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Introduction: Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) and dementia may have a significant impact on stroke recurrence and long-term functional outcomes of patients. Aim: To investigate the potential link between PSCI and dementia, and stroke recurrence, mortality, and poor functional outcomes of stroke survivors. Methods: A systematic search across Medline, Google Scholar, and Science Direct databases was done for studies that evaluated the association of PSCI and dementia with long-term stroke outcomes. The results were expressed as pooled hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), and heterogeneity was assessed using the I2 statistic and the Chi-square test. Subgroup analyses were performed based on the sample size, geographical location, follow-up, and type of dementia/cognitive impairment. Study quality was evaluated using the Newcastle Ottawa Scale (NOS). Results: The meta-analysis included thirteen studies. Of them, ten studies (n = 4036) reported a significant association between PSCI and stroke recurrence, with a pooled HR of 1.33 (95% CI: 1.14–1.55, I2 = 84.6%). Subgroup analysis revealed a statistically significant association between PSCI and stroke recurrence across various subrgoups. Four studies (n = 1944) demonstrated that patients with PSCI had a higher risk of poor functional outcome, with a pooled HR of 1.68 (95% CI: 1.16–2.05, I2 = 80.0%). However, the multivariate analysis did not detect a significant association between PSCI and stroke mortality, with a pooled HR of 1.50 (95% CI: 0.94–2.40, I2 = 45.9%). Conclusions: The study showed that PSCI was associated with 33% increased stroke recurrence and 68% higher rate of poor functional outcome. Our findings underscore the adverse impact of PSCI on stroke recurrence and functional outcomes, emphasizing the importance of early detection and targeted interventions to mitigate the cognitive impairment burden in stroke survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheep behavior recognition helps to monitor the health status of sheep and prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases. Aiming at the problems of low detection accuracy and slow speed due to the crowding of sheep in real farming scenarios, which can easily obscure each other, this study proposes a lightweight sheep behavior recognition model based on the YOLOv8n model. First, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is introduced and improved in the YOLOv8n model, and the channel attention module and spatial attention module are changed from serial to parallel to construct a novel attention mechanism, PCBAM, to enhance the network's attention to the sheep and eliminate redundant background information; second, the ordinary convolution in the backbone network is replaced with depth-separable convolution, which effectively reduces the number of parameters in the model and reduces the computational complexity. The study takes the housed breeding sheep as the test object, installs a camera diagonally above the sheep pen to collect images and makes a data set for testing, and in order to verify the superiority of the PD-YOLO model, compares it with a variety of target detection models. The experimental results show that the mean average precision (mAP) of the model proposed in this paper are 95.8%, 98.9%, and 96.2% for the three postures of sheep lying, feeding, and standing, respectively, which are 8.5%, 0.8%, and 0.8% higher than those of YOLOv8n, respectively, and the size of the model has been reduced by 13.3% and the amount of computation has been reduced by 12.1%. The inference speed reaches 52.1 FPS per second, which is better than other models in meeting the real-time detection requirement. To verify the practicality of this research method, the PD-YOLO model was deployed on the RK3399Pro development board for testing, and a high inference speed was achieved. It can provide effective technical support for sheep smart farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of genome-wide association (GWA) studies are now using the higher resolution 1000 Genomes Project reference panel (1000G) for imputation, with the expectation that 1000G imputation will lead to the discovery of additional associated loci when compared to HapMap imputation. In order to assess the improvement of 1000G over HapMap imputation in identifying associated loci, we compared the results of GWA studies of circulating fibrinogen based on the two reference panels. Using both HapMap and 1000G imputation we performed a meta-analysis of 22 studies comprising the same 91,953 individuals. We identified six additional signals using 1000G imputation, while 29 loci were associated using both HapMap and 1000G imputation. One locus identified using HapMap imputation was not significant using 1000G imputation. The genome-wide significance threshold of 5×10-8 is based on the number of independent statistical tests using HapMap imputation, and 1000G imputation may lead to further independent tests that should be corrected for. When using a stricter Bonferroni correction for the 1000G GWA study (P-value < 2.5×10-8), the number of loci significant only using HapMap imputation increased to 4 while the number of loci significant only using 1000G decreased to 5. In conclusion, 1000G imputation enabled the identification of 20% more loci than HapMap imputation, although the advantage of 1000G imputation became less clear when a stricter Bonferroni correction was used. More generally, our results provide insights that are applicable to the implementation of other dense reference panels that are under development.

