Efficacy of a combination of sildenafil and magnesium sulfate in the treatment of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, and its influence on hemodynamics

Purpose: To investigate the efficacy of the combined use of sildenafil and magnesium sulfate in the treatment of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN), and its influence on hemodynamics.Methods: A total of 174 children with persistent pulmonary hypertension who were treated in Ganzhou People’s Hospital, Ganzhou, China were selected and randomly assigned to joint group (JG) and control group (CG), with 87 patients in each group. The CG group received magnesium sulfate, while the JG group received sildenafil plus magnesium sulphate. The respiratory parameters of the children were analyzed using blood gas analyzer, while their hemodynamic indices were evaluated using color Doppler echocardiography. The levels of cytokines and inflammatory factors were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).Results: Time taken for symptom disappearance, oxygen therapy, and hospitalization period were shorter in JG than in CG (p < 0.05). Post-treatment, the respiratory parameters (PaO2, PaCO2, and SaO2) in both groups s improved, with lower levels of PaO2 and PaCO2, and a higher level of SaO2 in JG (p < 0.05). Following treatment, the levels of systemic vascular resistance (SVR), posterior pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) and pulmonary artery pressure (PA) in JG were significantly reduced, relative to CG (p < 0.05). Similarly, the expression of endothelin -1 (ET-1), brain natriureticpeptide (BNP), and angiotensin 1 (ANG-1) improved, with lower levels of ET-1 and BNP, and a higher level of ANG-1 in JG (p < 0.05). There was post-treatment reduction as well in IL-6 and TNF-α, with lower levels in JG (p < 0.05). Patients in JG showed higher total treatment effectiveness and a lowerincidence of adverse reactions than those in CG (p < 0.05).Conclusion: The combined use of sildenafil and magnesium sulfate enhances the management of PPHN, ameliorates respiratory parameters, hemodynamics, and levels of cytokines and inflammatory factors. These findings provide evidence-based medical references for a new treatment strategy for PPHN

Generalized quadrature spatial modulation for STAR-RIS aided NOMA networks

The simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) is regarded as a promising paradigm for enhancing the connectivity and reliability of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks. However, the transmission of STAR-RIS enhanced NOMA networks performance is severely limited due to the inter-user interference (IUI) on multi-user detections. To mitigate this drawback, we propose a generalized quadrature spatial modulation (GQSM) aided STAR-RIS in conjunction with the NOMA scheme, termed STAR-RIS-NOMA-GQSM, to improve the performance of the corresponding NGMA network. By STAR-RIS-NOMA-GQSM, the information bits for all users in transmission and reflection zones are transmitted via orthogonal signal domains to eliminate the IUI so as to greatly improve the system performance. The low-complexity detection and upper-bounded bit error rate (BER) of STAR-RIS-NOMA-GQSM are both studied to evaluate its feasibility and performance. Moreover, by further utilizing index modulation (IM), we propose an enhanced STAR-RIS-NOMA-GQSM scheme, termed E-STAR-RIS-NOMA-GQSM, to enhance the transmission rate by dynamically adjusting reflection patterns in both transmission and reflection zones. Simulation results show that the proposed original and enhanced scheme significantly outperform the conventional STAR-RIS-NOMA and also confirm the precision of the theoretical analysis of the upper-bounded BER

Generalized Pre-Coded Quadrature Spatial Modulation-Aided STAR-RIS-NOMA

This paper incorporates the concept of generalized pre-coded quadrature spatial modulation (GPQSM) into non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems aided by simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) to boost spectral efficiency. The proposed GPQSM-STAR-RIS-NOMA scheme allows for the conveyance of additional information bits to different users according to a pre-coding scheme for adapting the subsurface allocation patterns. Furthermore, we derive an approximate expression for the bit error rate. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme achieves a better transmission rate than the conventional STAR-RIS-NOMA scheme

