Objective The study aimed to elucidate the population composition and seasonal distribution characteristics of mosquitoes in Laoshan District, Qingdao City, providing a scientific basis for the prevention and control of mosquito-borne infectious diseases. Methods Mosquito surveillance was conducted in Laoshan District in Qingdao City using light traps from April to November 2020-2022. Dominant mosquito species were identified using the Berger-Parker dominance index(I)and mosquito density was compared using the Kruskal-Wallis H test. The seasonal distribution characteristics of adult mosquitoes were analyzed using concentration and circular distribution method. Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to study the relationship between mosquito populations and meteorological factors with mean monthly temperature, mean monthly relative humidity, and mean monthly rainfall. Results The mean mosquito density for the trapping period was 9.771 females/(trap·night)in 2020,9.771 in 2021, and 9.427 in 2022. There was no statistically significant difference in mosquito density between different years(H = 0.095, P = 0.954). In total, 2 781 adult female mosquitoes comprising five species from four genera were captured over three years. Culex pipiens(I = 0.654), Aedes albopictus(I = 0.202), and Aedes aegypti(I = 0.118)were identified as dominant species. Seasonal fluctuations in the adult mosquitoes were unimodal, and primarily concentrated from June to September. The peak period of adult mosquito varied between years with statistical significance. (F = 3.838, P ＜ 0.05). Mosquito density was highly correlated with mean monthly temperature, mean monthly relative humidity and mean monthly precipitation(P＜ 0.05). Conclusions Cx. pipiens pallens, Ae. albopictus, and Ar. inamoratus are the dominant mosquito species in the Laoshan District of Qingdao City. The activity of adult mosquitoes is seasonal, and primarily concentrated in summer and autumn, during which the risk of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever is increased.

Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) solid waste is characterized by widespread availability, renewability, and substantial production volume. In the context of the "dual carbon" goals, the pyrolysis of TCM solid waste for producing fuel gas for recycling in pharmaceutical production has emerged as a crucial strategy for optimizing the energy structure in the TCM industry and developing renewable energy. This paper comprehensively reviews both internal and external factors that influence the pyrolysis of TCM solid waste. Internal factors encompass moisture content, particle size, ash content, and the morphology of the raw materials, while external factors include pyrolysis conditions, equivalence ratios, types of gasifiers, and gasifying agents. Furthermore, this paper details the challenges associated with the pyrolysis of TCM solid waste, such as the dispersion of feedstocks, the diversity of resources, the complexity of the pyrolysis process, and the variations in gasifier performance. Finally, this paper proposes measures to address these challenges. This paper aims to provide insights into the development of a circular economy for TCM resources and the advancement of low-carbon energy utilization in the TCM industry.
Pyrolysis ; Carbon/chemistry* ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Solid Waste/analysis* ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/chemistry* ; Gases/chemistry*

Objective:To provide guidance on parameters for future endovaginal coil magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)in vivo,and to investigate the imaging potential of the endovaginal coil technique.Methods:The endovaginal coil was used to perform T2-weighted turbo spin echo sequence imaging on a phantom containing three spatial resolution modules,with variations in key imaging parameters.Signal-to-noise ratio(SNR),contrast-to-noise ratio(CNR),and contrast(C)were calculated for images under different imaging parameters,and image quality was assessed based on scores within specified intervals.Structural display scores were determined for the three resolution modules of the phantom,and the non-parametric tests were used for statistical comparison between groups.Results:Under the main imaging parameters of a slice thickness of 2 mm,a slice gap of 0.2 mm,4 times of excitation repetition,a matrix size of 384×384,an FOV of 52 mm×52 mm,a TE of 74 ms,a bandwidth of 180 Hz/Pixel,and an acceleration factor of 18,good image quality was obtained with an acquired spatial resolution of 0.14 mm×0.14 mm×2.00 mm and a reconstructed resolution of 0.07 mm×0.07 mm×2.00 mm,and all three resolution modules were clearly visualized with a clinically acceptable imaging time.There were signifi-cant differences between groups in the imaging quality scores of slice thickness,slice gap,number of excitations,FOV,and accelera-tion factor(P<0.05),while there were no significant differences in matrix,TE,and bandwidth between groups(P=0.521,0.502,and 0.566).There were significant differences in the structural display scores for all parameters between groups(P<0.05).Conclusion:The parameters obtained in this experiment can guide the future ap-plication of endovaginal coils in the human body,demonstrating the extremely high imaging potential of this technique,and endovaginal coil has the potential of identifying small lesions in future clinical practice.

