Search

Survival is difficult to predict in patients with resected stage I lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), but tumor microenvironment (TME) factors appear useful in predicting survival in advanced non-small cell lung cancer. We aimed to identify the TME factors linked to recurrence/metastasis and survival in stage I LUAD patients. We evaluated TME factors in stage I LUAD patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) using the “ESTIMATE” and “MCP-counter” R packages. We characterized infiltrating immune cells in the tumor and stromal regions in 44 stage I LUAD patients at our hospital using immunohistochemical methods combined with the HALO(®) Image Analysis Platform. In TCGA LUAD patients, the number of neutrophils was higher in patients without recurrence/metastasis than in patients with recurrence/metastasis. For patients with recurrence/metastasis, higher CD8+ T lymphocyte and B lymphocyte infiltration levels were associated with better overall survival (OS), and myeloid dendritic cell (DC) infiltration was associated with better disease-free survival (DFS). In stage I LUAD patients at our hospital, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, CD14+ monocytic lineage cells, CD16+ NK cells, and CD19+ B lymphocytes were more highly expressed in stromal regions than in tumor regions. Moreover, high intratumoral CD11c+ myeloid DC and CD68+ macrophage levels were associated with recurrence/metastasis. Within tumor regions, higher CD11c+ myeloid DC and CD68+ macrophage levels were associated with shorter DFS; within stromal regions, higher CD68+ macrophage levels were associated with shorter DFS. Multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of intravascular carcinoma embolus, higher intratumoral CD11c+ myeloid DC levels, and high stromal CD68+ macrophage and CD4+ T-cell levels were independently linked to recurrence/metastasis in stage I LUAD patients. This study using 2 datasets shows that key players in the TME are associated with recurrence/metastasis in stage I LUAD patients. Higher intratumoral CD11c+ myeloid DC, stromal CD68+ macrophage and stromal CD4+ T-cell levels are independent prognostic factors for DFS in these patients.

Purpose: Congenital heart defect (CHD) is the most common birth defect. Thoracic echocardiography (TTE) can provide sufficient cardiac structure information, evaluate hemodynamics and cardiac function, and is an effective method for atrial septal defect (ASD) examination. This paper aims to study a deep learning method based on cardiac ultrasound video to assist in ASD diagnosis. Materials and methods: We select two standard views of the atrial septum (subAS) and low parasternal four-compartment view (LPS4C) as the two views to identify ASD. We enlist data from 300 children patients as part of a double-blind experiment for five-fold cross-validation to verify the performance of our model. In addition, data from 30 children patients (15 positives and 15 negatives) are collected for clinician testing and compared to our model test results (these 30 samples do not participate in model training). We propose an echocardiography video-based atrial septal defect diagnosis system. In our model, we present a block random selection, maximal agreement decision and frame sampling strategy for training and testing respectively, resNet18 and r3D networks are used to extract the frame features and aggregate them to build a rich video-level representation. Results: We validate our model using our private dataset by five-cross validation. For ASD detection, we achieve 89.33 AUC, 84.95 accuracy, 85.70 sensitivity, 81.51 specificity and 81.99 F1 score. Conclusion: The proposed model is multiple instances learning-based deep learning model for video atrial septal defect detection which effectively improves ASD detection accuracy when compared to the performances of previous networks and clinical doctors.

Background and aims Despite its inclusion in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, there is a virtual paucity of high-quality scientific evidence about compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), especially in underrepresented and underserved populations. Therefore, we comprehensively examined CSBD across 42 countries, genders, and sexual orientations, and validated the original (CSBD-19) and short (CSBD-7) versions of the Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder Scale to provide standardized, state-of-the-art screening tools for research and clinical practice. Method Using data from the International Sex Survey (N = 82,243; Mage = 32.39 years, SD = 12.52), we evaluated the psychometric properties of the CSBD-19 and CSBD-7 and compared CSBD across 42 countries, three genders, eight sexual orientations, and individuals with low vs. high risk of experiencing CSBD. Results A total of 4.8% of the participants were at high risk of experiencing CSBD. Country- and gender-based differences were observed, while no sexual-orientation-based differences were present in CSBD levels. Only 14% of individuals with CSBD have ever sought treatment for this disorder, with an additional 33% not having sought treatment because of various reasons. Both versions of the scale demonstrated excellent validity and reliability. Discussion and conclusions This study contributes to a better understanding of CSBD in underrepresented and underserved populations and facilitates its identification in diverse populations by providing freely accessible ICD-11-based screening tools in 26 languages. The findings may also serve as a crucial building block to stimulate research into evidence-based, culturally sensitive prevention and intervention strategies for CSBD that are currently missing from the literature.

