OBJECTIVE: Residual varus after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) can affect functional outcomes, which may worsen in the presence of obesity. However, no studies were found to compare the outcomes of obese patients involving postoperative residual mild varus or neutral. The aim of this study was to compare postoperative complications and prosthesis survival, and functional outcomes for knees of obese patients with neutral or mild varus after TKA.
METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 188 consecutive obese patients (body mass index ≥30 kg/m2) at our hospital who underwent TKA due to varus knee osteoarthritis from January 2010 to December 2015. The mechanical hip-knee-ankle axis angle was measured in all patients at admission and discharge. Knee functions were retrospectively assessed based on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score, Knee Society Knee Score (KS-KS), Knee Society Function Score (KS-FS), Forgotten Joint Score (FJS), and range of motion (ROM). Continuous data were compared between knees with neutral or mild varus alignment using analysis of Student\'s t test or variance or the Kruskal-Wallis test as appropriate. For multiple comparisons of outcomes, we used Bonferroni-Dunn method to adjust p-values. Categorical data were compared using the chi-squared test.
RESULTS: Of the 156 knees in 137 obese patients who completed follow-up for a mean of 8.32 ± 1.47 years, 97 knees were corrected from varus to neutral and 54 knees were kept in mild residual varus. Patients with mild varus knees had significantly WOMAC (8.25 ± 8.637 vs. 14.97 ± 14.193, p = 0.009) and better FJS (86.03 ± 15.607 vs. 70.22 ± 30.031, p = 0.002). The two types of knees did not differ significantly in KS-KS, KS-FS, or ROM. Although one patient with a neutral knee had to undergo revision surgery, there was no significant difference between two groups.
CONCLUSIONS: For obese patients with osteoarthritis, preservation of residual varus alignment after TKA can improve functional outcomes without compromising prosthesis survival.

This paper investigates the pinning synchronization of stochastic neutral memristive neural networks with reaction-diffusion terms. Firstly, two novel pinning controllers, which contain both current state and past state, are designed. Subsequently, in terms of Green\'s theorem, inequality technology, stochastic analysis theory and pinning control technology, two easy-to-test sufficient conditions based on algebraic inequalities are obtained to ensure the mean-square asymptotic synchronization of stochastic memristive neural networks with neutral delays and reaction-diffusion terms by providing a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. In addition, some existing results can be regarded as special cases of our work. Finally, illustrative examples further verify the correctness and validity of the derived results.

In this paper, we study two types of second-order nonlinear differential equations with variable coefficients and mixed delays. Based on Krasnoselskii\'s fixed point theorem, the existence results of positive periodic solution are established. It should be pointed out that the equations we studied are more general. Therefore, the results of this paper have better applicability.

The process of molecular evolution has many elements that are not yet fully understood. Evolutionary rates are known to vary among protein coding and noncoding DNAs, and most of the observed changes in amino acid or nucleotide sequences are assumed to be non-adaptive by the neutral theory of molecular evolution. However, it remains unclear whether fixed and standing missense changes in slowly evolving proteins are more or less neutral compared to those in fast evolving genes. Here, based on the evolutionary rates as inferred from identity scores between orthologs in human and Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta), we found that the fraction of conservative substitutions between species was significantly higher in their slowly evolving proteins. Similar results were obtained by using four different methods of scoring conservative substitutions, including three that remove the impact of substitution probability, where conservative changes require fewer mutations. We also examined the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by using the 1000 Genomes Project data and found that missense SNPs in slowly evolving proteins also had a higher fraction of conservative changes, especially for common SNPs, consistent with more non-conservative substitutions and hence stronger natural selection for SNPs, particularly rare ones, in fast evolving proteins. These results suggest that fixed and standing missense variants in slowly evolving proteins are more likely to be neutral.

