Prophylactic LLLT reduces mucositis and severe mucositis and decreases the average severity of oral mucositis in pediatric and young patients with cancer. Therapeutic LLLT also reduces the average severity of oral mucositis and oral pain. Further research should investigate the optimal parameter of LLLT in pediatric and young patients, and studies with higher methodological quality should be performed. What is known: • Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) was recommended by Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer/International Society of Oral Oncology; however, evidences about LLLT on oral mucositis in pediatric and young patients were insufficient and lack supportive synthesized data. • Recently, there have been several new RCTs or CCTs for pediatric patients or young adults. What is new: • Prophylactic LLLT reduces the occurrence of mucositis and severe mucositis and decreases the average severity of oral mucositis in pediatric and young patients. • Therapeutic LLLT reduces the average severity of oral mucositis and oral pain.

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Accurate monitoring of grassland biomass at high spatial and temporal resolutions is important for the effective utilization of grasslands in ecological and agricultural applications. However, current remote sensing data cannot simultaneously provide accurate monitoring of vegetation changes with fine temporal and spatial resolutions. We used a data-fusion approach, namely the spatial and temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (STARFM), to generate synthetic normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat data sets. This provided observations at fine temporal (8-d) and medium spatial (30 m) resolutions. Based on field-sampled aboveground biomass (AGB), synthetic NDVI and support vector machine (SVM) techniques were integrated to develop an AGB estimation model (SVM-AGB) for Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia, China. Compared with model generated from MODIS-NDVI (R 2 = 0.73, root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 30.61 g/m 2 ), the SVM-AGB model we developed can not only ensure the accuracy of estimation (R 2 = 0.77, RMSE = 17.22 g/m 2 ), but also produce higher spatial (30 m) and temporal resolution (8-d) biomass maps. We then generated the time-series biomass to detect biomass anomalies for grassland regions. We found that the synthetic NDVI-derived estimations contained more details on the distribution and severity of vegetation anomalies compared with MODIS NDVI-derived AGB estimations. This is the first time that we have generated time series of grassland biomass with 30-m and 8-d intervals data through combined use of a data-fusion method and the SVM-AGB model. Our study will be useful for near real-time and accurate (improved resolutions) monitoring of grassland conditions, and the data have implications for arid and semi-arid grasslands management.

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MICs of eight antibiotics were detected with 40 Chinese Mycoplasma pneumoniae isolates. Thirty-eight isolates (95%) were macrolide resistant. Each macrolide-resistant isolate harbored an A2063G or A2064G point mutation in the 23S rRNA gene. All 40 isolates (100%) were type I strains, but they might have originated from different clones. Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a common pathogen causing community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) (4, 9, 12). Macrolides are the drugs of primary choice for the treatment of M. pneumoniae infections. Macrolide resistance rates of M. pneumoniae have increased rapidly in recent years, especially in Asia (3, 10, 11). In 2009, studies from China found that 83% (44/53) and 92% (46/50) of M. pneumoniae strains isolated from pediatric patients in Shanghai (6) and Beijing (14) were resistant to macrolides, respectively. In 2010, the macrolide resistance rate of M. pneumoniae isolated from ambulatory adult patients was 69% (46/67) in Beijing (1).In this study, 40 M. pneumoniae isolates were collected from CAP patients in Beijing, China. The antibiotic resistance patterns of this pathogen were surveyed with eight agents, and the mechanisms of resistance for macrolide-resistant isolates were investigated with 23S rRNA gene analysis.M. pneumoniae strains. Forty M. pneumoniae isolates were obtained from 182 CAP patients in the Beijing, Dongcheng, and Xicheng Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January 2011 to June 2011. The clonalities of all M. pneumoniae isolates were determined by the filtration-cloning technique and identified by colony morphology and real-time PCR assays (2).Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of isolates. The MICs of eight antibiotics were determined by broth microdilution methods with SP4 broth (Remel). M. pneumoniae reference strain M129 (ATCC 29342) was tested as an antibiotic-sensitive control. Thirty-eight (95%) isolates were macrolide resistant. The MIC 50 values of isolates for erythromycin, clarithromycin, azithromycin, and josamycin were greater than 256 g/ml, 256 g/ml, 32 g/ml, and 4 g/ml, respectively. The MIC 90 values of the isolates with the four macrolides above were greater than 256 g/ml, 256 g/ ml, 32 g/ml, and 8 g/ml, respectively. All M. pneumoniae isolates were susceptible to tetracycline and fluoroquinolones (Table 1). Gatifloxacin was more active than ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin. The MIC 90 of gatifloxacin (0.064 g/ml) was much lower than those of ciprofloxacin (1 g/ml) and levofloxacin (1 g/ml).Sequencing analysis of the 23S rRNA gene. Genomic DNA of each isolate was extracted with the QIAamp DNA minikit (Qiagen). Domains II and V of the 23S rRNA gene were amplified by methods described previously (8). All the amplicons were sequenced by the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI). Thirty-seven isolates harbored an A2063G mutation in domain V of the 23S rRNA gene, while one isolate harbored an A2064G mutation in domain V of the 23S rRNA gene. No mutations were found in domain II (Table 1).Typing of the p1 gene. All 40 M. pneumoniae isolates from CAP...

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Quantifying the impact of climate change and human activities on grassland dynamics is an essential step for developing sustainable grassland ecosystem management strategies. However, the direction and magnitude of climate change and human activities in driving alpine grassland dynamic over the Tibetan Plateau remain under debates. Here, we systematically reviewed the relevant studies on the methods, main conclusions, and causes for the inconsistency in distinguishing the respective contribution of climatic and anthropogenic forces to alpine grassland dynamic. Both manipulative experiments and traditional statistical analysis show that climate warming increase biomass in alpine meadows and decrease in alpine steppes, while both alpine steppes and meadows benefit from an increase in precipitation or soil moisture. Overgrazing is a major factor for the degradation of alpine grassland in local areas with high level of human activity intensity. However, across the entire Tibetan Plateau and its subregions, four views characterize the remaining controversies: alpine grassland changes are primarily due to (1) climatic force, (2) nonclimatic force, (3) combination of anthropogenic and climatic force, or (4) alternation of anthropogenic and climatic force. Furthermore, these views also show spatial inconsistencies. Differences on the source and quality of remote sensing products, the structure and parameter of models, and overlooking the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of human activity intensity contribute to current disagreements. In this review, we highlight the necessity for taking the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of human activity intensity into account in the models of attribution assessment, and the importance for accurate validation of climatic and anthropogenic contribution to alpine grassland variation at multiple scales for future studies.

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