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Aiming at solving the problems of small fault data samples and insufficient remaining useful life (RUL) prediction accuracy of nuclear power machinery, a method based on an exponential degradation model is proposed to predict the RUL of equipment after the failure warning system alarm. After data preprocessing, time-domain feature extraction, selection, and dimensionality reduction fusion of multiple degradation variables, the exponential degradation model is constructed based on the Bayesian process, and prior information is used. As an application, the RUL of a nuclear power turbine was calculated based on actual monitoring data, the α − λ precision curve was used to evaluate the prediction effect, and the RUL prediction results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Background The association of early-life undernutrition and dyslipidemia found in previous studies may be confounded by the uncontrolled age difference between exposed and unexposed participants. The study aimed to investigate the association of early-life undernutrition and the risk of dyslipidemia in adulthood with good control of the age variable. Methods We took the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961) as a natural experiment of severe undernutrition. This study was based on the baseline investigation of a population-based cohort in rural China. Undernutrition in early life was defined as being exposed to famine at younger than 3 years of age. Three approaches including Adjustment, Restriction, and Matching were applied to control the confounding effect of age. Logistic regression models were applied to evaluate the association between early-life famine and the presence of dyslipidemia. Stratified analysis by gender was also performed, and potential effect modification was tested by adding the interaction term of the famine exposure variable and gender into the model. Results Undernutrition in early life was associated with increased risk of borderline high and above (BHA) levels of total cholesterol (TC, ORAdjustment = 1.61; ORRestriction = 1.56; ORMatching = 1.87), triglycerides (TG, ORAdjustment = 1.33; ORRestriction = 1.30; ORMatching = 1.34), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C, ORAdjustment = 1.75; ORRestriction = 1.53; ORMatching = 1.77) and dyslipidemia (ORAdjustment = 1.52; ORRestriction = 1.45; ORMatching = 1.60), as well as high levels of TC, TG, LDL-C and dyslipidemia. An inverse association of undernutrition and risk of low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) was found. Female participants with undernutrition experience had an increased risk of BHA TG and LDL-C (TG: ORAdjustment, female = 1.45; ORRestriction, female = 1.39; ORMatching, female = 1.51; LDL-C: ORAdjustment, female = 2.11; ORRestriction, female = 1.80; ORMatching, female = 2.15), but this association was not found in males. Conclusion Early-life undernutrition increased the risk of TC, TG, LDL-C, and dyslipidemia. Gender would significantly modify this effect for TG and LDL-C. These results emphasize the importance of nutritional conditions in the early stages of life to long-term health consequences.

BackgroundConventional universal endoscopic screening with pathology-based endoscopic re-examination for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma is in need of reform in China. We established a “two-step” precision screening strategy using two risk prediction models and have evaluated the cost-effectiveness of this precision strategy compared with the traditional strategy based on a large population-level randomized controlled trial from a healthcare provider’s perspective.MethodsFour precision screening strategies with different risk cutoffs at baseline screening and endoscopic surveillance were constructed, and then compared with traditional strategy through modeling using subjects from the screening cohort of the ESECC (Endoscopic Screening for Esophageal Cancer in China) trial. Total screening costs and the number of SDA (severe dysplasia and above in lesions of the esophagus) cases were obtained to calculate the average screening cost per SDA detected, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and protection rates. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate uncertainties.ResultsCompared to traditional strategy, all precision screening strategies have much lower average costs for detection of one SDA case ($7,148~$11,537 vs. $14,944). In addition, precision strategies 1&2 (strategies 1,2,3,4 described below) achieved higher effectiveness (143~150 vs. 136) and higher protection rates (87.7%~92.0% vs. 83.4%) at lower cost ($1,649,727~$1,672,221 vs. $2,032,386), generating negative ICERs (-$54,666/SDA~-$25,726/SDA) when compared to the traditional strategy. The optimal strategies within different willingness-to-pay (WTP) ranges were all precision screening strategies, and higher model sensitivities were adopted as WTP increased.ConclusionsPrecision screening strategy for esophageal cancer based on risk stratification is more cost-effective than use of traditional screening strategy and has practical implications for esophageal cancer screening programs in China.

The rational design of PROTACs is difficult due to their obscure structure-activity relationship. This study introduces a deep neural network model - DeepPROTACs to help design potent PROTACs molecules. It can predict the degradation capacity of a proposed PROTAC molecule based on structures of given target protein and E3 ligase. The experimental dataset is mainly collected from PROTAC-DB and appropriately labeled according to the DC50 and Dmax values. In the model of DeepPROTACs, the ligands as well as the ligand binding pockets are generated and represented with graphs and fed into Graph Convolutional Networks for feature extraction. While SMILES representations of linkers are fed into a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory layer to generate the features. Experiments show that DeepPROTACs model achieves 77.95% average prediction accuracy and 0.8470 area under receiver operating characteristic curve on the test set. DeepPROTACs is available online at a web server (https://bailab.siais.shanghaitech.edu.cn/services/deepprotacs/) and at github (https://github.com/fenglei104/DeepPROTACs).

We aimed to develop an improved version of the diagnostic model predicting the risk of malignant esophageal lesions in opportunistic screening and validate it in external populations. The development set involved 10,595 outpatients receiving endoscopy from a hospital in Hua County, a high-risk region for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in northern China. Validation set A enrolled 9453 outpatients receiving endoscopy in a non-high-risk region in southern China. Validation set B involved 17,511 residents in Hua County. The improved diagnostic model consisted of seven predictors including age, gender, family history of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, smoking, body mass index, dysphagia, and retrosternal pain, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.860 (95% confidence interval: 0.835–0.886) in the development set. Ideal discrimination ability was achieved in external validations (AUC validation set A: 0.892, 95% confidence interval: 0.858–0.926; AUC validation set B: 0.799, 95% confidence interval: 0.705–0.894). This improved model also markedly increased the detection rate of malignant esophageal lesions compared with universal screening, demonstrating great potential for use in opportunistic screening of malignant esophageal lesions in heterogeneous populations.

