Different from developed countries, there is a paucity of research examining how the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and Mediterranean diets relate to lipids in less-developed ethnic minority regions (LEMR). A total of 83 081 participants from seven ethnic groups were retrieved from the baseline data of the China Multi-Ethnic Cohort study, which was conducted in less-developed Southwest China between May 2018 and September 2019. Multivariable linear regression models were then used to examine the associations of the DASH and alternative Mediterranean diet (AMED) scores, assessed by modified DASH score and AMED, as well as their components with total cholesterol (TC), LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, TAG and TC/HDL-cholesterol. The DASH scores were negatively associated with TC, HDL-cholesterol and TAG. Comparing the highest quintiles with the lowest DASH scores, TC decreased 0·0708 (95 % CI −0·0923, −0·0493) mmol/l, HDL-cholesterol decreased 0·0380 (95 % CI −0·0462, −0·0299) mmol/l and TAG decreased 0·0668 (95 % CI −0·0994, −0·0341) mmol/l. The AMED scores were negatively associated with TC, LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol. Comparing the highest quintiles with the lowest AMED scores, TC decreased 0·0816 (95 % CI −0·1035, −0·0597) mmol/l, LDL-cholesterol decreased 0·0297 (95 % CI −0·0477, −0·0118) mmol/l and HDL-cholesterol decreased 0·0275 (95 % CI −0·0358, −0·0192) mmol/l. Although both the DASH diet and the Mediterranean diet were negatively associated with blood lipids, those associations showed different patterns in LEMR, particularly for TAG and HDL-cholesterol.

Case identification is an ongoing issue for the COVID-19 epidemic, in particular for outpatient care where physicians must decide which patients to prioritise for further testing. This paper reports tools to classify patients based on symptom profiles based on 236 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positive cases and 564 controls, accounting for the time course of illness using generalised multivariate logistic regression. Significant symptoms included abdominal pain, cough, diarrhoea, fever, headache, muscle ache, runny nose, sore throat, temperature between 37.5 and 37.9 °C and temperature above 38 °C, but their importance varied by day of illness at assessment. With a high percentile threshold for specificity at 0.95, the baseline model had reasonable sensitivity at 0.67. To further evaluate accuracy of model predictions, leave-one-out cross-validation confirmed high classification accuracy with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.92. For the baseline model, sensitivity decreased to 0.56. External validation datasets reported similar result. Our study provides a tool to discern COVID-19 patients from controls using symptoms and day from illness onset with good predictive performance. It could be considered as a framework to complement laboratory testing in order to differentiate COVID-19 from other patients presenting with acute symptoms in outpatient care.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global public health threat. Misdiagnosis and delayed therapy of sputum smear-negative TB can affect the treatment outcomes and promote pathogen transmission. The application of Xpert MTB/RIF assay in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) has been recommended but needs clinical evidence. We carried out a prospective study in the Nanjing Public Health Medical Center from September 2018 to August 2019. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients were enrolled in the study if they had negative results of sputum smear. We compared the performance of Xpert MTB/RIF assay in sputum and BALF using sputum culture as the reference. In addition to this, we applied parallel tests using sputum culture, sputum-based Xpert MTB/RIF assay and BALF-based Xpert MTB/RIF assay to jointly detect smear-negative PTB using clinical diagnosis as the reference. With mycobacterial culture as the reference standard, Xpert MTB/RIF of BALF showed a higher sensitivity (14/16, 87.5%), but a relatively lower specificity (57/92, 62.0%). Xpert MTB/RIF of sputum showed relatively lower sensitivity (6/10, 60.0%) and higher specificity (63/88, 71.6%). Compared with sputum culture, Xpert MTB /RIF assay reduced the median detection time of MTB from 30 to 0 days, which significantly shortened the diagnosis time of the smear-negative TB patients. Among the combined detections, the positive detection proportion was improved with significant differences comparing with sputum culture only, from 11.1% (10/90) to 46.7% (42/90) (P < 0.05). Our study showed Xpert MTB/RIF in BALF had a better performance in detecting MTB of smear-negative patients.

Acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis is a highly contagious eye disease, the prediction of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis is very important to prevent and grasp its development trend. We use the exponential smoothing model and the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model to analyse and predict. The monthly incidence data from 2004 to 2017 were used to fit two models, the actual incidence of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis in 2018 was used to validate the model. Finally, the prediction effect of exponential smoothing is best, the mean square error and the mean absolute percentage error were 0.0152 and 0.1871, respectively. In addition, the incidence of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis in Chongqing had a seasonal trend characteristic, with the peak period from June to September each year.

