Publications by authors named "Wan Neng"

Background: Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) continue to drive persistent disparities in perioperative care. Our team has previously demonstrated racial and socioeconomic disparities in perioperative processes, notably in the administration of antiemetic prophylaxis, in several large perioperative registries. Given how neighborhoods are socially segregated in the US, we examined geospatial clustering of perioperative antiemetic disparities.

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Importance: There is growing interest in developing coordinated regional systems for nontraumatic surgical emergencies; however, our understanding of existing emergency general surgery (EGS) care communities is limited.

Objective: To apply network analysis methods to delineate EGS care regions and compare the performance of this method with the Dartmouth Health Referral Regions (HRRs).

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study was conducted using the 2019 California and New York state emergency department and inpatient databases.

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Background: While exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution (PM ) is known to cause adverse health effects, its impact on postoperative outcomes in US adults remains understudied. Perioperative exposure to PM may induce inflammation that interacts insidiously with the surgical stress response, leading to higher postoperative complications.

Methods: We conducted a single center, retrospective cohort study using data from 49,615 surgical patients living along Utah's Wasatch Front and who underwent elective surgical procedures at a single academic medical center from 2016-2018.

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During the process of synthesizing h-BN on Cu foil chemical vapor deposition (CVD), low-pressure CVD (LPCVD) typically synthesizes monolayer h-BN films, whereas atmospheric pressure CVD (APCVD) yields few-layer h-BN films. Herein, a growth mechanism for monolayer and few-layer h-BN on Cu foil is proposed using first-principles calculations: Cu(111) passivated h-BN hinders the diffusion of B and N atoms at the subsurface of Cu(111), preventing sufficient transportation of B and N atoms to the existing h-BN layer, thereby leading to the formation of monolayer h-BN in LPCVD. For APCVD, the edges of h-BN are passivated by H, which decreases the barrier energy for the diffusion of B and N atoms on the Cu(111) subsurface, and B and N atoms can easily migrate from the subsurface of Cu(111) to its surface, resulting in the nucleation of h-BN between the existing h-BN and Cu(111), and leading to the formation of few-layer h-BN films.

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There are substantial challenges in studying human transgenerational epigenetic outcomes resulting from environmental conditions. The task requires specialized methods and tools that incorporate specific knowledge of multigenerational relationship combinations of probands and their ancestors, phenotype data for individuals, environmental information of ancestors and their descendants, which can span historical to present datasets, and informative environmental data that chronologically aligns with ancestors and descendants over space and time. As a result, there are few epidemiologic studies of potential transgenerational effects in human populations, thus limiting the knowledge of ancestral environmental conditions and the potential impacts we face with modern human health outcomes.

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Background: Cutaneous melanoma is a highly heterogeneous cancer, and understanding the role of inflammation-related genes in its progression is crucial.

Methods: The cohorts used include the TCGA cohort from TCGA database, and GSE115978, GSE19234, GSE22153 cohort, and GSE65904 cohort from GEO database. Weighted Gene Coexpression Network Analysis (WGCNA) identified key inflammatory modules.

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Van der Waals (vdW) assembly of low-dimensional materials has proven the capability of creating structures with on-demand properties. It is predicted that the vdW encapsulation can induce a local high-pressure of a few GPa, which will strongly modify the structure and property of trapped materials. Here, we report on the structural collapse of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) induced by the vdW encapsulation.

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Background: Digital health and telemedicine are potentially important strategies to decrease health care's environmental impact and contribution to climate change by reducing transportation-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, we currently lack robust national estimates of emissions savings attributable to telemedicine.

Objective: This study aimed to (1) determine the travel distance between participants in US telemedicine sessions and (2) estimate the net reduction in carbon dioxide (CO) emissions attributable to telemedicine in the United States, based on national observational data describing the geographical characteristics of telemedicine session participants.

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Lipid droplets (LDs) are organelles critical for energy storage and membrane lipid homeostasis, whose number and size are carefully regulated in response to cellular conditions. The molecular mechanisms underlying lipid droplet biogenesis and degradation, however, are not well understood. The Troyer syndrome protein spartin (SPG20) supports LD delivery to autophagosomes for turnover via lipophagy.

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Stacking two atomic layers together can induce interlayer (sliding) ferroelectricity that is absent in their naturally occurring crystal forms. With the flexibility of two-dimensional materials, more layers could be assembled to give rise to even richer polarization states. Here, we show that three-layer boron nitride can host ferro- and antiferroelectric domains in the same sample.

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Lipid droplets (LDs) are organelles critical for energy storage and membrane lipid homeostasis, whose number and size are carefully regulated in response to cellular conditions. The molecular mechanisms underlying lipid droplet biogenesis and degradation, however, are not well understood. The Troyer syndrome protein spartin (SPG20) supports LD delivery to autophagosomes for turnover via lipophagy.