Binder jet 3D printing (BJ3DP) is one of the most promising 3D printing technologies, due to its ability of printing large-scale complex parts with high efficiency and low cost. The powder particle size is crucial for the sintering quality of BJ3DP. In this work, on the basis of the constitutive model of viscoplastic theory, the shape evolution (shrinkage and relative density) of cubes produced by BJ3DP using 316L stainless steel powders (normal distribution of powder sizes) with different mean particle sizes (i.e., 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 μm) was studied via finite element numerical simulation during sintering. It revealed that the volumetric shrinkage, relative density, and maximum sintering stress decreased with increasing the mean particle size. The maximum sintering stress of the sample with mean particle size of 70 μm was 0.0492 MPa, with the volumetric shrinkage of ~40% and the relative density of ~89%. In the meantime, the maximum sintering stress of the sample with mean particle size of 20 μm was 0.1789 MPa, with the volumetric shrinkage of ~48% and the relative density of ~97%. In addition, the simulated results of the relative density of assumed samples agreed well with the experimental results from the literature.

Background Muscle fatigue is a crucial indicator to determine whether training is in place and to protect trainers. Purpose To make full use of morphological information of surface EMG and ECG signals in the time domain, a new idea and method for the fatigue assessment of exercise muscles based on data fusion is proposed in this paper. Methods sEMG and ECG time series with the same length were obtained by signal preprocessing and sequence normalization, feature extraction of sequence tenses was realized by a deep learning network based on sequential convolution and signal fusion model of muscle fatigue evaluation was established by D-S evidence theory. Experiment Thirty volunteers were recruited and divided into three groups. ECG signals and sEMG signals at the biceps brachii of the right upper limb were monitored in a 20-minute exercise cycle. Results The prediction result of TCN based on time domain signal is better than the commonly used KNN and SVM recognition algorithm, and the recognition accuracy of relaxed, excessive and fatigue by D-S fusion was 89%, 86%, 88.5%. The accuracy was 0.9055, 0.9494 and 0.9269, respectively. The recall rates of the three conditions were 0.9303, 0.9570 and 0.9435. The F-score of the three conditions was 0.8911, 0.8764 and 0.8837, respectively. Conclusion Based on time series and time series convolutional network, sEMG and ECG fusion of motor muscle recognition method can better distinguish different state information and has certain practical value in the fields of muscle evaluation, clinical diagnosis, wearable devices and so on.

Currently, surveillance for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) runs a risk of underestimation of early lesions which show absence of iodine staining, with no or only mild histologic changes. The development of molecular markers that indicate risk of progression is thus warranted. We performed whole-exome sequencing on biopsies from two sequential endoscopies of a single esophageal lesion and matching blood samples. There were 27 pairs of age-, gender-, pathologic stage-, and sampling interval-matched progressors and non-progressors identified in a prospective community-based ESCC screening trial. Putative molecular progression markers for ESCC were first evaluated by comparing somatic mutation, copy number alteration (CNA), and mutational signature information among progressors and non-progressors. These markers were then validated with another 24 pairs of matched progressors and non-progressors from the same population using gene alteration status identified by target sequencing and quantitative PCR. Progressors had more somatic mutation and CNA burden, as well as apolipoprotein B mRNA editing catalytic polypeptide-like and age-related signature weights compared with non-progressors. A gene score consisting of somatic NOTCH1 mutation and CDKN2A deletion is predictive of risk of progression in lesions which show absence of iodine staining under endoscopy but have no or only mild dysplasia. This gene score was also validated in an external cohort of matched progressors and non-progressors. Absence of NOTCH1 mutation and presence of CDKN2A deletion are markers of progression in squamous lesions of the esophagus. This gene score would be an ideal indicator for assisting the pathologist in the identification of high-risk individuals who could be potentially 'missed' or subject to a risk underestimation by histologic analysis, and might improve the performance of ESCC surveillance. © 2022 The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

A numerical model is established based on the plasticity theory and a thermomechanical coupled finite element method (FEM) to simulate the hot isostatic pressing (HIP) process of atomized and milled Ti6Al4V powders and is then experimentally verified. Key material parameters related to the simulation are obtained by experimental and calculation methods. The HIP densification mechanism for two types of Ti6Al4V powders are clarified through the analysis of the powder flow and relative density distribution of compacts using the proposed model. The results indicate that the densification trends of the two powders are not much different under the same working conditions and that milled powder with a higher energy is more conducive to densification and can better overcome the “corner effect” compared to atomized powder. The equiaxed microstructure of the milled powder sintered body contributes to increasing its strength, whereas the lamellar microstructure of the atomized powder sintered body contributes to increasing its plasticity.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to prospectively evaluate the association of oral microbiome with malignant esophageal lesions and its predictive potential as a biomarker of risk. METHODS: We conducted a case-control study nested within a population-based cohort with up to 8 visits of oral swab collection for each subject over an 11-year period in a high-risk area for esophageal cancer in China. The oral microbiome was evaluated with 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing in 428 pre-diagnostic oral specimens from 84 cases with esophageal lesions of severe squamous dysplasia and above (SDA) and 168 matched healthy controls. DESeq analysis was performed to identify taxa of differential abundance. Differential oral species together with subject characteristics were evaluated for their potential in predicting SDA risk by constructing conditional logistic regression models. RESULTS: A total of 125 taxa including 37 named species showed significantly different abundance between SDA cases and controls (all P0.84. CONCLUSIONS: The oral microbiome may play an etiological and predictive role in esophageal cancer, and it holds promise as a non-invasive early warning biomarker for risk stratification for esophageal cancer screening programs.

