The aim was to systematically analyse the association of the specific flavonoids, Mg and their interactions from different food sources with the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in a cohort study. A total of 6417 participants aged 20 to 74 years from the Harbin Cohort Study on Diet, Nutrition and Chronic Non-communicable Diseases were included. Multivariate logistic regression analyses, forest plot and restricted cubic spline were performed in the study. After a 5·3-year follow-up, 1283 incident cases of the MetS were reported. Those with a higher total flavonoid intake had a lower risk of the MetS (fourth v. first quartile, relative risk (RR) 0·58; 95 % CI 0·37, 0·93; P = 0·024) and central obesity (RR 0·56; 95 % CI 0·33, 0·95; P = 0·032). Further analysis showed that the specific flavonoids quercetin, kaempferol, isorhamnetin, luteolin, and flavonoids from fruits, potatoes and legumes had the similar associations with risk of the MetS and central obesity (P < 0·05 for all). A higher intake of total flavonoids, quercetin and luteolin combined with a high level of Mg was more strongly associated with a lower risk of the MetS (RR 0·60; 95 % CI 0·45, 0·81 for total; RR 0·61; 95 % CI 0·45, 0·82 for quercetin; RR 0·52; 95 % CI 0·38, 0·71 for luteolin; all P for interaction < 0·01). Dose–response effects showed an L-shaped curve between the total intake of five flavonoids and the risk of the MetS. A higher flavonoid intake is associated with a lower risk of the MetS and central obesity; their combination with Mg helps to strengthen their negative association with the MetS.

A series of new synthetic armored cables were developed and tested to ensure that they were suitable for use with the RECoverable Autonomous Sonde (RECAS), which is a newly designed freezing-in thermal ice probe. The final version of the cable consists of two concentric conductors that can be used as the power and signal lines. Two polyfluoroalkoxy jackets are used for electrical insulation (one for insulation between conductors, and the other for insulation of the outer conductor). The outer insulation layer is coated by polyurethane jacket to seal the connections between the cable and electrical units. The 0.65 mm thick strength member is made from aramid fibers woven together. To hold these aramid fibers in place, a sheathing layer was produced from a polyamide fabric cover net. The outer diameter of the final version of the cable is ~6.1 mm. The permissible bending radius is as low as 17–20 mm. The maximal breaking force under straight tension is ~12.2 kN. The cable weight is only ~0.061 kg m−1. The mechanical and electrical properties and environmental suitability of the cable were determined through laboratory testing and joint testing with the probe.

Shifts in the maternal gut microbiota have been implicated in the development of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Understanding the interaction between gut microbiota and host glucose metabolism will provide a new target of prediction and treatment. In this nested case-control study, we aimed to investigate the causal effects of gut microbiota from GDM patients on the glucose metabolism of germ-free (GF) mice. Stool and peripheral blood samples, as well as clinical information, were collected from 45 GDM patients and 45 healthy controls (matched by age and prepregnancy body mass index (BMI)) in the first and second trimester. Gut microbiota profiles were explored by next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, and inflammatory factors in peripheral blood were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Fecal samples from GDM and non-GDM donors were transferred to GF mice. The gut microbiota of women with GDM showed reduced richness, specifically decreased Bacteroides and Akkermansia, as well as increased Faecalibacterium. The relative abundance of Akkermansia was negatively associated with blood glucose levels, and the relative abundance of Faecalibacterium was positively related to inflammatory factor concentrations. The transfer of fecal microbiota from GDM and non-GDM donors to GF mice resulted in different gut microbiota colonization patterns, and hyperglycemia was induced in mice that received GDM donor microbiota. These results suggested that the shifting pattern of gut microbiota in GDM patients contributed to disease pathogenesis.