During the last glacial termination, a warming trend was generally interrupted by rapid millennium-scale cold reversals, such as the Greenland (Isotope) Stadial 1 (GS-1) and GS-2a events. To understand how glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) responded to these rapid climate events, this study constrained the timing and extent of three glacial events during the late-glacial period. Specifically, using a cosmogenic 10Be exposure dating method, we dated three prominent glacial moraines (PM1, PM2, PM3) back to 15,850 ± 980, 14,140 ± 880, and 12,430 ± 790 yr in the Pagele valley, southern TP, corresponding to GS-2a, Greenland Interstadial 1 (GI-1), and GS-1, respectively. By simulating glacial extents forced by different climate scenarios, the study constrained the temperature decreases relative to present to be 2.6°C–2.9°C, ~1.6°C, and 1.4°C–1.5°C during the GS-2a, GI-1, and GS-1 periods in the region, with precipitation values of 60%–80%, ~100%, and 80%–90% of present value, respectively. Considering information from oceanic and atmospheric circulation, the study suggested that on the TP, the glacial events during the last glacial termination were well connected with the millennium-scale climate events in the North Atlantic region through the westerlies, while the Indian summer monsoon played a positive role in sustaining the glaciers under the warming climate trend.

A tunable ultrafast intensity-rotating optical field is generated by overlapping a pair of 20 Hz, 800 nm chirped pulses with a Michelson interferometer (MI). Its rotating rate can be up to 10 trillion radians per second ($\text{Trad}/\text{s}$), which can be flexibly tuned with a mirror in the MI. Besides, its fold rotational symmetry structure is also changeable by controlling the difference from the topological charges of the pulse pair. Experimentally, we have successfully developed a two-petal lattice with a tunable rotating speed from $3.9~\text{Trad}/\text{s}$ up to $11.9~\text{Trad}/\text{s}$, which is confirmed by our single-shot ultrafast frame imager based on noncollinear optical-parametric amplification with its highest frame rate of 15 trillion frames per second (Tfps). This work is carried out at a low repetition rate. Therefore, it can be applied at relativistic, even ultrarelativistic, intensities, which usually operate in low repetition rate ultrashort and ultraintense laser systems. We believe that it may have application in laser-plasma-based accelerators, strong terahertz radiations and celestial phenomena.

Cryptorchidism, characterized by the presence of one (unilateral) or both (bilateral) undescended testes, is a common male urogenital defect. Cryptorchidism can lead to male infertility, testicular cancer being the most extreme clinical symptom, as well as psychological issues of the inflicted individual. Despite this, both knowledge about the aetiology of cryptorchidism and the mechanism for cryptorchidism-induced male infertility remain limited. In this present study, by using an artificial cryptorchid mouse model, we investigated the effects of surgery-induced cryptorchidism on spermatogenic cells and seminiferous epithelial cycles. We found that surgery-induced cryptorchidism led to a reduced testicular weight, aberrant seminiferous epithelial cycles and impaired spermatogenesis characterized by degenerating spermatogenic cells. We also observed multinucleated giant cells after surgery-induced cryptorchidism. Transmission electron microscopy, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL) and western blot assays demonstrated cryptorchidism-induced apoptosis of spermatogenic cells. Moreover, we identified the occurrence of autophagy in germ cells after surgery-induced cryptorchidism. Interestingly, apoptosis and autophagy were synchronous, suggestive of their synergetic roles in promoting germ cell death. Our results provide novel insights into the cryptorchidism-induced male infertility, thereby contributing to the development of male contraceptive strategies as well as treatment options for male infertility caused by cryptorchidism.

This paper presents a complete two-step phase-shifting (TSPS) spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) to improve the reconstruction of ultrafast optical fields. Here, complete TSPS acts as a balanced detection that can not only remove the effect of the dc term of the interferogram, but also reduce measurement noises, and thereby improve the capability of SPIDER to measure the pulses with narrow spectra or complex spectral structures. Some prisms are chosen to replace some environment-sensitive optical components, especially reflective optics to improve operating stability and improve signal-to-noise ratio further. Our experiments show that the available shear can be decreased to 1.5% of the spectral width, which is only about $1/3$ compared with traditional SPIDER.

The present study deals with a theoretical investigation of a close-contact melting (CCM) process involving a vertical cylinder on a horizontal isothermal surface, where the liquid phase is a non-Newtonian viscoplastic fluid that behaves according to the Bingham model. Accordingly, a new approach is formulated based on the thin layer approximation and different quasi-steady process assumptions. By analytical derivation, an algebraic equation that relates the molten layer thickness and the solid bulk height is developed. The problem is then solved numerically, coupled with another equation for the melting rate. The new model shows that as the yield stress increases the melting rate decreases and the molten layer thickness increases. It is found that under certain conditions, the model can be reduced to a form that allows an analytical solution. The approximate model predicts an exponential dependence of both the melt fraction and the molten layer thickness. Comparison between the numerical and analytical solutions shows that the analytical approximation provides an excellent estimation for sufficiently large values of the yield stress. Dimensional analysis, which is supported by the analytical model results, reveals the dimensionless groups that govern the problem. For the general case, the melt fraction is a function of two dimensionless groups. For the analytical approximation, it is shown that the melt fraction is governed by a single dimensionless group and that the molten layer thickness is governed by two dimensionless groups.