Rock mass pressure has always been a research hotspot in the field of tunnel engineering, especially in the super large-span tunnel, which is characterized by flat section, large excavation span, and complex stress field. Based on the Letuan Tunnel (a bi-directional tunnel with eight traffic lanes) of Binlai expressway expansion project in Shandong Province, China, this paper focused on the calculation method of rock mass pressure and the evolution law of load release in the construction process of the super large-span tunnel excavated by upper-bench central diaphragm (CD) method. Based on field measured data of Letuan Tunnel, the deformation behavior of primary lining and the distribution state of rock mass pressure during the tunnel construction were analyzed. According to the bearing mode of supporting structure, the mechanical models of different construction stages were established. Then, the rock mass pressures in different construction stages were back-calculated using mechanical models and compared with the measured values, and the evolution law of load release during the tunnel construction was discussed. The study results show that the tunnel deformation and rock mass pressure were significantly affected by the construction process and support form, and the excavation span was the key factor affecting the stability of rock mass. For the shallow-buried super large-span tunnel constructed by upper-bench CD method, the primary support of upper bench was under eccentric pressure. The comparison between the back-calculated value and the field measured value indicated that they were similar, and the average relative error was 17.23%. According to the concept of load release coefficient proposed in this paper, the load release coefficient after the pilot tunnel ahead (Part I) excavation reached 63%, and the load release coefficient after the pilot tunnel behind excavation (Part II) was 37%, which means that the rock mass pressure of Part I is increased about 59% due to the excavation of Part II.

Strong ratoon ability is the key factor in improving sugarcane productivity and reducing production costs. Soil microorganisms are sensitive to environmental changes and play an important role in regulating soil ecological functions. However, the impacts of sugarcane varieties with different ratooning abilities on soil microorganisms are poorly understood. Therefore, two common cultivated varieties with different ratooning abilities (Yuetang 94-128 with strong ratooning ability and Yuetang 03-373 with low ratooning ability) were selected to study the effects of sugarcane varieties on sugarcane yield and microbial community structure from 2017 to 2019 in South China. The Illumina MiSeq platform was applied in the present study to detect the diversity and community structure of rhizosphere soil bacteria and fungi in the different sugarcane varieties in 2019. The results showed that sugarcane cane yield and sugar yield were higher in Yuetang 94-128 during the three years, whereas the sugar content was lower in Yuetang 94-128 than in Yuetang 03-373 during this time. Different years influenced cane yield and sugar yield, while the sucrose content remained stable during the different years. The pH, organic matter (SOM) and total nitrogen (TN) contents were significantly lower in Yuetang 03-373 than in Yuetang 94-128, whereas the other indices had no significant difference between the different varieties. The α-diversity of sugarcane rhizosphere soil bacteria and fungi was not significantly different between the different varieties. Compared with Yuetang 03-373, the increase in bacterial taxa associated with the soil carbon and nitrogen cycles may be one of the reasons for the strong ratooning of Yuetang 94-128. The difference in rare fungal taxa between the two sugarcane varieties may lead to different ecological functions in the soil. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and Mantel test showed that the soil physical and chemical properties did not significantly influence the microbial community structure, which could indicate that sugarcane variety was the primary variable responsible for microbial community structure. This study provided important information on the rhizosphere soil microbial community structure of different sugarcane varieties with different ratooning abilities and provided a theoretical basis for improving the ratooning ability of sugarcane varieties from the perspective of improving soil microbial community.