ObjectivesUpper gastrointestinal (G.I.) cancer screening has been conducted in China for decades. However, the economic burden for treatment “intensively” occurred in advance due to screening in resource-limited communities remain unclear.MethodsWe compared the treatment costs for upper G.I. cancers from the screening and control arms of a population-based randomized trial in a high-risk area for esophageal cancer (EC) in China based on claims data from the health insurance system in the local area which included whole population coverage.ResultsThe average out-of-pocket cost per treatment of EC in the screening arm was lower than that in the control arm ($5,972vs.$7,557). This difference was a consequence of down-staging from screening which resulted in lower cost therapy for earlier stage cancers. Moreover, this result is similar for cardial and non-cardial gastric cancer in the two study arms ($7,933vs.$10,605). However, three times as many (103vs.36) families in the screening arm suffered catastrophic health expenditure for all cancer types. The overall treatment cost for all EC patients in the screening arm ($1,045,119) was 2.44 times that in the control arm ($428,292), and the ratio for cardial and non-cardial gastric cancer was 1.12 ($393,261vs.$351,557).ConclusionCancer treatment secondary to screening may triple the likelihood of catastrophic patient medical expenditure, and sharply increase the economic pressure on the local community, particularly for cancer types which are of high prevalence. Financial support for patients and the health insurance system should be taken into consideration when planning budgets for cancer screening programs in communities which are resource-limited.

Compared with ordinary metal structures, advanced composite materials have the characteristics of high strength, high rigidity, and light weight. The use of composite materials in aircraft structures is currently a hot research topic. This research mainly discusses the optimization design of the composite wing structure of the DF-2 light sports aircraft. This article takes the DF-2 light sports aircraft planned to be produced by the company as the source. Based on its overall design basis, aerodynamic requirements, and the original wing structure design, according to the composite material aircraft structure design theory and method, the aircraft wing structure is carried out. Composite materials are materials with new properties that are composed of two or more materials with different properties at the macroscale by physical and chemical methods. Composite materials can be divided into functional composite materials and structural composite materials according to the nature of the application. Functional composites are materials with special functions, such as conductive composites, ablative materials, and frictional composites. At present, the main research is on structural composite materials, which are composed of two components: matrix material and reinforcing material. The new structural scheme design and structural strength analysis are designed to meet the structural strength requirements of the wing and the lightest weight. In this paper, according to the force transmission characteristics of different structural types of the wing, the characteristics of the load transmission are analyzed, and the shape parameters and load parameters of the wing structure design are used as initial conditions, and the quantitative analysis model of the wing structure is constructed according to the requirements of strength, stiffness, and stability. Through rapid mathematical modeling and analysis of the wing structure, the weight and efficiency of different configurations can be evaluated. Through the quantitative analysis model of the wing, the wing structure type can be quickly determined according to the wing parameters in the preliminary design, which makes the basis for the selection of the wing structure type. After optimization, the weight of the wing structure decreased from 0.966 kg to 0.803 kg, a decrease of 16.87%. The designability of composite materials is one of its major characteristics. By optimizing the layup angle, layup sequence, and dropout area, the performance indicators of the structure are finally improved. This research will promote the further development of the aerospace field.

With the continuous development of social economy, sports has become one of the important ways of physical exercise, and the demand for corresponding sports facilities is also increasing. The Internet of Things technology is introduced in this paper. Through combining the current status of urban public sports, an urban public sports sharing system is built by trial, to promote the sharing of urban public sports information through the continuous development of new technologies such as the Internet and improve the publicity and popularization of public sports information. Simulation experiments prove that the Internet of Things technology is effective and can effectively support the sharing of urban public sports information.

The simultaneous need for energy efficiency and indoor comfort may not be met by existing air source heat pump (ASHP) technology. The novelty of this study lies in the use of a new gravity-driven radiator as the indoor heating terminal of ASHPs, aiming to provide an acceptable indoor comfort with improved energy efficiency. To confirm and quantify the performance improvement due to the proposed system retrofit, a field test was conducted to examine the system performance under real conditions. In the tests, measurements were made on the refrigerant- and air-side of the system to characterize its operational characteristics. Results showed that the proposed radiator has a rapid thermal response, which ensures a fast heat output from the system. The proposed system can create a stable and uniform indoor environment with a measured air diffusion performance index of 80%. The energy efficiency of the proposed system was also assessed based on the test data. It was found that the system’s first law efficiency is 42.5% higher than the hydraulic-based ASHP system. In terms of the second law efficiency, the compressor contributes the most to the overall system exergy loss. The exergy efficiency of the proposed system increases with the outdoor temperature and varies between 35.02 and 38.93% in the test period. The research results and the analysis methodology reported in this study will be useful for promoting the technology in search of energy efficiency improvement in residential and commercial buildings.

