Utility of Tokyo Guidelines 2018 in early laparoscopic cholecystectomy for mild and moderate acute calculus cholecystitis: A retrospective cohort study

BackgroundTokyo Guidelines 2018 (TG18) proposed laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) for acute calculus cholecystitis (ACC) irrespective of the duration of symptoms. This retrospective study assessed the impact of utility of TG18 in early LC for ACC.MethodsFrom 2018 to 2020, 66 patients with mild (grade I) and moderate (grade II) ACC who underwent early surgery were studied. Subgroup analyses were based on timing of surgery and operation time.ResultsA total of 32 and 34 patients were operated within and beyond 7 days since ACC onset. More patients with grade II ACC were in the beyond 7 days group (P < 0.05). More patients with enlarged gallbladder were in the within 7 days group (P < 0.05). The duration of symptoms to admission, symptoms to LC, and operation time were longer in the beyond 7 days group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences regarding intraoperative blood loss, conversion to bail-out procedures, complication rate, hospital stay, and cost between the two groups (P > 0.05). Longer operation time was significantly associated with duration of symptoms to admission, symptoms to LC, and conversion to laparoscopic subtotal cholecystectomy (LSC) (P < 0.05).ConclusionIn a subset of carefully selected patients, applying TG18 in early LC for mild and moderate ACC results in acceptable clinical outcomes. Standardized safe steps and conversion to LSC in difficult cases are important

Highly porous Fe2O3-SiO2 layer for acoustic wave based H2S sensing: mass loading or elastic loading effects?

A highly porous Fe 2 O 3 -SiO 2 layer prepared using sol-gel and spin-coating methods was applied on the surface of a surface acoustic wave (SAW) device for H 2 S sensing. SiO 2 in this sensing layer serves as a porous support for dispersing Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles, and Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles can effectively adsorb and react with H 2 S molecules. By changing the Fe/Si molar ratio in this Fe 2 O 3 -SiO 2 layer, its pore volume, pore distribution and H 2 S adsorption capacity can be adjusted, the contribution of mass loading effect and the elastic loading effect toward the frequency response of the sensor can be controlled, and the sensing performance of the sensor can be optimized. The optimized sensing response is -4.4 kHz toward 100 ppm H 2 S, with a good selectivity and reproducibility operated at room temperature (25 ℃)

Long-term effect of transurethral partial cystectomy with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer

PurposeWe have reported the efficacy and safety of 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser cystectomy of non-muscle invasive bladder tumor (NMIBC) (J Urol. 2009;182:66–9). In this study, we evaluated the long-term outcomes of patients with NMIBC who underwent transurethral partial cystectomy with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser, and explored the risk factors for tumor recurrence.MethodsThis was a retrospective study of patients with NMIBC planned to undergo transurethral partial cystectomy with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser at the Fourth Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital between January 2012 and December 2014. The primary outcome was bladder cancer recurrence.ResultsA total of 75 patients were enrolled. Sixty-two (82.7%) were male. The patients were 59.8 ± 12.9 years of age. The mean operation time was 38.7 ± 20.4 min. No Clavien grade >2 complications occurred. The duration of catheter indwelling was 3.6 ± 1.8 days. The hospital stay was 6.0 ± 2.3 days. The median follow-up was 80 months. A total of 17 patients had a recurrence during follow-up, and the recurrence-free survival (RFS) rate was 77.3%. In the multivariable analysis, the tumor risk group were independently associated with the recurrence of NMIBC (p = 0.026).ConclusionsAfter TURBT with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser, RFS was 77.3% at the median follow-up of 80 months. All complications were mild. Only tumor risk group was independently associated with the recurrence of NMIBC

Postpartum depression in mothers and fathers: a structural equation model

open access articleBackground Post-partum depression (PPD) is a growing mental health concern worldwide. There is little evidence in the Chinese context of the relationship between paternal PPD and maternal PPD. Given the growing global concerns this relationship requires further exploration. Methods A survey was conducted with 950 total couples from March 2017 to December 2018. The study was conducted using a standardized questionnaire that included basic demographic information, information on the relationship between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, marital satisfaction (both maternal and paternal), and PPD symptoms. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis was used to explore the underlying mechanism for PPD symptoms in mothers and fathers. Results In 4.4% of the couples both the wife and the husband showed depressive symptoms. Maternal marital satisfaction showed a significant mediating effect on paternal PPD (B = -0.114, p < 0.01), and there was a direct effect of maternal PPD on paternal PPD (B = 0.31, p < 0.001). Conclusions This is the first study to investigate the possible correlation between maternal PPD, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship satisfaction, maternal marital satisfaction, paternal marital satisfaction, and paternal PPD. It is important for future PPD interventions to target both maternal and paternal mental health, as well as the mechanisms identified that can lead to PPD

Concept for a Future Super Proton-Proton Collider

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson at LHC, new large colliders are being studied by the international high-energy community to explore Higgs physics in detail and new physics beyond the Standard Model. In China, a two-stage circular collider project CEPC-SPPC is proposed, with the first stage CEPC (Circular Electron Positron Collier, a so-called Higgs factory) focused on Higgs physics, and the second stage SPPC (Super Proton-Proton Collider) focused on new physics beyond the Standard Model. This paper discusses this second stage.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures, 5 table

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Theoretical prediction of novel ultrafine nanowires formed by Si

Using density functional theory calculations, we predict that novel SiC ultrafine nanowires can be produced via the coalescence of stable Si12C12 clusters. For the isolated Si12C12 clusters, we find that the cage-like structure with a distinct segregation between Si and C atoms is energetically more favourable than the fullerene-like structure with alternating Si-C bonds. Via the coalescence of Si12C12 clusters, three novel stable nanowires have been characterised. The band structure reveals that these nanowires are semiconductors with narrow gap, indicating that they may be used as infrared detectors and thermoelectrics

Heterostructured NiO/ZnO nanorod arrays with significantly enhanced H2S sensing performance

H2S gas sensors were fabricated using p-n heterojunctions of NiO/ZnO, in which the ZnO nanorod arrays were wrapped with nickel oxide (NiO) nanosheets via a hydrothermal synthesis method. When the H2S gas molecules were adsorbed and then oxidized on the surfaces ZnO, the free electrons will be released. The increase of electron concentration on the ZnO boosts the transport speeds of electrons on both sides of the NiO/ZnO p-n junction, which significantly improved the sensing performance and selectivity for H2S detection, if compared to those using the pure ZnO nanorod arrays. The response toward 20 ppm of H2S was 21.3 at 160 oC for the heterostructured NiO/ZnO sensor, while the limit of detection was 0.1 ppm. Additionally, it was found that when the sensor was exposed to H2S at an operating temperature below 160 oC, the resistance of sensor was significantly decreased, indicating its n-type semiconductor nature, whereas when the operating temperature was above 160 oC, the resistance was significantly increased, indicating its p-type semiconductor nature. Finally, the sensing mechanism of the NiO/ZnO heterostructured H2S gas sensor was discussed in detail