We report our experiences implementing standards-based grading at scale in an Algorithms course, which serves as the terminal required CS Theory course in our department's undergraduate curriculum. The course had 200-400 students, taught by two instructors, eight graduate teaching assistants, and supported by two additional graders and several undergraduate course assistants. We highlight the role of standards-based grading in supporting our students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude by detailing the successes and adjustments we would make to the course structure., Comment: This is an extended version of our paper, which will appear in ITiCSE 2022

In this paper, we study the problem of jointly estimating the optical flow and scene flow from synchronized 2D and 3D data. Previous methods either employ a complex pipeline that splits the joint task into independent stages, or fuse 2D and 3D information in an "early-fusion" or "late-fusion" manner. Such one-size-fits-all approaches suffer from a dilemma of failing to fully utilize the characteristic of each modality or to maximize the inter-modality complementarity. To address the problem, we propose a novel end-to-end framework, called CamLiFlow. It consists of 2D and 3D branches with multiple bidirectional connections between them in specific layers. Different from previous work, we apply a point-based 3D branch to better extract the geometric features and design a symmetric learnable operator to fuse dense image features and sparse point features. Experiments show that CamLiFlow achieves better performance with fewer parameters. Our method ranks 1st on the KITTI Scene Flow benchmark, outperforming the previous art with 1/7 parameters. Code is available at https://github.com/MCG-NJU/CamLiFlow., Comment: Accepted to CVPR 2022 (Oral)

Accurate absolute pose regression is one of the key challenges in robotics and computer vision. Existing direct regression methods suffer from two limitations.First, some noisy scenarios such as poor illumination conditions are likely to result in the uncertainty of pose estimation. Second, the output n-dimensionalfeature vector in the Euclidean space R^n cannot be well mapped to SE(3) manifold. In this work, we propose a deep dual quaternion network that performs the absolute pose regression on SE(3). We first develop an antipodally symmetricprobability distribution over the unit dual quaternion on SE(3) to model uncertainties and then propose an intermediary differential representationspace to replace the final output pose, which avoids the mapping problem from R^n to SE(3). In addition, we introduce a backpropagation method that considers the continuousness and differentiability of the proposed intermediary space. Extensive experiments on the camera re-localization task on the Cambridge Landmarks and 7-Scenes datasets demonstrate that our method greatly improves the accuracy of the pose as well as the robustness in dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity, compared to the state-of-the-art.

We see the world with two eyes. Binocular vision provides more ample information through interocular interaction. Previous studies have shown that aging impairs a variety of visual functions, but how aging affects binocular vision is still unclear. In this study, we measured three typical binocular functions-binocular combination, binocular rivalry, and stereo vision-to investigate aging-related effects on binocular vision in a relatively large sample (48 younger adults and 27 older adults) with normal or corrected-to-normal distance vision and no ophthalmological and mental diseases. We found that there were no consistent aging-related declines in binocular vision, with the worst effect on alternation frequency in binocular rivalry and no effect on binocular phase combination and stereo vision tested by Titmus. In addition, aging changed the correlation pattern among some of these binocular functions. These results reflected (at least partially) different aging-related mechanism(s) in binocular vision.

Large deformation has always been a focus and difficult issue in the construction of deep-buried tunnels in squeezing rock. Previous studies mainly focused on the large deformation of medium and small span railway/highway tunnels in soft ground. However, there are limited researches on the large deformation control methods for large-span (three-lane) highway tunnels constructed in unfavorable geological environment. Based on the Lianchengshan Tunnel of the Baoji-Hanzhong expressway in Shaanxi Province, China, this paper studied the deformation behaviors and mechanical mechanisms of a large-span tunnel excavated in chlorite schist formation with single primary lining method and double primary lining method by in-situ test and numerical simulation. The achieved results indicate that the double primary lining method is much more effective than that of the single primary lining method in restraining the deformation of surrounding rock, and the maximum vertical displacement and horizontal convergence are reduced by 67% and 66%, respectively. The support method of double HK200b-type steel sets combined with large-diameter foot reinforcement bolt (FRB) and deep invert could effectively control the large deformation of the case tunnel, which effectively avoided the supporting structure failure, repeated clearance invasion and multiple reshaping work caused by the single primary lining method and conformed to the energy-saving construction concept of “no clearance interfering, no support reshaping” of tunnels in squeezing ground. Simulation analysis of surrounding rock deformation, supporting structure stress and plastic zone distribution was performed to evaluate the support effect of the two deformation-controlled methods. Finally, the deformation and stress characteristic curves of rock-support of the two deformation-controlled methods were established, which revealed the supporting mechanism of double primary linings for large-span tunnels in chlorite schist. The research results can provide a theoretical basis and practical reference for the large-deformation control of similar large-span tunnels in squeezing rock.

