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In this paper, the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of H-type finned tube banks are numerically investigated on the basis of a more accurate and convenient calculation method of fin efficiency for H-type fins. Experiments are performed to validate the numerical simulations. The variations of the Nusselt number, Euler number, and comprehensive factor [Formula: see text] with the Reynolds number and seven geometric parameters of H-type finned tube banks are obtained. The results indicate that the Nusselt number is proportional to the Reynolds number, the slit width, the fin thickness, and the longitudinal tube pitch; but, it is inversely proportional to the tube row number, the fin height, and the spanwise tube pitch. As the Reynolds number, the tube row number, the slit width, the fin pitch, and the spanwise tube pitch increase, the Euler number decreases. The [Formula: see text] factor rises with the increase of the slit width, and there exists an optimal tube row number ([Formula: see text]) at which the [Formula: see text] factor is the maximum. The correlations of the heat transfer (Nusselt number) and pressure drop (Euler number) of the 10-row H-type finned tube bank, which can nearly be considered to be fully developed, are presented. The numerical results and correlations have good applicability under different fluids and show good agreement with the experimental results and correlations.

The security of our data stores is underestimated in current practice, which resulted in many large-scale data breaches. To change the status quo, this paper presents the design of ShieldDB, an encrypted document database. ShieldDB adapts the searchable encryption technique to preserve the search functionality over encrypted documents without having much impact on its scalability. However, merely realising such a theoretical primitive suffers from real-world threats, where a knowledgeable adversary can exploit the leakage (aka access pattern to the database) to break the claimed protection on data confidentiality. To address this challenge in practical deployment, ShieldDB is designed with tailored padding countermeasures. Unlike prior works, we target a more realistic adversarial model, where the database gets updated continuously, and the adversary can monitor it at an (or multiple) arbitrary time interval(s). ShieldDB's padding strategies ensure that the access pattern to the database is obfuscated all the time. Additionally, ShieldDB provides other advanced features, including forward privacy, re-encryption, and flushing, to further improve its security and efficiency. We present a full-fledged implementation of ShieldDB and conduct intensive evaluations on Azure Cloud., Comment: Accepted version of our work published in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE, 2021)

Objectives Fluoxetine has been used as the first line for the therapy of depression. However, lack of therapeutic efficacy and time lag still limit the application of fluoxetine. Gap junction dysfunction is a potentially novel pathogenic mechanism for depression. To clarify the mechanism underlying these limitations, we investigated whether gap junction was related to the antidepressant effects of fluoxetine. Methods and key findings After chronic unpredictable stress (CUS), animals showed decreases in gap junction intracellular communication (GJIC). Treatment with fluoxetine 10 mg/kg significantly improved GJIC and anhedonia of rats until six days. These results indicated that fluoxetine improved gap junction indirectly. Furthermore, to test the role of gap junction on antidepressant effects of fluoxetine, we blocked gap junction using carbenoxolone (CBX) infusion in the prefrontal cortex. CBX dampened fluoxetine-induced decrease in immobility time of mice in tail suspension test (TST). Conclusions Our study suggested that gap junction dysfunction blocks antidepressant effects of fluoxetine, contributing to understanding the mechanism underlying the time lag of fluoxetine.

ObjectivesGinsenoside Rg1 (Rg1) has been well-documented to be effective against ischemic/reperfusion (I/R) injury. However, whether it has therapeutic effect on delayed neuronal death is still unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of Rg1 on delayed neuronal death and elucidate its underlying mechanism.MethodsDelayed neuronal death model was prepared by global cerebral ischemia-reperfusion in rats, Rg1 was intravenously administered once a day. Nissl and Fluoro Jade B staining were carried out to evaluate the effect of Rg1 on delayed neuronal death. Western blot and qPCR were used to investigate the levels of HBXIP and Survivin. HBXIP/Survivin complex was observed by co-immunoprecipitation. AAV-CMV-shRNA (HBXIP) was used to observe the role of HBXIP on delayed neuronal death improved by Rg1.Key findingsRg1 attenuated delayed neuronal death at the dose of 20 mg/kg, which also improved the mRNA and protein levels of HBXIP, as well as Survivin. Moreover, administration of Rg1 promoted the formation of HBXIP/Survivin complex, which contributed to the reduction of caspases signaling pathway. Knockdown of HBXIP abolished the alleviation of DND and inhibition of caspase cascade induced by Rg1.ConclusionsRg1 alleviated delayed neuronal death by promoting anti-apoptosis effect by HBXIP/Survivin complex.

