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Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is marked by hepatic steatosis accompanied by an inflammatory response. At present, there are no approved therapeutic agents for NAFLD. Dendrobium Huoshanense polysaccharide (DHP), an active ingredient extracted from the stems of Dendrobium Huoshanense , and exerts a protective effect against liver injury. However, the therapeutic effects and mechanisms of action DHP against NAFLD remain unclear. DHP was extracted, characterized, and administered to mice in which NAFLD had been induced with a high-fat and high-fructose drinking (HFHF) diet. Our results showed that DHP used in this research exhibits the characteristic polysaccharide peak with a molecular weight of 179.935 kDa and is composed primarily of Man and Glc in a molar ratio of 68.97:31.03. DHP treatment greatly ameliorated NAFLD by significantly reducing lipid accumulation and the levels of liver function markers in HFHF-induced NAFLD mice, as evidenced by decreased serum levels of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), total cholesterol (TC) and total triglyceride (TG). Furthermore, DHP administration reduced hepatic steatosis, as shown by H&E and Oil red O staining. DHP also inhibited the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)/nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) signaling pathway expression, thereby reducing levels of hepatic proinflammatory cytokines. Besides, untargeted metabolomics further indicated that 49 metabolites were affected by DHP. These metabolites are strongly associated the metabolism of glycine, serine, threonine, nicotinate and nicotinamide, and arachidonic acid. In conclusion, DHP has a therapeutic effect against NAFLD, whose underlying mechanism may involve the modulation of TLR4/NF-κB, reduction of inflammation, and regulation of the metabolism of glycine, serine, threonine, nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism, and arachidonic acid metabolism.

The benefits of anatomic resection (AR) vs. non-anatomic resection (NAR) in patients with primary intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) with hepatolithiasis (HICC) are unclear. This study aimed to compare the long-term outcomes of AR vs. NAR in patients with HICC. A total of 147 consecutive patients with HICC who underwent R0 hepatectomy were included. Overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) following AR vs. NARs were compared using a 1:1 propensity score matching (PSM) analysis. A subgroup analysis was also conducted according to whether there are lymph node metastases (LNM). In a multivariate analysis, CA 19-9 (>39 U/L), microvascular invasion, LNM, and NAR were independent risk factors for poor RFS and OS rates, whereas multiple tumors were independent risk factors for OS. AR had better 1-, 3-, and 5-year RFS and OS rates than NAR (OS: 78.7, 58.9, and 28.5%, respectively, vs. 61.2, 25.4, and 8.8%, respectively; RFS: 59.5, 36.5, and 20.5%, respectively, vs. 38.2, 12.1, and 6.9%, respectively). After PSM, 100 patients were enrolled. The NAR group also had significantly poorer OS and RFS (OS: 0.016; RFS: = 0.010) than the AR group. The subgroup analysis demonstrated that in HICC without LNM, OS and RFS were significantly poorer in the NAR group than the AR group, while no significant differences were observed in HICC with LNM before or after PSM. Anatomic resection was associated with better long-term survival outcomes than NAR in patients with HICC, except for patients with LNM.

The major concern in the aviation industry is the flight safety. Although great effort has been put into the development of material and system reliability, the failure cases of fatal accidents still occur nowadays. Due to the complexity of the aviation system and the interaction among the failure components, it is difficult to do the failure analysis of the related equipment. This study focused on surveying the failure cases in aviation, which were extracted from failure analysis journals, including Engineering Failure Analysis and Case studies in Engineering Failure Analysis, in order to obtain the failure sensitive factors or failure sensitive parts. The analytical results showed that among the failure cases the fatigue failure is the largest in number of occurrence. The most failed components are the disk, blade, landing gear, bearing, and fastener. The frequently failed materials are steel, aluminum alloy, superalloy and titanium alloy. Therefore, in order to assure the safety in aviation, more attention should be paid to the fatigue failures.

For nonlinear equations, the homotopy methods (continuation methods) are popular in engineering fields since their convergence regions are large and they are quite reliable to find a solution. The disadvantage of the classical homotopy methods is that their computational time is heavy since they need to solve many auxiliary nonlinear systems during the intermediate continuation processes. In order to overcome this shortcoming, we consider the special explicit continuation Newton method with the residual trust-region time-stepping scheme for this problem. According to our numerical experiments, the new method is more robust and faster than the traditional optimization method (the built-in subroutine fsolve.m of the MATLAB environment) and the homotopy continuation methods (HOMPACK90 and NAClab). Furthermore, we analyze the global convergence and the local superlinear convergence of the new method.

By using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigated a triangle double-layer graphene nanoisland with mixed-spin (3/2, 2) configuration. We focused on the effects of crystal-fields, exchange couplings, longitudinal magnetic fields, and temperature on the magnetic properties of the system. Various curves of magnetization, susceptibility, and internal energy as a function of temperature were obtained. We plotted the phase diagrams of blocking temperature in the different parameter planes. We found that increasing | J ab / J Z |, J bb / J Z , and h / J Z or weakening | D b / J Z | is beneficial to improving the T B / J Z , but the T B / J Z is very insensitive to changes in the D a / J Z and J aa / J Z . In addition, it is worth noting that the system can exhibit abundant multiple-loops hysteresis behaviors for certain physical parameters, such as triple, quadruple, quintuple, septuple hysteresis loops.

