Linear growth

Wound dressings play important roles in the management of wounds, and calcium cross-linked alginate (Ca(2+)-Alg) is a commonly used hydrogel that is adapted for wound treatment. However, conventional methods for fabricating Ca(2+)-Alg hydrogels can be tedious and difficult to control because of the rapid Ca(2+)-induced gelation of alginate. In this study, An electrodeposition method was used to rapidly and controllably fabricate Ca(2+)-Alg films for wound treatment. Several measures of film growth (e.g., thickness and mass) are shown to linearly correlate to the imposed charge transfer at the electrode...

CONTEXT: Twenty-five to 40% of patients with well-controlled X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets (XLHR) have a final height under -2 SDS. Previous studies have shown that recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) treatment improves linear growth in short children with XLHR. OBJECTIVE: We studied the effectiveness of rhGH treatment in children with XLHR in a larger cohort. DESIGN: Monocentric, prospective, non-randomized trial. SETTING: University hospital in France...

HPLC-MS/MS was applied to the determination of residual amount of plant growth retardant such as paclobutrazol, daminozide, chlormequat and mepiquat chloride in dried root and rhizome herbs. The sample was extracted twice with acetonitrile containing 0.1% formic acid. The separation was performed on a Waters Atlantis HILIC column with an elution system consisting of acetonitrile-5 mmol•L⁻¹ ammonium acetate solution with 0.1% formic acid, methanol and acetonitrile. The MS spectrum was acquired in positive mode with multiple reactions monitoring (MRM)...

Herein, bimetallic dendritic core-shell AuPd@Au nanocrystals (AuPd@Au NCs) were prepared by a simple one-pot aqueous method using xanthine as a green growth-directing agent. By virtue of the enhanced peak currents in the H2O2 reduction catalyzed by AuPd@Au NCs, a label-free immunosensor was constructed for the detection of prostate specific antigen (PSA). The immunosensor exhibited significantly improved analytical performance for the assay of PSA with wide linear range of 0.1-50ngmL(-1) and low detection limit of 0...

Integrating bottom-up area-selective building-blocks in microelectronics has a disruptive potential because of the unique capability of engineering new structures and architectures. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is an enabling technology, yet understanding the surfaces and their modification is crucial to leverage area-selective ALD (AS-ALD) in this field. The understanding of general selectivity mechanisms and the compatibility of plasma surface modifications with existing materials and processes, both at research and production scale, will greatly facilitate AS-ALD integration in microelectronics...

In patients with major cerebral artery disease, lower blood pressure might reduce blood flow in the collateral pathways, thereby impairing the growth of cerebral collaterals, inhibiting hemodynamic improvement. We evaluated the hemodynamic status twice using positron emission tomography and (15)O-gas, over time, in 89 medically treated patients with atherosclerotic internal carotid artery or middle cerebral artery disease that had no ischemic episodes during follow-up (mean, 28 ± 23 months). Changes in the mean hemispheric values of hemodynamic parameters in the territory of the diseased artery at follow-up were correlated with the mean blood pressure values at the baseline and follow-up examinations...

PURPOSE: Growth retardation is a common complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children. Treatment with recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) has been used to help short children with CKD to attain a height more in keeping with their age group, but the scientific evidence regarding the effect of rhGH on final height is scarce. METHODS: Final heights of children with CKD receiving rhGH treatment (cases) were compared with final heights of a matched cohort of children with CKD that did not receive rhGH therapy (controls)...

A pool of 200 traditional, landraces and modern elite and old cultivars of rice, mainly japonica varieties adapted to temperate regions, have been used to perform a genome wide association study to detect chromosome regions associated to low temperature germination (LTG) regulation using a panel of 1672 SNP markers. Phenotyping was performed by determining growth rates when seeds were germinated at 25° and 15°C in order to separate the germination vigorousness from cold tolerance effects. As expected, the ability to produce viable seedlings varied widely among rice cultivars and also depended greatly on temperature...

Human milk contains essential micronutrients for growth and development during early life. Environmental pollutants, such as potentially toxic metals, can also be transferred to the infant through human milk. These elements have been well-studied, but changing diets and environments and advances in laboratory technology require re-examining these elements in a variety of settings. The aim of this study was to characterize the concentrations of essential and toxic metals in human milk from four diverse populations...

The growth status of winter wheat in irrigated field and rainfed field are obviously different and the field types may have an effect on the predictive accuracy of hyperspectral model. The objectives of the present study were to understand the difference of spectral sensitive wavelengths for leaf area index (LAI) in two field types and realize its hyperspectral prediction. In study, a total of 31 and 28 sample sites in irrigated fields and rainfed fields respectively were selected from Wenxi County, and the LAI and canopy spectra were also collected at the main grow stage of winter wheat...