Pulsed-xenon-ultraviolet light (PX-UVL) is increasingly used as a supplemental disinfection method in healthcare settings. We undertook a systematic search of the literature through several databases and conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of PX-UVL in reducing healthcare-associated infections. Eleven studies were included in the systematic review and nine in the meta-analysis. Pooled analysis of seven studies with before-after data indicated a statistically significant reduction of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) rates with the use of the PX-UVL (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 0.73, 95% CI 0.57–0.94, I2 = 72%, P = 0.01), and four studies reported a reduction of risk of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections (IRR: 0.79, 95% CI 0.64–0.98, I2 = 35%, P = 0.03). However, a further four trials found no significant reduction in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infection rates (IRR: 0.80, 95% CI 0.63–1.01, I2 = 60%, P = 0.06). The results for CDI and MRSA proved unstable on sensitivity analysis. Meta-regression analysis did not demonstrate any influence of study duration or intervention duration on CDI rates. We conclude that the use of PX-UVL, in addition to standard disinfection protocols, may help to reduce the incidence of CDI and MRSA but not VRE infection rates. However, the quality of evidence is not high, with unstable results and wide confidence intervals, and further high-quality studies are required to supplement the current evidence.

Findings for the roles of dairy products, Ca and vitamin D on ovarian cancer risk remain controversial. We aimed to assess these associations by using an updated meta-analysis. Five electronic databases (e.g. PubMed and Embase) were searched from inception to 24 December 2019. Pooled relative risks (RR) with 95 % CI were calculated. A total of twenty-nine case–control or cohort studies were included. For comparisons of the highest v. lowest intakes, higher whole milk intake was associated with increased ovarian cancer risk (RR 1·35; 95 % CI 1·15, 1·59), whereas decreased risks were observed for higher intakes of low-fat milk (RR 0·84; 95 % CI 0·73, 0·96), dietary Ca (RR 0·71; 95 % CI 0·60, 0·84) and dietary vitamin D (RR 0·80; 95 % CI 0·67, 0·95). Additionally, for every 100 g/d increment, increased ovarian cancer risks were found for total dairy products (RR 1·03; 95 % CI 1·01, 1·04) and for whole milk (RR 1·07; 95 % CI 1·03, 1·11); however, decreased risks were found for 100 g/d increased intakes of low-fat milk (RR 0·95; 95 % CI 0·91, 0·99), cheese (RR 0·87; 95 % CI 0·76, 0·98), dietary Ca (RR 0·96; 95 % CI 0·95, 0·98), total Ca (RR 0·98; 95 % CI 0·97, 0·99), dietary vitamin D (RR 0·92; 95 % CI 0·87, 0·97) and increased levels of circulating vitamin D (RR 0·84; 95 % CI 0·72, 0·97). These results show that whole milk intake might contribute to a higher ovarian cancer risk, whereas low-fat milk, dietary Ca and dietary vitamin D might reduce the risk.

The impulsive noise (IN) damages the performance of wireless communication in modern 5G scenarios such as manufacturing and automatic factories. The proposed receiver utilizes constant false alarm rate to obtain the threshold and combines with blanking to further improve the performance of the conventional blanking scheme with acceptable complexity. The simulated results show that the proposed receiver can achieve a lower bit error rate even if the probability of IN occurrence is very high and the power of the IN is much larger than that of the background noise.

Epidemiological data for Toxoplasma gondii regarding malignancy have gained increasing attention; however, the information about T. gondii infection among children with malignant lymphoma (ML) in China is unclear. Therefore, 314 children with lymphoma and 314 healthy children, age- and gender-matched, were recruited to estimate the seroprevalence of T. gondii in the participants and identify the risk factors of infection. Blood samples from all participants were collected and examined for T. gondii IgG and IgM antibodies using ELISA. The results showed that the overall seroprevalence of T. gondii antibodies (including IgG and/or IgM) in ML patients and healthy controls was 19.8% and 9.9%, respectively. Contact with the cats, consumption of oysters and history of chemotherapy were estimated to be the risk factors for T. gondii infection in children with lymphoma by multivariable logistic regression analysis, whereas in healthy children, contact with cats and consumption of oysters were the risk factors. Moreover, among various histological types of lymphoma, individuals with NK/T-cell lymphoma, B-small lymphocytic lymphoma, marginal zone B-lymphoma and Hodgkin's lymphoma had a higher seroprevalence than healthy controls (P < 0.05). These findings indicated the high prevalence of T. gondii infection in children with lymphoma, and hence, efforts should be performed to evaluate the effect of the infection further in lymphoma patients.

