Publications by authors named "Zhen Ding"

Previous observational studies have suggested that higher levels of education attainment and intelligence (IQ) are associated with better health outcomes in humans. However, the causal link between education attainment and IQ and their association with health outcomes remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the distinct impacts of intelligence and educational attainment on gastrointestinal symptoms.

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  • - Rectal mucosal prolapse syndrome (RMPS) often presents with symptoms like rectal bleeding and can be mistaken for malignant rectal tumors (MRT) during endoscopic exams; this study aimed to differentiate between the two and examine RMPS characteristics.
  • - A total of 826 patients were analyzed, revealing that RMPS patients were younger, had smaller lesions, and a longer clinical course compared to those with MRT.
  • - Five distinct morphological phenotypes of RMPS lesions were identified, with gender differences noted in lesion types; key features like age, lesion size, and clinical duration can help differentiate RMPS from MRT.
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Efficient personal protection has emerged as a crucial approach for reducing pulmonary injury induced by particulate matter (PM). However, current personal protective equipments usually lack essential biosafety concerns and fail to own adsorbing/antioxidant/antibacterial function together, making it a challenge to develop an integrated platform with the above characteristics. Herein, a facile oxygen-free hydrothermal strategy is proposed to synthesize new copper-based metal-organic frameworks, Cu-HHTPs, (HHTP: 2,3,6,7,10,11-hexahydroxytriphenylene), with great adsorbing/antioxidant/antibacterial activity and high biosafety.

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Estimating human joint angles is a crucial task in motion analysis, gesture recognition, and motion intention prediction. This paper presents a novel model-based approach for generating reliable and accurate human joint angle estimation using a dual-branch network. The proposed network leverages combined features derived from encoded sEMG signals and RGB-D image data.

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Solid fuel combustion exposure is a leading global health risk factor, yet evidence on its effects, especially on vulnerable children, is sparse. This large-scale, multi-center prospective study aimed to address this gap by involving 9997 schoolchildren across China between 2013 and 2015. Here we show that lung function levels exhibited a marginally significant decline among children exposed to solid fuel usage.

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  • * Researchers identified 37 members of the Kelch repeat F-box (KFB) protein family in tomatoes and studied their structure, relationships, and expression during drought and other stress conditions.
  • * Key findings indicate that two specific proteins, SlKFB16 and SlKFB34, play crucial roles in managing drought stress, with their silencing leading to decreased plant resilience by reducing reactive oxygen species scavenging.
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  • * Various indicators, like neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and controlling nutritional status score (CONUT), were identified as strong predictors of severe conditions and mortality in these patients.
  • * These findings suggest that assessing nutritional status in COVID-19 patients is crucial, as it can help healthcare providers identify those at higher risk for critical outcomes and guide nutritional interventions.
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  • Wearable sensor-based human activity recognition (HAR) is key for improving exoskeleton system control, but quality issues and cross-subject challenges persist.
  • The proposed active learning framework enhances HAR by fine-tuning classifiers for individual users and optimizing data sampling, leading to better accuracy and adaptability.
  • Experiments on public and self-collected datasets show that this approach outperforms existing methods and highlights the importance of effective data management for user-independent HAR in exoskeletons.
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Sedentary behavior (SB) has been linked in the past by observational studies to gastrointestinal illnesses, although the exact cause of the link is still unknown. To deal with this problem, we carried out a Mendelian randomization (MR) study to thoroughly examine the connection between SB and common gastrointestinal illnesses. We selected instrumental variables representing the SB from the UK Biobank study, including watching television viewing, playing computer, and driving.

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Mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) senescence is a key factor in skeletal aging, affecting the potential of MSC applications. Identifying targets to prevent MSC and skeletal senescence is crucial. Here, we report increased miR-29 expression in bone tissues of aged mice, osteoporotic patients, and senescent MSCs.