Accurate tree height and diameter at breast height (dbh) are important input variables for growth and yield models. A total of 5503 Chinese Metasequoia trees were used in this study. We studied 53 fitted models, of which 7 were linear models and 46 were non-linear models. These models were divided into two groups of single models and multivariate models according to the number of independent variables. The results show that the allometry equation of tree height which has diameter at breast height as independent variable can better reflect the change of tree height; in addition the prediction accuracy of the multivariate composite models is higher than that of the single variable models...

We present an experimental study on the formation and dissociation characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas hydrates using Raman spectroscopy. The CO2 hydrates were formed from sodium-chloride/water solutions with salinities of 0-10 wt-%, which were pressurized with liquid CO2 in a stirred vessel at 6 MPa and a subcooling of 9.5 K. The formation of the CO2 hydrate resulted in a hydrate gel where the solid hydrate can be considered as the continuous phase that includes small amounts of a dispersed liquid water-rich phase that has not been converted to hydrate...

INTRODUCTION: Gestational weight gain (GWG) varies widely among different populations, and an inappropriate GWG is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. We aimed to investigate week-specific serial changes in GWG in an urban Chinese population to derive clusters of GWG pattern and explore the impact of GWG patterns on birthweight. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This was an observational cohort study of 6130 women delivered at a university hospital in Shanghai, China...

BACKGROUND: Obesity is a serious public health problem in China. The relationship between obesity and socio-economic status (SES) is changing and affected by uncertainty, particularly, in developing countries. The sex-related differences in body mass index (BMI) trajectories are controversial and require substantial empirical data for updating and enriching. METHODS: This study examined the relationship between SES and BMI in Chinese adults from a dynamic perspective using longitudinal data (1991-2011) from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS)...

BACKGROUND: Considerable debate exists concerning the effects of antiretroviral therapy (ART) service scale-up on non-HIV services and overall health system performance in sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we examined whether ART services affected trends in non-ART outpatient department (OPD) visits in Kenya and Uganda. METHODS: Using a nationally representative sample of health facilities in Kenya and Uganda, we estimated the effect of ART programs on OPD visits from 2007 to 2012...

Basal area (BA) is a good predictor of timber stand volume and forest growth. This study developed predictive models using field and airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data for estimation of basal area in Pinus taeda plantation in south Brazil. In the field, BA was collected from conventional forest inventory plots. Multiple linear regression models for predicting BA from LiDAR-derived metrics were developed and evaluated for predictive power and parsimony. The best model to predict BA from a family of six models was selected based on corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) and assessed by the adjusted coefficient of determination (adj...

Phytohormones are special small molecules that play important role in plant growth and development at trace levels. Quantification of multiple phytohormones will be great helpful for researches about cross-talks that plant hormones regulate the responses of plants against both biotic and abiotic stresses by means of synergistic or antagonistic interactions. In the current study, we developed a method for profiling of phytohormones in one small sample, including indole-3-acetic acid, abscisic acid, jasmonic acid, gibberellins, cytokinins and brassinosteroids...

BACKGROUND: The application of genomic selection to sheep breeding could lead to substantial increases in profitability of wool production due to the availability of accurate breeding values from single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data. Several key traits determine the value of wool and influence a sheep's susceptibility to fleece rot and fly strike. Our aim was to predict genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV) and to compare three methods of combining information across traits to map polymorphisms that affect these traits...

Food nitrogen (N), which includes animal-food (AN) and plant-food N (PN), has been driven by population growth (PG), dietary changes associated with income growth (DC) and rural-urban migration (M) over the past three decades, and these changes combined with their N cost, have caused some effect on N use in China's food system. Although there is an increasing literature on food N and its environmental impacts in China, the relative magnitude of these driving forces are not well understood. Here we first quantify the differences in per capita AN and PN consumption in urban and rural areas and their impacts on N input to the food system during 1990-2012, and then quantify the relative contributions of DC, PG and M in the overall N change during this period...

BACKGROUND: Multiple micronutrients (MMN) are commonly prescribed in pediatric primary healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa to improve nutritional status and appetite without evidence for their effectiveness or international clinical guidelines. Community-wide MMN supplementation has shown limited and heterogeneous impact on growth and morbidity. Short-term ready-to-use therapeutic foods in acutely sick children in a hospital setting also had limited efficacy regarding subsequent growth. The effectiveness of MMN in improving morbidity or growth in sick children presenting for primary care has not been assessed...