A fundamental design rule that nature has developed for biological machines is the intimate correlation between motion and function. One class of biological machines is molecular motors in living cells, which directly convert chemical energy into mechanical work. They coexist in every eukaryotic cell, but differ in their types of motion, the filaments they bind to, the cargos they carry, as well as the work they perform. Such natural structures offer inspiration and blueprints for constructing DNA-assembled artificial systems, which mimic their functionality. In this article, we describe two groups of cytoskeletal motors, linear and rotary motors. We discuss how their artificial analogues can be built using DNA nanotechnology. Finally, we summarize ongoing research directions and conclude that DNA origami has a bright future ahead.

Northeastern China is a region of high tick abundance, multiple tick-borne pathogens and likely human infections. The spectrum of diseases caused by tick-borne pathogens has not been objectively evaluated in this region for clinical management and for comparison with other regions globally where tick-transmitted diseases are common. Based on clinical symptoms, PCR, indirect immunofluorescent assay and (or) blood smear, we identified and described tick-borne diseases from patients with recent tick bite seen at Mudanjiang Forestry Central Hospital. From May 2010 to September 2011, 42% (75/180) of patients were diagnosed with a specific tick-borne disease, including Lyme borreliosis, tick-borne encephalitis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, human babesiosis and spotted fever group rickettsiosis. When we compared clinical and laboratory features to identify factors that might discriminate tick-transmitted infections from those lacking that evidence, we revealed that erythema migrans and neurological manifestations were statistically significantly differently presented between those with and without documented aetiologies (P < 0.001, P = 0.003). Twelve patients (6.7%, 12/180) were co-infected with two tick-borne pathogens. We demonstrated the poor ability of clinicians to identify the specific tick-borne disease. In addition, it is necessary to develop specific laboratory assays for optimal diagnosis of tick-borne diseases.

The Carrier-Phase (CP) technique used in the Global Positioning System (GPS) has proved to be a useful spatial tool for remote precise time transfer. Galileo is a Global Navigation Satellite System like GPS. However, currently, given the low number of satellites at any one observation epoch, Galileo's accuracy and continuity of time transfer leave much to be desired. To achieve better performance of time transfer for Galileo, this study has developed a new approach for Galileo CP time transfer, using prior constraint information such as precise coordinates and troposphere zenith delay constraints. The new approach was applied for precise time transfer in real-time mode and post-processed mode for short baseline and long baseline observations. For the short baseline time link in real-time mode, compared with the standard Galileo CP, the standard deviation improved by 51·4% for the troposphere zenith delay constraint, 47·6% for the station coordinates constraint, and 49·5% when considering both constraints simultaneously. At a 10,000 s time interval, in comparison to the standard CP, the three constraint approaches show stable results as well as improvements of nearly an order of magnitude. In post-processed mode, the constraint approach for Galileo time transfer showed little improvement compared to the standard CP technique for both the short baseline and long baseline time links.

In this work, temperature-dependent optical properties of a series of AlN thin films with different thickness are studied by spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) ranging from 300 to 825K. The fitted refractive index at 300K is in good agreement with the reported by others, which confirms the high accuracy of the optical model used in this work. The degradation of the absorption properties and the decrease of the bandgap become more pronounced with temperature increases above 475K. A larger change of bandgap at elevated temperature is observed for the thinner AlN epi-layer (300nm) than the thicker ones (404nm). This can be attributed to the poor surface morphologies and crystal qualities in the thinner AlN epi-layer.