Previous studies have shown that expectancy incongruence in emotional stimuli influences the encoding (i.e., the first stage of memory processing) of the stimuli. However, it is unknown about whether expectancy incongruence influences later stages of memory processing, such as recognition. To this end, expectancy cues were presented prior to emotional pictures. Most often, the cues accurately indicated the emotional consequences of the pictures, but in some cases the consequence was incongruent with the expectations, and a picture from another emotional category was presented. Afterward, participants completed an unexpected recognition task in which old and novel pictures were not preceded by expectancy cues. The results showed that, in the encoding phase, expectancy incongruence reduced response accuracy when categorizing pictorial emotions, and the effect was smaller for neutral pictures than for negative pictures. ERP results showed stronger and weaker responses to expectancy incongruent pictures compared to congruent pictures in time ranges related to the encoding-related early and middle late positive potential (LPP), respectively. In the subsequent recognition phase, d\' scores were higher for incongruent neutral pictures than for congruent ones. Expectancy incongruence enlarged the P2 response but reduced the recognition-related early LPP response for neutral pictures. However, effects of expectancy incongruence were not seen for negative pictures. Therefore, the findings in the present study indicate that negative expectations influence the later recognition of expectancy incongruent neutral events, whereas negative events are more resistant to the effects of expectation incongruence.

This study employs potential-monitoring techniques, cyclic voltammetry tests, alternating current (AC) voltammetry methods, and surface characterization to investigate the AC corrosion of cathodically protected X80 pipeline steel. In a non-passive neutral solution at pH 7.2, a sufficiently negative potential completely protects steel at an AC current density of 100 A/m². In an alkaline solution at pH 9.6, more serious AC corrosion occurs at more negative cathodic protection (CP) potential, whereas without CP the steel suffers negligible corrosion. In addition, the interface capacitance increases with AC amplitude. Based on these results, the AC corrosion mechanisms that function under various conditions are analyzed and described.

The problem of global dissipativity for memristor-based inertial networks with time-varying delay of neutral type is investigated in this paper. Based on a proper variable substitution, the inertial system is transformed into a conventional system. Some sufficient criteria are established to ascertain the global dissipativity for the aforementioned inertial neural networks by employing analytical techniques and Lyapunov method. Meanwhile, the globally exponentially attractive sets and positive invariant sets are also presented here. Finally, numerical examples and simulations are given out to corroborate the effectiveness of obtained results.

Cationic polymers constitute an important class of materials in development of delivery vehicles for nucleic acid-based therapeutics. Among them, polyethylenimine (PEI) has been a classical cationic carrier intensively studied for therapeutic delivery of DNA, RNA, and short RNA molecules to treat diseases. However, the development of PEI for in vivo applications has been hampered by the inherent problems associated with the material, particularly its cytotoxicity and the instability of the nucleic acid complexation systems formed via electrostatic interactions. Here, we demonstrate a strategy to modify PEI polymers via hydrazidation to create neutralized, stable, and multifunctional system for delivering siRNA molecules. Through substitution of the primary amino groups of PEI with neutral hydrazide groups, cross-linked nanoparticles with surface decorated with a model targeting ligands were generated. The neutral cross-linked siRNA nanoparticles not only showed favorable biocompatibility and cell internalization efficiency in vitro but also allowed for significant tissue uptake and gene silencing efficiency in zebrafish heart in vivo. Our study suggests transformation of conventional branched PEI into a neutral polymer that can lead to a new category of nonviral carriers, and the resulting functional delivery systems may be further explored for development of siRNA therapeutics for treating cardiovascular disease/injury.

Impairment of RNA editing at a handful of coding sites causes severe disorders, prompting the view that coding RNA editing is highly advantageous. Recent genomic studies have expanded the list of human coding RNA editing sites by more than 100 times, raising the question of how common advantageous RNA editing is. Analyzing 1,783 human coding A-to-G editing sites, we show that both the frequency and level of RNA editing decrease as the importance of a site or gene increases; that during evolution, edited As are more likely than unedited As to be replaced with Gs but not with Ts or Cs; and that among nonsynonymously edited As, those that are evolutionarily least conserved exhibit the highest editing levels. These and other observations reveal the overall nonadaptive nature of coding RNA editing, despite the presence of a few sites in which editing is clearly beneficial. We propose that most observed coding RNA editing results from tolerable promiscuous targeting by RNA editing enzymes, the original physiological functions of which remain elusive.