During the tunnel construction in soft ground, the insufficient bearing capacity of tunnel foundation usually causes a series of settlement problems. Tunnel feet-lock pipe (TFP) has been widely used to take the vertical load acting at the foundation of a tunnel foot. However, the detailed bearing performance of TFP is still not clear, and there is a lack of quantitative research. In this paper, a simple analytical approach is adopted to evaluate the performance of the TFP, and the main parameters affecting the supporting performance of the TFP are analyzed. The results show that the ϕ42–ϕ140 TFP with the angle of 10° can take 3.8%–40.4% of vertical load. TFP has an effective length of 1.7 m–2.8 m, which is related to the relative stiffness between the TFP and the stratum. With the increase of the installation angle, the TFP shares more vertical load. This trend is more obvious when the angle of the TFP is greater than 20°. If the proportion coefficient of the subgrade reaction coefficient is doubled, the vertical load shared by the TFP can be increased by 34%–38%. For every 10 cm increase in overbreak behind the steel rib, the vertical load shared by TFP is reduced by 16%.

Light, one of the key environmental components for both life and work, played significant role in subjective feelings (e.g. affect and comfort), but the exact effects and mechanisms were still to be determined. The present study screened thirty healthy adults (13 females, 22.45 ± 3.26 years) and examined subjective affect and comfort under short-term white lights with different combination of correlated color temperature (CCT) and illuminance at different times of day (e.g. morning, afternoon, and evening). Our results showed a significant interaction between illuminance level and time-of-day on subjective comfort. Participants felt more comfortable under 50 lx and 100 lx instead of 500 lx in the evening, and more comfortable under 500 lx in the morning and afternoon. In addition, a positive correlation between illuminance and comfort in the morning and a negative correlation between them in the evening were found. No significant effect of CCT on any subjective feeling was revealed. Our results necessitate the consideration of time-of-day in understanding lighting effects and application of healthy lighting in daily life.

A functional pesticide–fertilizer combination is in high demand due to the many potential advantages, including the dual reduction in pesticide and fertilizer inputs, increased crop yield, safe to use, and environmental friendly. To investigate the impact of a pesticide–fertilizer on the soil environment of sugarcane, the effects of clothianidin and/or organic fertilizer treatments on the diversity, structure, and function of the rhizosphere bacterial community were studied using 16S rRNA gene sequencing in 2019 at Guangzhou Sugarcane Research Institute. The bacterial community treated with the pesticide–fertilizer displayed a higher diversity compared with the control treatments (added with pesticide or fertilizer only). The dynamic changes of the bacterial community structure revealed that the pesticide–fertilizer treatment showed a significant variation in the second week. Functional analysis demonstrated that four bacterial genera, including Dyella, Mucilaginibacter, Massilia, and Telmatospirillum, could play an important role in degrading clothianidin and improving soil health. The relative abundance of nitrogen cycle genes showed that the nitrification-related gene pmoA-amoA and denitrification-related genes nirK and norB were increased significantly in the pesticide–fertilizer treatment compared with that of the control treatments. This preliminary study provides a good basis to understand the effect of a pesticide–fertilizer integration on the soil rhizosphere microbiome which would be helpful for the evaluation of its application in the field.

