D-dimer-albumin ratio (DAR) as a new biomarker for predicting preoperative deep vein thrombosis after geriatric hip fracture patients.

PURPOSE: Hip fractures in the elderly are complicated by preoperative deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The objective of this study is to determine the usefulness of blood-based biomarkers, particularly the D-dimer-albumin ratio (DAR), in predicting preoperative DVT. METHODS: A retrospective observational study was carried out on 1149 patients from a single hospital, and subsequently validated on an additional 626 patients from a separate hospital. The aim was to evaluate the prognostic and predictive value of 10 biomarkers, with a specific emphasis on DAR, in both cohorts. The primary measure of interest was the occurrence of preoperative DVT. RESULTS: The ratio of D-dimer to albumin demonstrated superior predictive capability for preoperative DVT in older patients with hip fractures compared to other biomarkers (AUC = 0.677). Using the optimal cutoff point of 0.24, high DAR was significantly associated with preoperative DVT (OR 3.45, 95% CI 2.00-5.95). Notably, all the DAR definitions detailed above were successfully validated in an external, independent cohort. CONCLUSIONS: DAR may be a valuable biomarker for predicting preoperative DVT in elderly patients with hip fractures.

Leaf spot of Alnus cremastogyne Caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides in Sichuan, China.

Alnus cremastogyne Burk, a broad-leaved tree endemic to south-western China, has both ecological and economic value. The tree is widely used in furniture, timber, windbreaks and sand fixation, and soil and water conservation (Tariq et al. 2018). In December 2020, a new leaf spot disease was discovered on A. cremastogyne in two plant nurseries in Bazhong City (31°15' to 32°45N, 106°21' to 107°45'E), with 77.53% disease incidence. Among the infected trees, 69.54% of the leaves were covered with symptoms of the disease. The typical symptoms initially appeared as irregular brown necrotic lesions, while some lesions were surrounded by a light yellow halo. As the disease progressed, the number of necrotic lesions increased, and lesions gradually expanded and coalesced (Fig. 1). Finally, the disease caused the leaves of A. cremastogyne to wither, curl, die, and fall off. Ten symptomatic leaves were collected from 5 different trees in the two plant nurseries. The leaves with symptoms of leaf spot disease were collected and cut from the junction between the diseased and the healthy tissues. The infected tissues from 10 samples were cut into small 2.5 × 2.5 mm pieces. Infected tissues was sterilized in 3% NaClO solution for 60 s followed by 75% ethanol for 90 s, rinsed three times in sterile water, blot-dried with autoclaved paper towels, and then cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 25℃ for 4 to 8 days in 12 h/12 h light/dark conditions. After 8 days, the colony diameter reached 71.2 to 79.8 mm. The colonies were initially light pink, and then turned white with pale orange beneath. The conidia were single-celled, aseptate, colorless, cylindrical, straight, bluntly rounded at both ends, and measured 11.6 to 15.9 × 4.3 to 6.1 µm (n = 100). These morphological characteristics were consistent with the description of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (Pan et al. 2021). For molecular identification, the genomic DNA of a representative isolate, QM202012, was extracted using a fungal genomic DNA extraction kit (Solarbio, Beijing). The internal transcribed spacer (ITS), actin (ACT), and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) genes were amplified with primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), ACT-512F/ACT-783R (Carbone & Kohn, 1999) and GDF/GDR (Templeton et al. 1992), respectively. Sequences were deposited in GenBank (ITS: OL744612, ACT: OL763390, and GAPDH: OL799166). BLAST results indicated that the ITS, ACT, and GAPDH sequences showed >99% identity with C. gloeosporioides sequences in NCBI (GenBank NR160754, MG561657, and KP145407). Identification was confirmed by Bayesian inference using Mr Bayer (Fig 2) A conidial suspension (1 × 106 conidia/ml) was used to test pathogenicity on the leaves of 4-year-old A. cremastogyne plants (10 plants). Fifteen leaves of each plant (10 pots in total) were inoculated with the spore suspension on the leaves. The same number of control leaves was sprayed with sterilized distilled water as a control. Finally, all potted plants were placed in a greenhouse at 25°C under 16 h/8 h photoperiod and 67 to 78% relative humidity. The symptoms observed on the inoculated plants were similar to those of the original diseased plants, with 100% of the inoculated plants being infested with brown leaf spots, but the controls remained symptom-free. C. gloeosporioides was re-isolated from the infected leaves and identified by both morphological characteristics and DNA sequence analysis. The pathogenicity test was repeated three times, showing similar results each time, confirming Koch's postulates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of leaf spot on A. cremastogyne caused by C. gloeosporioides in China. This finding indicates that C. gloeosporioides may become a serious threat to A. cremastogyne production in Bazhong City and helps to further examine and prevent leaf spot disease in A. cremastogyne growing areas in Bazhong City.

An Integrated Approach Fusing CEEMD Energy Entropy and Sparrow Search Algorithm-Based PNN for Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Bearings.

This paper solves the problem of difficulty in achieving satisfactory results with traditional methods of bearing fault diagnosis, which can effectively extract the fault information and improve the fault diagnosis accuracy. This paper proposes a novel artificial intelligence fault diagnosis method by integrating complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD), energy entropy (EE), and probabilistic neural network (PNN) optimized by a sparrow search algorithm (SSA). The vibration signal of rolling bear was firstly decomposed by CEEMD into a set of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) at different time scales. Then, the correlation coefficient was used as a selection criterion to determine the effective IMFs, and the signal features were extracted by EE as the input of the diagnosis model to suppress the influence of the redundant information and maximize the retention of the original signal features. Afterwards, SSA was used to optimize the smoothing factor parameter of PNN to reduce the influence of human factors on the neural network and improve the performance of the fault diagnosis model. Finally, the proposed CEEMD-EE-SSA-PNN method was verified and evaluated by experiments. The experimental results indicate that the presented method can accurately identify different fault states of rolling bearings and achieve better classification performance of fault states compared with other methods.