Functional separators have played important roles in improving the electrochemical performance of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries by addressing the key issues of both the sulfur cathode and lithium anode. Compared with other materials that are used for separator functionalization, two-dimensional (2D) materials with atomic layer thickness and infinite lateral dimensions feature several advantages of ultra-thin laminate structure, remarkable physical properties and tunable surface chemistry, which show potential applications in separator functionalization towards addressing the issues of both the shuttle effect and formation of Li dendrites in Li–S batteries. In this review, the unique advantages of 2D materials for separator functionalization in Li–S batteries and their common construction methods are introduced. Then, recent progress and advances in the construction of 2D materials functional separators are summarized in detail towards inhibiting the shuttle effect of polysulfides and suppressing Li dendrite growth in Li–S batteries. Finally, some opportunities and challenges of 2D materials for constructing high-performance functional separators are proposed. We anticipate that this review will provide new insights into separator functionalization for developing advanced Li–S batteries.

Background: To assess potential roles for tumor-associated autoantibodies (TAAs) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) screening: detecting early-stage malignancy, and predicting future cancer risk. Methods: Thirteen candidate autoantibodies identified in previous literatures were measured using multiplex serological assays in sera from cases and matched controls nested in two population-level screening cohorts in China. To evaluate the role of TAAs in detecting prevalent esophageal malignant lesions, an identification set (150 cases vs. 560 controls) and an external validation set (34 cases vs. 121 controls) were established with pre-screening sera collected ≤ 12 months prior to screening-related diagnosis. To explore the role of TAAs in predicting future ESCC risk, an exploration set (105 cases vs. 416 controls) with pre-diagnostic sera collected > 12 months before clinical diagnosis was established. Two models, the questionnaire-based model and full model additionally incorporating TAA markers, were constructed. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and net reclassification improvement (NRI) were calculated to compare the performance of the two models. Findings: In the identification set, NY-ESO-1 (OR=2·12, 95% CI=1·02-4·40) and STIP1 (OR=1·83, 95% CI=1·10-3·05) were positively associated with higher risk of esophageal malignancy. Elevated MMP-7 was associated with higher risk of malignancy in females (ORfemale=5·07, 95% CI=1·30-19·71). The estimates in validation set were consistent with these results, but were close to null in exploration set. Integration of selected TAAs improved the performance of questionnaire-based models in detecting prevalent esophageal malignancy (female: AUCfull model=0·745, 95% CI=0·675-0·814, AUCquestionnaire-based model=0·658, 95% CI=0·585-0·732, NRI=0·604, P

Three types of triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures are chosen to investigate the quasi-static and dynamic compressive behaviors in this paper. All the TPMS lattices (Primitive, Gyroid, IWP) have the same relative density of 37.5%, and the samples are fabricated by the 3D printing of selective laser melting technique using AlSi10Mg powder. The energy absorption performance and dynamic load mitigation of the 3D printed TPMS structures under three different impact velocities are compared, and the corresponding engineering strain rates are 143 s −1, 286 s −1, and 571 s −1, respectively. The results of numerical simulation indicate that the IWP structure has the highest specific energy absorption (SEA) and plateau stress, followed by the Gyroid structure, and finally the Primitive structure. The SEA of Primitive and Gyroid structures increases with the impact velocity and decreases for IWP structure.

For anomaly identification of predicted data in machinery condition monitoring, traditional threshold methods have problems during residual testing. It is difficult to make decisions when the residuals are close to the threshold and fluctuate. This paper proposes a Bayesian dynamic thresholding method that combines Bayesian inference with neural network signal prediction. The method makes full use of historical prior data to build an anomaly identification and warning model applicable under single variable or multidimensional variables. A long short-term memory signal prediction model is established, and then a Bayesian hypothesis testing-based anomaly identification strategy is presented to quantify the probability of anomaly occurrence and issue early warnings for anomalies beyond a certain probability. The model was applied to open data sets of a pumping station and actual operating data of a nuclear power turbine. The results indicate that the model successfully predicts the failure probability and failure time. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.

Supercharged protein ions produced by electrospray ionization are extremely efficient proton donors for secondary ionization. Here, by electrospraying the protein solutions containing 5% 1,2-butylene carbonate, the supercharged protein ions with unusually high proton density were produced as the primary ions for the ionization of exhaled breath samples in the extractive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (EESI-MS), which resulted in the enhanced ionization efficiency for the breath analytes even with relatively low gas phase basicity. Moreover, the total number of metabolites detected in breath increased by about 260% in the mass range of 200-500 Da, owing to the substantial signal enhancement for breath metabolites, providing complementary and additional information to conventional SESI.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) can induce chronic inflammation, cirrhosis, and eventually hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Despite evidence suggesting a link between adaptive immunity and HBV-related diseases in humans, the immunopathogenic mechanisms involved are seldom described. Here we show that expression of TIGIT, a promising immune checkpoint in tumor immunotherapy, increases with age on hepatic CD8+ T cells in HBsAg-transgenic (HBs-tg) mice whose adaptive immune system is tolerant to HBsAg. TIGIT blockade or deficiency leads to chronic hepatitis and fibrosis, along with the emergence of functional HBsAg-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), suggesting adaptive immune tolerance could be broken by TIGIT blockade or deficiency. Importantly, HBsAg vaccination further induces nonresolving inflammation and HCC in a CD8+ T cell-dependent manner in TIGIT-blocked or -deficient HBs-tg mice. Therefore, CD8+ T cells play an important role in adaptive immunity-mediated tumor progression and TIGIT is critical in maintenance of liver tolerance by keeping CTLs in homeostatic balance., Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and is associated with immune tolerance to HBV. Here the authors show, in a transgenic mouse model, that rescuing T cells function via inhibition of co-inhibitory receptor TIGIT results in HCC development via supporting inflammation.