This paper investigates a wideband and low axial ratio circularly polarized (CP) antenna, which is composed of a monopole on a novel polarization rotating reflective surface (PRRS) based on a corner-truncated artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) structure. By adjusting the dimensions of truncated corner properly, the PRRS has two polarization rotation (PR) frequency points. Then, a large PR band of 18% (5.55–6.65 GHz) can be achieved with two adjacent PR frequency points coming together. The profile of the newly PRRS is only0.04λ0. With corner-truncated AMC-based PRRS loading, a measured impedance bandwidth of 1.8 GHz (5.4–7.2 GHz) and the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 1 GHz (5.55–6.65 GHz) could be obtained by the monopole antenna and validated by measurements. The values of AR were well below 1 dB at most of the CP region, which show a perfect CP performance. Moreover, the proposed antenna has exhibited a large axial ratio beamwidth in both the xoz- and yoz-planes and a peak gain of 6.1 dBic within the operational bandwidth.

Boron carbide (B4C) powder was consolidated at 45 MPa by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) for 20 min from 1450 to 2000 °C. The density of the B4C reached 99.6% at 2000 °C. A continuum model was applied to describe the densification mechanism of B4C powder under SPS conditions. The shrinkage rate was sensitive to particle size and temperature. The effect of porosity on thermal diffusion was significant, especially for small particle sizes. It appears that there is Joule heating, discharge, and electromagnetic field involved during the SPS of B4C. The current can enhance the sintering process, and it can obviously reduce the creep activation energy.

To evaluate the effects of different anthropogenic activities on zooplankton and the pelagic ecosystem, we conducted seasonal cruises in 2010 to assess spatial heterogeneity among the mesozooplankton communities of Xiangshan Bay, a subtropical semi-enclosed bay in China. The evaluation included five different areas: a kelp farm, an oyster farm, a fish farm, the thermal discharge area of a power plant, and an artificial reef, and we aimed to identify whether anthropogenic activities dominated spatial variation in the mesozooplankton communities. The results demonstrated clear spatial heterogeneity among the mesozooplankton communities of the studied areas, dominantly driven by natural hydrographic properties, except in the area near the thermal discharge outlet of the power station. In the outlet area, thermal shock caused by the discharge influenced the mesozooplankton community by decreasing abundance and biomass throughout the four seasons, even causing a shift in the dominant species near the outlet during summer from Acartia pacifica to eurythermal and warm water taxa. Unique features of the mesozooplankton community in the oyster farm may be due to the combined effects of oyster culture and the natural environment in the branch harbour. However, kelp and fish culture, and the construction of an artificial reef did not exert any obvious influence on the mesozooplankton communities up to 2010, probably because of the small scale of the aquaculture and a time lag in the rehabilitation effects of the artificial reef. Thus, our results suggested that the dominant factors influencing spatial variations of mesozooplankton communities in Xiangshan Bay were still the natural hydrographic properties, but the thermal discharge was an anthropogenic activity that changed the pelagic ecosystem, and should be supervised.

Invasive species and acid rain cause global environmental problems. Creeping daisy, an invasive exotic allelopathic weed, has caused great damage in southern China, where acid rain is prevalent. The impact of the acidity of simulated acid rain (SAR) on soil nutrients, the decomposition of creeping daisy litter, and on the allelopathic potential of the surrounding soils was investigated. Litter was treated with SAR at different acidity (pH 2.5, 4.0, 5.6) or with water (pH 7.0) as a control. After 70 d, the remaining amount of creeping daisy litter, nutrient contents, and allelopathic potentials in the surrounding soil were determined. The litter decomposition was commensurate to the increase in the acidity of the SAR. Total C and N contents, NO3−-N and available P increased, levels of NH4+-N, the ratio of C/N and soil pH values decreased, water contents increased and then decreased, whereas available K did not significantly change in the soil surrounding the litters in response to the increase in the acidity of the SAR. Bioassays showed that SAR promoted the allelopathic activity in the soil surrounding the litter, as measured by seedling growth of turnip and radish. In conclusion, our results indicated that SAR influenced soil nutrient status, accelerated creeping daisy litter decomposition, and enhanced the allelopathic potential of its litter in the surrounding soil, suggesting that acid rain may enhance the invasiveness of creeping daisy plants.

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) whisker obtained from acid hydrolysis of cotton was incorporated into the freezing polymerized PNIPA/clay hydrogels to prepare inorganic–organic hybrid nanocomposite hydrogels (named as C-NC gels). The influence of NCC on the properties of C-NC gels was investigated systematically. It was found that all C-NC gels exhibit similar lower critical solution temperature as that of NCC-free gels, being independent of the NCC content. However, with the increase of NCC content in C-NC gels, the swelling ability of gels decreases slightly while the response rate of gels increases gradually, the gels with high content of NCC exhibit an ultrarapid deswelling rate due to the amount of interconnected micropores appeared inside the gels. Moreover, the enhancement effect of increased NCC on the gels is significant, which is also determined by the swelling degree of gels directly. Comparably, for the gels with the same content of NCC, higher strength was found when the gels were kept in lower swelling ratio due to the stronger interaction of NCC through hydrogen bond in the gels.