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Yong-Lin Liu,1 Wei-Min Xiao,1 Man-Qiu Liang,2 Zhi-Qiang Wu,1 Ya-Zhi Wang,1 Jian-Feng Qu,1 Yang-Kun Chen11Department of Neurology, Affiliated Dongguan People’s Hospital, Southern Medical University (Dongguan People’s Hospital), Dongguan, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Radiology, Affiliated Dongguan People’s Hospital, Southern Medical University (Dongguan People’s Hospital), Dongguan, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yang-Kun ChenDepartment of Neurology, Affiliated Dongguan People’s Hospital, Southern Medical University (Dongguan People’s Hospital), 3 South Wandao Road, Wanjiang District, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province 523059, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 7 692 863 6830Fax +86 07 692 222 2353Email cykun78@163.comPurpose: Wernicke’s encephalopathy (WE) is a severe neurological disorder caused by thiamine deficiency. The most common cause of WE is alcoholism. However, there is a significant paucity of information in the existing literature relating to nonalcoholic WE. In this study, we investigated the clinical characteristics and neuroimaging findings of nine patients with nonalcoholic WE.Patients and methods: We retrospectively collated clinical data from nine patients who had been diagnosed with WE in accordance with established criteria including age, gender, risk factors and clinical manifestations. We also collated initial hematological and neuroimaging findings.Results: The mean age of the nine patients was 54.0±17.1 years; four of these patients (44.4%) were male. All nine patients had a history of fasting (range, 5–47 days) prior to WE. Four of the nine patients (44.4%) exhibited the classical triad, and eight (88.9%) showed alterations in mental status. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed that all nine patients had symmetric lesions of the medial thalamus. MRI also revealed other WE-related lesions in mammillary bodies (22.2%), the periaqueductal region (55.6%), the tectal plate of the midbrain (77.8%), cranial nerve nuclei (77.8%) and in the symmetric subcortical white matter (11.1%).Conclusion: Our analysis showed that fasting is a common cause of WE in nonalcoholic patients and that MRI is a useful tool for the diagnosis of WE. The most common MRI findings were symmetrical lesions of the medial thalamus lesions, followed by the tectal plate of the midbrain and cranial nerve nuclei.Keywords: Wernicke’s encephalopathy, altered mental status, magnetic resonance imaging, fasting, thiamine, alcoholism

Rationale: Metachronous sternal metastasis of thyroid carcinoma was a rare disease. There was no consensus in the treatment for bone metastasis after the initial thyroid carcinoma surgery. Patient concerns: A 53-year-old female patient was hospitalized due to recurrent dull chest pains, with a history of radical right side thyroid carcinoma 4 years ago. On examination, there was an irregular mass on the lower left half of the sternum. Computerized tomography scan showed sternal bone destruction with a soft tissue mass. Diagnoses: Metachronous sternal metastasis of thyroid carcinoma. Interventions: Partial resection of the sternum and reconstruction with a titanium alloy mesh were performed. Outcomes: After a 3-year follow-up, the patient had no recurrence. Lessons: Surgical resection may be a sufficient treatment for metachronous sternal metastasis of thyroid carcinoma. Biosynthesis material mesh is preferred to be used.

Tongboshan Nature Reserve (between 28°03′30′′ - 28°10′33′′N and 118°12′00′′ - 118°21′36′′E) is located in the northeast of the Wuyi Mountain Range in the eastern Jiangxi Province. The fish fauna of mountain streams in the nature reserve was investigated seasonally during 2012. A total of 442 samples were collected and classified into four orders, eight families and 22 species. None of them collected in the nature reserve was exotic species. Among them, Zacco platypus was the most abundant fish species collected, followed by Onychostoma barbatulu and Acrossocheilus parallens. A total of 10 species were found to be endemic to China. Current threats to conservation of fishes in the nature reserve were identified and management solutions are suggested. Key words: Tongboshan Nature Reserve, Mountain streams, ichthyofauna, diversity, conservation.

To optimize somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) procedures in mini-pigs, the present study was designed to examine the effects of donor cell types and aphidicolin (APC) treatment on in vitro development of reconstructed embryos. Oviduct epithelial cells (OEC), ear fibroblast cells (EFC) and cumulus cells (CC) derived from mini-pigs were treated with serum starvation only or serum starvation followed by treatment of 0.1 µg/mL APC. The reconstructed embryos were cultured for 7 days to evaluate their developmental competency. Cleavage and blastocyst formation rates of reconstructed embryos derived from the OEC by APC treatment were significantly higher than the serum starvation (61.82% vs. 56.25%, 24.55% vs. 17.86%; P < 0.05). The cleavage rate from the EFC was significantly increased by APC treatment compared to serum starvation only (63.36% vs. 57.01%; P < 0.05). In the ooctyes with the CC, the reconstructed embryos could yield high blastocyst formation rate by APC treatment (29.63%; P < 0.05). In the presence of APC, CC gave rise to the highest cleavage and blastocyst formation rates among the three cell types. Therefore, our results suggest that treatment of CC with serum starvation plus APC prior to nuclear transfer is more suitable in SCNT of mini-pigs.

In March and April 2009, an entirely novel influenza A (H1N1) virus (NIAV) emerged in Mexico and the USA. During the subsequent months, the virus rapidly spread all over the world by person-to-person transmission. In this report, RNA interference (RNAi) was used as an antiviral agent to inhibit NIAV replication in A549 cells. Ten small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) targeting extremely conserved regions among multiple NIAV genomes could effectively block the replication of NIAV strain A/Beijing/01/2009 (H1N1) in A549 cells. This study may be useful to confront the sudden emergence of NIAV infection.