For the droop-controlled distributed generation units (DGs) in microgrids (MGs), the power sharing error associated with voltage difference of DGs can be attributed to the mismatched line impedance. To improve the power sharing accuracy in islanded MGs, a neighbor-prediction based hierarchical control strategy is proposed. In secondary control, a consensus protocol is used to regulate the DGs voltages interacted by communication network to the state of tracking synchronization. Thus, the error-free power sharing is obtained. Network data-loss and delay problems are considered. To stabilize the DGs’ inner-loop control in which there is a delayed input, the H∞ robustness criteria of a dynamic model of DGs is derived. If the DGi’s voltage in network transmission loses, the prediction system of a neighbor will be activated to forecast the lost voltage for secondary consensus control by extreme learning machine (ELM). Thus, the voltages regulation will be back to normalization. Simulations in MATLAB confirm the effectiveness of proposed control in MGs.

Objective To evaluate the accuracy of identifying cancer patients by use of medical claims data in a health insurance system in China, and provide the basis for establishing the claims-based cancer surveillance system in China. Methods We chose Hua County, Henan Province as the study site, and randomly selected 300 and 1,200 qualified inpatient electronic medical records (EMRs) as well as the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) claims records for cancer patients in Hua County People's Hospital (HCPH) and Anyang Cancer Hospital (ACH) in 2017. Diagnostic information for NCMS claims was evaluated on an individual level, and sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) were calculated taking the EMRs as the gold standard. Results The sensitivity of NCMS was 95.2% (93.8%-96.3%) and 92.0% (88.3%-94.8%) in ACH and HCPH, respectively. The PPV of the NCMS was 97.8% (96.7%-98.5%) in ACH and 89.0% (84.9%-92.3%) in HCPH. Overall, the weighted and combined sensitivity and PPV of NCMS in Hua County was 93.1% and 92.1%, respectively. Significantly higher sensitivity and PPV in identifying patients with common cancers than non-common cancers were detected in HCPH and ACH separately (P Conclusions Identification of cancer patients by use of the NCMS is accurate on individual level, and it is therefore feasible to conduct claims-based cancer surveillance in areas not covered by cancer registries in China.

Background: The protocol for surveillance for Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (ESCC) in China following screening lacks evidence from large-scale population-based studies. We aim to establish an evidence-based surveillance target and respective intervals for ESCC surveillance. Methods: This study enrolled 14980 subjects from a large-scale randomized controlled trial in China. Poisson regression models were applied to estimate adjusted incidence rate ratios (IRR) for subjects with Lugol-unstained lesions (LUL) of differing size and baseline pathologic diagnosis. We clustered subgroups of subjects with LULs of varying size and pathologic status into three categories (low, moderate and high risk) according to their risk of progression to ESCC. Cumulative incidence of ESCC was calculated year by year for these three categories to determine appropriate surveillance intervals. Findings: LUL size is a principal predictor of post-screening risk of ESCC besides the pathologic diagnosis (adjusted IRR 6-10 mm VS none = 8·54, 95%CI: 2·78-26·24; adjusted IRR >10 mm VS none = 30·91, 95%CI: 10·69-89·39). Subjects with LULs >10mm (irrespective of the pathologic diagnosis) had the highest risk of progression, and the risk grew rapidly after the 2 nd year following the index endoscopy. Subjects with LULs of 6-10mm (irrespective of the pathologic diagnosis) or dysplastic LULs of 1-5mm had moderate risk, and the risk started to rise after the year three. Interpretation: We propose a novel surveillance strategy for ESCC that combines Lugol’s chromoendoscopy findings and the pathologic diagnosis. Use of this strategy would improve the effectiveness of ESCC screening programs in China. Funding: This study was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0901404) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81773501). Declaration of Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: Research protocols were approved by the Institutional Review Board of Peking University School of Oncology.

Extracellular vesicles have shown essential roles in various biological processes, mainly through mediating cell-cell communications by its surface and internal cargo. Recently it was found that activated T cells release TCR enriched microvesicles (Tc-MV) from immunological synapse, but the function of Tc-MV is still a mystery. By analyzing proteomics and miRNA profiles of Tc-MV derived from mouse OT-II CD4 T cells (OVA323–339 specific), we found Tc-MV are enriched with proteins related to T cell helper function, including TCRs, CD40L, CD28, ICOS, OX40 and LFA-1, and also contained B cell function involved miRNAs, such as miR-21a-5p, miR-28a-3p, miR-155-5p and miR-210-3p. Accordantly, by in vitro coculture, OT-II Tc-MV could promote NP-specific B cells to secret IgG when cognate antigen NP-OVA was present, similarly Tc-MV from SMARTA T cell (LCMV GP61–80 specific) could promote B cells with antigen NP-GFP-GP61–80, but switching either the MV or the antigens in these two systems dampened the antibody production, suggesting Tc-MV help B cells in an antigen specific manner. The helper function of the Tc-MV was also confirmed in vivo by serum antibody production of Rag1−/− mice transferred with Tc-MV and B cells and followed by immunization, importantly the endogenous Tc-MV were found in the serum of the WT mice post-immunization, demonstrating a fundamental role of Tc-MV in the physiological condition. In conclusion, our findings revealed a critical role of Tc-MV in promoting antigen specific antibody production of B cells, which can be exploited for vaccine design. Supported by University of Michigan Startup Funds and NIH: R01AI134999.