Objective: To investigate the role of murine double minute 2(MDM2) in dihydroartemisinin′s(DHA) inhibition of lung adenocarcinoma cell proliferation and migration. Methods: CCK8 assay was used to detect the inhibitory effect of gradient concentrations of DHA(0, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 μmol/L) and time gradients(0, 24, 48, and 72 h) on the proliferation of lung adenocarcinoma A549 and PC9 cells, and the half maximal inhibitory concentrate(IC50) were calculated respectively. Colony formation and scratch assays were used to detect the inhibitory effects of DHA on colony formation and migration of A549 and PC9 cells. Western blot was used to detect the inhibitory effects of DHA on MDM2 expression and epithelial-mesenchymal transition(EMT)-related proteins E-cadherin and N-cadherin. The promoting effects of MDM2 on proliferation, migration and EMT of lung adenocarcinoma cells were verified by small interfering RNA-mediated knockdown of MDM2(si-MDM2). The reversal effects of MDM2 overexpression on DHA′s inhibition on the proliferation and migration of A549 and PC9 cells were observed. Results: DHA inhibited the proliferation of A549 and PC9 cells in a dose⁃ and time⁃dependent manner,with IC50 values of 30. 57 and 78. 61 μmol/L , respectively. Compared with the Control group , A549 and PC9 cells had significantly decreased colony formation (both P < 0. 01) and migration (both P < 0. 01) upon treatment with DHA. Moreover, DHA significantly inhibited the protein expression levels of MDM2 and N ⁃cadherin in A549 and PC9 cells , and upregulated the expression of E ⁃cadherin protein (both P < 0. 05) . Compared with si⁃Control ,si⁃MDM2 significantly inhibited the protein levels of MDM2 and N ⁃cadherin in A549 and PC9 cells , and upregulat⁃(both P < 0. 01) of both cells. After overexpression of MDM2 in A549 and PC9 cells , the proliferation and migra⁃ tion ability were significantly enhanced (both P < 0. 05) , and the inhibitory effects of DHA were partially reversed by MDM2 overexpression (both P < 0. 05) . Conclusion DHA effectively inhibits the proliferation and migration of lung adenocarcinoma cells , and its mechanism is associated with the suppression of MDM2.

Hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)expresses abundant glycolytic enzymes and displays comprehensive glucose metabolism reprogramming.Aldolase A(ALDOA)plays a prominent role in glycolysis;however,little is known about its role in HCC development.In the present study,we aim to explore how ALDOA is involved in HCC proliferation.HCC proliferation was markedly suppressed both in vitro and in vivo following ALDOA knockout,which is consistent with ALDOA overexpression encouraging HCC prolifera-tion.Mechanistically,ALDOA knockout partially limits the glycolytic flux in HCC cells.Meanwhile,ALDOA translocated to nuclei and directly interacted with c-Jun to facilitate its Thr93 phosphorylation by P21-activated protein kinase;ALDOA knockout markedly diminished c-Jun Thr93 phosphorylation and then dampened c-Jun transcription function.A crucial site Y364 mutation in ALDOA disrupted its interaction with c-Jun,and Y364S ALDOA expression failed to rescue cell proliferation in ALDOA deletion cells.In HCC patients,the expression level of ALDOA was correlated with the phosphorylation level of c-Jun(Thr93)and poor prognosis.Remarkably,hepatic ALDOA was significantly upregulated in the promotion and progression stages of diethylnitrosamine-induced HCC models,and the knockdown of Aldoa strikingly decreased HCC development in vivo.Our study demonstrated that ALDOA is a vital driver for HCC development by activating c-Jun-mediated oncogene transcription,opening additional avenues for anti-cancer therapies.

