The associations of red/processed meat consumption and cancer-related health outcomes have been well discussed. The umbrella review aimed to summarise the associations of red/processed meat consumption and various non-cancer-related outcomes in humans. We systematically searched the systematic reviews and meta-analyses of associations between red/processed meat intake and health outcomes from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library databases. The umbrella review has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD 42021218568). A total of 40 meta-analyses were included. High consumption of red meat, particularly processed meat, was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality, CVD and metabolic outcomes. Dose–response analysis revealed that an additional 100 g/d red meat intake was positively associated with a 17 % increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), 15 % increased risk of CHD, 14 % of hypertension and 12 % of stroke. The highest dose–response/50 g increase in processed meat consumption at 95 % confident levels was 1·37, 95 % CI (1·22, 1·55) for T2DM, 1·27, 95 % CI (1·09, 1·49) for CHD, 1·17, 95 % CI (1·02, 1·34) for stroke, 1·15, 95 % CI (1·11, 1·19) for all-cause mortality and 1·08, 95 % CI (1·02, 1·14) for heart failure. In addition, red/processed meat intake was associated with several other health-related outcomes. Red and processed meat consumption seems to be more harmful than beneficial to human health in this umbrella review. It is necessary to take the impacts of red/processed meat consumption on non-cancer-related outcomes into consideration when developing new dietary guidelines, which will be of great public health importance. However, more additional randomised controlled trials are warranted to clarify the causality.

Whether starchy and non-starchy vegetables have distinct impacts on health remains unknown. We prospectively investigated the intake of starchy and non-starchy vegetables in relation to mortality risk in a nationwide cohort. Diet was assessed using 24-h dietary recalls. Deaths were identified via the record linkage to the National Death Index. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % CI were calculated using Cox regression. During a median follow-up of 7·8 years, 4904 deaths were documented among 40 074 participants aged 18 years or older. Compared to those with no consumption, participants with daily consumption of ≥ 1 serving of non-starchy vegetables had a lower risk of mortality (HR = 0·76, 95 % CI 0·66, 0·88, P trend = 0·001). Dark-green and deep-yellow vegetables (HR = 0·79, 95 % CI 0·63, 0·99, P trend = 0·023) and other non-starchy vegetables (HR = 0·80, 95 % CI 0·70, 0·92, P trend = 0·004) showed similar results. Total starchy vegetable intake exhibited a marginally weak inverse association with mortality risk (HR = 0·89, 95 % CI 0·80, 1·00, P trend = 0·048), while potatoes showed a null association (HR = 0·93, 95 % CI 0·82, 1·06, P trend = 0·186). Restricted cubic spline analysis suggested a linear dose–response relationship between vegetable intake and death risk, with a plateau at over 300 and 200 g/d for total and non-starchy vegetables, respectively. Compared with starchy vegetables, non-starchy vegetables might be more beneficial to health, although both showed a protective association with mortality risk. The risk reduction in mortality plateaued at approximately 200 g/d for non-starchy vegetables and 300 g/d for total vegetables.

Sporadic clusters of healthcare-associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred despite intense rostered routine surveillance and a highly vaccinated healthcare worker (HCW) population, during a community surge of the severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) B.1.617.2 δ (delta) variant. Genomic analysis facilitated timely cluster detection and uncovered additional linkages via HCWs moving between clinical areas and among HCWs sharing a common lunch area, enabling early intervention.

This study was designed to investigate the effects of dietary starch structure on muscle protein synthesis and gastrointestinal amino acid (AA) transport and metabolism of goats. Twenty-seven Xiangdong black female goats (average body weight = 9·00 ± 1·12 kg) were randomly assigned to three treatments, i.e., fed a T1 (normal maize 100 %, high amylose maize 0 %), T2 (normal maize 50 %, high amylose maize 50 %) and T3 (normal maize 0 %, high amylose maize 100 %) diet for 35 d. All AA in the ileal mucosa were decreased linearly as amylose:amylopectin increased in diets (P < 0·05). The plasma valine (linear, P = 0·03), leucine (linear, P = 0·04) and total AA content (linear, P = 0·03) increased linearly with the increase in the ratio of amylose in the diet. The relative mRNA levels of solute carrier family 38 member 1 (linear, P = 0·01), solute carrier family 3 member 2 (linear, P = 0·02) and solute carrier family 38 member 9 (linear, P = 0·02) in the ileum increased linearly with the increase in the ratio of amylose in the diet. With the increase in the ratio of amylose:amylopectin in the diet, the mRNA levels of acetyl-CoA dehydrogenase B (linear, P = 0·04), branched-chain amino acid transferase 1 (linear, P = 0·02) and branched-chain α-keto acid dehydrogenase complex B (linear, P = 0·01) in the ileum decreased linearly. Our results revealed that the protein abundances of phosphorylated mammalian target of rapamycin (p-mTOR) (P < 0·001), phosphorylated 4E-binding protein 1 (P < 0·001) and phosphorylated ribosomal protein S6 kinases 1 (P < 0·001) of T2 and T3 were significantly higher than that of T1. In general, a diet with a high amylose ratio could reduce the consumption of AA in the intestine, allowing more AA to enter the blood to maintain higher muscle protein synthesis through the mTOR pathway.