In the traditional cognition, the factors that affect the level of internal control are usually based on the objective factors such as corporate characteristics, financial status, and governance structure. However, the internal control defects of many famous companies expose the phenomenon of subjective manipulation, and this leads us to focus on the subjective factor of internal control, which we call internal-control willingness. We define “internal-control willingness” as the degrees of subjective initiative of the internal-control construction and execution activities. Additionally, we propose a method for measuring internal-control willingness, using text analysis and machine learning. Then, we examine the impact of internal-control willingness on enterprise risk-taking, through the internal-control, financial, and market data of China A-share main board enterprises in 2011–2018. The study found that (1) internal-control willingness has a significant positive impact on internal-control level, which can fairly achieve the measurement of internal-control subjective initiative. (2) It confirms that internal-control willingness lowers corporate risk-taking. (3) Further research finds that state-owned enterprises strengthen internal-control willingness and their risk-taking level is significantly lower than that of non-state-owned enterprises. This paper suggests that the regulatory authorities actively urge the board of directors to strengthen internal-control willingness.

Standard echocardiographic view recognition is a prerequisite for automatic diagnosis of congenital heart defects (CHDs). This study aims to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of standard echocardiographic view recognition in the diagnosis of CHDs in children using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). A new deep learning-based neural network method was proposed to automatically and efficiently identify commonly used standard echocardiographic views. A total of 367,571 echocardiographic image slices from 3,772 subjects were used to train and validate the proposed echocardiographic view recognition model where 23 standard echocardiographic views commonly used to diagnose CHDs in children were identified. The F1 scores of a majority of views were all ≥0.90, including subcostal sagittal/coronal view of the atrium septum, apical four-chamber view, apical five-chamber view, low parasternal four-chamber view, sax-mid, sax-basal, parasternal long-axis view of the left ventricle (PSLV), suprasternal long-axis view of the entire aortic arch, M-mode echocardiographic recording of the aortic (M-AO) and the left ventricle at the level of the papillary muscle (M-LV), Doppler recording from the mitral valve (DP-MV), the tricuspid valve (DP-TV), the ascending aorta (DP-AAO), the pulmonary valve (DP-PV), and the descending aorta (DP-DAO). This study provides a solid foundation for the subsequent use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify CHDs in children.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pss-10.1177_09567976211056620 for Identifying Long- and Short-Term Processes in Perceptual Learning by Jia Yang, Fang-Fang Yan, Lijun Chen, Shuhan Fan, Yifan Wu, Lei Jiang, Jie Xi, Junlei Zhao, Yudong Zhang, Zhong-Lin Lu and Chang-Bing Huang in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pss-10.1177_09567976211056620 for Identifying Long- and Short-Term Processes in Perceptual Learning by Jia Yang, Fang-Fang Yan, Lijun Chen, Shuhan Fan, Yifan Wu, Lei Jiang, Jie Xi, Junlei Zhao, Yudong Zhang, Zhong-Lin Lu and Chang-Bing Huang in Psychological Science

In this paper, the field monitoring method is used to study the variation of rock mass pressure during the construction of a tunnel in phyllite stratum, and three functions are used to fit and analyze the variation of rock mass pressure with deformation, excavation time, and space. The results show the following (1) When the deformation increases significantly, the rock mass pressure decreases firstly and then increases. This is caused by the insufficient bearing capacity of the rock mass in the arch foot of the supporting structure after the excavation of the upper bench, which leads to a settlement of supporting structure and surrounding rock. (2) Compared with other kinds of fitting functions, the logistic function can better characterize the variation of the pressure of surrounding rock with deformation, excavation time, and distance from the face. This paper provides a reliable reference for the design and construction of the tunnel in phyllite stratum. The logistic function can be used to present and predict the change of rock mass pressure with deformation, excavation time, and space in similar rock mass conditions.

