To cite: Jin X, lian J-s, hu Jh, et al. Gut epub ahead of print: [please include Day Month Year].

Background. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 has become a large threat to public health in China, with high contagious capacity and varied mortality. This study aimed to investigate the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of older patients with COVID-19 outside Wuhan.Methods. A retrospective study was performed, with collecting data from medical records of confirmed COVID-19 patients in Zhejiang province from 17 January to 12 February 2020. Epidemiological, clinical, and treatment data were analyzed between older (≥ 60 years) and younger (< 60 years) patients.Results. A total of 788 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were selected; 136 were older patients with corresponding mean age of 68.28 ± 7.31 years. There was a significantly higher frequency of women in older patient group compared with younger patients (57.35% vs 46.47%, P = .021). The presence of coexisting medical conditions was significantly higher in older patients compared with younger patients (55.15% vs 21.93%, P < .001), including the rate of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Significantly higher rates of severe clinical type (older vs younger groups: 16.18% vs 5.98%, P < .001), critical clinical type (8.82% vs 0.77%, P < .001), shortness of breath (12.50% vs 3.07%, P < .001), and temperature of > 39.0°C (13.97% vs 7.21%, P = .010) were observed in older patients compared with younger patients. Finally, higher rates of intensive care unit admission (9.56% vs 1.38%, P < .001) and methylprednisolone application (28.68% vs 9.36%, P < .001) were also identified in older patients compared with younger ones.Conclusions. The specific epidemiological and clinical features of older COVID-19 patients included significantly higher female sex, body temperature, comorbidities, and rate of severe and critical type disease.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 2 (Lanjuan Li); yidayang65@zju.edu.cn (Yida Yang) Highlight  COVID-19 has be a great threat to world health.  We aim to investigate clinical features of patients with abnormal imaging findings.  Those with abnormal images have more obvious clinical and laboratory features.  Combing clinical data with imaging score can predict severe/critical type. AbstractPurpose: To investigate the epidemiological, clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients with abnormal imaging findings. Methods: Patients confirmed with SARS-CoV-2 infection of Zhejiang province fromJan 17 to Feb 8 underwent CT or x-ray were enrolled. Epidemiological, clinical data were analyzed between those with abnormal or normal imaging findings.Results: Excluding 72 patients with normal images, 230 of 573 patients affected more than two lobes. The median radiograph score was 2.0 and there's negative correlation between the score and oxygenation index (ρ=-0.657, P<0.001). Patients with abnormal images were older (46.65±13.82), with higher rate of coexisting condition(28.8%), lower rate of exposure history and longer time between onset and confirmation(5d) than non-pneumonia patients(all P<0.05). Higher rate of fever, cough, expectoration, and headache, lower lymphocytes, albumin, serum sodium levels and higher total bilirubin, creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase and C-reactive J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 3 protein levels and lower oxygenation index were observed in pneumonia patients (all P<0.05). Muscle ache, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, lower lymphocytes levels and higher serum creatinine and radiograph score at admission were predictive factors for severe/critical subtype. Conclusion:Patients with abnormal images have more obvious clinical manifestations and laboratory changes. Combing clinical features and radiograph score can effectively predict severe/critical type.

Creating a security label that carries entirely distinct information in reflective and fluorescent states would enhance anti-counterfeiting levels to deter counterfeits ranging from currencies to pharmaceuticals, but has proven extremely challenging. Efforts to tune the reflection color of luminescent materials by modifying inherent chemical structures remain outweighed by substantial trade-offs in fluorescence properties, and vice versa, which destroys the information integrity of labels in either reflection or fluorescent color. Here, a strategy is reported to design geminate labels by programming fluorescent cholesteric liquid crystal microdroplets (two-tone inks), where the luminescent material is ‘coated’ with the structural color from helical superstructures. These structurally defined microdroplets fabricated by a capillary microfluidic technique contribute to different but intact messages of both reflective and fluorescent patterns in the geminate labels. Such two-tone inks have enormous potential to provide a platform for encryption and protection of valuable authentic information in anti-counterfeiting technology.

We report first principle calculations of electronic and mechanical properties of few-layer borophene with the inclusion of interlayer van der Waals (vdW) interaction. The anisotropic metallic behaviors are preserved from monolayer to few-layer structures. The energy splitting of bilayer borophene at Γ point near the Fermi level is about 1.7 eV, much larger than the values (0.5-1 eV) of other layered semiconductors, indicating much stronger vdW interactions in metallic layered borophene. In particular, the critical strains are enhanced by increasing the number of layers, leading to much more flexibility than that of monolayer structure. On the one hand, because of the buckled atomic structures, the out-of-plane negative Poisson's ratios are preserved as the layernumber increases. On the other hand, we find that the in-plane negative Poisson's ratios disappear in layered borophene, which is very different from puckered black phosphorus. The negative Poisson's ratio will recover if we enlarge the interlayer distance to 6.3Å, indicating that the physical origin behind the change of Poisson's ratios is the strong interlayer vdW interactions in layered borophene.