Showing papers by "Yu Hu published in 2023"

Cu atoms on UiO-66-NH2 / ZnIn2S4 nanosheets enhance photocatalytic performance for recovering hydrogen energy from organic wastewater treatment

Abstract: The extensive use of sacrificial agents and the low carrier separation and utilization efficiency remain important factors limiting the development of photocatalytic hydrogen production. We report a three-layered, dual-functional photocatalysts of Cu [email protected]2(U6N)/ZnIn2S4 nanosheets (ZIS), for the simultaneous production of photocatalytic hydrogen and degradation of organic pollutants. When common and highly toxic organic pollutants (phenolic compounds and antibiotics) were substituted for the sacrificial agents, [email protected]/ZIS exhibited superior sustained hydrogen production, approximately 28 times greater than that of pure ZIS. The experimental results suggested that the window size of U6N (< organic pollutants molecular size) separates the reaction sites of organic pollutants oxidation and reduction of hydrogen ions (H+), thereby achieving spatial separation of redox sites. Besides, the structure of [email protected]/ZIS, which was anchored Cu within U6N and encapsulated by ZIS nanosheets, forming Z-type heterojunctions, achieved the control of the directional transfer of photogenerated electrons. And the coupled system can effectively enhance water quality by reducing the biological toxicity of the wastewater. This study suggests new avenues for environmental restoration and non-fossil fuel production.

Functionalization process of coking sludge: Biochar immobilizing with Fe/Co to enhance the wastewater treatment of ozone

Abstract: In order to make full use and resourcefulness of the products produced in the coking wastewater treatment process, solve the residual problem of wastewater, and achieve clean production, a sludge-derived metal catalyst was prepared in this paper using metal-doped coking sludge. The catalyst has a regulated lattice surface ordering, surface exposure of metal oxides, pore size exposure and functional chemical bonding, which enhances the catalytic activity of ozone (O3). The catalytic performance of the catalyst was tested in refractory wastewater where the catalyst modified its biodegradability, chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency and humic acid structure. Compared to the catalytic treatment with biochar alone, the removal efficiency of total organic carbon (TOC), COD and ultraviolet absorption (UV254) were significantly increased by 35.67 %, 57.23 % and 45.44 %. Various energy conversions and valence transitions of Fe and Co metals within the catalyst catalyzed the generation of hydroxyl radicals (OH), superoxide radical (O2-) and singlet oxygen (1O2) from O3. In this study, high value-added functional catalysts were synthesized from biochar with Fe/Co and organic skeleton structure, which was prepared from coking sludge. The degradation of pollution in biological treatment of coking wastewater (BTCW) was performed and the mechanism was elucidated. The environmental risk in wastewater treatment process was controlled by “disposal wase with waste” approach, which has important practical application value.

How we treat primary immune thrombocytopenia in adults

Abstract: Abstract Primary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an immune-mediated bleeding disorder characterized by decreased platelet counts and an increased risk of bleeding. Multiple humoral and cellular immune abnormalities result in accelerated platelet destruction and suppressed platelet production in ITP. The diagnosis remains a clinical exclusion of other causes of thrombocytopenia. Treatment is not required except for patients with active bleeding, severe thrombocytopenia, or cases in need of invasive procedures. Corticosteroids, intravenous immunoglobulin, and anti-RhD immunoglobulin are the classical initial treatments for newly diagnosed ITP in adults, but these agents generally cannot induce a long-term response in most patients. Subsequent treatments for patients who fail the initial therapy include thrombopoietic agents, rituximab, fostamatinib, splenectomy, and several older immunosuppressive agents. Other potential therapeutic agents, such as inhibitors of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase and neonatal Fc receptor, are currently under clinical evaluation. An optimized treatment strategy should aim at elevating the platelet counts to a safety level with minimal toxicity and improving patient health-related quality of life, and always needs to be tailored to the patients and disease phases. In this review, we address the concepts of adult ITP diagnosis and management and provide a comprehensive overview of current therapeutic strategies under general and specific situations.