Real-time localization is an important mission for self-driving cars and it is difficult to achieve precise pose information in dynamic environments. In this paper, a novel localization method is proposed to estimate the pose of self-driving cars using a 3D-LiDAR sensor. First, the multi-frame curb features and laser intensity features are extracted. Meanwhile, based on the high-precision curb map generated offline, obstacles on road are detected using region segmentation methods and their features are removed. Furthermore, a map-matching method is proposed to match the features to the map, a robust iterative closest point algorithm is utilized to deal with curb features along with a probability search method dealing with intensity features. Finally, two separate Kalman filters are used to fuse the low-cost global positioning systems and map-matching results. Both offline and online experiments are carried out in dynamic environments and the results demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method.

We aimed to examine whether baseline neutrophil counts affected the risk of new-onset proteinuria in hypertensive patients, and, if so, whether folic acid treatment is particularly effective in proteinuria prevention in such a setting. A total of 8208 eligible participants without proteinuria at baseline were analysed from the renal substudy of the China Stroke Primary Prevention Trial. Participants were randomised to receive a double-blind daily treatment of 10 mg of enalapril and 0·8 mg of folic acid (n 4101) or 10 mg of enalapril only (n 4107). The primary outcome was new-onset proteinuria, defined as a urine dipstick reading of ≥1+ at the exit visit. The mean age of the participants was 59·5 (sd, 7·4) years, 3088 (37·6 %) of the participants were male. The median treatment duration was 4·4 years. In the enalapril-only group, a significantly higher risk of new-onset proteinuria was found among participants with higher neutrophil counts (quintile 5; ≥4·8 × 109/l, OR 1·44; 95 % CI 1·00, 2·06), compared with those in quintiles 1–4. For those with enalapril and folic acid treatment, compared with the enalapril-only group, the new-onset proteinuria risk was reduced from 5·2 to 2·8 % (OR 0·49; 95 % CI 0·29, 0·82) among participants with higher neutrophil counts (≥4·8 × 109/l), whereas there was no significant effect among those with neutrophil counts <4·8 × 109/l. In summary, among hypertensive patients, those with higher neutrophil counts had increased risk of new-onset proteinuria, and this risk was reduced by 51 % with folic acid treatment.

The epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began in China and had spread rapidly to many other countries. This study aimed to identify risk factors associated with delayed negative conversion of SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 patients. In this retrospective single-centre study, we included 169 consecutive patients with confirmed COVID-19 in Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University from 15th January to 2nd March. The cases were divided into two groups according to the median time of SARS-CoV-2 negative conversion. The differences between groups were compared. In total, 169 patients had a median virus negative conversion time of 18 days (interquartile range: 11–25) from symptom onset. Compared with the patients with short-term negative conversion, those with long-term conversion had an older age, higher incidence of comorbidities, chief complaints of cough and chest distress/breath shortness and severer illness on admission, higher level of leucocytes, neutrophils, aspartate aminotransferase, creatine kinase and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), lower level of CD3+CD4+ lymphocytes and albumin and more likely to receive mechanical ventilation. In multivariate analysis, cough, leucocytes, neutrophils and ESR were positively correlated with delayed virus negative conversion, and CD3+CD4+ lymphocytes were negatively correlated. The integrated indicator of leucocytes, neutrophils and CD3+CD4+ lymphocytes showed a good performance in predicting the negative conversion within 2 weeks (area under ROC curve (AUC) = 0.815), 3 weeks (AUC = 0.804), 4 weeks (AUC = 0.812) and 5 weeks (AUC = 0.786). In conclusion, longer quarantine periods might be more justified for COVID-19 patients with cough, higher levels of leucocytes, neutrophils and ESR and lower levels of CD3+CD4+ lymphocytes.

The FNDC5 gene encodes the fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 that is a membrane protein mainly expressed in skeletal muscle, and the FNDC5 rs3480 polymorphism may be associated with liver disease severity in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We investigated the influence of the FNDC5 rs3480 polymorphism on the relationship between sarcopenia and the histological severity of NAFLD. A total of 370 adult individuals with biopsy-proven NAFLD were studied. The association between the key exposure sarcopenia and the outcome liver histological severity was investigated by binary logistic regression. Stratified analyses were undertaken to examine the impact of FNDC5 rs3480 polymorphism on the association between sarcopenia and the severity of NAFLD histology. Patients with sarcopenia had more severe histological grades of steatosis and a higher prevalence of significant fibrosis and definite non-alcoholic steatohepatitis than those without sarcopenia. There was a significant association between sarcopenia and significant fibrosis (adjusted OR 2·79, 95 % CI 1·31, 5·95, P = 0·008), independent of established risk factors and potential confounders. Among patients with sarcopenia, significant fibrosis occurred more frequently in the rs3480 AA genotype carriers than in those carrying the FNDC5 rs3480 G genotype (43·8 v. 17·2 %, P = 0·031). In the association between sarcopenia and liver fibrosis, there was a significant interaction between the FNDC5 genotype and sarcopenia status (P value for interaction = 0·006). Sarcopenia is independently associated with significant liver fibrosis, and the FNDC5 rs3480 G variant influences the association between sarcopenia and liver fibrosis in patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD.

