Purpose Alpha-adrenergic receptor blockers can be effectively used in the context of medical expulsion therapy (MET) to treat ureteric stones. This study was designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of doxazosin in MET relative to placebo or tamsulosin.

Pseudoviruses are useful surrogates for highly pathogenic viruses because of their safety, genetic stability, and scalability for screening assays. Many different pseudovirus platforms exist, each with different advantages and limitations. Here we report our efforts to optimize and characterize an HIV-based lentiviral pseudovirus assay for screening neutralizing antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 using a stable 293T cell line expressing human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2). We assessed different target cells, established conditions that generate readouts over at least a two-log range, and confirmed consistent neutralization titers over a range of pseudovirus input. Using reference sera and plasma panels, we evaluated assay precision and showed that our neutralization titers correlate well with results reported in other assays. Overall, our lentiviral assay is relatively simple, scalable, and suitable for a variety of SARS-CoV-2 entry and neutralization screening assays.

The use of non-motorized vehicles in urban city has improved the convenience of short-distance travel and reduced traffic pollution. However, the overtaking behaviour of non-motorized vehicles impacts traffic safety and efficiency significantly. The objective of this study is to model the durations of overtaking behaviour in the non-motorized vehicle exclusive lane. A total of 3010 overtaking events of non-motorized vehicles were extracted from two locations in Chengdu, China. The nonparametric survival analysis was conducted to model the overtaking duration of non-motorized vehicles. The categorical variables that significantly influence the overtaking duration were examined by the Log-rank test. The results show that the overtaking durations of female riders is longer than that of male riders. It takes longer for electrical bikes to complete overtaking than conventional bikes. When the non-motorized vehicle is under the load state (i.e. passengers or goods on the non-motorized vehicle), the overtaking behaviour takes more time than the un-load state. Moreover, it takes less time to overtake the non-motorized vehicle with load than to overtake the one without load. When there is a wrong-way driving phenomenon or under higher traffic volume, the duration is longer compared to the normal traffic and lower traffic volume conditions. The findings of this study attempt to provide a more profound understanding of non-motorized vehicles overtaking behaviour under different traffic conditions and give insights to the safety research of non-motorized vehicles.

There are a few existing studies on whether domestic migration improves China’s pension system’s fiscal sustainability in the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization. In this paper, we systematically investigate the impact of migration on the solvency of the worker’s old-age insurance for urban employees by constructing actuarial and econometric models. We use panel data from 2002 to 2018, collected from 31 provinces in China. The results show that the association between migration and the solvency of pensions is an inverted-U shape along the urbanization process. Further regional comparison showed that the above-stated inverted-U curve is more pronounced in the central and western regions. We also established that the number of participants and the contribution base are the main contributors to these results. Our conclusions are important for future population policies and public pension systems in China.