosing H. parasuis infections and tested against 56 clinical samples. Two sets of primers for LAMP were designed based on the H. parasuis inf B gene sequence. Target DNA was amplified and visualized on agarose gels after 50 min incubation at 63°C. The LAMP amplicon was also directly visualized in the reaction tubes by the naked eye following the addition of SYBR green I. The detection limit of the inf BLAMP method was 10 cfu mL-1, that was 10 times more sensitive than conventional PCR. Furthermore, positive rates of H. parasuis detection using inf B-LAMP were higher (46.4%, 26/56) than the rates obtained with conventional PCR (33.9%, 19/56). inf B-LAMP specificity analysis demonstrated no crossreactivity with any other swine pathogens. In conclusion, inf B-LAMP was more sensitive and faster and could be carried out in the absence of expensive equipment. Furthermore, the visual readout demonstrated great potential for the use of inf B-LAMP in the clinical detection of H. parasuis.Key words: Glässer’s disease, Haemophilus parasuis, inf B, PCR, LAM

A fMRI Study of Correlation Between Acupoints and Brain Cortical Sites Involved in Language Functions

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