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Emerging spatial technologies, including spatial transcriptomics and spatial epigenomics, are becoming powerful tools for profiling of cellular states in the tissue context1-5. However, current methods capture only one layer of omics information at a time, precluding the possibility of examining the mechanistic relationship across the central dogma of molecular biology. Here, we present two technologies for spatially resolved, genome-wide, joint profiling of the epigenome and transcriptome by cosequencing chromatin accessibility and gene expression, or histone modifications (H3K27me3, H3K27ac or H3K4me3) and gene expression on the same tissue section at near-single-cell resolution. These were applied to embryonic and juvenile mouse brain, as well as adult human brain, to map how epigenetic mechanisms control transcriptional phenotype and cell dynamics in tissue. Although highly concordant tissue features were identified by either spatial epigenome or spatial transcriptome we also observed distinct patterns, suggesting their differential roles in defining cell states. Linking epigenome to transcriptome pixel by pixel allows the uncovering of new insights in spatial epigenetic priming, differentiation and gene regulation within the tissue architecture. These technologies are of great interest in life science and biomedical research.

Remote sensing scene classification has been extensively studied for its critical roles in geological survey, oil exploration, traffic management, earthquake prediction, wildfire monitoring, and intelligence monitoring. In the past, the Machine Learning (ML) methods for performing the task mainly used the backbones pretrained in the manner of supervised learning (SL). As Masked Image Modeling (MIM), a self-supervised learning (SSL) technique, has been shown as a better way for learning visual feature representation, it presents a new opportunity for improving ML performance on the scene classification task. This research aims to explore the potential of MIM pretrained backbones on four well-known classification datasets: Merced, AID, NWPU-RESISC45, and Optimal-31. Compared to the published benchmarks, we show that the MIM pretrained Vision Transformer (ViTs) backbones outperform other alternatives (up to 18% on top 1 accuracy) and that the MIM technique can learn better feature representation than the supervised learning counterparts (up to 5% on top 1 accuracy). Moreover, we show that the general-purpose MIM-pretrained ViTs can achieve competitive performance as the specially designed yet complicated Transformer for Remote Sensing (TRS) framework. Our experiment results also provide a performance baseline for future studies., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2301.12058

The past few years have seen an increased interest in aerial image object detection due to its critical value to large-scale geo-scientific research like environmental studies, urban planning, and intelligence monitoring. However, the task is very challenging due to the birds-eye view perspective, complex backgrounds, large and various image sizes, different appearances of objects, and the scarcity of well-annotated datasets. Recent advances in computer vision have shown promise tackling the challenge. Specifically, Vision Transformer Detector (ViTDet) was proposed to extract multi-scale features for object detection. The empirical study shows that ViTDet's simple design achieves good performance on natural scene images and can be easily embedded into any detector architecture. To date, ViTDet's potential benefit to challenging aerial image object detection has not been explored. Therefore, in our study, 25 experiments were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of ViTDet for aerial image object detection on three well-known datasets: Airbus Aircraft, RarePlanes, and Dataset of Object DeTection in Aerial images (DOTA). Our results show that ViTDet can consistently outperform its convolutional neural network counterparts on horizontal bounding box (HBB) object detection by a large margin (up to 17% on average precision) and that it achieves the competitive performance for oriented bounding box (OBB) object detection. Our results also establish a baseline for future research.

The impact of bevacizumab (an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy) remains uncertain, which has been the focus of studies on the management of ovarian cancer (OC). We performed a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab combined with chemotherapy in OC.

FOXP1 syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by global developmental delay, intellectual disability, and language delay, with or without autistic features. Several splicing variants have been reported for this condition, but most of them lack functional evidence, and the actual effects of the sequence changes are still unknown. In this study, a de novo splicing variant (c.1652 + 5 G>A) of the FOXP1 gene was identified in a patient with global developmental delay, mild intellectual disability, speech delay, and autistic features. Assessed by TA-cloning, the variant promoted the skipping of exon 18 and a premature stop codon (p.Asn511*), resulting in a predicted truncated protein. This variant, that is lacking the forkhead-box DNA-binding domain and nuclear localization signal 2, may disrupt the protein function and thus cause FOXP1 syndrome-related symptoms. Our study extends the phenotypic and allelic spectra of the FOXP1 syndrome.

Primary aldosteronism (PA) is characterized by overproduction of aldosterone which can lead to various target organ damage, including the cardiovascular system. There are rare case reports about PA patients with severe heart failure. We report two male patients who were admitted because of severe cardiac systolic dysfunction induced by primary aldosteronism. Their cardiac function improved significantly after target therapy. Patient A was a 33 year old male with serum aldosterone concentration (PAC) 251.3 pg/ml, renin activity (PRA) 0.04 ng/ml/h, and aldosterone-to-renin ratio (ARR) 627.5. Computed tomography (CT) revealed a tumor in the left adrenal gland, while no dominant secretion function was found in the left side after the adrenal veins sampling (lateralization index 0.99). Bilateral adrenal hyperplasia was diagnosed and spironolactone was prescribed. Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was improved from 30% to 45% at the 11-month follow-up visit. Patient B was 43 years old male with PAC 185.5 pg/ml, PRA 0.46 ng/ml/h and ARR 403.2; Captopril challenge test was positive and a microadenoma (2.7*3.2*2.8 cm) was revealed on CT. Unilateral aldosterone-producing adenoma was diagnosed. His LVEF was improved from 30% to 51% at 12 months after laparoscopic adrenalectomy. Thus, it is important to screen for PA in patients with heart failure and launch the appropriate treatment for such patients.