First report of Leaf spot Caused by Colletotrichum siamense on Pharbitis purpurea in Sichuan, China.

The Pharbitis purpurea (L.) Voisgt, a member of the Convolvulaceae, is a graceful plant with an air purifying function and ornamental values. It is often cultivated in parks and roadsides. In April 2021, leaf spots (with approximately 67.9% disease incidence) were observed on P. purpurea grown in Xichang city (27°49'N; 102°16'E). More than 1000 square meters of planting area were investigated. Initially, yellowish-brown spots were of different sizes with a yellow irregular border, and slightly sunken necrotic lesions. Gradually, the necrotic lesions expanded and developed into brown spots that often coalesced and expanded to cover the entire leaves. Finally, the leaves wilted, died and fell off. For fungal isolation, infected tissues from ten samples were cut into small pieces of (2.5 × 2.5 mm) sterilized with 3% NaOCl for 30 s and 75% ethanol for 60 s, rinsed three times with sterilized water, blot-dried and cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 25°C in dark for 8 days. After culturing for 8 days, the colony diameter reached 75.2 to 79.7 mm. The pure colonies were grayish-white with pale yellowish borders and grayish black and pale yellowish borders on the reverse side. The conidia were hyaline, single-celled, cylindrical, smooth-walled, subcylindrical with obtuse to slightly rounded ends, measuring 11.6 to 17.9 × 3.7 to 5.8 µm (n = 100; average=14.7 × 4.9µm). These morphological characteristics were consistent with the description of Colletotricum siamense (Zhang et al. 2021). For molecular identification, the genomic DNA of the representative isolate LBH202104 was extracted using a fungal genomic DNA extraction kit (Solarbio, Beijing). Partial of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions, actin (ACT), calmodulin (CAL), and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) genes were amplified using the primers ITS1/ITS4, ACT-512F/ACT-783R, CL1C/CL2C, and GDF/GDR, respectively (Weir et al. 2012). BLAST results of obtained sequences (ITS: OM948680, ACT: OM959361, CAL: OM959366, and GAPDH: OM959364), showed >99% identity with C. siamense sequences (MN305712, MZ461478, MK141754, and MK361203) in GenBank. Based on morphology and phylogenetic analysis, the representative isolate was identified as Colletotrichum siamense (Fig. S1&S2). For pathogenicity test, the conidial suspension (1 × 106 conidia/ml) was sprayed on the leaves of 4-year-old eight potted P. purpurea plants. Fifteen leaves of each plant were inoculated. For negative controls, 8 plants were sprayed with sterilized distilled water. Finally, all pots were kept in a greenhouse at 26°C under a 16 h/8 h photoperiod and 68 to 75% relative humidity. The inoculated plants showed symptoms similar to those of the original diseased plants, while controls remained asymptomatic. C. siamense cultures were re-isolated from the infected leaves and identified by both morphological characteristics and DNA sequence analysis. The pathogenicity test was repeated thrice, which showed similar results, confirming Koch's postulates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of leaf spot caused by C. siamense on P. purpurea worldwide. The identification of this pathogen provides a foundation for the management of Leaf spot in P. purpurea.

The minimally invasive spinal surgery in the treatment of posterior edge separation.

BACKGROUND: Posterior edge separation of the vertebral body is an uncommon but non-rare orthopedic disease, the traditional treatment is posterior open surgery. Recently, a lot of attempts in minimally invasive treatment of lumbar posterior edge fracture have been made. We set to discover the value of minimally invasive surgery in the treatment of posterior edge separation, we designed this retrospective study. METHODS: Eighteen patients (10 males and 8 females) with posterior edge separation were included between September 2015 and May 2019. The mean age of the patients were 49.9 years. Patients that we included were divided into two groups: people in team A were treated with percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD), while the other group (team B) were carried the minimally invasive spinal surgery-transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MISS-TLIF). The intraoperative/postoperative complications and index were recorded respectively. Visual analogue scale (VAS) and Oswestry disability index (ODI) were applied as evaluation parameters to evaluate the effect of the procedure. RESULTS: The mean operation time and notch length in PELD group were 71 min and 6.8 mm, while these date in the other group were 105 min and 31.2 mm. In PELD group, the blood loss during the operation were 5 mL and the time lying in bed after the surgery 24 h, the data in corresponding group were 101 mL and 96 h. People included in our trial (excluding 1 defaulters) had a mean follow-up of 9 months (range, 3-12 months). The VAS and ODI score before and after the surgery had insignificant difference between the two groups (P>0.05). Compared with the data before the operation, the VAS and ODI score had significantly improved after the surgery in two groups (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The MISS-TLIF and PELD were all effective methods in the treatment of posterior edge separation.

Discovery of 3,6-diaryl-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridines as potent anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitors.

A new series of 3,6-diaryl-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridine compounds have been discovered as potent anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitors. The 4-hydroxyphenyl in the 6-position of 1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridine were crucial and a fluorine atom substitution could give promising inhibitory activity. The IC50 of compound 9v against ALK was up to 1.58 nM and a binding mechanism was proposed.

Metal-free α-alkylation of alcohols with para-quinone methides.

A metal-free α-alkylation of alcohols with para-quinone methides (p-QMs) for accessing alcohol-containing phenols and dihydroisocoumarins has been developed. The alcohols were converted to α-oxy radicals in the presence of di-tert-butyl peroxide (DTBP), which were added to p-QMs for aromatization and C(sp3)-C(sp3) bond formation.