The burden of upper motor neuron involvement is correlated with the bilateral limb involvement interval in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis:a retrospective observational study

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a rare neurodegenerative disease characterized by the involvement of both upper and lower motor neurons.Early bilateral limb involvement significantly affects patients'daily lives and may lead them to be confined to bed.However,the effect of upper and lower motor neuron impairment and other risk factors on bilateral limb involvement is unclear.To address this issue,we retrospectively collected data from 586 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients with limb onset diagnosed at Peking University Third Hospital between January 2020 and May 2022.A univariate analysis revealed no significant differences in the time intervals of spread in different directions between individuals with upper motor neuron-dominant amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and those with classic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.We used causal directed acyclic graphs for risk factor determination and Cox proportional hazards models to investigate the association between the duration of bilateral limb involvement and clinical baseline characteristics in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients.Multiple factor analyses revealed that higher upper motor neuron scores(hazard ratio[HR]=1.05,95%confidence interval[CI]=1.01–1.09,P=0.018),onset in the left limb(HR=0.72,95%CI=0.58–0.89,P=0.002),and a horizontal pattern of progression(HR=0.46,95%CI=0.37–0.58,P<0.001)were risk factors for a shorter interval until bilateral limb involvement.The results demonstrated that a greater degree of upper motor neuron involvement might cause contralateral limb involvement to progress more quickly in limb-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients.These findings may improve the management of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients with limb onset and the prediction of patient prognosis.

Small World Properties Generated by a New Algorithm Under Same Degree of All Nodes

Based on the model of the same degree of all nodes we proposed before, a new algorithm, the so-called “spread all over vertices” （SAV） algorithm, is proposed for generating small-world properties from a regular ring lattices. During randomly rewiring connections the SAV is used to keep the unchanged number of links. Comparing the SAV algorithm with the Watts-Strogatz model and the “spread all over boundaries” algorithm, three methods can have the same topological properties of the small world networks. These results offer diverse formation of small world networks. It is helpful to the research of some applications for dynamics of mutual oscillator inside nodes and interacting automata associated with networks.

Evaluation on Combustion Characteristics of Finishing Materials for Exterior Walls

Existing fire test methods reply on measurement of the energy released rate to identify the combustion properties of a material. However, they are inadequate when assessing combustion characteristics of a composite material characterized by vertical flame spread and different inside/outside combustion behaviors. In addition, major factors that affect the flame spread outside the building include the combustion characteristics of materials used as well as air flow around a skyscraper. However, since it is highly difficult to analyze and forecast the air flow from a fire engineering viewpoint, an investigation of the flame spread characteristics of exterior walls of a building depends primarily on the combustion characteristics of materials. Hence, this study examined, using ISO 13785-2 testing method, the temperature changes and vertical flame spread behaviors of one of the finishing materials for exterior walls--（generic ＆ fire-resistant） aluminium panels by a real-scale combustion experiment. According to the results of real-scale experiment, the maximum heat temperature of 987.7 ℃ was recorded seven minutes after the fire test was initiated while the fire-resistant aluminium panels showed the maximum heat temperature of 850.2℃ after exposed for approximately 12 min. The vertical flame spread properties put more emphasis on the time required to reach the maximum temperature rather than its magnitude and there was a five minutes difference between the materials.