Liya Wang,1 Shenjiao Huang,2 Xiujie Sheng,3 Chenchen Ren,4 Qiming Wang,5 Linqing Yang,6 Shuping Zhao,7 Tianmin Xu,8 Xiaoxin Ma,9 Ruixia Guo,10 Pengming Sun,11 Yang Lin,8 Yuhong Li,1 Jiandong Wang,12 Yudong Wang1 1Department of Gynecologic Oncology, International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Municipal Key Clinical Specialty, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Embryo Original Disease, Shanghai, 200030, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Centre, Guangzhou 510623, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Key Laboratory of Major Obstetric Diseases of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou 510150, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Women and Children’s Hospital of Ningbo City, Ningbo 315012, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Gynecology, Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University, Jining 272029, People’s Republic of China; 7Department of Gynecology, Women and Children’s Hospital of Qingdao, Qingdao 266000, People’s Republic of China; 8Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130000, People’s Republic of China; 9Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Shengjing Hospital Affiliated of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, People’s Republic of China; 10Department of Gynecology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, People’s Republic of China; 11Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Fujian Maternity and Child Health Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou 350001, People’s Republic of China; 12Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100026, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yudong Wang Department of Gynecologic OncologyInternational Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, NO. 1961, Huashan Road, Shanghai 200030, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail gfywangyudong@126.comJiandong WangDepartment of Gynecologic Oncology, Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Capital Medical University, NO. 251, Yao Jiayuan Road, Beijing 100026, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail wangjiandongxy@hotmail.comPurpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical characteristics and management of malignant ovarian tumors during pregnancy, as well as the feto-maternal outcomes and analyze the influentialfactorson thepregnancyoutcomes.Patients and Methods: Eighty-five patients with ovarian malignancies during pregnancy treated at 12tertiary hospitals between 2009 and 2019 were analyzed in this study. The clinical features, histopathological characteristics, clinical management, and maternal and perinatal outcomes were retrospectively analyzed. The clinical features and managements were compared between abortion group and live birth group.Results: The following diagnoses were made: 41 (48.24%) patients with borderline ovarian tumors, 18 (21.18%) patients with epithelial ovarian cancers, 17 (20.00%) patients with non-epithelial ovarian malignancies and 9 (10.59%) patients with metastatic ovarian tumors. Thirty-six (42.45%) patients underwent conservative surgical treatment. Thirty-four (40.00%)patients opted for fertility-sparing surgery, and fifteen (17.56%)patients received radical surgery. Chemotherapy was administered to 32.94% of the patients. The proportion of ovarian malignancies diagnosed in the first trimester in the abortion group was higher than that in the live birth group (P< 0.05). However, tumor diameter, reproductive history, stage and surgical indications showed no significant differences between groups. A total of 67 live babies were recorded in this study, including 19 premature babies and 1 full-term newborn who died of respiratory distress. All of the BOTs were diagnosed with stage I, among whom 38 (92.68%) patients exhibited disease-free survival. Twenty-eight ovarian cancers were in stage I–II and 26 of them had disease-free survival with the longest follow-up time of 10 years. Five of the sixteen patients in advanced stage (stage III–IV) died, four of whom had metastatic tumors.Conclusion: Pregnant women with early-stage malignant ovarian tumors appear to have favorable outcomes. Conservative surgery is acceptable for early-stage borderline ovarian tumors during pregnancy. The gestational age of ovarian malignancy detection is key for pregnancy outcomes.Keywords: malignant ovarian tumor, pregnancy, management, prognosis

Mitochondrial thymidine kinase 2 (TK2) is an essential enzyme for mitochondrial dNTP synthesis in many tissues. Deficiency in TK2 activity causes devastating mitochondrial diseases. Here we investigated several residues involved in substrate binding and catalysis. We showed that mutations of Gln-110 and Glu-133 affected Mg2+ and ATP binding, and thus are crucial for TK2 function. Furthermore, mutations of Gln-110 and Tyr-141 altered the kinetic behavior, suggesting their involvement in substrate binding through conformational changes. Since the 3 D structure of TK2 is still unknown, and thus, the identification of key amino acids for TK2 function may help to explain how TK2 mutations cause mitochondrial diseases.

Additional file 1. Additional figures.