Previous risk prediction models taking esophageal malignant lesions detected during endoscopy as the primary outcome are not always sufficient to identify prevalent cases which are "overlooked" at screening. We aimed to update and externally validate our previous risk prediction model for malignant esophageal lesions by redefining the predicted outcome.15,192 individuals from the Endoscopic Screening for Esophageal Cancer in China randomized controlled trial (ESECC trial, NCT01688908) were included as the training set, and 4576 participants from another population-based esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) screening cohort (Anyang Esophageal Cancer Cohort Study, AECCS) served as the external validation set. Lesions with severe dysplasia or worse diagnosed at chromoendoscopy or identified via follow-up within 1 year after screening were defined as main outcome. Logistic regressions were applied to reconstruct the questionnaire-based prediction model using information collected before screening, with Akaike Information Criterion to determine the model structure.The final prediction model included age and its quadratic term, family history of ESCC, low body mass index (≤22 kg/mThe described tool may promote the efficiency of current national screening programs for ESCC and contribute to a precision screening strategy in high-risk regions in China.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073626, 81773501), the National ScienceTechnology Fundamental Resources Investigation Program of China (2019FY101102), the National Key RD Program of China (2021YFC2500405), the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Basic Research Cooperation Project (J200016), the Digestive Medical Coordinated Development Center of Beijing Hospitals Authority (XXZ0204) and the Beijing Nova Program (Z201100006820093). Sponsors had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are essential in the regulation of biological functions and cell events, therefore understanding PPIs have become a key issue to understanding the molecular mechanism and investigating the design of drugs. Here we highlight the major developments in computational methods developed for predicting PPIs by using types of artificial intelligence algorithms. The first part introduces the source of experimental PPI data. The second part is devoted to the PPI prediction methods based on sequential information. The third part covers representative methods using structural information as the input feature. The last part is methods designed by combining different types of features. For each part, the state-of-the-art computational PPI prediction methods are reviewed in an inclusive view. Finally, we discuss the flaws existing in this area and future directions of next-generation algorithms.

Background. Delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), also known as tenderness of touch, refers to the pain caused by muscle mechanical stimulation, such as contraction and stretching. Chinese massage has been widely used in the treatment of sports fatigue and sports injury, but there is controversy in the efficacy. In this experiment, we established DOMS model in rats to observe the prevention and treatment effect of massage, to find the best time for intervention, and to provide scientific basis for the prevention and treatment of exercise fatigue.Methods. 130 male SD(sprague-dawley, SD) healthy rats were randomly divided into blank group, control group and massage group. Except for blank group, the other rats received DOMS model. Professionals applied kneading and twisting methods on both lower limbs of rats. The expression of IL-2, IL-6 and IL-8 in skeletal muscle of rats were determined by western blot, PCR and ELISA, and the content of serum creatine kinase was determined by ELISA. In addition, we measured the concentration of Ca2+, Ca2+-ATPase in mitochondria of skeletal muscle. The changes of skeletal muscle structure were observed by scanning electron microscopy.Result. After massage, the expression of IL-2, IL-6, IL-8 and CK decreased compared with control group (P < 0.01), the expression of IL-2, IL-6 and IL-8 in post massage group was lower than that in front massage group (P < 0.01), and the content of CK in front massage group was lower than that in post massage group(P < 0.01). The content of Ca2+ in front massage 24, 48 and 72h group was lower than that in post massage (P < 0.01), the concentration of Ca2+-ATPase in front massage 24h and 72h group was lower than that in post massage group (P < 0.05).Conclusion. Massage can prevent the injury of muscle and reduce the inflammatory reaction of muscle after exercise. It can also improve the activity of Ca2+-ATPase, enhance the transport of Ca2+ by mitochondria and protect the skeletal muscle.

Background and Aims At present, the surveillance strategy for premalignant esophageal lesions in China is based solely on the pathologic diagnosis in Lugol’s chromoendoscopy (LCE). In this study, we sought to determine the degree to which various unstained features under LCE may lead to improved ability to predict the risk of progression in esophageal lesions. Methods We re-examined and followed up on 1058 subjects who had Lugol-unstained lesions (LULs) together with a pathologic diagnosis that was lower than severe dysplasia at baseline screening based on a population-based randomized controlled trial over a median time of 5.8 years. We established a logistic regression model and calculated the adjusted cumulative incidence of severe dysplasia or malignancy. Results LUL size was predictive of progression to malignant lesions in individuals with a nondysplastic diagnosis (adjusted odd ratio6-10 mm vs ≤5 mm, 6.7; 95% confidence interval, 1.7-25.7; adjusted odds ratio>10 mm vs ≤5 mm, 27.9; 95% confidence interval, 7.3-105.7), and the corresponding adjusted cumulative incidence of malignant lesions was 3.6 and 13.2 per 100 persons. This is higher than that of small (≤5 mm) lesions, which showed mild dysplasia (2.7 per 100 persons), a condition for which surveillance every 3 years is recommended. Under the current approach, 65.3% of interval cancers missed at surveillance would be detected if individuals with medium (6-10 mm) and large (>10 mm) nondysplastic LULs were additionally monitored. Conclusions We propose a modified surveillance strategy that combines findings under LCE examination and the pathologic analysis, where follow-up endoscopy is recommended for individuals with relatively large nondysplastic lesions.

