Analysis of factors affecting the prognosis of patients with intrauterine adhesions after transcervical resection of adhesions.

OBJECTIVES: To study the factors affecting the prognosis of patients with intrauterine adhesions (IUAs) after transcervical resection of adhesions (TCRA), analyze the reproductive outcome, and guide prognostic improvements. DESIGN: Prospective study. PATIENTS: Our study included 292 patients diagnosed with IUAs who underwent follow-up office hysteroscopy at Shenyang Women's and Children's Hospital between June 2018 and June 2022. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were divided into case (52 patients whose hysteroscopy results indicated the presence of IUAs) and nocase (240 patients whose uterine cavity had returned to normal shape without obvious adhesion) groups on the basis of the results of a 2-month follow-up hysteroscopy following TCRA. Clinical data were collected and compared with various influencing factors, and the combined effect of these factors was assessed using multifactorial logistic regression analysis. A nomogram prediction model was constructed and internally validated on the basis of multifactorial analysis. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Intrauterine re-adhesion was observed at a 2-month follow-up after TCRA. RESULTS: Postoperative re-adhesion occurred in 52 of 292 patients with IUAs. Multifactorial binary logistic regression analysis showed that IUA barrier gel reapplication 5 days after TCRA was a protective factor. In contrast, the preoperative American Fertility Society scores demonstrated that severe IUAs and chronic endometritis were risk factors. The results of the multifactorial analysis were used to build a nomogram model, and the area under the curve value of the nomogram model for predicting postoperative recurrence was 0.914 (95% confidence interval: 0.864-0.956). The bootstrap method was subsequently used to resample 1,000 times for internal validation. The results showed that the internal validation C-index was 0.9135, and the calibration and ideal curves were well-matched. CONCLUSION: The prognosis of patients with IUAs after TCRA is related to the severity of preoperative IUAs, presence of chronic endometritis, and IUA barrier gel reapplication 5 days after TCRA. Therefore, clinicians should monitor patients using targeted data to reduce recurrence risk after TCRA and improve the prognosis of patients with IUAs.

Characterizing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on road dusts in Shenzhen, China: implications for road stormwater reuse safety.

Urban road stormwater reuse is one of the most effective ways to mitigate water resource shortage. However, due to a diversity of human activities such as traffic, various toxic pollutants can be deposited on road surfaces during dry periods and washed off during wet periods, threatening stormwater reuse safety. Among these pollutants, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been widely found in road stormwater. This study selected twelve road sites in Shenzhen, China, and investigated PAHs deposited on urban roads and their influential factors (traffic characteristics, land use and road surface condition). The research outcomes showed that high-molecular-weight PAH species (5-6 benzene rings) had higher concentrations and variability on spatial distributions than light-molecular-weight ones (2-4 benzene rings). Additionally, more PAHs were attached to dusts with small particle sizes (< 150 µm), and among influential factors, commercial land use showed a stronger correlation with PAHs distributions, regardless of particle sizes. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that traffic volume did not have an important influence on PAH generations on roads, while the source tracking results did indicate that traffic activities were the main contributor of PAHs. This implies that other traffic characteristics such as frequent go-and-stop activities might also contribute PAHs on roads. This means that areas with frequent traffic congestions could be the "hot spot" areas of PAHs, although the traffic volume might be not high. These research outcomes can provide useful insight into effective stormwater management and ensuring their reuse safety.

Effect of Energy Provision Strategy on Rumen Fermentation Characteristics, Bacterial Diversity and Community Composition.

This study was conducted to explore the rumen fermentation characteristics, bacterial diversity, and community composition of Hu sheep under four energy provision strategies. Ninety-six Hu sheep (body weight: 17.78 ± 1.24 kg) were equally assigned to four energy provision strategies: (1) low-energy diet for the whole finishing stage (LL); (2) high-energy diet for the whole finishing stage (HH); (3) low-energy diet in the early finishing stage and high-energy diet in the late finishing stage (LH); (4) high-energy diet in the early finishing stage and low-energy diet in the late finishing stage (HL). The results showed that the proportion of acetate was lower in the HH group than that in the HL group, whereas the opposite result was observed for the butyrate proportion (p < 0.05). The Chao 1, observed species, PD whole tree, and Shannon index of the rumen bacteria were higher in the LL group than that in the HH group (p < 0.05). The taxonomic annotations revealed that the Patescibacteria, Rikenellaceae RC9 gut group, Christensenellaceae R-7 group, and Anaeroplasma abundances were higher in the HL group than that in the HH group, and the opposite results were observed regarding the relative abundances of Selenomonas and Anaerovibrio (p < 0.05). The relative abundances of Spirochaetota and Treponema were higher in the LH group than that in the HH group (p < 0.05). Moreover, the analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) showed significant differences between groups (R = 0.6792 and p = 0.001). This study indicates that the energy provision strategy had little impact on the rumen fermentation characteristics, while it heavily affected the rumen bacterial diversity and community composition. This study may provide insight into the rumen fermentation characteristics and bacterial community under routine finishing models and contribute to the optimization of energy provision strategies of Hu sheep.