PRNet:Pyramid Restoration Network for RAW Image Super-Resolution

Typically, image super-resolution (SR) methods are applied to the standard RGB (sRGB) images produced by the image signal processing (ISP) pipeline of digital cameras. However, due to error accumulation, low bit depth and the nonlinearity with scene radiance in sRGB images, performing SR on them is sub-optimal. To address this issue, a RAW image SR method called pyramid restoration network (PRNet) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, PRNet takes the low-resolution (LR) RAW image as input, and generates a rough estimation of the SR result in the linear color space. Afterwards, a pyramid refinement (PR) sub-network refines image details in the intermediate SR result and corrects its colors in a divide-and-conquer manner. To learn the appropriate colors for displaying, external guidance is extracted from the LR reference image in the sRGB color space, and then fed to the PR sub-network. To effectively incorporate the external guidance, the cross-layer correction module (CLCM), which fully investigates the long-range interactions between two input features, is introduced in the PR sub-network. Moreover, as different frequency components decomposed from the same image are highly correlated, in the PR sub-network, the refined features from a lower layer are utilized to support the feature refinement in an upper layer. Extensive experiments presented in this paper demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of recovering fine details and small structures in images while producing vivid colors that align with the output of a specific camera ISP pipeline

Alcohol Intake and Abnormal Expression of Brf1 in Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common malignant disease of females. Overall, one woman in every nine will get breast cancer at some time in her life. Epidemiological studies have indicated that alcohol consumption has most consistently been associated with breast cancer risk. However, the mechanism of alcohol-associated breast cancer remains to be addressed. Little is known about the effects of alcohol consumption on Brf1 (TFIIIB-related factor 1) expression and RNA Pol III gene (RNA polymerase III-dependent gene) transcription, which are responsible for protein synthesis and tightly linked to cell proliferation, cell transformation, and tumor development. Emerging evidences have indicated that alcohol induces deregulation of Brf1 and Pol III genes to cause the alterations of cell phenotypes and tumor formation. In this paper, we summarize the progresses regarding alcohol-caused increase in the expression of Brf1 and Pol III genes and analysis of its molecular mechanism of breast cancer. As the earlier and accurate diagnosis approach of breast cancer is not available yet, exploring the molecular mechanism and identifying the biomarker of alcohol-associated breast cancer are especially important. Recent studies have demonstrated that Brf1 is overexpressed in most ER+ (estrogen receptor positive) cases of breast cancer and the change in cellular levels of Brf1 reflects the therapeutic efficacy and prognosis of this disease. It suggests that Brf1 may be a potential diagnosis biomarker and a therapeutic target of alcohol-associated breast cancer

Epidemiological characteristics and drug resistance analysis of Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-in Maoming City from 2017 to 2019

Objective To understand the epidemic characteristics and drug resistance of Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-in Maoming City. Methods Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-were identified by serological method, and then antibiotic sensitivity of isolated Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-was tested by broth microdilution method. Results Among 476 strains of Salmonella from patients’ feces, 143 strains of Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-were detected, and the detection rate was 33.81%. The feces of patients were mainly from infants <3 years old, the peak period mainly occurred from June to August. The rate of resistance to doxycycline was the highest (97.90%, 140/143), followed by tetracycline (95.10%, 136/143), sulfamethoxazole (93.71%, 134/143), ampicillin (90.91%, 130/143), streptomycin (86.71%, 124/143), minocycline (83.22%, 119/143), ampicillin/sulbactam (58.74%, 84/143), chloramphenicol (58.74%, 84/143) and sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (53.85%, 77/143). Amikacin and meropenem were the most sensitive antibiotics, and no drug-resistant strains were found, followed by polymyxin B (99.30%, 142/143), imipenem (99.30%, 142/143), cefoxitin (97.20%, 139/143), colistin (93.01%, 133/143), ceftazidime (92.31%, 132/143), azithromycin (92.31%, 132/143), cefotaxime (81.82%, 117/143), cefepime (79.72%, 114/143) and aztreonam (79.72%, 114/143). 97 kinds of drug resistance spectrum were identified, and the multi drug resistance rate was 100.00%. Conclusion Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-infection rate in infants is high, drug resistance is serious, and it is harmful to infants. It is necessary to expand the scope of sentinel hospitals and strengthen the surveillance of Salmonella, especially Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-. Salmonella I4, [5], 12∶I∶-was more sensitive to carbapenems and the second, third and fourth generation of cephalosporins which could be used as the first choice for treatment