Background This study aims to compare the performance of the recently developed Chinese (city) tariff of the EQ-5D-3L against the UK, US, Japanese and Korean tariffs in a general rural population in China. Methods From November 2015 to September 2016, 12,085 permanent residents aged 45–69 from 257 villages randomly selected from Hua County, Henan Province, China, were interviewed using EQ-5D-3L, and a one-on-one questionnaire investigation was used to collect data on factors associated with HRQOL. The health utility scores were calculated using the UK, US, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (city) tariffs. The agreement, known-groups validity and sensitivity of these five tariffs were evaluated. Transition scores for pairs of observed EQ-5D-3L health states were calculated and compared. Results The Korean tariff yielded the highest mean health utility score (0.963), followed by the Chinese (city) (0.948), US (0.943), UK (0.930) and Japanese (0.921) tariffs, but the differences in the scores of any two tariffs did not exceed the MCID. The Chinese (city) tariff showed higher ICC values (ICCs> 0.89, 95% CI:0.755–0.964) and narrower limits of agreement (0.099–0.167) than the Korean tariff [(ICCs> 0.71, 95% CI:0.451–0.955); (0.146–0.253)]. The Chinese (city) tariff had a higher relative efficiency and effect size statistics in 10 out of 11 variables as compared to the UK, US and Japanese tariffs. The Chinese (city) tariff (0.215) was associated with moderate mean absolute transition scores compared with the UK (0.342), US (0.230), Japanese (0.149) and Korean (0.189) tariffs for 1485 observed pairs of the EQ-5D-3L health states. Conclusions Health utility scores derived from the five tariffs differed. The Chinese (city) tariff was the most suitable of these tariffs and was without obvious weakness. We recommend adopting the Chinese (city) tariff when applying EQ-5D-3L to assess quality of life among the elderly in China’s agricultural region with socio-economic status similar to Hua County. Results of this study had provided a crucial basis for health surveys, health promotion projects, health intervention trials, and health economic evaluation taking HRQOL as a target in rural areas of China.

Background Heterogeneity should be carefully addressed to facilitate establishment of effective population-level blood lipid management. The primary aim of the study was to investigate gender heterogeneity in prevalence of dyslipidemia, including trends with age and associated factors in middle age rural Chinese. Methods This is a cross-sectional study based on a baseline investigation of a population-based randomized controlled trial in rural China, involving 26,378 permanent residents of age 45–69. The age-specific prevalence of dyslipidemia was estimated for men and women, and the trends of prevalence with age were compared. Logistic regression was used to explore the factors associated with prevalent risk of dyslipidemia. Results The overall prevalence of dyslipidemia was significantly higher in females than in males for borderline high and above (BHA) total cholesterol (TC ≥ 200 mg/dL), BHA triglycerides (TG ≥ 150 mg/dL) and BHA low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C ≥ 130 mg/dL), but was lower for low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C Conclusion Heterogeneity was found in comparing the prevalence of dyslipidemia in men and women, and gender heterogeneity was found in its trend with age and associated factors in middle aged rural Chinese. The effectiveness of population-level blood lipid management and CVD primary prevention programs in China is expected to be improved if gender heterogeneity is considered.

This paper proposes a method for robotic arms in realistic physical environment based on Gazebo. Parallel-Axis Theorem is used to estimate the links' moment of inertia. Controllers of the joints and the path planning algorithm are the important parts of the system. ROS is chosen to organize task architecture considering its easier hardware abstraction. The simulation system is able to analysis and compare robotic arm's responses under different algorithms and different target pose. When several targets given at the same time, the system can analysis which is optimal concerning the path's length and velocity's change smoothness.

Objective To investigate the risk factors for osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) after the treatment of femoral neck fracture in patients under 60 years old. Methods A total of 250 cases of femoral neck fracture treated at 3 hospitals in Xuzhou from January 2002 to January 2016 were studied. The patients were followed up for 1~15 years, and the clinical data on femoral head necrosis after the femoral neck operation were analysed retrospectively. Risk factors were recorded, including age, gender, preoperative traction, time from injury to operation, reduction method, type of reduction, BMI, ASA classification, and quality of reduction. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the independent risk factors for ONFH after treatment of femoral neck fracture. Results The duration of follow-up was 1~15 years, with an average of 7.5 years. None of the 250 patients had fracture non-union, but 40 (16%) had necrosis of the femoral head. The time to necrosis of the femoral head was 1~7 years after the operation, with an average of 3.8 years. Univariate analysis showed that the type of fracture, the quality of reduction, the removal of internal fixation, BMI and ASA classification were risk factors affecting necrosis of the femoral head in patients with femoral neck fracture, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Multivariate analysis showed that internal fixation, fracture type (displacement), reduction quality (dissatisfaction), BMI (> 25), and ASA grade (III + IV) were independent risk factors affecting femoral head necrosis in patients with femoral neck fracture. Conclusion A variety of high-risk factors for femoral head necrosis are present after surgery with hollow compression screws for femoral neck fracture in adults. Removal of internal fixation, type of fracture, quality of reduction, BMI, and ASA classification were the most important risk factors influencing the development of femoral head necrosis. During treatment, there should be some targeted measures to reduce the incidence of necrosis of the femoral head.

Additional file 2: Supplement Figure 1. Bland-Altman plots of the five EQ-5D-3L tariffs in 12,085 residents from rural Hua County, China.

Recently, convolutional neural networks have attracted much attention due to its good performance in hyperspectral image classification. However, excessively increasing the depth of the network will lead to overfitting and vanishing gradient. Besides, previous networks rarely consider the related information among different convolution layers. In this paper we propose a hierarchical deep features adaptive fusion network (FAFNet) to address the above two problems. On the one hand, we use dense connectivity to overcome vanishing gradient and overfitting. On the other hand, we adaptively fuse different convolution layers by the learned weights which utilizing softmax to calculate. Experimental results on two well-known datasets demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed method compared with other state-of-the-art methods.