A Research Based on Online Medical Platform: The Influence of Strong and Weak Ties Information on Patients' Consultation Behavior.

As an indispensable part of contemporary medical services, Internet-based medical platforms can provide patients with a full range of multi-disciplinary and multi-modal treatment services. Along with the emergence of many healthcare influencers and the increasing connection between online and offline consultations, the operation of individual physicians and their teams on Internet-based medical platforms has started to attract a lot of attention. The purpose of this paper is to, based on an Internet platform, study how the information on physicians' homepages influences patients' consultation behavior, so as to provide suggestions for the construction of physicians' personal websites. We distinguish variables into strong- and weak-ties types, dependent on whether deep social interactions between physicians and patients have happened. If there exist further social interactions, we define the variable as the "strong ties" type, otherwise, "weak ties". The patients' consultation behavior will be expressed as the volume of online consultation, i.e., the number of patients. We obtained the strong and weak ties information of each physician based on EWM (entropy weight method), so as to establish a regression model with explained variable, i.e., the number of patients, and three explanatory variables, i.e., the strong and weak ties information, and their interaction term. The estimation results verified our hypotheses and proved to be robust. It showed that both strong and weak ties information can positively influence patients' consultation behavior, and the influence of weak ties information is greater. Regarding the positive influence of strong and weak ties, we found a trade off effect between them. Based on the results, we finalize with some suggestions on how to improve a physician's online medical consultation volume.

Glutamate Supplementation Improves Growth Performance, Rumen Fermentation, and Serum Metabolites in Heat-Stressed Hu Sheep.

This study evaluated the effect of glutamate supplementation on the physiological parameters of heat-stressed Hu sheep. Forty-eight male Hu sheep with an average initial body weight of 17.74 ± 0.17 kg were randomly divided into two groups: The control group (CON) was fed a basal diet and a treatment group (GLU) was fed a basal diet + 3 g/head/day of L-glutamate. There were six replications in each group with four sheep in each replication for a 90 days feeding test. Growth performance, serum biochemistry, and serum hormones were measured during phase 1 (1-30 days), phase 2 (31-60 days), and phase 3 (61-90 days) of the experiment; rumen fermentation characteristics, nutrient digestibility, and slaughter performance were measured at the end of the experimental periods. There were no differences in growth performance, serum biochemical indices, and immune indices between CON and GLU during phases 1 and 2. However, a higher average daily gain (ADG), a lower average daily feed intake (ADFI), and a lower F:G ratio (ADFI/ADG) were observed in GLU during phase 3 (p < 0.05). Serum levels of glutamate, globulin, immunoglobulin A, immunoglobulin G, immunoglobulin M, and growth hormone in GLU were higher than those in CON only on day 90 (p < 0.05). Serum levels of heat shock protein 70, adrenocorticotrophic hormone, corticosterone, triiodothyronine, and tetraiodothyronine in GLU were lower than those in CON on day 90 (p < 0.05). At the end of the experiment, ruminal pH, microbial crude protein, ammonia nitrogen, and isovalerate concentrations in GLU were higher than those in CON (p < 0.05). The apparent digestibility of dry matter, organic matter, and crude protein in GLU was higher than those in CON (p < 0.05). There were no differences in carcass traits and organ indices but spleen weight and spleen index tended to be higher in GLU. In conclusion, dietary glutamate supplementation improved rumen fermentation, increased nutrition digestibility and metabolism, enhanced immunity, and promoted growth performance of heat-stressed Hu sheep. This suggests that a longer period of glutamate supplementation (not less than 60 days) at a level of 3 g/head/day is beneficial to Hu sheep under heat stress.

A Novel Signal Design and Performance Analysis in NavCom Based on LEO Constellation.

The mega-launch of low Earth orbit satellites (LEOs) represents a critical opportunity to integrate navigation and communication (NavCom), but first, challenges related to signal design must be overcome. This article proposes a novel signal scheme named CE-OFDM-PM. Via research on the in-band or adjacent band, it was found that the proposed signal scheme was suitable for S-band and had a wide normalized power spectrum density (PSD), high peak-to-side lobe ratio (PSR), and multiple peaks in autocorrelation. In an analysis of the simulation performance evaluation in navigation and communication, it is found that the proposed signal scheme has the potential for high accuracy, a code tracking accuracy of up to 0.85 m, a small mutual influence between the proposed signal scheme and other schemes, excellent anti-interference properties, and a better performance at both short and long distances in terms of its anti-multipath capability. Furthermore, the proposed signal scheme shows the ability to communicate between satellites and the ground and is outstanding in terms of its bit error rate (BER), CNR, and energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio (Eb/N0). From the technical, theoretical, and application perspectives, our proposed signal scheme has potential as an alternative scheme in future BDS, PNTs, and even 5G/B5G.

The Prediction of Infectious Diseases: A Bibliometric Analysis.