Objective To investigate the possible association between cross-domain associative memory(AM)impairment and hippocampal subfield volumes in patients with schizophrenia(SCZ).Methods We enrolled 28 SCZ patients from Shanghai Mental Health Center,Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine,and 28 healthy controls(HCs)between 2019 and 2021.Based on an innovative AM paradigm and automated segmentation,3D-T1 weighted data of the objects were processed with PhiPipe and FreeSurfer.Differences in subfield volums between the two groups were analyzed using ANCOVA,while their relationship with AM scores was assessed using Pearson correlation.Results SCZ patients exhibited significantly poorer AM performance across three conditions compared with HCs.Marginally significant reductions were observed in the total volume of bilateral hippocampus,encompassing both the hippocampal head and body.Significant volume reductions were identified in the bilateral presubiculum and parasubiculum.The volumes of bilateral presubiculum head(r=0.273,P=0.042),parasubiculum(r=0.397,P=0.002),and CA1 head(r=0.382,P=0.004)exhibited positive correlations with cross-domain AM performance.Conclusion The bilateral presubiculum and parasubiculum,as hippocampal subregions significantly associated with cross-modal AM deficits in SCZ,may play a crucial role in the pathology of AM.

A VLi-net based cell nucleus segmentation method integrating convolutional neural networks(CNN)and Vision Transformer(ViT)is proposed to address the limitation that the U-Net with CNN as its backbone is only proficient in capturing local features and has a restricted receptive field.Firstly,to mitigate challenges such as high cost of data annotation and insufficient annotated data,text annotations are introduced to enhance the network's understanding of image information.Secondly,to improve the segmentation performance of VLi-net,ViT and CNN are combined to fully extract global and local features,with multi-receptive field convolution features incorporating into the ViT structure for effectively mitigating the issues of limited local information interaction and single feature representation in ViT.Finally,an interactive fusion module(ViFusion)is used to efficiently fuse the multi-level features from the CNN and ViT branches.Experimental results show that VLi-net achieves a Dice coefficient of 80.85%and a mean intersection over union(MIoU)of 66.83%on the MoNuSeg dataset,obtains a Dice coefficient of 80.53%and a MIoU of 67.54%on the DSB-2018 dataset,and has a Dice coefficient of 86.87%and a MIoU of 77.44%on the TNBC dataset.These findings confirm that VLi-net outperforms other methods across multiple experimental metrics.

Objective:To investigate the efficacy and safety of sintilimab combined with the SOX regimen for adjuvant treatment of stage Ⅲgastric cancer after D2 radical resection and to provide a reference for individualized clinical treatment.Methods:The clinical data of 245 pa-tients with stage III gastric cancer who underwent D2 radical resection at the 940th Hospital of the Joint Support Force of the People's Liber-ation Army from June 2019 to May 2022 were retrospectively analyzed.The 180 patients who received only the SOX regimen were desig-nated the control group,and the 65 patients who received sintilimab combined with the SOX regimen were designated the experimental group.The 3-year disease-free survival(DFS)rate,overall survival(OS)rate,and adverse reactions among the two groups and different sub-groups(HER-2 positive,dMMR,CPS≥5)were compared.Results:The 3-year DFS(81.5%vs.59.4%)and OS(84.6%vs.70.6%)rates in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group(both P<0.05).Group analysis showed that in patients with CPS≥5,the 3-year DFS(91.5%vs.67.0%)and OS(95.7%vs.71.6%)rates within the experimental group were significantly better than those in the control group(both P<0.05).Intra-group analysis within the experimental group showed that the 3-year DFS rate(91.5%vs.55.6%)and OS rate(95.7%vs.55.6%)of patients with CPS≥5 were significantly better than those of patients with CPS<5(both P<0.05).The overall and grade≥3 incidences of liver and kidney function damage,thyroid dysfunction,colitis,pneumonia,and rash in the experimental group were higher than those in the control group(all P<0.05),while the differences in other adverse reactions,including leukopenia were not statistic-ally significant(all P>0.05).Conclusions:Sintilimab combined with the SOX regimen can significantly improve 3-year DFS and OS rates in pa-tients with stage Ⅲ gastric cancer after surgery,especially in the CPS≥5 subgroup,with significant benefits and controllable safety.