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ATG2 proteins facilitate bulk lipid transport between membranes. ATG2 is an essential autophagy protein, but ATG2 also localizes to lipid droplets (LDs), and genetic depletion of ATG2 increases LD numbers while impairing fatty acid transport from LDs to mitochondria. How ATG2 supports LD homeostasis and whether lipid transport regulates this homeostasis remains unknown.

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Free-form surface parts are widely used in industries, and they consist of intricate 3D surfaces such as molds, impellers, and turbine blades that possess complex geometrical contours and demand high precision. Proper tool orientation is crucial for ensuring the efficiency and accuracy of five-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machining. Multi-scale methods have received much attention and have been widely used in various fields.

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The research of high-quality agricultural products rich in selenium and low in cadmium (Se-rich and Cd-low, respectively) is related directly to the value of agricultural products and people's food safety. Now it is still challenging to carry out development planning for Se-rich rice. By fuzzy weights-of-evidence method, the geochemical soil survey data of Se and Cd from 27,833 surface soil samples and 804 rice samples was used to predict the probability of areas, in Hubei Province, China, that will likely yield (a) Se-rich and Cd-low rice, (b) Se-rich and Cd-normal rice and (c) Se-rich and Cd-high rice.

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Two-dimensional (2D) materials have become potential resistive switching (RS) layers to prepare emerging non-volatile memristors. The atomically thin thickness and the highly controllable defect density contribute to the construction of ultimately scaled memory cells with stable switching behaviors. Although the conductive bridge random-access memory based on 2D hexagonal boron nitride has been widely studied, the realization of RS completely relying on vacancies in 2D materials has performance superiority.

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In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) multifunctional materials have become a research hotpot for their wide application range. In this work, PbGe(CN) and PbGe(CH) are predicted to realize the piezoelectricity, quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator, and Rashba effects simultaneously. The topological bandgaps of PbGe(CN) and PbGe(CH) are 0.

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Background: Emergency general surgery (EGS) diseases are time-sensitive conditions that require urgent surgical evaluation, yet the effect of geographic access to care on outcomes remains unclear. We examined the association of spatial access with outcomes for common EGS conditions.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of twelve 2014 State Inpatient Databases, identifying adults admitted with eight EGS conditions, was performed.

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Social context matters for health, healthcare processes/quality and patient outcomes. The social status and circumstances we are born into, grow up in and live under, are called social determinants of health; they drive our health, and how we access and experience care; they are the fundamental causes of disease outcomes. Such circumstances are influenced heavily by our location through neighborhood context, which relates to support networks.

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In terms of interlayer trions, electronic excitations in van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) can be classified into Type I (i.e., two identical charges in the same layer) and Type II (i.

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Dietary intake of selenium (Se)-enriched rice has benefit for avoiding Se-deficient disease, but there is a risk of excessive cadmium (Cd) intake. Through hydroponic culture and adsorption-desorption experiments, this paper focused on Se and Cd uptake in rice seedlings associated with the interactive effects of Se (Se or Se), Cd, and iron (Fe) plaque. The formation of Fe plaque was promoted by Fe and inhibited by Cd but not related with Se species.

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Lipid transport proteins at membrane contacts, where organelles are closely apposed, are critical in redistributing lipids from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where they are made, to other cellular membranes. Such protein-mediated transfer is especially important for maintaining organelles disconnected from secretory pathways, like mitochondria. We identify mitoguardin-2, a mitochondrial protein at contacts with the ER and/or lipid droplets (LDs), as a lipid transporter.

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Importance: Hospitals with emergency surgical services provide essential care for a wide range of time-sensitive diseases. Commonly used measures of spatial access, such as distance or travel time, have been shown to underestimate disparities compared with more comprehensive metrics.

Objective: To examine population-level differences in spatial access to hospitals with emergency surgical capability across the US using enhanced 2-step floating catchment (E2SFCA) methods.

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Background: Transgenerational epigenetic risks associated with complex health outcomes, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), have attracted increasing attention. Transgenerational environmental risk exposures with potential for epigenetic effects can be effectively identified using space-time clustering. Specifically applied to ancestors of individuals with disease outcomes, space-time clustering characterized for vulnerable developmental stages of growth can provide a measure of relative risk for disease outcomes in descendants.

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Food insecurity is a complex problem affected by a number of factors from individual to societal. While individual-level demographic information and population-level social determinants of health (SDoH) are commonly used to identify patients at risk of food insecurity and to direct resources, a more comprehensive understanding of food insecurity requires integrating multi-level data. Our goal is to identify factors associated with food insecurity using patient, health system, and population level data.

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Brain-inspired intelligent systems demand diverse neuromorphic devices beyond simple functionalities. Merging biomimetic sensing with weight-updating capabilities in artificial synaptic devices represents one of the key research focuses. Here, we report a multiresponsive synapse device that integrates synaptic and optical-sensing functions.

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