Real-time and accurate fault detection and isolation is very important to ensure the reliability and precision of integrated inertial navigation and global navigation satellite systems. In this paper, the detection performance of a residual chi-square method is analysed, and on this basis an improved method of fault detection is proposed. The local test based on a standardised residual is introduced to detect and identify faulty measurements directly. Differing from the traditional method, two appropriate thresholds are selected to calculate the weight factor of each measurement, and the gain matrix is adjusted adaptively to reduce the influence of the undetected faulty measurement. The sliding window test, which uses past measurements, is also added to further improve the fault detection performance for small faults when the local test based on current measurements cannot judge whether a fault has occurred or not. Several simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed method. The results show that the improved method has better fault detection performance than the traditional detection method, especially for small faults, and can improve the reliability and precision of the navigation system effectively.

This paper presents new LA-ICP-MS zircon U–Pb chronology, whole-rock geochemical and zircon Hf isotopic data for the felsic lavas of the Huili Group from the southwestern Yangtze Block. LA-ICP-MS zircon U–Pb dating shows that these rocks were emplaced in Late Mesoproterozoic time (∼1028 to 1019 Ma). Relative to typical I-type and S-type granitoids, all the samples are characterized by low Sr and Eu, and high high-field-strength element contents, high TFeO/MgO, enriched rare earth element compositions and negative Eu anomalies, indicating that they share the geochemical signatures of A-type granitoid. They can be further divided into two groups: Group I and Group II. Group I are A1-type felsic rocks and were produced by fractional crystallization of alkaline basaltic magmas. The Group II felsic lavas belong to the A2-type and were derived by partial melting of a crustal source with mixing of mantle-derived magmas. Both Group I and Group II felsic lavas may erupt in a continental back-arc setting. The coexistence of A1- and A2-type rocks in the southwestern Yangtze Block suggests that they can occur in the same tectonic setting.

Minimally invasive surgery is a developing direction of modern medicine. With the successful development of controllable capsule endoscopies, capsule robots are very popular in the field of gastrointestinal medicine. At present, the study of intestinal robots is aimed at the pipeline environment of a single-phase liquid flow. But there exist food residues (i.e. solid particles) or liquid foods in the actual intestine, so intestinal fluid should be liquid–solid or liquid–liquid two-phase mixed fluid. For inner spiral capsule robots with different internal diameters and outer spiral capsule robots, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, the operational performance indicators (i.e. axial thrust force, circumferential resisting moment and maximum pressure to pipeline wall) of spiral capsule robots are numerically calculated in the liquid–solid or liquid–liquid two-phase mixed fluid. By the orthogonal experimental optimization method, the optimum design of spiral capsule robots is obtained in the liquid–solid mixed fluid. The experimental verification has been also carried out. The results show that in the liquid–solid two-phase fluid, the axial thrust force and circumferential resisting moment of the spiral capsule robots decrease with the increase of the size or concentration of solid particles. In the same liquid–solid or liquid–liquid mixed fluid, the operational performance indicators of outer spiral robots are much higher than those of inner spiral robots, and the operational performance indicators of inner spiral robots with bigger internal diameters are higher than those with smaller internal diameters. Adding solid particles of high concentration in the pipeline containing liquid will reduce the drive performance of spiral capsule robots, but adding another liquid of high viscosity will improve the drive performance of spiral capsule robots.

'Missing wedge' problem exists in some kind of CT imaging situations, such as electron microscopy, x-ray nano-CT image, etc. Method such as iterative reconstruction algorithms, total variation based method were applied to improve the reconstruction quality, but the 'missing wedge' artifacts are still inevitable. In this paper, a method based on image processing technique was proposed to locate the 'missing wedge' artifacts in CT reconstruction. The result showed good performance on locating the artifacts, which also showed the potential in CT reconstruction and image analysis in nano-CT.

The soft X-ray Microscopy beamline BL07W at National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory is devoted to cryo nano-tomography for biological applications in the water window (284 - 530 eV) and for imaging of nanomaterials from 200 to 2500 eV. An ellipsoidal capillary used as condense to focus monochromatic light onto the sample. Two Ni zone plate (ZP) lenses made by Zeiss with 40 nm and 25 nm outer most zone widths, respectively, are available, giving spatial resolution in 2D of down to 40 nm and 30 nm, respectively. Hydrated biological specimens had been imaged in the water window photon energy range without chemical fixation, dehydration, chemical staining and physical sectioning. In addition, other applications such as nanomaterials imaging had been demonstrated.

Cell's sub-cellular architecture and function can be revealed by Cryo soft X-ray tomography (Cryo-SXT) and Cryo-fluorescence microscopy (Cryo-FM) respectively. To understand the connection between cells' structure and function, correlative Cryo-SXT and Cryo-FM has been applied. Here we introduce a semiautomatic precise alignment and fusion technology of Cryo-SXT and Cryo-fluorescence microscopy.