Age at SARS-CoV-2 infection and psychological and physical recovery among Chinese health care workers with severe COVID-19 at 28 months after discharge: A cohort study

Abstract: Background No prior study had reported the psychological and physical recovery of patients with COVID-19 2~3 years after discharge from the hospital. Moreover, it is not clear whether there is any difference in the health status of the patients with COVID-19 of different ages after discharge from the hospital. Methods Embedding in the “Rehabilitation Care Project for Medical Staff Infected with COVID-19” in China, this study included 271 health care workers (HCWs) with severe COVID-19. Their status of health-related quality of life, persistent symptoms, functional fitness and immune function at 28 months after discharge were followed, and compared according to tertiles of age at SARS-CoV-2 infection (group of younger (≤ 33 years); medium (34-42 years); and older (≥43 years)). Multivariate linear regression and multivariable adjusted logistic regression models were applied in investigating the associations of age at SARS-CoV-2 infection and outcomes. Results At 28 months after discharge, 76% of the HCWs with severe COVID-19 had symptom of fatigue/weakness; 18.7% of the HCWs with severe COVID-19 did not fully recover their functional fitness; the decrease of CD3+ T cells, CD8+ T cells and the increase of natural killer cells accounted for 6.6, 6.6, and 5.5%, respectively. Compared with the HCWs with severe COVID-19 in younger group, HCWs with severe COVID-19 in older group had lower scores regarding physical functioning, role physical, bodily pain and role emotional; HCWs with severe COVID-19 in older group had higher risk of cough, joint pain, hearing loss and sleep disorder; HCWs with severe COVID-19 in older group scored lower on flexibility test. The variance of relative numbers of CD3+ T cells, CD8+ T cells and natural killer cells among HCWs with severe COVID-19 of different age groups were significant. Conclusions This study demonstrated that older HCWs with severe COVID-19 recovered slower than those with younger age regarding health-related quality of life, persistent symptoms, functional fitness and immune function at 28 months after discharge. Effective exercise interventions regarding flexibility should be performed timely to speed their rehabilitation, especially among those with older age.

The effect of common dental fixtures on treatment planning and delivery for head and neck intensity modulated proton therapy

Abstract: Abstract Purpose Proton treatment plan perturbation by common dental fixtures such as amalgams (Am) and porcelain‐fused‐to‐metal (PFM) crowns has, to date, been uncharacterized. Previous studies have been conducted to determine the physical effect of these materials within the beam path for single spots, but their effects on complex treatment plans and clinical anatomy have not yet been quantified. The present manuscript aims to study the effect of Am and PFM fixtures on proton treatment planning in a clinical setting. Methods An anthropomorphic phantom with removable tongue, maxilla, and mandible modules was simulated on a clinical computed tomography (CT) scanner. Spare maxilla modules were modified to include either a 1.5 mm depth central groove occlusal amalgam (Am) or a porcelain‐fused‐to‐metal (PFM) crown, implanted on the first right molar. Modified tongue modules were 3D printed to accommodate several axial or sagittal oriented pieces of EBT‐3 film. Clinically representative spot‐scanning proton plans were generated in Eclipse v.15.6 using the proton convolution superposition (PCS) algorithm v.15.6.06 using a multi‐field optimization (MFO) technique with the goal of delivering a uniform 54 Gy dose to a clinical target volume (CTV) typical of a base‐of‐tongue (BoT) treatment. A typical geometric beam arrangement of two anterior oblique (AO) beams and a posterior beam was employed. Plans optimized without any material overrides were delivered to the phantom A) without implants; B) with Am fixture; or C) with PFM crown. Plans were also reoptimized and delivered with inclusion of material overrides to equate relative stopping power of the fixture with that of a previously measured result. Results Plans exhibit slightly greater dose weight towards AO beams. The optimizer accounted for inclusion of fixture overrides by increasing beam weights to the beam closest to the implant. Film measurements exhibited cold spots directly within the beam path through the fixture in plans with and without overridden materials. Cold spots were somewhat mitigated in plans including overridden materials in the structure set but were not entirely eliminated. Cold spots associated with Am and PFM fixtures were quantified at 17% and 14% for plans without overrides, respectively, and 11% and 9% with using Monte Carlo simulation. Compared with film measurements and Monte Carlo simulation, the treatment planning system underestimates the dose shadowing effect in plans including material overrides. Conclusions Dental fixtures create a dose shadowing effect directly in line with the beam path through the material. This cold spot is partially mitigated by overriding the material to measured relative stopping powers. Due to uncertainties in modeling perturbation through the fixture, the magnitude of the cold spot is underestimated using the institutional TPS when compared to measurement and MC simulation.