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic airway inflammatory disease characterized by irreversible airflow obstruction. Pathogenic mechanisms underlying COPD remain largely unknown. Objective The current study was designed to explore serum concentration of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) in stable COPD patients and the potential effect of Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBP) on HIF-1α protein expression. Methods Serum HIF-1α was quantified by ELISA in 102 stable COPD patients before and after 2-week orally taken LBP (100 mL/time, twice daily, 5-15 mg/mL). Correlation of serum LBP and lung function (FEV1%) or blood gas (PO2 and PCO2) was also analyzed. As a control, 105 healthy subjects were also enrolled into this study. Results Serum concentration of HIF-1α was significantly higher in the stable COPD patients (37.34 ± 7.20 pg/mL) than that in the healthy subjects (29.55 ± 9.66 pg/mL, P

Visual functions decline with age, but how aging degrades visual functions remains controversial. In the current study, the mechanisms underlying age-related visual declines were examined psychophysically. We developed an efficient method to quickly explore contrast sensitivity as a function of nine spatial frequencies at three levels of external noise in both young and old subjects. Fifty-two young and twenty-six old subjects have been screened for ophthalmological and mental diseases and participated in the experiment. Contrast sensitivity varied significantly with spatial frequency, age, and level of external noise. By adopting a nonlinear observer model, we decomposed contrast sensitivity into inefficiencies in internal additive noise, internal multiplicative noise, perceptual template gain, and/or system non-linearity. Model analysis revealed that aging impacts both internal additive noise and perceptual template gain, and such age-related degradation is tuned to spatial frequency, which is also a good predictor to discriminate old from young. The quick characterization of contrast sensitivity functions at different noise levels and the accompanying analysis developed in the current study may have profound application in other clinical populations.

Reasonable evaluation and prediction of squeezing condition to avoid large deformation disaster in tunnels have been an important research issue. In order to accurately and rapidly predict the larg...

The issue of large deformation mechanism in soft rock tunnels has puzzled tunnel scholars for decades. Previous studies have not evolved a clear and common understanding. Therefore, detailed on-site measurement, full investigation and statistical analysis have been conducted on the instability and failure of Muzhailing Tunnel since its construction, whose length is beyond 15 km. The study aims at systematically analyzing the failure mechanisms and modes of Muzhailing Tunnel in monoclinic and soft-hard interbedded rock strata. Study results show that the angle between strata strike and tunnel axis greatly determines the magnitude of deformation, the dip direction significantly controls the bias direction and maximum deformation direction, and the dip angle deeply affects the deformation form. The failure modes of surrounding rock mainly include four types: spalling and overturning failure, bending failure, shear slip failure and buckling failure. Large deformation characteristics are summarized from six aspects: failure form, groundwater, sensitivity to influencing factors, deformation degree, deformation speed and deformation duration. The instability modes of primary lining include in-plane (transverse) instability and out-plane (longitudinal) instability. Finally, the causes of large deformation are analyzed from geological, structural, engineering and human factors.

China Academy of Engineering Physics Terahertz Free Electron Laser (CTFEL) works in the range of 0.7~4.2 THz. To expand the range below 0.1 THz, we developed a super-radiation terahertz (THz) source based on sub-picosecond electron beam behind CTFEL. The sub-picosecond electron beam was generated by velocity compression and then injected into undulator to provide THz wave. In this proceeding, the preliminary experimental results of super-radiation terahertz source were reported.

The rhizosphere microbial community is important for plant health and is shaped by numerous environmental factors. This study aimed to unravel the effects of a pesticide/fertilizer mixture on the soil rhizosphere microbiome of field-grown sugarcane. A field trial on sugarcane was conducted in Zhanjian City, Guangdong Province, China, and soil samples from the rhizosphere were collected after clothianidin pesticide and/or organic fertilizer treatments. The effects of pesticide and/or organic fertilizer treatments on the composition, diversity, and predictive function of the rhizosphere microbial communities were examined using 16S rRNA gene and ITS1 amplicon sequencing. Compared with the controls (no pesticide or fertilizer used), the microbial community that resulted from treatment with the pesticide/fertilizer mixture (SPF) had a higher relative bacterial diversity and fungal richness, and contributed more beneficial functions to sugarcane, including xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism of amino acids. The bacterial and fungal compositions at various taxonomic levels were not significantly different in SPF and SP (pesticide only) treatments compared to treatments without the pesticide, suggesting that the clothianidin addition did not cause a detrimental impact on the soil microbiome. Moreover, five bacterial genera, including Dyella, Sphingomonas, Catenulispora, Mucilaginibacter, and Tumebacillus, were significantly more abundant in the SPF and SP treatments, which could be associated with the pesticide addition. With the addition of organic fertilizers in SPF, the abundances of some soil-beneficial bacteria Bacillus, Paenibacillus, and Brevibacillus were highly increased. Our study provides insights into the interactions between the rhizosphere soil microbiome and pesticide-fertilizer integration, which may help improve the application of pesticide-fertilizer to sugarcane fields. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-021-02770-3.