Purpose This study aims to explore the success factors of tourism performing arts (TPA) programs by analyzing a large data set of online reviews. Design/methodology/approach A total of 195,230 reviews from Ctrip.com were collected and preprocessed. A deep learning method was leveraged to estimate the similarity between words. Then, regression analysis was conducted to determine success factors. Findings This study extracted four positive and two negative factors affecting tourist satisfaction with tourism performance arts. The results demonstrate that the tourists paid the most attention to the traditional Chinese cultural aspects, audiovisual effects and the actors’ performing enthusiasm. Research limitations/implications Despite this study’s large data set, the focused was only on Chinese reviews. It would be useful and interesting to compare the success factors of tourism performance arts programs offered in different countries. Practical implications The study findings can contribute to the development of TPA programs to attract tourists to travel destinations. Originality/value This study demonstrates that analyzing online reviews of TPA through text mining technology is an effective method of understanding tourist satisfaction.

In this study, guar gum fibers were obtained by wet spinning, in which epichlorohydrin (ECH) and calcium chloride (CaCl

Panax ginseng is a valuable medicinal plant which is affected by many diseases during its long cultivation period. Ginseng root rot, caused by Fusarium oxysporum, has become severe in China. This soilborne pathogen comprises many formae speciales based on host specificity. Ten representative isolates from diseased ginseng rot root showed pathogenicity on ginseng. To identify the forma specialis of the F. oxysporum strains, host range tests of three representative isolates were carried out on nine plant species. All three isolates caused severe symptoms only on ginseng, but only slight or no visual symptoms on the other eight hosts, indicating that the strains were host-specific to ginseng. Phylogenetic trees were constructed based on sequences of the translation elongation factor 1-α (EF-1α) gene, two endopolygalacturonase genes (Pg1, Pg5) and two exopolygalacturonase genes (Pgx1 and Pgx4). The ten F. oxysporum isolates from ginseng clustered into a unique group clearly separated from other formae speciales already described. Based on the host range tests and phylogenetic analyses, the isolates of F. oxysporum derived from ginseng have been identified as a new forma specialis, designated Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ginseng. This is the first report of forma specialis of F. oxysporum on ginseng.

The incompleteness of knowledge graphs triggers considerable research interest in relation prediction. As the key to predicting relations among entities, many efforts have been devoted to learning the embeddings of entities and relations by incorporating a variety of neighbors' information which includes not only the information from direct outgoing and incoming neighbors but also the ones from the indirect neighbors on the multihop paths. However, previous models usually consider entity paths of limited length or ignore sequential information of the paths. Either simplification will make the model lack a global understanding of knowledge graphs and may result in the loss of important and indispensable information. In this article, we propose a novel global graph attention embedding network (GGAE) for relation prediction by combining global information from both direct neighbors and multihop neighbors. Concretely, given a knowledge graph, we first introduce the path construction algorithms to obtain meaningful paths, then design path modeling methods to capture the potential long-distance sequential information in the multihop paths, final propose an entity graph attention and a relation graph attention mechanisms to obtain entity embeddings and relation embeddings. Moreover, an entity graph attention mechanism is proposed to calculate the entity embeddings by aggregating direct incoming and outgoing neighbors from: 1) an original knowledge graph with the original entity and relation embeddings and 2) a new knowledge graph constructed by the paths whose embeddings are updated by path modeling methods. for each relation, we construct a new graph with related entities and present a relation graph attention to learn the features. Therefore, our model can encapsulate the information from different distance neighbors, and enable the embeddings of entities and relations to better capture all-sided semantic information. The experimental results on benchmark datasets verify the superiority of our model over the state-of-the-art ones.

The key to reducing the mortality of gastric cancer is early detection, early diagnosis, and early treatment of gastric cancer. Early diagnosis of gastric cancer is the key to early detection and diagnosis of gastric cancer. Early diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer is of great significance for improving the curative effect and reducing mortality of gastric cancer. The purpose of this paper is to study the diagnosis of early gastric cancer based on medical imaging techniques and mathematical modeling. The effect of W-DeepLab network-assisted diagnosis of images under white light was analyzed, and the value of Narrow Band Imaging and Blue Laser Imaging in the diagnosis of early gastric cancer was compared. Because Blue Laser Imaging endoscopy can clearly observe the demarcation line and microvascular morphology; but when using Narrow Band Imaging observation, part of the demarcation line and microvascular morphology is not observed. The results show that Blue Laser Imaging is brighter than Narrow Band Imaging’s endoscopic images, and it is easier to observe the microstructure of lesions under endoscopy, so as to accurately determine the nature of lesions.

Background: This study was to investigate the prevalence of preoperative rim enhancement, and its association with clinicopathological features, relapse, and survival profiles in Chinese basal-like...