Lisa M Hess,1 Michael Grabner,2 Liya Wang,2 Astra M Liepa,1 Xiaohong Ivy Li,3 Zhanglin Lin Cui,3 Lee Bowman,1 William R Schelman4 1Global Patient Outcomes, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA; 2Life Sciences Research, HealthCore Inc., Wilmington, DE, USA; 3Global Statistics, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA; 4Medical Affairs, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USACorrespondence: Lisa M HessEli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN 46285, USAEmail Hess_lisa_m@lilly.comBackground: As real-world data resources expand and improve, there will increasingly be opportunities to study the effectiveness of interventions. There is a need to ensure that study designs explore potential sources of bias and either acknowledge or mitigate them, in order to improve the accuracy of findings. The objective of this study was to understand newly approved drug utilization patterns in real-world clinical settings over time.Methods: This retrospective study included three sources of real-world data (claims, electronic health records, and recoded data from a quality care program) collected from patients diagnosed with gastric cancer who initiated therapy with either trastuzumab or ramucirumab. Linear regression was used to investigate trends in the use of these drugs for the care of patients with gastric cancer over time from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.Results: Eligible patients (n=1700) had consistent demographic and clinical characteristics over time. After regulatory approval, trastuzumab was used in later lines of therapy and then shifted to earlier lines (p=0.002), while ramucirumab utilization remained consistent over time after FDA approval (p=0.49). Ramucirumab augmentation, defined as the addition of the drug after initiation of a line of therapy, decreased over time (p=0.03), and trastuzumab augmentation remained consistent over time (p=0.58).Conclusion: Since treatment effectiveness may change across lines of treatment, bias may arise if there are changes in the use of the drug (such as line migration) during the time period of analysis using real-world data.Keywords: gastric cancer, trastuzumab, ramucirumab, bias, real-world data

Background: The impact of bevacizumab (an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy) remains uncertain, which has been the focus of studies on the management of ovarian cancer (OC). We performed a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab combined with chemotherapy in OC. Methods: The presentation of methods and results in this systematic review was performed according to the evaluation guidelines for health care interventions provided in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocol. This study will use the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, China Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China Science and Technology Journal Database, Wanfang Database, and Ongoing Clinical Trials Database. The risk of bias of included studies is estimated by taking into consideration the characteristics including random sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of patients, blinding of outcome assessment, completeness of outcome data, selective reporting, and other bias by Cochrane Collaboration's tool. All analyses were performed with Review Manager (RevMan) software, version 5.3. Results: The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Conclusion: Bevacizumab combined with chemotherapy may improve progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with OC.

Several monotonic triaxial consolidated drained (CD) and consolidated undrained (CU) tests were conducted to investigate the effect of biogenic gas formation through microbial-induced denit...

Transformers have become the de-facto standard in the natural language processing (NLP) field. They have also gained momentum in computer vision and other domains. Transformers can enable artificial intelligence (AI) models to dynamically focus on certain parts of their input and thus reason more effectively. Inspired by the success of transformers, we adopted this technique to predict strategic flight departure demand in multiple horizons. This work was conducted in support of a MITRE-developed mobile application, Pacer, which displays predicted departure demand to general aviation (GA) flight operators so they can have better situation awareness of the potential for departure delays during busy periods. Field demonstrations involving Pacer's previously designed rule-based prediction method showed that the prediction accuracy of departure demand still has room for improvement. This research strives to improve prediction accuracy from two key aspects: better data sources and robust forecasting algorithms. We leveraged two data sources, Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM) and System Wide Information Management (SWIM), as our input. We then trained forecasting models with temporal fusion transformer (TFT) for five different airports. Case studies show that TFTs can perform better than traditional forecasting methods by large margins, and they can result in better prediction across diverse airports and with better interpretability., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2011.04476

Additional file 3: Figure S2. Full length original image of western blot analyses shown in Fig. 2B & C. On the left is the original western blot image and on the right is a photo of the membrane taken after ECL detection with protein ladder seen. These image are directly exported from the software (Bio-Rad Image lab version 5.2.1) without any manipulation. The membrane was cut into two pieces after protein transfer, one was used for anti-his-tag antibody and the other one was used for anti-TK1 antibody. They were put together just before ECL detection. The membrane is outlined with black lines

Additional file 2: Figure S1. Original full length image of SDS-PAGE analysis shown in Fig. 2A. The SDS-gel was stained with Page Blue protein staining solution (Thermo Scientific) and distained with water. The wet gel was scanned directly. Half of the gel image is shown here because the other half is not relevant.

Hydrodynamic lubrication is an ideal state of lubrication in that friction and wear hardly occur. The friction pair of piston ring-cylinder liner is one of the most important friction pairs in a flowmeter. With the development of flowmeter aiming at high-precision and high-stability, how to make the piston ring-cylinder liner system maintain a good lubrication condition has great importance in terms of reducing the friction and wear. In this paper, a hydrodynamic lubrication mathematical model on the surface of piston ring was established. And the finite difference method(FDM) and successive over relaxation method(SOR) were adopted to solve the mathematical model numerically. The dimensionless average pressure of the lubrication film was taken as the criterion to estimate the hydrodynamic lubrication performance of the piston ring, and the effects of different flow rate conditions, different fluid viscosities and different minimum film thicknesses on the lubrication film pressure distribution were investigated respectively. The numerical analysis results reveal that: (a) the average pressure decreases with the increase of minimum film thickness, under the condition of the same minimum film thickness, when the medium is diesel, the average pressure is greater than the average pressure when the medium is gasoline; (b) the lubrication film pressure increases with the increase of flow rate, and the flow regime of the lubrication film changes with the change of flow rate; (c) as the viscosity increases, the pressure increases as well, for the same leakage clearance, the higher the viscosity, the larger load-carrying capacity of the clearance lubrication film. These results provide a guidance for lubrication design of piston ring-cylinder liner friction pair.