Comparison of MR‐soft tissue based versus biliary stent based alignment for image guidance in pancreatic SBRT

Abstract: Abstract Purpose The role of biliary stents in image‐guided localization for pancreatic cancer has been inconclusive. To date, stent accuracy has been largely evaluated against implanted fiducials on cone beam computed tomography. We aim to use magnetic resonance (MR) soft tissue as a direct reference to examine the geometric and dosimetric impacts of stent‐based localization on the newly available MR linear accelerator. Methods Thirty pancreatic cancer patients (132 fractions) treated on our MR linear accelerator were identified to have a biliary stent. In our standard adaptive workflow, patients were set up to the target using soft tissue for image registration and structures were re‐contoured on daily MR images. The original plan was then projected on treatment anatomy and dose predicted, followed by plan re‐optimization and treatment delivery. These online predicted plans were soft tissue‐based and served as reference plans. Retrospective image registration to the stent was performed offline to simulate stent‐based localization and the magnitude of shifts was taken as the geometric accuracy of stent localization. New predicted plans were generated based on stent‐alignment for dosimetric comparison. Results Shifts were within 3 mm for 90% of the cases (mean = 1.5 mm); however, larger shifts up to 7.2 mm were observed. Average PTV coverage dropped by 1.1% with a maximum drop of 26.8%. The mean increase in V35Gy was 0.15, 0.05, 0.02, and 0.02 cc for duodenum, stomach, small bowel and large bowel, respectively. Stent alignment was significantly worse for all metrics except for small bowel (p = 0.07). Conclusions Overall discrepancy between stent‐ and soft tissue‐alignment was modest; however, large discrepancies were observed for select cases. While PTV coverage loss may be compensated for by using a larger margin, the increase in dose to gastrointestinal organs at risk may limit the role of biliary stents in image‐guided localization.

Detecting Socially Abnormal Highway Driving Behaviors via Recurrent Graph Attention Networks

Abstract: With the rapid development of Internet of Things technologies, the next generation traffic monitoring infrastructures are connected via the web, to aid traffic data collection and intelligent traffic management. One of the most important tasks in traffic is anomaly detection, since abnormal drivers can reduce traffic efficiency and cause safety issues. This work focuses on detecting abnormal driving behaviors from trajectories produced by highway video surveillance systems. Most of the current abnormal driving behavior detection methods focus on a limited category of abnormal behaviors that deal with a single vehicle without considering vehicular interactions. In this work, we consider the problem of detecting a variety of socially abnormal driving behaviors, i.e., behaviors that do not conform to the behavior of other nearby drivers. This task is complicated by the variety of vehicular interactions and the spatial-temporal varying nature of highway traffic. To solve this problem, we propose an autoencoder with a Recurrent Graph Attention Network that can capture the highway driving behaviors contextualized on the surrounding cars, and detect anomalies that deviate from learned patterns. Our model is scalable to large freeways with thousands of cars. Experiments on data generated from traffic simulation software show that our model is the only one that can spot the exact vehicle conducting socially abnormal behaviors, among the state-of-the-art anomaly detection models. We further show the performance on real world HighD traffic dataset, where our model detects vehicles that violate the local driving norms.