The antibacterial secondary metabolites of the fungus Penicillium chrysogenum associated with the beetle Aspongopus chinensis were investigated through chromatographic fractionation methods of ethyl acetate extracts of the fungal cultures. Five compounds were isolated, and their structures were determined as emodin, 4-(methoxymethyl)benzoic acid, isoochracinic acid, secalonic acid D, and dicerandrol A using mass spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic analyses. Emodin exhibited strong antimicrobial activity, especially against Staphylococcus aureus even when growing on cooked pork, with a minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 6.3 μg/mL. Dimeric tetrahydroxanthones, such as secalonic acid D and dicerandrol A, also exhibited potent activity, with MIC values ranging from 9.5 to 28.5 μg/mL. In summary, P. chrysogenum was isolated as a symbiotic fungus of the beetle A. chinensis for the first time and this strain could generate antibacterial secondary metabolites, which could potently inhibit gram-positive bacteria growth in vitro.

Li Fang,1,2 Chun-Hao Li,1,3 Qian Zhang,1,3 Tian-Jiao Jiang,1,3 Yuan Liu,1,2 Feng-Po Shi,1,3 Peng Yu,1,3 Liang Yu,1,3 Ai-Ping Chen,1,3 Tao Li,1,3 Yu-Zhu Wan,1,3 Li Shi1,3 1Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, The Second People’s Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Allergy, Shandong Second Provincial General Hospital, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Tao Li; Yu-Zhu Wan, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital, Shandong University, Duanxing West Road, Jinan, Shandong, 250033, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 531 83086279 ; +86 531 83086280, Fax +86 531 87980304, Email ltwfmc@163.com; wanyuzhu001@126.comBackground: Mounting research indicates that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), has great potential to increase neuro-hyperresponsiveness and airway resistance in airway allergic disease. The expression level of BDNF has been found to be notably elevated in lung/nasal lavage (NAL) fluid. However, the expression and position of BDNF in ciliated cells with allergic rhinitis remains unclear.Methods: Nasal mucosal cells were collected from patients with allergic rhinitis (AR) and mice which were performed under different allergen challenge time, then observed the expression and position of BDNF located in ciliated cells through the immunofluorescence staining. Nasal mucosa, serum and NAL fluid were collected also. The expression level of BDNF and IL-4/5/13 were detected by RT-PCR. The expressions of BDNF (in serum and NAL fluid), and total-IgE, ovalbumin sIgE (in serum) were detected by ELISA.Results: We found that MFI of BDNF in AR group’s ciliated cells was obviously lower than that in the control group, and a negative correlation was discovered between MFI and VAS score. It can be roughly divided into 5 patterns according to its location in the cytoplasm of ciliated cells. In the mouse model, the expressions of BDNF in serum and NAL fluid increased temporarily after allergen stimulation. The MFI of BDNF in ciliated cells displayed an initial increase followed by a subsequent decrease.Conclusion: Our study shows for the first time that, the expression and localization of BNDF were observed in the human nasal ciliated epithelial cells of allergic rhinitis, and the expression of level was less than the control group under the persistent state of allergy. BDNF expression in ciliated cells was transient increased after allergen stimulation and decreased to normal level after 24h in mouse model of allergic rhinitis. This might be the possible source of the transient increase of BNDF in serum and NAL fluid.Keywords: allergic rhinitis, BDNF, ciliated cell, NAL fluid

The development of venous thromboembolism (VTE) is associated with high mortality among gastric cancer (GC) patients. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) have been reported to correlate with the prothrombotic state in some diseases, but are rarely reported in GC patients.To investigate the effect of NETs on the development of cancer-associated thrombosis in GC patients.The levels of NETs in blood and tissue samples of patients were analyzed by ELISA, flow cytometry, and immunofluorescence staining. NET generation and hypercoagulation of platelets and endothelial cells (ECs)NETs were likely to form in blood and tissue samples of GC patients compared with healthy individuals.GC-induced NETs strongly increased the risk of VTE development both

Current pre-training methods in computer vision focus on natural images in the daily-life context. However, abstract diagrams such as icons and symbols are common and important in the real world. We are inspired by Tangram, a game that requires replicating an abstract pattern from seven dissected shapes. By recording human experience in solving tangram puzzles, we present the Tangram dataset and show that a pre-trained neural model on the Tangram helps solve some mini visual tasks based on low-resolution vision. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed method generates intelligent solutions for aesthetic tasks such as folding clothes and evaluating room layouts. The pre-trained feature extractor can facilitate the convergence of few-shot learning tasks on human handwriting and improve the accuracy in identifying icons by their contours. The Tangram dataset is available at https://github.com/yizhouzhao/Tangram.