Inspired by the success of deep learning (DL) in natural language processing (NLP), we applied cutting-edge DL techniques to predict flight departure demand in a strategic time horizon (4 hours or longer). This work was conducted in support of a MITRE-developed mobile application, Pacer, which displays predicted departure demand to general aviation (GA) flight operators so they can have better situation awareness of the potential for departure delays during busy periods. Field demonstrations involving Pacer's previously designed rule-based prediction method showed that the prediction accuracy of departure demand still has room for improvement. This research strives to improve prediction accuracy from two key aspects: better data sources and robust forecasting algorithms. We leveraged two data sources, Aviation System Performance Metrics (ASPM) and System Wide Information Management (SWIM), as our input. We then trained forecasting models with DL techniques of sequence to sequence (seq2seq) and seq2seq with attention. The case study has shown that our seq2seq with attention performs best among four forecasting algorithms tested. In addition, with better data sources, seq2seq with attention can reduce mean squared error (mse) over 60%, compared to the classical autoregressive (AR) forecasting method., Paper will be submitted to AIAA aviation forum

Biocementation catalyzed by ureolytic bacteria or enzyme urease is a promising technique for the treatment of liquefiable soil. Silty sand is often encountered in natural conditions and is ...

Biocementation catalyzed by ureolytic bacteria or enzyme urease is a promising technique for the treatment of liquefiable soil. Silty sand is often encountered in natural conditions and is often prone to earthquake liquefaction. However, the applicability of the biocementation to silty sand is still a challenge. In this study, we proposed and tested a new method of applying the biocementation to silty sand. In this method, crude urease obtained from the lysis of ureolytic bacteria was used for the soil treatment instead of using live bacteria directly. It was found that crude urease could be successfully obtained from bacteria using the ultrasonic cell lysis method. The activity of the crude urease was relatively high in 0.01-1 mol/L of urea concentrations and 5-11 pH values and increased in temperature in the tested range (10°C-50°C). The results of the CaCO3 precipitation reaction tests showed that crude urease was capable of hydrolyzing urea and could be used in the biocementation treatment when the initial urea concentration was not higher than 0.5 mol/L. Triaxial consolidated undrained tests and CaCO3 content measurements were conducted on the silty sand samples treated by either urease or live bacteria. Silty sand samples treated by urease had higher shear strengths and more dilative stress-strain responses during the undrained shear as compared with the samples treated by live bacteria. In the bacteria-treated samples, CaCO3 was prone to accumulating at the injection side of the samples, while the treatment using crude urease can alleviate such a problem by showing higher CaCO3 contents at farther locations of the samples. Ministry of Education (MOE) Nanyang Technological University This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51608169, 41630638, 51609093, and51578214), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFC0800205), the Ministry of Education, Singapore (No. MOE2015-T2-2-142), and the Centre for Usable Space, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Additional file 1: Table S1. dT and dC kinase activity in mitochondrial and cytosolic extracts. Figure S1. Assessment of the quality of mitochondrial and cytosolic preparations by using western blot analyses using anti cytochrome c oxidase subunit 4 (COX4) and anti-cytochrome c antibodies. Mitochondrial and cytosolic preparation from liver, heart, brain, spleen, kidney, and skeletal muscle (A); and lung and heart (B). Figure S2. Recombinant TK2 was used as standard in western blot analysis for determination of mitochondrial TK2 in rat tissue mitochondrial extracts. TK2 (2, 5, 10, and 25 ng) was loaded onto the same gel for western blot analysis using TK2 specific antibody and the band intensity was quantified and plotted against the amount of TK2 protein in each lane to generate a standard curve by using linear regression analysis. Figure S3. Direct correlation analysis of mRNA levels of TK2 (A), p53R2 (B) and TS (C) with protein concentration determined by western blot analyses (TK2 and p53R2) and radiolabeling (TS). Tissues mRNA expression data/heat map is from Expression Atlas (D)

Mitochondrial dysfunction elicits stress responses that safeguard cellular homeostasis against metabolic insults. Mitochondrial integrated stress response (ISRmt) is a major response to mitochondrial (mt)DNA expression stress (mtDNA maintenance, translation defects), but the knowledge of dynamics or interdependence of components is lacking. We report that in mitochondrial myopathy, ISRmt progresses in temporal stages and development from early to chronic and is regulated by autocrine and endocrine effects of FGF21, a metabolic hormone with pleiotropic effects. Initial disease signs induce transcriptional ISRmt (ATF5, mitochondria) one-carbon cycle, FGF21, and GDF15). The local progression to 2nd metabolic ISRmt stage (ATF3, ATF4, glucose uptake, serine biosynthesis, and transsulfuration) is FGF21 dependent. Mitochondria! unfolded protein response marks the 3rd ISRmt stage of failing tissue. Systemically, FGF21 drives weight loss and glucose preference, and modifies metabolism and respiratory chain deficiency in a specific hippocampal brain region. Our evidence indicates that FGF21 is a local and systemic messenger of mtDNA stress in mice and humans with mitochondrial disease.

