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Background Workplace heat exposure can cause a series of heat-related illnesses and injuries. Protecting workers especially those undertake work outdoors from the risk of heat strain is a great challenge for many workplaces in China under the context of climate change. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions and adaptation behaviors of heat exposure among construction workers and to provide evidence for the development of targeted heat adaptation strategies nationally and internationally. Methods In 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional online questionnaire survey via WeChat Survey Star in China, using a purposive snowball sampling approach. A total of 326 construction workers submitted completed questionnaires. The perceptions of workplace heat exposure were measured using seven indicators: concerns over high temperature, perception of high temperature injury, attitudes towards both heat-related training and regulations, adjustment of working habits during heat, heat prevention measures in the workplace, and reduction of work efficiency. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were used to identify the factors significantly associated with workers’ heat perceptions and behavioral responses. Results 33.3% of the respondents were moderately or very concerned about heat exposure in the workplace. Less than half of the workers (43.8%) were worried about heat-related injuries. Workers who have either experienced work-related injuries (OR = 1.30, 95% CI 1.03–1.62) or witnessed injuries to others during high temperatures (OR = 1.12, 95% CI 1.02–1.27) were more concerned about heat exposure compared to other workers. Most respondents (63.5%) stated that their work efficiency declined during extremely hot weather. The factors significantly associated with a reduction of work efficiency included undertaking physically demanding jobs (OR = 1.28, 95% CI 1.07–1.54) and witnessing other workers’ injuries during high temperatures (OR = 1.26, 95% CI 1.11–1.43). More than half of the workers were willing to adjust their work habits to adapt to the impact of high temperatures (81.6%). The internet was the most common method to obtain heat prevention information (44.7%), and the most frequently used heat prevention measure was the provision of cool drinking water (64.8%). Conclusions Chinese construction workers lack heat risk awareness and are not well prepared for the likely increasing heat exposure in the workplace due to global warming. Therefore, there is a need to improve their awareness of heat-related injuries, strengthen high temperature related education and training, and update the current heat prevention policies to ensure compliance and implementation.

Reconstructing large, inflammatory maxillofacial defects using stem cell-based therapy faces challenges from adverse microenvironments, including high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), inadequate oxygen, and intensive inflammation. Here, inspired by the reaction mechanisms of intracellular antioxidant defense systems, we propose the de novo design of an artificial antioxidase using Ru-doped layered double hydroxide (Ru-hydroxide) for efficient redox homeostasis and maxillofacial bone regeneration. Our studies demonstrate that Ru-hydroxide consists hydroxyls-synergistic monoatomic Ru centers, which efficiently react with oxygen species and collaborate with hydroxyls for rapid proton and electron transfer, thus exhibiting efficient, broad-spectrum, and robust ROS scavenging performance. Moreover, Ru-hydroxide can effectively sustain stem cell viability and osteogenic differentiation in elevated ROS environments, modulating the inflammatory microenvironment during bone tissue regeneration in male mice. We believe this Ru-hydroxide development offers a promising avenue for designing antioxidase-like materials to treat various inflammation-associated disorders, including arthritis, diabetic wounds, enteritis, and bone fractures. Reconstructing inflammatory maxillofacial defects is a global health challenge. This study presents an artificial antioxidase with rapid proton/electron transfer for efficient redox homeostasis and maxillofacial bone regeneration.

Cloud segmentation is a fundamental step in accurately acquiring cloud cover. However, due to the nonrigid structures of clouds, traditional cloud segmentation methods perform worse than expected. In this paper, a novel deep convolutional neural network (CNN) named MA-SegCloud is proposed for segmenting cloud images based on a multibranch asymmetric convolution module (MACM) and an attention mechanism. The MACM is composed of asymmetric convolution, depth-separable convolution, and a squeeze-and-excitation module (SEM). The MACM not only enables the network to capture more contextual information in a larger area but can also adaptively adjust the feature channel weights. The attention mechanisms SEM and convolutional block attention module (CBAM) in the network can strengthen useful features for cloud image segmentation. As a result, MA-SegCloud achieves a 96.9% accuracy, 97.0% precision, 97.0% recall, 97.0% F-score, 3.1% error rate, and 94.0% mean intersection-over-union (MIoU) on the Singapore Whole-sky Nychthemeron Image Segmentation (SWINySEG) dataset. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that MA-SegCloud performs favorably against state-of-the-art cloud image segmentation methods.