In this paper taking the case of the Computer Specialty in Newly-promoted undergraduate universities, discussed how to create a practice teaching environment for cultivating applied talents. Specifically suggested how to bulid an effectively practice teaching environment in the classroom; how to take employment as the direction to guide the training orientation of students’s practical ability and how to make good use of teaching resources to create a practice platform and so on. Those thoughts and methods proposed in this paper have some references for other specialties’s practice teaching.

In the real world applications, those basic decision rules inducted using rough set theory can’t match a new object, so it can’t always make an accurate decision for the object. In order to improve the matching ability of decision rules to a new object, an algorithm which generates approximate decision rules more efficiently is proposed in this article and applied to the field of filtering spam based on rough set theory. The results in experimental test showed that those approximate decision rules obtained by the algorithm can enhance the matching ability to a new mail. So the algorithm proposed in this paper is believed to be more effective and feasible.

Diamond-like films have been deposited by dc plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD). During deposition, the characteristics of the plasma have been measured by means of the Langmuir single probe. The structure of the deposits has been studied by x-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

In order to study the mechanism of acoustic landmine detection, the propagation characteristics of acoustically coupled seismic waves in shallow soil are investigated. Based on the porosity and compressibility of shallow soil, the influences of parameters including soil porosity and water saturation on the propagation properties of seismic wave are discussed with the model of seismic waves in unsaturated three-phase porous medium. The calculation results show that under the given parameters, the propagation velocity and attenuation coefficient of seismic wave increase with the increase of acoustic frequency. The propagation velocities of longitudinal waves and those of transverse waves respectively decrease and increase with the increase of soil porosity. In addition, the propagation characteristics of acoustically coupled seismic waves become complicated with the increase of water saturation. The feasibility of the analysis method is discussed by comparing the calculation results with the experimental data published previously. As a result, a theoretical foundation is provided for the acoustic-to-seismic coupling mechanism and its application in the study of acoustic resonance landmine detection.

We observe the phenomenon of priority oscillation of the unexpected σ-polarization in high-power Nd:YVO4 ring laser. The severe thermal lens of the σ-polarized lasing, compared with the π-polarized lasing, is the only reason for the phenomenon. By designing a wedge Nd:YVO4 crystal as the gain medium, the unexpected σ-polarization is completely suppressed in the entire range of pump powers, and the polarization stability of the expected π-polarized output is enhanced. With the output power increasing from threshold to the maximum power, no σ-polarization lasing is observed. As a result, 25.3 W of stable single-frequency laser output at 532 nm is experimentally demonstrated.

Dimensionless dispersion curve equation of one-dimensional periodic structure with three oscillators is deduced. It is proved by singularity theory that the topology of the dispersion curves does not change with mass and stiffness parameter. Then the equations of initial and final frequencies of the bands are presented. The method of band gap design is gained consequently. Two examples i.e., the system with the same stiffness and the system with the same mass, are given to verify it. The method may provide the reference for designing the band gap of the photonic and phononic crystals.

Systems with double-loop hysteresis are used increasingly in engineering, but few studies on their dynamics are reported. In this study, the bifurcation characteristics of the primary resonance of a system with double-loop bilinear hysteresis are investigated on the background of a shape memory alloy damper. First, the frequency-amplitude response equation is obtained by using the averaging methods. Then, the influences of the temperature and the amplitude of excitation on amplitude-frequency responses are analyzed by the constrained bifurcation singularity analysis method of non-smooth systems. The calculation results show that the parameter space composed of the temperature and the amplitude of excitation can be divided into 11 regions, which suggest that there are 11 qualitatively different kinds of amplitude-frequency responses to the variation of two parameters. In order to describe and compare the frequency-amplitude response curves conveniently, an encoding rule is proposed to describe their jump phenomena as the frequency sweeps. The above results can guide directly the design of frequency response mode of the system.

Films of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H,Cl) containing about 10 atomic % hydrogen and 2–8 at % chlorine have been prepared using the r.f. glow-discharge technique with a mixture of H 2 and SiCl 4 . The infrared spectra showed in addition to the hydrogen induced absorption bands at 2100, 2000, 840, 890 and 860 cm −1 the following new absorption lines: 545 cm −1 due to SiCl stretching, 787 and 737 cm −1 which might be caused by the Si-HCl bending vibrations. The absolute chlorine content was measured using sulphocyanic mercury spectrophotometric and chlorine ion selective electrode methods.

Small-angle X-ray diffraction study of amorphous a-Si:H/(a-SiNx:H) periodical multilayer thin films and some single layer films has been undertaken. A number of satellite peaks were found in the lower side of Bragg diffraction peaks of multilayer thin films with a less number of periods. A number of diffraction peaks were also found for the small-angle diffraction of single layer films. We have presented a simple formula for calculating the X-ray diffraction intensity of multilayer and single layer films. A satisfactory explaination of experimental results was obtained. Consequently, a simple method for measuring the total thickness of both multilayer and single layer thin films has been presented.

The thermal expansion coefficients (along and normal to the chain direction) of PTS have been measured by differential parallel-plate capacitances from 77 K to 273 K. A sudden change near the phase transition temperature 195 K and a negative expansion coefficient near 200 K along the chain direction have been observed. The causes of these result are discussed qualitati-vly.