The conical silo and wedge-shaped hopper in the discharge system of ceramic press are important devices for storing and transferring ceramic powder. The conical silo stores ceramic powder and delivers the powder to the wedge-shaped hopper, which distributes the powder evenly in the grating. In order to provide sufficient supply quantity for brick pressing or improve the production efficiency of brick pressing, it is necessary to accurately predict the discharge rate of conical silo and wedge-shaped hopper. Based on dynamic arching theory and considering the influence of structure size, this paper deduces the prediction model of discharge rate of conical silo and wedge-shaped hopper, and proves the accuracy of the prediction model through discharge experiment.

Torrential rains hit Beijing on July 21, 2012, and provide a good opportunity for the study of the single rainfall event on local groundwater resource. Water level is the macroscopic characteristic of the groundwater system. Through visual comparison of the curves of groundwater level of 618 monitoring wells in the Beijing Plain, it is demonstrated that there are only 34 monitoring wells with an obvious response to the 7/21/2012 heavy rain, accounting for about 6% of the total wells. Those affected are mostly the shallow wells. The effects of the heavy rain to the groundwater levels in the area are not strongly correlated. According to the analysis of the 34 monitoring wells, most of them are located along the upstream channels of the big rivers where the permeability of strata is higher. The occurrence of diffuse stormwater runoff with a longer retention time and more permeable strata are important factors for an obvious response of the groundwater levels. Reasons for the limited influence of a single rainfall are examined. The blocking effects of the clay-type strata, human surface hardening and the compaction of the strata during the sedimentary process, especially the differential compaction, are the three main reasons for this effect. All could reduce both vertical and horizontal permeability; therefore, the effect of the rainfall on groundwater levels could be significantly reduced. The impact on groundwater resources of a single rainfall is generally not very obvious because the quantity of the water is generally not large enough, also the time that the ground remained saturated water is not long enough.

In this work, we collected 101 geothermal water samples to investigate comprehensively the radioactivity of geothermal water in Beijing. The concentrations of gross beta, 226Ra and 222Rn were measured and the obtained values were in the range of 0.032–7.060, 0.023–0.363 and 0.470–29.700 Bq/L, respectively. The samples with higher concentration of 222Rn were found to be located near large faults. The effective dose of 222Rn in the air for three cases were calculated to be greater than radiation dose limit of 1 mSv/a.

The venturi scrubber is one of the most efficient gas cleaning devices for removal of contaminating particles in industrial flue-gas purification processes. The velocity of the gas entering the scrubber is one of the key factors influencing its dust-removal efficiency. In this study, the shapes of the heavy mound and tube wall are optimized, allowing the girth area to become linearly adjustable. The resulting uniformity of velocity distribution is verified numerically.

Table S2. Antibodies used in the cohort of patients. (DOCX 16 kb)

In this work, we report a new method to simulate active Brownian particles (ABPs) in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Immersed in a fluid, each ABP consists of a head particle and a spherical phantom region of fluid where the flagellum of a microswimmer takes effect. The orientation of the active particle is governed by a stochastic dynamics, with the orientational persistence time determined by the rotational diffusivity. To hydrodynamically drive the active particle as a pusher, a pair of active forces are exerted on the head particle and the phantom fluid region respectively. The active velocity measured along the particle orientation is proportional to the magnitude of the active force. The effective diffusion coefficient of the active particle is first measured in free space, showing semi-quantitative agreement with the analytical result predicted by a minimal model for ABPs. We then turn to the probability distribution of the active particle in confinement potential. We find that the stationary particle distribution undergoes an evolution from the Boltzmann-type to non-Boltzmann distribution as the orientational persistence time is increased relative to the relaxation time in the potential well. From the stationary distribution in confinement potential, the active part of the diffusion coefficient is measured and compared to that obtained in free space, showing a good semi-quantitative agreement while the orientational persistence time varies greatly relative to the relaxation time.

This article introduces the effect of acid on the setting time, early strength and stability of aluminum sulfate alkali-free accelerator. The inorganic acids used are phosphoric acid, hydrofluoric acid and fluorosilicic acid, and the organic acids are oxalic acid and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. As a result, it was found that increasing the amount of acid can increase the stability of the accelerator. The product of the anion in acid and calcium ion in cement is easy to form. The product damages the network structure of the cement paste, and the early strength is low.