We report on a systematic experimental study on the fluorescence spectra produced from a femtosecond laser filament in air under a high electric field. The electric field alone was strong enough to create corona discharge (CD). Fluorescence spectra from neutral and ionic air molecules were measured and compared with pure high-voltage CD and pure laser filamentation (FIL). Among them, high electric field assisted laser FIL produced nitrogen fluorescence more efficiently than either pure CD or pure FIL processes. The nonlinear enhancement of fluorescence from the interaction of the laser filament and corona discharging electric field resulted in a more efficient ionization along the laser filament zone, which was confirmed by the spectroscopic measurement of both ionization-induced fluorescence and plasma-scattered 800 nm laser pulses. This is believed to be the key precursor process for filament-guided discharge.

It is well known that conventional edge elements in solving vector Maxwell's eigenvalue equations by the finite element method will lead to the presence of spurious zero eigenvalues. This problem has been addressed for the first order edge element by Kikuchi by the mixed element method. Inspired by this approach, this paper describes a higher order mixed spectral element method (mixed SEM) for the computation of two-dimensional vector eigenvalue problem of Maxwell's equations. It utilizes Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) polynomials as the basis functions in the finite-element framework with a weak divergence condition. It is shown that this method can suppress all spurious zero and nonzero modes and has spectral accuracy. A rigorous analysis of the convergence of the mixed SEM is presented, based on the higher order edge element interpolation error estimates, which fully confirms the robustness of our method. Numerical results are given for homogeneous, inhomogeneous, L-shape, coaxial and dual-inner-conductor cavities to verify the merits of the proposed method.

This paper develops a high-order accurate gas-kinetic scheme in the framework of the finite volume method for the one- and two-dimensional flow simulations, which is an extension of the third-order accurate gas-kinetic scheme [Q.B. Li, K. Xu, and S. Fu, J. Comput. Phys., 229(2010), 6715-6731] and the second-order accurate gas-kinetic scheme [K. Xu, J. Comput. Phys., 171(2001), 289-335]. It is formed by two parts: quartic polynomial reconstruction of the macroscopic variables and fourth-order accurate flux evolution. The first part reconstructs a piecewise cell-center based quartic polynomial and a cell-vertex based quartic polynomial according to the “initial” cell average approximation of macroscopic variables to recover locally the non-equilibrium and equilibrium single particle velocity distribution functions around the cell interface. It is in view of the fact that all macroscopic variables become moments of a single particle velocity distribution function in the gas-kinetic theory. The generalized moment limiter is employed there to suppress the possible numerical oscillation. In the second part, the macroscopic flux at the cell interface is evolved in fourth-order accuracy by means of the simple particle transport mechanism in the microscopic level, i.e. free transport and the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collisions. In other words, the fourth-order flux evolution is based on the solution (i.e. the particle velocity distribution function) of the BGK model for the Boltzmann equation. Several 1D and 2D test problems are numerically solved by using the proposed high-order accurate gas-kinetic scheme. By comparing with the exact solutions or the numerical solutions obtained the second-order or third-order accurate gas-kinetic scheme, the computations demonstrate that our scheme is effective and accurate for simulating invisid and viscous fluid flows, and the accuracy of the high-order GKS depends on the choice of the (numerical) collision time.

In this paper, we demonstrate a thin film Cu–Ni–Nb alloy deposited directly on silicon, without a designated barrier, showing very high thermal stability at a temperature up to 700 °C for 1 h. Thin [Nb–Ni12]Cux films were sputter deposited and annealed, and their material and electrical properties were studied. The results can be explained by the “cluster-plus-glue atom” model for stable solid solutions, where [Nb–Ni12] cuboctahedral clusters are embedded in a Cu matrix. In this model, the clusters are congruent with the Cu minimizing atomic interactions allowing a good stability. The properties of the films were found to be affected by the Ni/Nb ratios. Especially, the (Nb1.2/13.2Ni12/13.2)0.3Cu99.7 film annealed at 500 °C for 1 h had the lowest electrical resistivity of about 2.7 μΩ cm. And even after 40 h annealing at 500 °C, it maintained a low resistivity of about 2.8 μΩ cm, demonstrating extremely high stabilities against silicide formation.