To characterize atypical brain dynamics under diseases, prevalent studies investigate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, most of the existing analyses compress rich spatial-temporal information as the brain functional networks (BFNs) and directly investigate the whole-brain network without neurological priors about functional subnetworks. We thus propose a novel graph learning framework to mine fMRI signals with topological priors from brain parcellation for disease diagnosis. Specifically, we 1) detect diagnosis-related temporal features using a "Transformer" for a higher-level BFN construction, and process it with a following graph convolutional network, and 2) apply an attention-based multiple instance learning strategy to emphasize the disease-affected subnetworks to further enhance the diagnosis performance and interpretability. Experiments demonstrate higher effectiveness of our method than compared methods in the diagnosis of early mild cognitive impairment. More importantly, our method is capable of localizing crucial brain subnetworks during the diagnosis, providing insights into the pathogenic source of mild cognitive impairment., 5 pages, 2 figures, conference paper, accepted by IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) 2023

Ischemic stroke is characterized by the presence of reactive microglia. However, its precise involvement in stroke etiology is still unknown. We used metabolic profiling and showed that chemokine like factor 1 (CKLF1) causes acute microglial inflammation and metabolic reprogramming from oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis, which was reliant on the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)–mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)–hypoxia inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) signaling pathway. Once activated, microglia enter a chronic tolerant state as a result of widespread energy metabolism abnormalities, which reduces immunological responses, including cytokine release and phagocytosis. Metabolically dysfunctional microglia were also found in mice using genome-wide RNA sequencing after chronic administration of CKLF1, and there was a decrease in the inflammatory response. Finally, we showed that the loss of CKLF1 reversed the defective immune response of microglia, as indicated by the maintenance its phagocytosis to neutrophils, thereby mitigating the long-term outcomes of ischemic stroke. Overall, CKLF1 plays a crucial role in the relationship between microglial metabolic status and immune function in stroke, which prepares a potential therapeutic strategy for ischemic stroke. Graphical Abstract

Because cone penetration test (CPT) is reasonably rapid, affordable and repeatable, it has been widely used in-situ for subsurface soil stratification and classification in geological and geotechnical engineering practice. When used for soil stratification across a two-dimensional (2D) geological cross section, however, it is often observed that some CPTs probe deeper than others, and that some CPT soundings may contain missing data due to presence of gravel-sized particles or intentional bypassing of gravelly soil layers. Arguments above and frequently encountered problem of a small number of CPT soundings in practice pose a great challenge for 2D soil stratification, especially for non-stationary CPT within multi-layers. While certain methods have been proposed hoping to address these concerns, they are frequently constrained by either stationary assumption of data, autocorrelation function forms, or computational issues. This study introduces a data-driven multi-task Bayesian compressive sensing (MT-BCS) method to estimate missing data for CPT sounding of interest, and then develops a modified 2D BCS method for fast interpolation for horizontal locations without CPT soundings. The proposed method is demonstrated and validated using both numerical and real-world CPT data. Results show that proposed method is both efficient and robust in terms of missing data estimate in each CPT sounding and soil stratification for a 2D geological cross section.

Objective: To explore the correlation between the time course of CE-T1WI plaque and the level of CSF inflammatory factors in patients with cerebral infarction or TIA assessed by contrast-enhanced high-resolution MRI. Methods: From August 2019 to December 2021, 136 patients with ischemic stroke-related neurological symptoms or suspected ischemic stroke in Gong’an County Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine were retrospectively analyzed, including 69 men and 67 women aged 45-80 years old, with an average age of 65.98±8.29. The study was divided into two groups: infarction group (patients with high DWI signal in the middle cerebral artery supply area, n=68) and TIA group (patients with ischemic neurologic symptoms but no relevant imaging findings, n=68). Patients with grade 1 or grade 2 image quality were included in the study after imaging with a 3.0T MRI device. Unenhanced MRI (T1WI and T2WI) and contrast-enhanced T1WI (CE+T1WI) plaque signals were compared between the two groups. The expression levels of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β in CSF of the two groups were detected by ELISA. VA(MLN), LA(MLN), PA, stenosis rate, and reconstruction index were compared between the two groups. The SNR and CNR values on T1WI and CE+T1WI were compared. The expression levels of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β detected by ELISA in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with CE-T1WI plaque enhancement were compared. Results: The expression levels of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β in the cerebral infarction group were higher than those in the TIA group (P0.05), and there was no significant difference in VA(MLN) and stenosis rate between groups (P0.05). The expression levels of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β in the moderate enhancement group were higher than those in the non-enhancement group, and the expression levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β in the high enhancement group were higher than those in the moderate enhancement group (P