This paper presents the impact of valley topography on the stability of an earth-rockfill dam slope during earthquakes. The valley site is simplified as an ideal trapezium. A series of three-dimensional numerical models with different valley floor widths and valley wall slopes are used to represent different geometries of the valley topography. A modified dimensionless valley topography coefficient ς is proposed to describe the shape characteristics of the valley topography quantitatively. Considering the most commonly used parameter, the length-height ratio of the dam (L/H), ς replaces L with the length of the median line, Lm, and introduces a shape index, S, as a correction factor on the basis of Lm/H. Comparing to L/H, data from previous studies indicate that ς has a better correlation with the increment ratio of FoS3D to FoS2D. The shear strength reduction technique and the pseudo-static approach are adopted to calculate the factor of safety and the associated critical slip surface of the dam slopes. The results show that the valley topography plays a positive role in the seismic stability of the dam in the cases investigated in this study, especially for narrow valleys and that the valley topography effect will decrease with increasing earthquake intensity.

For the purpose of efficient utilization of sediments dredged from harbor, a new method was proposed in this study. Marine silt bricks were made by mixing sediments with cement and gypsum, placing it in a cubic mold with 240 mm in length, 115 mm in width, and 53 mm in height, and curing for certain days. To investigate the effects of cement and initial water content of soil on the mechanical behavior of marine silt bricks, unconfined compressive and flexural strength tests were carried out. Given the same curing time and cement content, the higher the initial water content, the lower the compressive and flexural strength. After 60 days of curing, the compressive strength of marine silt bricks with cement content = 20% and water content = LL (liquid limit) reached approximately 5 MPa. The flexural strength was relatively low. The flexural strength of marine silt bricks with 20% cement and water content = LL was around 1.5 MPa. The compressive and flexural strength decreased with the increase of wat...

Microbial induced desaturation and precipitation (MIDP) is an emerging bio-mediated ground improvement method in which nitrate-reducing bacteria in the soil are stimulated to produce biogas and biominerals. In this study, the potential of MIDP for mitigating soil liquefaction was evaluated using a modified triaxial setup. Modifications to the triaxial test setup allowed the change in the degree of saturation during treatment and the mechanical response to cyclic and monotonic loading to be measured. An experimental procedure was developed to simulate the in situ treatment process of a sand layer underneath an embankment along the Fraser River in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, which was susceptible to liquefaction. Denitrifying microbes were enriched from locally collected soil. Reconstituted samples were treated with a single MIDP treatment cycle under similar stress conditions as encountered in the field. Triaxial consolidated undrained cyclic and monotonic tests were performed to investigate the mechanical response of the treated soil. Results showed that a single MIDP treatment cycle reduced the degree of saturation to 80 % and produced an average calcium carbonate content of 0.086 %, and significantly increased the cyclic shear resistance.

Figure S1. (A) qRT-PCR analysis of the expression of indicated miRNAs in HCT8 and HCT116 cells. (B & C) Transfection efficiency was measured by qRT-PCR. *p

Purpose Recent studies revealed that immunological mechanisms play a prominent role in the pathogenesis of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). Given the importance of the immune response in PDR and the significance of the programmed death 1 (PD-1) pathway as an immune regulatory pathway, the aim of this study is to determine the expression and functional characteristics of the PD-1 pathway in peripheral blood lymphocytes from patients with PDR. Methods Peripheral blood lymphocytes were obtained from patients with PDR, age-matched patients with diabetes mellitus and no diabetic retinopathy (DM-NDR), and controls. The mRNA expression of PD-1 and its ligands were determined using real-time PCR. The frequencies of PD-1 and its ligands, activation-induced apoptosis, IFN-γ, and IL-4 were determined by flow cytometry. Results The PD-1 mRNA expression markedly decreased, while the frequency of PD-1+ cells increased in the PDR group compared with the DM-NDR and control groups. The expression of PD-ligand 1 (PD-L1) mRNA and PD-L1+ cells in the PDR group was lower than that in the other two groups. In the PDR group, the frequency of Annexin V+PI- and Annexin V+PI-PD-1+ cells increased, while the frequency of Annexin V+PI-PD-L1+ cells decreased. Although their expression was upregulated, the ratio of PD-1+ IFN-γ+ to PD-1+IL-4+ cells in the PDR group was not significantly different to that in the DM-NDR and control groups. Conclusions These results suggest that PD-1 is involved in the development of PDR by mediating activation-induced apoptosis.