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  • Researchers studied how older adults deal with emotions and identified key factors and differences based on health status by analyzing data from 677 participants.
  • The main findings highlighted three core nodes: Catastrophizing, Difficulty Identifying Feelings, and Refocusing on Planning, which are crucial to emotional regulation.
  • Significant differences in network structures were found between healthy participants and those with multiple health issues, indicating that comorbidity is linked to less effective emotion regulation strategies.
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  • - The study focused on the nutritional status and body composition of head and neck cancer patients receiving complete nutritional support during surgery, using assessments like NRS 2002 and PG-SGA to evaluate factors related to weight loss and skeletal muscle mass (SMM).
  • - Patients with a low skeletal muscle index showed lower overall weight and body composition, and key nutritional markers (albumin, prealbumin, PNI, LMR) dropped post-surgery but improved by two weeks after surgery, while inflammatory markers like NLR and PLR increased.
  • - The findings indicate that adipose tissue loss happens before muscle loss post-operatively, and prealbumin levels can be an important indicator to monitor recovery in these patients.
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  • The STELLAR II study explores combining short-course radiotherapy with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors (specifically sindilizumab) for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer to improve treatment outcomes.
  • The trial involves 588 participants, who will be assigned to either the experimental group (with immunotherapy) or the control group (without immunotherapy) after receiving short-course radiotherapy.
  • The study aims to assess the complete remission rate and various secondary health outcomes, utilizing a seamless phase II/III randomized controlled design.
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Increasing evidence has supported that oxidative potential (OP) serves as a crucial indicator of health risk of exposure to PM over mass concentration. However, there is a lack of comparative studies across multiple cities, particularly on a fine temporal scale. In this study, we aim to investigate daily variation of ambient PM OP through simultaneous samplings in six Chinese cities for one year.

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Background: The global spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) underscores the urgent need for reliable methods to forecast the disease's severity and outcome, thereby facilitating timely interventions and reducing mortality rates. This study focuses on evaluating the clinical and laboratory profiles of patients with Omicron variant-induced COVID-19 pneumonia and assessing the efficacy of various scoring systems in prognosticating disease severity and mortality.

Methods: In this retrospective analysis, we examined the clinical records of 409 individuals diagnosed with Omicron variant COVID-19 pneumonia.

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Purpose: We report a dosimetric study in whole breast irradiation (WBI) of plan robustness evaluation against position error with two radiation techniques: tangential intensity-modulated radiotherapy (T-IMRT) and multi-angle IMRT (M-IMRT).

Methods: Ten left-sided patients underwent WBI were selected. The dosimetric characteristics, biological evaluation and plan robustness were evaluated.

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Background: Reliability and robustness have been recognized as key challenges for Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) analytical techniques. Quantifying the concentration of an analyte using a single characteristic peak from SERS has been a controversial topic because the Raman signal is susceptible to highly concentrated electromagnetic hotspots, inhomogeneity of SERS substrate, or non-standardization of measurement conditions. Ratiometric SERS strategies have been demonstrated as a promising solution to effectively balance and compensate for signal fluctuations caused by matrix heterogeneity.

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Objective: The present study endeavored to investigate the interconnection between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and cognitive function, alongside the manifestations of depression and anxiety. Simultaneously, an analysis was conducted to discern the factors exerting influence upon cognitive function.

Methods: A cohort of 102 patients, who had undergone polysomnography (PSG) at Binhu Hospital, Anhui Medical University, between January 2022 and June 2023, was encompassed in the study.

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Glycogen is a highly branched glucose polymer that is an energy storage material in fungi and animals. Extraction of glycogen from its source in a way that minimizes its molecular degradation is essential to investigate its native structure. In this study, the following extraction methods were compared: sucrose gradient density ultracentrifugation, thermal alkali, hot alcohol and hot water extractions.

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Attendance absences have a substantial impact on student's future physical and mental health as well as academic progress. Numerous personal, familial, and social issues are among the causes of student absences. Any kind of absence from school should be minimized.

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Background: Inflammatory bowel disease is an incurable group of recurrent inflammatory diseases of the intestine. Mendelian randomization has been utilized in the development of drugs for disease treatment, including the therapeutic targets for IBD that are identified through drug-targeted MR.

Methods: Two-sample MR was employed to explore the cause-and-effect relationship between multiple genes and IBD and its subtypes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and replication MR was utilized to validate this causality.

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Background: Multifaceted SARS-CoV-2 interventions have modified exposure to air pollution and dynamics of respiratory diseases. Identifying the most vulnerable individuals requires effort to build a complete picture of the dynamic health effects of air pollution exposure, accounting for disparities across population subgroups.

Methods: We use generalized additive model to assess the likely changes in the hospitalisation and mortality rate as a result of exposure to PM2.

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A widely used type II pyrethroid pesticide cypermethrin (CYP) is one of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) with anti-androgenic activity to induce male reproductive toxicology. However, the mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. This study was to explore the effects of CYP on apoptosis of mouse Sertoli cells (TM4) and the roles of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-mitochondria coupling involving 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor type1-glucose-regulated protein 75-voltage-dependent anion channel 1 (IP3R1-GRP75-VDAC1).

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