The sex ratio shift was observed in peoples who underwent ART treatment. Moreover, there is limited evidence on differences in sex ratio between single frozen-thawed blastocyst morphology, insemination type and transfer days. So further research is needed in this area with regard to factors possibly affecting the sex ratio. Retrospective study based on multicenter including two large assisted reproduction centers in Shanghai and Wuhan in China. A total of 6361 singleton delivery offspring after frozen-thawed blastocyst transfer. Propensity score weighting and logistic regression models were used to estimate the associations between blastocyst morphology grading and child sex ratio. The main outcome measures is singleton sex ratio. In our study, the primary outcome measure was sex ratio which was calculated as the proportion of male newborns among all live births. Higher quality blastocysts resulted in a higher sex ratio than single poor-quality frozen-thawed blastocyst transfer. Among the three blastocyst morphological parameters of trophectoderm (TE), Grade A and B were significantly associated with a higher sex ratio than Grade C. The similar trend was observed in both IVF and ICSI treated subgroups. As compared with expansion (4 + 3), expansion degree 6 achieved a higher sex ratio in overall populations and IVF treated subgroup. Transferring blastocysts of day 6 had the highest sex ratio both in IVF group and ICSI group. A 6.95% higher sex ratio in transferring blastocysts of day 5 in IVF group than those in ICSI group. No significant association between inner cell mass degree and sex ratio was observed. However, as compared with IVF treatment, all morphology parameters achieved the similar or the biased sex ratio favoring female in ICSI treated subgroup. Quality of blastocysts was positively associated with sex ratio. TE score and expansion degree rather than ICM were significantly associated with sex ratio at birth. ICSI treatment promotes the biased sex ratio favoring female.

Neurologic injury remains a critical complication of deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA) in aortic arch surgery, with neuroinflammation driven by multiple factors in its pathogenesis. While circular RNAs (circRNAs) are known to modulate inflammatory responses, their specific role in DHCA-associated brain injury has not been established. In this study, we demonstrated that circFRRS1 exacerbates hippocampal neuroinflammation via the miR-27a-3p/TLR4 axis through integrated in vivo and in vitro approaches. In a rat model of DHCA, machine learning-based motion sequencing (MoSeq) identified delirium-like behaviors, accompanied by hippocampal neuronal necrosis and activation of NLRP3 inflammasome. circFRRS1 was significantly upregulated in hippocampal tissue following DHCA and in hypoxic-ischemic PC-12 cells. Silencing circFRRS1 attenuated oxygen-glucose deprivation/reperfusion (OGD/R)-induced cytotoxicity and suppressed the TLR4/NF-κB/NLRP3 signaling pathway. Mechanistically, circFRRS1 acts as a molecular sponge for miR-27a-3p, thereby relieving its repression of TLR4; inhibition of miR-27a-3p abolished the observed neuroprotective effects. This study identifies circFRRS1 as the first reported circRNA to regulate DHCA-induced neuroinflammation, uncovering a novel epigenetic mechanism and suggesting the potential of circRNA-targeted therapies as adjuvants to conventional hypothermic strategies.

AMPylation is a post-translational modification in which AMP is added to the amino acid side chains of proteins 1 , 2 . Here we show that, with ATP as the ligand and actin as the host activator, the effector protein LnaB of Legionella pneumophila exhibits AMPylase activity towards the phosphoryl group of phosphoribose on PR R42 -Ub that is generated by the SidE family of effectors, and deubiquitinases DupA and DupB in an E1- and E2-independent ubiquitination process 3 – 7 . The product of LnaB is further hydrolysed by an ADP-ribosylhydrolase, MavL, to Ub, thereby preventing the accumulation of PR R42 -Ub and ADPR R42 -Ub and protecting canonical ubiquitination in host cells. LnaB represents a large family of AMPylases that adopt a common structural fold, distinct from those of the previously known AMPylases, and LnaB homologues are found in more than 20 species of bacterial pathogens. Moreover, LnaB also exhibits robust phosphoryl-AMPylase activity towards phosphorylated residues and produces unique ADPylation modifications in proteins. During infection, LnaB AMPylates the conserved phosphorylated tyrosine residues in the activation loop of the Src family of kinases 8 , 9 , which dampens downstream phosphorylation signalling in the host. Structural studies reveal the actin-dependent activation and catalytic mechanisms of the LnaB family of AMPylases. This study identifies, to our knowledge, an unprecedented molecular regulation mechanism in bacterial pathogenesis and protein phosphorylation. An effector protein called LnaB from Legionella pneumophila catalyses a unique type of AMPylation, and LnaB and its homologues represent a distinct family of AMPylases with specific structural features.