Impact of a novel multilayer imager on metal artifacts in MV-CBCT

Abstract: Objective. Megavoltage cone-beam computed tomography (MV-CBCT) imaging offers several advantages including reduced metal artifacts and accurate electron density mapping for adaptive or emergent situations. However, MV-CBCT imaging is limited by the poor efficiency of current detectors. Here we examine a new MV imager and compare CBCT reconstructions under clinically relevant scenarios. Approach. A multilayer imager (MLI), consisting of four vertically stacked standard flat-panel imagers, was mounted to a clinical linear accelerator. A custom anthropomorphic pelvis phantom with replaceable femoral heads was imaged using MV-CBCT and kilovoltage CBCT (kV-CBCT). Bone, aluminum, and titanium were used as femoral head inserts. 8 MU 2.5 MV scans were acquired for all four layers and (as reference) the top layer. Prostate and bladder were contoured on a reference CT and transferred to the other scans after rigid registration, from which the structural similarity index measure (SSIM) was calculated. Prostate and bladder were also contoured on CBCT scans without guidance, and Dice coefficients were compared to CT contours. Main results. kV-CBCT demonstrated the highest SSIMs with bone inserts (prostate: 0.86, bladder: 0.94) and lowest with titanium inserts (0.32, 0.37). Four-layer MV-CBCT SSIMs were preserved with bone (0.75, 0.80) as compared to titanium (0.67, 0.74), outperforming kV-CBCT when metal is present. One-layer MV-CBCT consistently underperformed four-layer results across all phantom configurations. Unilateral titanium inserts and bilateral aluminum insert results fell between the bone and bilateral titanium results. Dice coefficients trended similarly, with four-layer MV-CBCT reducing metal artifact impact relative to KV-CBCT to provide better soft-tissue identification. Significance. MV-CBCT with a four-layer MLI showed improvement over single-layer MV scans, approaching kV-CBCT quality for soft-tissue contrast. In the presence of artifact-producing metal implants, four-layer MV-CBCT scans outperformed kV-CBCT by eliminating artifacts and single-layer MV-CBCT by reducing noise. MV-CBCT with a novel multi-layer imager may be a valuable alternative to kV-CBCT, particularly in the presence of metal.

Compound danshen dripping pills vs. nitrates for stable angina pectoris: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract: Background Long-term use of nitrates for treating stable angina pectoris (SAP) may lead to patients' tolerance to nitrates. As a traditional Chinese medicine, Compound danshen dropping pills (CDDP) is beneficial for patients with SAP. This study aimed to critically assess the efficacy and safety of CDDP vs. nitrates for SAP. Methods PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane library, CNKI, Wanfang Digital Periodicals, and Chinese Science and Technology Periodicals database were searched from inception to April 2023. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing CDDP with nitrates for SAP were included. The meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the pooled effect. Results Twenty-nine studies were included for the statistical analysis. The meta-analyses with the random-effect model indicated that CDDP could significantly increase the effective rate in symptom improvement compared with nitrates (Pooled 9 RCTs, OR = 1.95, 95% CI: 1.25–3.05, P = 0.003, duration of 4 weeks; Pooled 4 RCTs, OR = 3.45, 95% CI: 1.84–6.48, P = 0.0001, duration of 6 weeks; Pooled 13 RCTs, OR = 4.02, 95% CI: 2.14–7.57, P < 0.0001, duration of 8 weeks). The meta-analyses with the random-effect model indicated that CDDP could significantly increase the effective rate in electrocardiogram improvement compared with nitrates (Pooled 5 RCTs, OR = 1.60, 95% CI: 1.02–2.52, P = 0.04, duration of 4 weeks; Pooled 3 RCTs, OR = 2.47, 95% CI: 1.60–3.82, P < 0.0001, duration of 6 weeks; Pooled 11 RCTs, OR = 3.43, 95% CI: 2.68–4.38, P < 0.00001, duration of 8 weeks). The incidence of adverse drug reactions in the CDDP group was lower than that in the nitrates group (Pooled 23 RCTs, OR = 0.15, 95% CI: 0.1–0.21, P < 0.00001). The results of the meta-analyses with fixed-effect model were similar with above results. The levels of the evidence ranged from very low to low. Conclusion The present study suggests that CDDP with the duration of at least 4 weeks can be considered as an alternative to nitrates for treating SAP. However, more high-quality RCTs are still needed to confirm these findings. Systematic Review Registration https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42022352888, identifier [CRD42022352888].

Mental health, health-related quality of life, and lung function after hospital discharge in healthcare workers with severe COVID-19: a cohort study from China

Abstract: 本研究旨在报道感染新冠医务人员出院后的健康状况。研究对象来自“中国感染新冠肺炎医务人员康复关怀行动”,在随访中医务人员完成心理健康问卷、健康相关生活质量问卷、肺功能检查和6分钟步行试验。在出院后139.4（127.3, 150.5）天,23%的重症新冠肺炎医务人员被诊断患有创伤后应激综合征。将不同性别、有无并发症重症新冠肺炎医务人员出院后的恢复情况进行比较发现,应采取主动康复干预措施帮助重症新冠肺炎医务人员加快心理和生理康复,尤其应重点关注男性和有合并症患者。