Glioma is the most common primary intracranial tumor and is related to poor clinical outcomes. The developments of sensitive markers can be applied to reveal the mechanisms involved in the progression of glioma. This study examined CDCA2 expression in glioma samples and its significance in predicting glioma patient outcome. GEPIA and GEO datasets were used to explore the expression of CDCA2 in glioma. Kaplan-Meier and multivariate assays were applied to delve into the prognostic values of CDCA2 expression in glioma patients using CGGA datasets. Our group also determined the associations between CDCA2 and clinical characteristics. Coexpression analysis was performed. In this research, we observed that CDCA2 expression was distinctly upregulated in glioma specimens compared with nontumor specimens. The prognosis of glioma with high CDCA2 expression was distinctly worse compared with that of glioma with low CDCA2 expression. Additionally, multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that high CDCA2 expression was an independent poor prognostic indicator for glioma patients. High expression of CDCA2 was positively associated with advanced clinical progression. Coexpression analysis revealed that CDCA2 could be positively related to ASPM, SKA1, DLGAP5, NCAPG, and CDCA8 and was negatively associated with ETNPPL, LDHD, MRVI1, CBX7, and CENPJ. Overall, our findings revealed that CDCA2 might serve as an independent prognosis indicator for glioma.

A clear understanding of the distribution characteristics of contaminants in soils is a prerequisite for remediation of contaminated sites. However, investigations on the distributions of chlorohydrocarbon contaminants in the field are still rare. In this study, three contaminated sites in the urban area of Shanghai, China, were selected to investigate the spatial distribution characteristics of chlorohydrocarbon contaminants. The chlorohydrocarbon contaminant contents were obtained by sampling in the field and measuring in the laboratory. The chlorohydrocarbon contaminants even break through the relatively deeper soil layers due to their high density and low solubility in groundwater and then accumulate to a high content in the top surface of a specific layer, which can be a natural barrier for preventing contaminants from migrating downwards due to its relatively low permeability. The relationships between chlorohydrocarbon contaminant spatial distributions and soil layer features were analysed. By combining the zone maps of soil layer distributions, the characteristics of chlorohydrocarbon contaminant distributions and enrichment phenomena in three different zones corresponding to three different sites are discussed and summarised. Conceptual models for distributions of chlorohydrocarbon contaminants are also proposed for preliminary estimation of the maximum depth and the possible enrichment zones of chlorohydrocarbon contaminants.

Searchable Encryption (SE) enables a data owner to outsource encrypted data to an untrusted server while preserving keyword search functionality. Typically, the server learns whether or not a query has been performed more than once, which is called the search pattern. However, such kind of information leakage might be leveraged to break query privacy. To reduce such type of leakage and provide strong privacy guarantee, Wang et al. proposed a novel SE scheme based on the Paillier encryption scheme in INFOCOM'15. Unfortunately, their scheme cannot perform keyword search successfully, because the additive homomorphic property is not sufficient for their construction. In this paper, we first show that why their scheme fails to return the correct search result, and then propose a new SE scheme by adopting a special additive homomorphic encryption scheme to achieve the multiplicative homomorphic property efficiently. Furthermore, we enhance the security on the user side. Specifically, we use random polynomials with an appropriate degree to guarantee that the user cannot learn anything other than the desired search result. Finally, we present a formal security analysis and implement our scheme on a real-world database, which demonstrates that our construction can achieve the desired security properties with good performance.

Microstructures and mechanical properties of directionally solidified Mg-xGd (5.21, 7.96 and 9.58 wt.%) alloys were investigated at a wide range of growth rates (V = 10-200 μm/s) under the constant temperature gradient (G = 30 K/mm). The results showed that when the growth rate was 10 μm/s, different interface morphologies were observed in three tested alloys: cellular morphology for Mg-5.21Gd alloy, a mixed morphology of cellular structure and dendritic structure for Mg-7.96Gd alloy and dendrite morphology for Mg-9.58Gd alloy, respectively. Upon further increasing the growth rate, only dendrite morphology was exhibited in all experimental alloys. The microstructural parameters (λ1, λ2) decreased with increasing the growth rate for all the experimental alloy, and the measured λ1 and λ2 values were in good agreement with Trivedi model and Kattamis-Flemings model, respectively. Vickers hardness and the ultimate tensile strength increased with the increase of the growth rate and Gd content, while the elongation decreased gradually. Furthermore, the relationships between the hardness, ultimate tensile strength, the growth rate and the microstructural parameters were discussed and compared with the previous experimental results.