Non-ionic surfactant micelles are helpful for improving the diffusion of topically delivered drugs through the cornea. This study aimed to develop terbinafine hydrochloride (TH)-loaded micelles based on a soft non-ionic surfactant-macrogol 15 hydroxystearate (HS 15) and to investigate their in vivo cornea permeation. Briefly, 0.25% TH-loaded HS 15 micelles (TH-HNMs) were developed using a simple co-solvent method. Characterization of the TH-HNMs by Zetasizer and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that the spherical and discrete micellar droplets with a small size (13.22 ± 0.73 nm) and an electrically neutral surface (− 2.15 ± 0.39 mV) were achieved. The drug entrapment efficiency of TH-HNMs was almost 100%. The release of TH from the micelles was pH dependent. 93.2 ± 3.4% of encapsulated TH was released from the micelles in the PBS at pH 5.0 within 6 h, but only 0.122 ± 0.020% of encapsulated TH was released in the PBS at pH 7.4 within the same release time. TH-HNMs possessed good physical stability in the pH neutral medium (pH 7.0).No obvious irritations were observed in rabbit eyes after ocular instillation of TH-HNMs. The in vivo corneal permeation study revealed that the TH-HNMs can penetrate into the corneal epithelium quickly and efficiently in mouse eyes. Good permeability was also noted in the stroma of mouse corneas with de-epithelialization. Compared with the TH oily solution, TH-HNMs delivered considerably increased levels of TH into rabbit corneas with or without de-epithelialization. In conclusion, the easily prepared, small, physically stable and biocompatible TH-HNMs with good ocular bioavailability hold great promise as an efficient carrier for topical ocular delivery of TH.

Background Canine atopic dermatitis (CAD) is an inflammatory and pruritic allergic skin disease caused by interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Previously, a genome‐wide significant risk locus on canine chromosome 27 for CAD was identified in German shepherd dogs (GSDs) and Plakophilin‐2 (PKP2) was defined as the top candidate gene. PKP2 constitutes a crucial component of desmosomes and also is important in signalling, metabolic and transcriptional activities. Objectives The main objective was to evaluate the role of PKP2 in CAD by investigating PKP2 expression and desmosome structure in nonlesional skin from CAD‐affected (carrying the top GWAS SNP risk allele) and healthy GSDs. We also aimed at defining the cell types in the skin that express PKP2 and its intracellular location. Animals/Methods Skin biopsies were collected from nine CAD‐affected and five control GSDs. The biopsies were frozen for immunofluorescence and fixed for electron microscopy immunolabelling and morphology. Results We observed the novel finding of PKP2 expression in dendritic cells and T cells in dog skin. Moreover, we detected that PKP2 was more evenly expressed within keratinocytes compared to its desmosomal binding‐partner plakoglobin. PKP2 protein was located in the nucleus and on keratin filaments attached to desmosomes. No difference in PKP2 abundance between CAD cases and controls was observed. Conclusion Plakophilin‐2 protein in dog skin is expressed in both epithelial and immune cells; based on its subcellular location its functional role is implicated in both nuclear and structural processes.

A turbine blade is one of the key components of the aero-engine. Its geometric shape should be inspected carefully in the production stage to ensure that it meets the tolerance specification. In the present paper, an approach for investment turbine blade geometric shape analysis based on multi-source digital measurement is presented. Its key technologies, such as measurement data collection, blade model reliable alignment, geometric shape deviation fast calculation and visualization, were investigated. Actual measurement data from a structure light measurement device and a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) for turbine blades were used to validate the presented method. The experimental results show that the proposed method is accurate, quick and effective to implement.

This paper mainly studies the test buffer overflow software. This paper proposes an improved combining static analysis and dynamic testing for the detection of buffer overflow software. Using static analysis provides information for further test case generation to create a feedback loop, the key to explore space and faster input buffer overflow detection. The empirical results show that, Adaptive test cases generation method improves the results of dynamic testing, random test cases.

Purpose To identify the molecular defect causing Schnyder crystalline corneal dystrophy (SCCD) in a Chinese family with bilateral corneal abnormalities. Methods The Chinese SCCD family was subjected to a complete ophthalmic examination that included slit-lamp examination and slit-lamp photography to assess and document the crystalline deposits and arcus lipoides. In vivo laser scanning confocal microscopy and Fourier-domain OCT were also performed on both eyes of SCCD patients. Blood samples were taken for subsequent genetic analysis. The two coding exons of the UbiA prenyltransferase domain-containing protein 1 (UBIAD1) gene were screened for mutations by direct sequencing. Results We report on a novel heterozygous mutation of UBIAD1, G98S, in two patients with SCCD. The identified molecular defect cosegregates with the disease and is not found in 50 unaffected individuals. Morphological evaluation on SCCD by in vivo laser scanning confocal microscopy and Fourier-domain OCT highlighted pathological observations at the level of Bowman’s membrane and anterior stroma. Conclusion The newly identified mutation expands the spectrum of mutations in UBIAD1 that may cause pathological corneal cholesterol deposition. Observations by in vivo laser scanning confocal microscopy and Fourier-domain OCT were consistent with the previous histopathologic descriptions of SCCD.