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) maintain and promote infant health. Most of the current methods for HMOs quantitation require labor-intensive and time-consuming steps for sample preparation. This study presents two very simple and easy-to-operate pretreatment methods, requiring either ultrafiltration or centrifugation to separate free oligosaccharides from whole fat human milk and other milk matrix before oligosaccharides labeling for quantifying HMOs using ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. A single chromatography run quantified 15 sialylated and neutral HMOs with high sensitivity (with an LOD less than 8 pg for all HMOs tested: about 1 pg for 2'-fucosyllactose, 3-fucosyllactose, 4'-galactosyllactose, 3'-galactosyllactose, and 6'-galactosyllactose) and good linearity with coefficient of correlation above 0.999. Accuracy and precision were satisfactory for both pretreatment methods. Overall, the centrifugation pretreatment was efficient and reliable for samples with high levels of oligosaccharides, and the ultrafiltration pretreatment was especially suitable for samples with low oligosaccharide abundance.

Comprehensive harnessing of soil and water erosion can change the regional surface environment, improve ecological conditions, and promote regional social and economic development, which can also achieve good ecological, social, and economic benefits for the purpose of preventing and controlling soil erosion. Scientific evaluation of soil erosion comprehensive harnessing benefits is presented, and analysis of influencing factors is adopted, which is an important basis for further understanding of work effectiveness and optimization of governance measures. The research selects Taihang Mountain Area of Hebei Province as the research area. This paper evaluates the comprehensive treatment benefits of 16 typical small watersheds by multi-level fuzzy evaluation method, and uses the exponential, linear, logarithmic, power function and polynomial as the model. The correlation between land use type area and comprehensive treatment benefit was studied, and the corresponding improvement of management efficiency has been proposed in order to provide a reference for optimizing the comprehensive management mode of small watersheds in Taihang Mountain area and improving the efficiency of comprehensive management.

AA damage is a common defect caused by particle residue, charge accumulation, abnormal etch and so on. In the actual production process, on different products such as logical and CMOS, it is found that the AA damage with the same characteristics can be observed after POLY loop to show regular circular and annular distribution, but impact wafer cannot find the regularity. In this paper, for the same form AA damage defect occurring after the POLY Loop, according to the impact wafer condition, and the information such as the condition of the front film, the etch condition and the pretreatment mode are deeply investigated, and the reasons for the AA damage defect are obtained: insufficient etch selection ratio, high vacuum cavity operation in the front layer and the influence of particle. The experimental results show that the generation of this type of AA damage can be effectively improved by prohibiting the operation of high vacuum cavity, adopting the pretreatment of removing particle and selecting the high selection ratio when the process is established.