Using the method of social network analysis, this article explores the characteristics of financial resources distribution at the provincial level in China from 2000 to 2017, and analyzes the influencing factors and network effects of the spatial correlation network characteristics on distribution of financial resources, the results are as follows: The overall network characteristics of the financial resources distribution among provinces and cities in China are of low density, of high dependence and poor stability. The level of economic development, marketization, and integration are related to the spatial correlation network of the distribution of financial resources, and the level of integration and marketization have a significant positive impact on it. Due to the imbalance of economic development among regions in China, the overall network characteristics have a negative network effect on the speed of economic development. Individual network characteristics have a positive network effect on the speed of economic development. Improving network density, network correlation, and reducing network level can narrow the gap in economic development between provinces.

Coastal eutrophication and hypoxia remain a persistent environmental crisis despite the great efforts to reduce nutrient loading and mitigate associated environmental damages. Symptoms of this crisis have appeared to spread rapidly, reaching developing countries in Asia with emergences in Southern America and Africa. The pace of changes and the underlying drivers remain not so clear. To address the gap, we review the up-to-date status and mechanisms of eutrophication and hypoxia in global coastal oceans, upon which we examine the trajectories of changes over the 40 years or longer in six model coastal systems with varying socio-economic development statuses and different levels and histories of eutrophication. Although these coastal systems share common features of eutrophication, site-specific characteristics are also substantial, depending on the regional environmental setting and level of social-economic development along with policy implementation and management. Nevertheless, ecosystem recovery generally needs greater reduction in pressures compared to that initiated degradation and becomes less feasible to achieve past norms with a longer time anthropogenic pressures on the ecosystems. While the qualitative causality between drivers and consequences is well established, quantitative attribution of these drivers to eutrophication and hypoxia remains difficult especially when we consider the social economic drivers because the changes in coastal ecosystems are subject to multiple influences and the cause–effect relationship is often non-linear. Such relationships are further complicated by climate changes that have been accelerating over the past few decades. The knowledge gaps that limit our quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the human-coastal ocean nexus are identified, which is essential for science-based policy making. Recognizing lessons from past management practices, we advocate for a better, more efficient indexing system of coastal eutrophication and an advanced regional earth system modeling framework with optimal modules of human dimensions to facilitate the development and evaluation of effective policy and restoration actions.

Among women undergoing IVF, high BMI negatively affects pregnancy outcomes when using the conventional ovary stimulating protocols combined with fresh embryo transfer. Therefore, finding a proper treatment for these high BMI women is more important and urgent when obesity is prevalent. In our study, we reported a retrospective study of 4457 women who were divided into normal BMI group (18.5 kg/m 2 –24.9 kg/m 2 ) and high BMI group (≥25 kg/m 2 ) undergoing 4611 IVF treatment cycles with frozen embryo transfer (FET). We found the high BMI group originally had the poor oocytes performance, but after FET they got the similar pregnancy outcomes as the normal BMI group. Then under FET we analyzed the IVF outcomes of our new progestin-primed ovary stimulation (PPOS) protocol, indicating that the hMG + MPA (4 or 10 mg/d) groups had the obvious better pregnancy results than the conventional short group in the high BMI group, and binary logistic regression analysis showed the hMG + MPA (10 mg/d) group was associated with better pregnancy outcomes than the hMG + MPA (4 mg/d) group. These results indicate PPOS - hMG + MPA (10 mg/d) combined with FET might be a new potential treatment choice for the high BMI women undergoing IVF treatments.

Mineralized tissues, such as teeth and bones, pose significant challenges for repair due to their hardness, low permeability, and limited blood flow compared to soft tissues. Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) have been identified as playing a crucial role in mineralized tissue formation and repair. However, the application of large amounts of exogenous BMPs may cause side effects such as inflammation. Therefore, it is necessary to identify a more precise molecular target downstream of the ligands. Activin receptor-like kinase 3 (ALK3), a key transmembrane receptor, serves as a vital gateway for the transmission of BMP signals, triggering cellular responses. Recent research has yielded new insights into the regulatory roles of ALK3 in mineralized tissues. Experimental knockout or mutation of ALK3 has been shown to result in skeletal dysmorphisms and failure of tooth formation, eruption, and orthodontic tooth movement. This review summarizes the roles of ALK3 in mineralized tissue regulation and elucidates how ALK3-mediated signaling influences the physiology and pathology of teeth and bones. Additionally, this review provides a reference for recommended basic research and potential future treatment strategies for the repair and regeneration of mineralized tissues.