Genetic composition of IBM Syn4 and Syn10 population. X axis: one vertical bar present one progeny in the corresponding population. Y axis: The percentage of markers of each progeny inherited from bi-parents. For each progeny, the genetic origin of each marker was identified according to the genotype of the marker in bi-parents and progeny. The length of blue and red parts of each vertical bar represent the percentage of markers inherited from B73 or Mo17, respectively. The genetic composition of IBM Syn10 was more biased toward B73 (the average percentage of markers inherited from B73 in IBM Syn10 was higher than in IBM Syn4, U-test, P=9.74 Ă 10â 5). (PDF 47 kb)

Comparison of orientation of segregation distortion and additive effect of flowering time QTL on 10 chromosomes. X axis: physical coordinate on the B73 chromosomes. Left Y axis: B73 allele frequency in IBM populations. Right Y axis: The additive effect of flower time of QTL inherited from B73. Blue hollow circles and red hollow circles represent markers of IBM Syn10 and Syn4, respectively. B73 allele frequency of each marker was obtained by dividing the number of progeny with genotype of B73 allele using total number of progeny with non-missing genotype. Adjacent circles from the same population were connected by solid line to show variation tendency of B73 allele frequency among the genome. Blue dashed and red dashed lines represent the 99% confidence interval for the â no distortionâ hypothesis in the Syn10 and Syn4 populations, respectively. The information of flowering time QTL such as physical coordinate, length, and additive effect was indicated by blue (Syn10) and red (Syn4) thick lines. (PDF 163 kb)

Comparison of the chromosome genetic length in F2, IBM Syn4 and Syn10 populations. (PDF 11 kb)

Correction of a potential assembly error in B73 reference. A fragment consisting of 4 alignment based bins (600kb) from chromosome 8 was re-assigned to linkage group 2 (chromosome 2) by following linkage mapping. (PDF 36 kb)

The nutritional compositions of the main tissues (meat, testis and liver) of farmed Takifugu obscures were investigated. All tissues reported in this study showed high amounts of crude protein in meat (18.44±0.11 g/100g) and testis (17.15±0.15 g/100g), but lower proportions in liver (3.89±0.16g/100g). At the same time, liver (63.86±0.93 g/100g) contained significant amounts of crude fat, while testis (1.82±0.13 g/100g) and meat (1.31±0.21 g/100g) contained lower proportion of crude fat. Concerning to the minerals, K was the most abundant macroelement in meat, testis and liver. At the same time, Zn accounts for the majority of microelement in meat and testis, while Fe does in liver. In addition, amino acids (AA) were rich in testis and meat. The contents of total amino acids (TAA) in meat and testis were 80.08 ±0.75g/100g and 63.33±0.10 g/100g, respectively. The ratios of total essential amino acids (TEAA) to TAA in meat and testis were 40.60% and 39.33%, respectively. The TEAA/TAAs were comparable to the reference values recommended by FAO/WHO. The AA contents of meat were dominated by Glu, testis were dominated by Arg. According to amino acid score (AAS), the first limiting amino acid of meat was Tyr; the first limiting amino acid of testis were (Phe+ Tyr).

The average size of internal translated exons, ranging from 120 to 165 nt across metazoans, is approximately the size of the typical mononucleosome (147 nt). Genome-wide study has also shown that nucleosome occupancy is significantly higher in exons than in introns, which might indicate that the evolution of exon size is related to its nucleosome occupancy. By grouping exons by the GC contents of their flanking introns, we show that the average exon size is positively correlated with its GC content. Using the sequencing data from direct mapping of Homo sapiens nucleosomes with limited nuclease digestion, we show that the level of nucleosome occupancy is also positively correlated with the exon GC content in a similar fashion. We then demonstrated that exon size is positively correlated with their nucleosome occupancy. The strong correlation between exon size and the nucleosome occupancy suggests that chromatin organization may be related to the evolution of exon sizes., Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures

We present CloudSTRUCTURE, an application for running parallel analyses with the population genetics program STRUCTURE. The HPC ready application, powered by iPlant cyber-infrastructure, provides a fast (by parallelization) and convenient (through a user friendly GUI) way to calculate like-lihood values across multiple values of K (number of genetic groups) and numbers of iterations. The results are automati-cally summarized for easier determination of the K value that best fit the data. In addition, CloudSTRUCTURE will reformat STRUCTURE output for use in downstream programs, such as TASSEL for association analysis with population structure ef-fects stratified., Comment: 2 pages

This is a response to some of the questions asked by Franco Passalacqua and Federico Pianzola as a follow-up of the 2013 ENN conference. The discussions that originated at the conference were rich and thought-provoking and so the editors of this special section of «Enthymema» decided to continue the dialogue about the state of the art and the future of narratology., ENTHYMEMA, No 9 (2013)

All running machines may deteriorate because of abnormal mechanical wear, fatigue crack, poor lubrication and so on. Physical parameters such as vibration, sound, temperature, etc. may vary with its deterioration. In this paper a web based instrument system which can collect data of vibration, temperature, image, radio frequency identification, meter indicator and observed variables was developed for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis. Firstly, the structure and principle of the instrument system was introduced; then the portable instrument based on arm microprocessor and embedded Linux operating system was designed; after that the acquisition of vibration signal and the analysis of the vibration data was discussed; finally the function of application was presented. The developed instrument system provided an effective method for device management, condition monitoring and fault diagnosis. It has good practicability and can be easily incorporated with the enterprise asset management system.