The PFOA surfactant (chemical structure: (polymer backbone)-C8F17) using in photoresist is forbade own to every country need protect environment, so the PFOA surfactant is replaced by non PFOA type (chemical structure: (polymer)-(CF2) n2 -CF3, n2

Plant–microbe interactions can modulate the plant metabolome, but there is no information about how different soil microbiomes could affect the sugarcane metabolome and its quality. Here, we collected soil and stalk samples from bitter sugarcane (BS) and sweet sugarcane (SS) to conduct chemical analysis, microbiome and metabolome analysis. Our data revealed lower species diversity in the BS group than in the SS group, and 18 discriminatory OTUs (relative abundance ≥ 0.01%) were identified. Sugarcane metabolomic analysis indicated the different abundances of 247 metabolites between the two groups in which 22 distinct metabolites involved in two flavonoid biosynthesis pathways were revealed. Integrated analysis between soil microbial taxa, stalk chemical components, and soil properties showed that the flavonoid content in stalks and the nitrogen concentration in soil were highly correlated with the soil microbiome composition. Bacteria at the genus level exhibited greater associations with distinct metabolites, and six genera were independently associated with 90.9% of the sugarcane metabolites that play a major metabolic role in sugarcane. In conclusion, this study provided evidences that the interaction between plant–microbiome can change the plant metabolome.

A key challenge in wide adoption of sophisticated context-aware applications is the requirement of continuous sensing and context computing. This paper presents Panorama, a middleware that identifies collaboration opportunities to offload context computing tasks to nearby mobile devices as well as cloudlets/cloud. At the heart of Panorama is a multi-objective optimizer that takes into account different constraints such as access cost, computation capability, access latency, energy consumption and data privacy, and efficiently computes a collaboration plan optimized simultaneously for different objectives such as minimizing cost, energy and/or execution time. Panorama provides support for discovering nearby devices and cloudlets/cloud, computing an optimal collaboration plan, distributing computation to participating devices, and getting the results back. The paper provides an extensive evaluation of Panorama via two representative context monitoring applications over a set of Android devices and a cloudlet/cloud under different constraints., Published in MobiCase 2015

Adaptive charging can charge electric vehicles (EVs) at scale cost effectively, despite the uncertainty in EV arrivals. We formulate adaptive EV charging as a feasibility problem that meets all EVs' energy demands before their deadlines while satisfying constraints in charging rate and total charging power. We propose an online algorithm, smoothed least-laxity-first (sLLF), that decides the current charging rates without the knowledge of future arrivals and demands. We characterize the performance of the sLLF algorithm analytically and numerically. Numerical experiments with real-world data show that it has a significantly higher rate of feasible EV charging than several other existing EV charging algorithms. Resource augmentation framework is employed to assess the feasibility condition of the algorithm. The assessment shows that the sLLF algorithm achieves perfect feasibility with only a 0.07 increase in resources., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-crd-10.1177_14799731211060051 for The association of blood urea nitrogen levels upon emergency admission with mortality in acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by Lan Chen, Lijun Chen, Han Zheng, Sunying Wu and Saibin Wang in Chronic Respiratory Disease

This paper provides the conceptualization and the development of IIUMSAT-2, a nanosatellite that is designed by a group of engineering students from International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) to simulate an actual satellite ability in space. IIUMSAT-2 is an integrated system comprising Mechanical Subsystem, Payload Subsystem, Communication and Data Handling Subsystem (CDH), Electrical Power Subsystem, and Ground Control System. The nanosatellite is developed based on the Space Mission Analysis and Design (SMAD) approach. IIUMSAT-2 is able to communicate at a 200m distance, transmitting pressure, temperature, altitude, humidity, location, attitude, and flight images to the ground station wirelessly.

Light, one of the key environmental components for both life and work, played significant role in subjective feelings (e.g. affect and comfort), but the exact effects and mechanisms were still to be determined. The present study screened thirty healthy adults (13 females, 22.45 ± 3.26 years) and examined subjective affect and comfort under short-term white lights with different combination of correlated color temperature (CCT) and illuminance at different times of day (e.g. morning, afternoon, and evening). Our results showed a significant interaction between illuminance level and time-of-day on subjective comfort. Participants felt more comfortable under 50 lx and 100 lx instead of 500 lx in the evening, and more comfortable under 500 lx in the morning and afternoon. In addition, a positive correlation between illuminance and comfort in the morning and a negative correlation between them in the evening were found. No significant effect of CCT on any subjective feeling was revealed. Our results necessitate the consideration of time-of-day in understanding lighting effects and application of healthy lighting in daily life.