The outbreak of a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) generated an outbreak of public opinions in the Chinese Sina-microblog. To help in designing effective communication strategies during a major public health emergency, we propose a multiple-information susceptible-discussing-immune (M-SDI) model in order to understand the patterns of key information propagation on social networks. We develop the M-SDI model, based on the public discussion quantity and take into account of the behavior that users may re-enter another related topic or Weibo after discussing one. Data fitting using the real data of COVID-19 public opinion obtained from Chinese Sina-microblog can parameterize the model to make accurate prediction of the public opinion trend until the next major news item occurs. The reproduction ratio has fallen from 1.7769 and maintained around 0.97, which reflects the peak of public opinion has passed but it will continue for a period of time.

Dual antiplatelet therapy （DAT） with aspirin and clopidogrel is the standard regimen to achieve rapid platelet inhibition and prevent thrombotic events. Currently, little information is available regarding alternative antiplatelet therapy in patients with an allergy or intolerance to aspirin. Although cilostazol is already a common alternative to aspirin in clinical practice in China, its efficacy and safety remain to be determined. We retrospectively analyzed 613 Chinese patients who had undergone primary percutaneous coronary intervention （PCl）. Among them, 405 patients received standard DAT （aspirin plus clopidogrel） and 205 patients were identified with intolerance to aspirin and received alternative DAT （cilostazol plus clopidogrel）. There were no significant differences between the two groups in their baseline clinical characteristics. The main outcomes of the study included major adverse cardiac events （MACEs） and bleeding events during 12 months of follow-up. The MACEs endpoint was reached in 10 of 205 patients treated with cilostazol （4.9%） and in 34 of 408 patients treated with aspirin （8.3%）. No statistically significant difference was observed in MACEs between the two groups. However, patients in the cilostazol group had less restenosis than did patients in the aspirin group （1.5% vs 4.9%, P=0.035）. The occurrence of bleeding events tended to be lower in the cilostazol group （0.49% vs 2.7%, P=0.063）. These clinical observations were further analyzed using network system pharmacology analysis, and the outcomes were consistent with clinical observations and preclinical data reports. We conclude that in Chinese patients with aspirin intolerance undergoing coronary stent implantation, the combination of clopidogrel with cilostazol may be an efficacious and safe alternative to the standard DAT regimen.

Objective： Percutaneous coronary intervention （PCI） triggers an acute inflammatory response, while sirolimus is known to have anti-inflammatory properties; the inflammatory system response to PCI after sirolimus-eluting stent placement remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to determine the changes in high sensitive C-reactive protein （hs-CRP） and apelin after PCI procedure and drug-eluting stent implantation in patients with and without reduced left ventricular systolic function. Methods： Forty-eight consecutive patients undergoing PCI at the Beijing Anzhen Hospital between July and September 2006 were recruited. Sirolimus-eluting stents were employed in all patients. Blood samples were drawn immediately before and 24 h after the procedure. Plasma hs-CRP and apelin levels were determined by enzyme immunoassay. Results： Paired t-test revealed a significant increase in both hs-CRP and apelin post-procedure （P=0.006 and P〈0.0001, respectively）. Patients with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction （LVEF） had significantly lower baseline apelin levels compared to those with normal ventricular function [（46.8±10.8） vs. （72.0±8.4） pg/ml, P〈0.001]. However, apelin increased to a level similar to the level of those with normal left ventricular systolic function 24 h after the PCI procedure [（86.7±11.6） vs. （85.1±6.1） pg/ml, P=0.72]. Conclusions： hs-CRP and apelin levels increased after PCI and sirolimus-eluting stent implantation. Patients with impaired left ventricular systolic function had significantly lower baseline apelin levels, which increased significantly after PCI.

For nonlinear equations, the homotopy methods (continuation methods) are popular in engineering fields since their convergence regions are large and they are quite reliable to find a solution. The disadvantage of the classical homotopy methods is that their computational time is heavy since they need to solve many auxiliary nonlinear systems during the intermediate continuation processes. In order to overcome this shortcoming, we consider the special explicit continuation Newton method with the residual trust-region time-stepping scheme for this problem. According to our numerical experiments, the new method is more robust and faster to find the required solution of the real-world problem than the traditional optimization method (the built-in subroutine fsolve.m of the MATLAB environment) and the homotopy continuation methods(HOMPACK90 and NAClab). Furthermore, we analyze the global convergence and the local superlinear convergence of the new method.

This paper considers an explicit continuation method and the trust-region updating strategy for the unconstrained optimization problem. Moreover, in order to improve its computational efficiency and robustness, the new method uses the switching preconditioning technique. In the well-conditioned phase, the new method uses the L-BFGS method as the preconditioning technique in order to improve its computational efficiency. Otherwise, the new method uses the inverse of the Hessian matrix as the pre-conditioner in order to improve its robustness. Numerical results aslo show that the new method is more robust and faster than the traditional optimization method such as the trust-region method and the line search method. The computational time of the new method is about one percent of that of the trust-region method (the subroutine fminunc.m of the MATLAB2019a environment, it is set by the trust-region method) or one fifth of that the line search method (fminunc.m is set by the quasi-Newton method) for the large-scale problem. Finally, the global convergence analysis of the new method is also given.