PURPOSE: Bone cement-reinforced fenestrated pedicle screws (FPSs) have been widely used in the internal fixation and repair of the spine with osteoporosis in recent years and show significant improvement in fixation strength and stability. However, compared with conventional reinforcement methods, the advantages of bone cement-reinforced FPSs remain undetermined. This article compares the effects of fenestrated and conventional pedicle screws (CPSs) combined with bone cement in the treatment of osteoporosis. METHODS: A clinical control study of FPSs and CPSs combined with bone cement reinforcement in osteoporotic vertebral internal fixation was performed using the database PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, the Wanfang, and the China Biomedical Literature Service System. Two evaluators screened the relevant literature in strict accordance with the inclusion criteria (diagnosis of participants, type of clinical study, treatment with FPS and CPS, and outcome indicators) and exclusion criteria (duplicate literature and missing or incorrect data) and independently conducted data extraction and quality evaluation. Clinical control studies of direct comparison between FPS and CPS combined with bone cement reinforcement in patients who were definitively diagnosed with thoracolumbar fractures or spinal degenerative diseases were included. Quality evaluation was conducted using the Cochrane risk bias evaluation tool for randomized controlled studies and using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale for retrospective case-control studies. RevMan software (version 5.3) was used for the meta-analysis to compare the clinical efficacy, radiological results, and related complications of the 2 methods. RESULTS: A total of 13 articles were included, including 7 randomized controlled studies and 6 retrospective case-control studies. There were 909 patients in these studies, 451 in the FPS and polymethyl methacrylate (FPS & PMMA) group and 458 in the CPS and polymethyl methacrylate (CPS & PMMA) group. The results of the meta-analysis showed that there was no significant difference between the 2 groups in operation time, hospital stay, visual analogue score, Japanese orthopaedic association score, Oswestry disability index score, Cobb angle, vertebral body deformation index and fusion rate (p > 0.05). The mean difference of intraoperative bleeding volume was -10.45, (95% confidence intervals (CI) (-16.92, -3.98), p = 0.002), the mean difference of loss height of the anterior edge of the vertebral body after surgery was -0.69 (95% CI (-0.93, -0.44), p < 0.001), and the relative risk (RR) of overall complication rate was 0.43 (95% CI (0.27, 0.68), p < 0.001), including the RR of bone cement leakage rate was 0.57 (95% CI (0.39, 0.85), p = 0.005). The screw loosening rate (RR = 0.26, 95% CI (0.13, 0.54), p < 0.001) of the FPS group was significantly lower than that of the CPS group. CONCLUSION The existing clinical evidence shows that compared with the CPS combined with bone cement, the use of FPS repair in the internal fixation of an osteoporotic vertebral body can reduce the amount of intraoperative bleeding, be more conducive to maintaining the height of the vertebral body, and significantly reduce the incidence of postoperative complications such as bone cement leakage and screw loosening.
Humans ; Pedicle Screws ; Bone Cements ; Spinal Fractures/surgery* ; Osteoporotic Fractures/surgery* ; Fracture Fixation, Internal/instrumentation*

Spermatogenesis is a fundamental process that requires a tightly controlled epigenetic event in spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs). The mechanisms underlying the transition from SSCs to sperm are largely unknown. Most studies utilize gene knockout mice to explain the mechanisms. However, the production of genetically engineered mice is costly and time-consuming. In this study, we presented a convenient research strategy using an RNA interference (RNAi) and testicular transplantation approach. Histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9) methylation was dynamically regulated during spermatogenesis. As Jumonji domain-containing protein 1A (JMJD1A) and Jumonji domain-containing protein 2C (JMJD2C) demethylases catalyze histone H3 lysine 9 dimethylation (H3K9me2), we firstly analyzed the expression profile of the two demethylases and then investigated their function. Using the convenient research strategy, we showed that normal spermatogenesis is disrupted due to the downregulated expression of both demethylases. These results suggest that this strategy might be a simple and alternative approach for analyzing spermatogenesis relative to the gene knockout mice strategy.
Spermatogenesis/physiology* ; Animals ; Male ; Mice ; Epigenesis, Genetic ; Jumonji Domain-Containing Histone Demethylases/metabolism* ; Histones/metabolism* ; RNA Interference ; Testis/metabolism* ; Methylation ; Mice, Knockout ; Histone Demethylases