Additional file 1: Supplementary Table 1. Definitions and coding forms for potential risk factors investigated in the ESECC trial from rural Hua County, China, 2012–2016. Supplementary Table 2. Selected demographic and behavioral characteristics in individuals enrolled in and excluded from the current study from the ESECC trial. Supplementary Table 3. Age and gender specific mean level (mg/dL) and prevalence of dyslipidemia among 26,378 participants from rural Hua County, China, 2012–2016. Supplementary Table 4. Associated factors for high dyslipidemia identified in stratification of gender from 26,378 participants from rural Hua County, China, 2012–2016. Supplementary Figure 1. Flowchart of participant enrollment in this study. Supplementary Figure 2. The age and gender distribution of prevalence of high TG, TC and LDL-C among 26,378 individuals from rural Hua County, China, 2012–2016. Supplementary Figure 3. The prevalence of high TC, high TG, high LDL-C and low HDL-C in individuals 40–69 years in the 2013–2014 China Chronic Disease and Risk Factor Surveillance (CCDRFS), The China National Survey of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and dyslipidemia investigation in Chongqing.

Fine-grained images have similar global structure but exhibit variant local appearance. Bilinear pooling models have been proven to be effective in modeling different semantic parts and capturing the effective feature learning for fine-grained image classification. However, the bilinear models do not consider that convolutional neural networks (CNNs) may lose important semantic information during forward propagation, and feature interactions of different convolutional layers enhance feature learning which improves classification performance. Therefore, we propose a multi-layer weight-aware bilinear pooling method to model cross-layer object parts feature interaction as the feature representation, and different weights are assigned to each convolutional layer to adaptively adjust the outputs of the convolutional layers to highlight more discriminative features. The proposed method results in great performance improvement compared with previous state-of-the-art approaches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on the CUB-200-2011 and FGVC-Aircraft datasets.

Additional file 1: Supplement Table 1. Descriptive statistics of differences derived from the five EQ-5D-3L tariffs in 12,085 residents from rural Hua County, China.

To improve the performance of an air-source heat pump cycle under low ambient temperature, a solar-driven ejector-cascade heat pump cycle which consists of an ejector sub-cycle and a vapor compression sub-cycle is discussed. Energy and exergy models are developed to conduct analyses on the cascade cycle, in which the ejector sub-cycle takes R134a, R1234yf or R141b as a working fluid and the vapor compression sub-cycle uses R1234yf as a refrigerant. The results indicate that the proposed cycle can significantly improve the thermodynamic performance of the air-source heat pump under low ambient temperature, especially when the ejector sub-cycle employs an R141b ejector. Energy investigation finds that the variation of the thermal coefficient of performance (COPh) exhibits the opposite trend to that of the mechanical coefficient of performance (COPm) as the generation temperature, the intermediate condensation/evaporation temperature or the condensation temperature varies. Exergy analysis indicates that the exergy destructions in the solar collector-generator, the ejector, the compressor and the expansion valve of vapor compression sub-cycle are much larger than those in other components. We hence conclude that decreasing various losses in these components are the key tasks to improve the performance and exergy efficiency of the cascade system.

A hierarchized Ni(OH)2/RGO/Cu2O nanocomposite electrode grown on Cu foil was prepared through a facile in-situ one-pot hydrothermal method. Three kinds of strong interfaces of Ni(OH)2/RGO, RGO/Cu2O and Cu2O/Cu were simultaneously formed and thus a sandwich structure of Ni(OH)2/RGO/Cu2O was constructed on Cu substrate. Without further assembly and modification, as-synthesized Ni(OH)2/RGO/Cu2O@Cu was directly used as a non-enzymatic sensor, which exhibited a better amperometric response than other non-enzymatic sensors, e.g., detection limit (0.35 μM and 0.20 μM), sensitivity (5350 uA·mM−1·cm-2 and 1706.3 uA·mM−1·cm-2) and linear range (0.5 μM to 7.67 and 7.5 mM) on the detection of glucose and hydrogen peroxide. Furthermore, the non-enzymatic sensor showed good long-term stability and good performance in human blood analysis. The present work gives a new insight in sensor based on metal hydroxide/RGO/metal oxides electrode and its potential application in non-enzymatic glucose and hydrogen peroxide sensing.

ObjectiveDescription of the design and preliminary results of baseline recruitment and screening in the endoscopic screening for esophageal cancer in China (ESECC), the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) assessing efficacy and cost-effectiveness of endoscopic screening for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).DesignESECC trial is a cluster RCT, and 668 villages in rural Hua County, Henan Province, a high-incidence area of ESCC in China, were randomised into two arms at a ratio of 1:1. Screening arm participants were screened by Lugol chromoendoscopy; no screening was performed in the control arm. ESCC-specific and all-cause mortality, incidence of advanced ESCC and cost-effectiveness of screening will be evaluated in the next 10-year follow-up. Here, we report the performance of baseline recruitment and randomisation, prevalence of upper GI lesions and risk factors for ESCC.ResultsA total of 17 151 and 16 797 participants were enrolled in screening and control arms from January 2012 to September 2016. The truncated prevalence (aged 45–69 years) of oesophageal and overall upper GI high-grade lesions was 744.0/100 000 and 902.0/100 000. 69.9% of the 113 patients with high-grade oesophageal lesions were of early stage. Risk factors for severe oesophageal dysplasia and more severe lesions in this population included higher age, family history of ESCC, lower body mass index, eating rapidly and frequent ingestion of leftovers.ConclusionThis ESECC trial met the predesigned recruitment and randomisation requirements. Age, family history, undernutrition and unhealthy dietary habits increased the risk for high-grade oesophageal lesions in this high-risk population.Trail registration numberNCT01688908; Pre-results.