OBJECTIVE: The outbreak of infectious diseases has a negative influence on public health and the economy. The prediction of infectious diseases can effectively control large-scale outbreaks and reduce transmission of epidemics in rapid response to serious public health events. Therefore, experts and scholars are increasingly concerned with the prediction of infectious diseases. However, a knowledge mapping analysis of literature regarding the prediction of infectious diseases using rigorous bibliometric tools, which are supposed to offer further knowledge structure and distribution, has been conducted infrequently. Therefore, we implement a bibliometric analysis about the prediction of infectious diseases to objectively analyze the current status and research hotspots, in order to provide a reference for related researchers. METHODS: We viewed "infectious disease*" and "prediction" or "forecasting" as search theme in the core collection of Web of Science from inception to 1 May 2020. We used two effective bibliometric tools, i.e., CiteSpace (Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA) and VOSviewer (Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands) to objectively analyze the data of the prediction of infectious disease domain based on related publications, which can be downloaded from the core collection of Web of Science. Then, the leading publications of the prediction of infectious diseases were identified to detect the historical progress based on collaboration analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-occurrence analysis. RESULTS: 1880 documents that met the inclusion criteria were extracted from Web of Science in this study. The number of documents exhibited a growing trend, which can be expressed an increasing number of experts and scholars paying attention to the field year by year. These publications were published in 427 different journals with 11 different document types, and the most frequently studied types were articles 1618 (83%). In addition, as the most productive country, the United States has provided a lot of scientific research achievements in the field of infectious diseases. CONCLUSION: Our study provides a systematic and objective view of the field, which can be useful for readers to evaluate the characteristics of publications involving the prediction of infectious diseases and for policymakers to take timely scientific responses.

Examining User's Initial Trust Building in Mobile Online Health Community Adopting.

Due to the high perceived risk, it is critical to foster users' initial trust in the promotion of mobile online health community (MOHC) adoption. The present study focused on the role of two different trust elements and examined the initial trust building process based on elaboration likelihood model and trust transfer theory. The results indicated that initial trust in MOHC context was composed of two interrelated components: health service provider (doctor) and underlying technology (MOHC platform). Especially, the initial trust in MOHC platform exerted greater effects on adopting intention. Both performance-based cue (doctors' information quality and interaction quality) and transfer-based cue (trust in the offline doctors' health service) positively shaped the initial trust in doctor. Meanwhile, only the performance-based cue (MOHC platform's information quality and service quality) has significant positive association with initial trust in MOHC platform. However, interpersonal recommend is insignificantly related to the initial trust in doctor. Trust in the mobile internet service is insignificantly related to the initial trust in MOHC platform.

Uncertain Multiplicative Language Decision Method Based on Group Compromise Framework for Evaluation of Mobile Medical APPs in China.

The mobile medical application (M-medical APP) can optimize medical service process and reduce health management costs for users, which has become an important complementary form of traditional medical services. To assist users including patients choose the ideal M-medical APP, we proposed a novel multiple attribute group decision making algorithm based on group compromise framework, which does not need to determine the weight of decision-maker. The algorithm utilizes an uncertain multiplicative linguistic variable to measure the individual original preference to express the real evaluation information as much as possible. The attribute weight was calculated by maximizing the differences among alternatives. It determined the individual alternatives ranking according to the net flow of each alternative. By solving the 0-1 model with the objective of minimizing the differences between individual ranking, the ultimate group compromise ranking is obtained. Then we took 10 well-known M-medical APPs in Chinese as an example, we summarized service categories provided for users and constructed the assessment system consisting of 8 indexes considering the service quality users are concerned with. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method and the consistency of ranking results were verified, through comparing the group ranking results of 3 similar algorithms. The experiments show that group compromise ranking is sensitive to attribute weight.

[Visualized Quantitative Research of Soil Pollution in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area].

Soil pollution has become a constraint for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to move toward becoming an international first-class bay area. Learning from the three major bay areas of New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo can provide guidance for alleviating the soil environmental pressure in the Greater Bay Area. Based on the relevant literature in the core database of the Web of Science, the current research status of soil pollution in the three major bay areas was analyzed by using co-citation analysis, keywords co-occurrence analysis, and keyword emergence detection. The results showed that the main research topics of soil pollution in the three major bay areas are focused mainly on the source, spatial distribution of and remediation of soil pollutants, bioavailability of soil pollution and its adverse effects on marine organisms, and the role of the marine biotic index in soil pollution assessment. Hotspots in the study of soil pollutants are concentrated in the areas of organic pollution and heavy metal pollution. Toxicity, imposex, and biomarkers are the hot topics in the related marine biological research. By comparing the research status of soil pollution in bay areas at home and abroad, it was found that the study of soil pollution in China's bay areas started relatively late compared with that in the three major bay areas and that the distributions of research area and subject are unbalanced. The intensity of research on the related marine biological research is relatively low. Therefore, carrying out research on the land-sea integration of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is an urgent priority. The research field needs to be extended to the related marine biological research. In this way, the study of soil pollution in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area can be improved and the problems of soil pollution can be addressed.