In order to evaluate the impact of emergencies on the resilience of highway transportation, a resilience network hierarchical model of the highway transportation system was constructed by analyzing the formation and emergence process of safety resilience in the highway transportation system. Four layers of networks were divided, including highway network, transport network, traffic network, and emergency network. Combined with the network hierarchical model, a resilience evaluation index system was designed, and an assessment method for highway transportation systems based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process(FAHP) was proposed. Finally, a case study of a public health emergency in a region of Hunan was carried out. The results show that the proposed method for evaluating the safety resilience of highway transportation systems can better reflect the overall resilience under public health emergencies, which is consistent with the quantitative analysis results through the system resilience curve. It helps to accurately evaluate the safety resilience of the system. At the same time, this method has the advantages of flexibility and simplicity in solving unstructured decision-making problems of the system, which helps to improve the safety production management and safety resilience level of highway transportation systems. In the future, the scope of research scenarios and regions can be expanded, and further analysis of the evolution of safety resilience and the ability of resilience development in different stages under external disturbances can be conducted in order to further explore and optimize the resilience of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muscle fatigue is one of the leading causes that contributes tremendously to injuries among volunteer firefighters in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of positive-pressure breathing apparatus on muscle fatigue in the shoulder, back, and legs of volunteer firefighters. A total of 60 volunteer firefighters were recruited to perform a running task on a motorized treadmill in a controlled laboratory environment. Surface electromyography and rating of perceived exertion scores were collected from all participants every 60 seconds during the running task. Results show that the median frequency values for all measured muscle groups were significantly lower, and the rating of perceived exertion score was significantly higher after running with the positive-pressure breathing apparatus. Meanwhile, there were no significant differences in the median frequency values for the upper trapezius, erector spinae, and biceps femoris between the initial and final periods of running task without load. However, the median frequency values with load for gastrocnemius, rectus femoris, and tibialis anterior exhibited a greater downward trend compared to those without load. Additionally, using a breathing apparatus can cause asymmetric muscle fatigue in bilateral upper trapezius, erector spinae, gastrocnemius, and tibialis anterior muscles. The decreased performance due to muscle fatigue increases the risk of accidents, thereby posing a threat to the safety of volunteer firefighters. This study offers valuable insights into the effects of positive-pressure breathing apparatus on muscle fatigue among volunteer firefighters. These results may serve as a reference for developing improved fatigue management strategies and optimizing the design features of breathing apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: While driving, drivers frequently adapt their driving behaviors according to their perception of the road's alignment features. However, traditional two-dimensional alignment methods lack the ability to capture these features from the driver's perspective. Method: This study introduces a novel method for road alignment recognition, employing image recognition technology to extract alignment perspective features, namely alignment perspective skewness (APS) and alignment perspective kurtosis (APK), from in-real driving images. Subsequently, the K-means clustering algorithm is utilized for road segment classification based on APS and APK indicators. Various sliding step length for clustering are employed, with step length ranging from 100m to 400m. Furthermore, the accident rates for different segment clusters are analyzed to explore the relationship between alignment perspective features and traffic safety. A 150 km mountain road section of the Erlianhaote-Guangzhou freewway from Huaiji to Sihui is selected as a case study. Results: The results demonstrate that using alignment perspective features as classification criteria produces favorable clustering outcomes, with superior clustering performance achieved using shorter segment lengths and fewer cluster centers. The road segment classification based on alignment perspective features reveals notable differences in accident rates across categories; while traditional two-dimensional parameters-based classification methods fail to capture these differences. The most significant differences in accident rates across categories are observed with segment length of 100m, with the significance gradually diminishing as segment length increases and disappearing entirely when the length exceeds 300m. Implication: These findings validate the reliability of using alignment perspective features (APS and APK) for road alignment classification and road safety analysis, providing valuable insights for road safety management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refractive error (RE) is a complex, multifactorial disorder characterized by a mismatch between the optical power of the eye and its axial length that causes object images to be focused off the retina. The two major subtypes of RE are myopia (nearsightedness) and hyperopia (farsightedness), which represent opposite ends of the distribution of the quantitative measure of spherical refraction. We performed a fixed effects meta-analysis of genome-wide association results of myopia and hyperopia from 9 studies of European-derived populations: AREDS, KORA, FES, OGP-Talana, MESA, RSI, RSII, RSIII and ERF. One genome-wide significant region was observed for myopia, corresponding to a previously identified myopia locus on 8q12 (p = 1.25×10(-8)), which has been reported by Kiefer et al. as significantly associated with myopia age at onset and Verhoeven et al. as significantly associated to mean spherical-equivalent (MSE) refractive error. We observed two genome-wide significant associations with hyperopia. These regions overlapped with loci on 15q14 (minimum p value = 9.11×10(-11)) and 8q12 (minimum p value 1.82×10(-11)) previously reported for MSE and myopia age at onset. We also used an intermarker linkage- disequilibrium-based method for calculating the effective number of tests in targeted regional replication analyses. We analyzed myopia (which represents the closest phenotype in our data to the one used by Kiefer et al.) and showed replication of 10 additional loci associated with myopia previously reported by Kiefer et al. This is the first replication of these loci using myopia as the trait under analysis. "Replication-level" association was also seen between hyperopia and 12 of Kiefer et al.'s published loci. For the loci that show evidence of association to both myopia and hyperopia, the estimated effect of the risk alleles were in opposite directions for the two traits. This suggests that these loci are important contributors to variation of refractive error across the distribution.

BackgroundMild retinopathy (microaneurysms or dot-blot hemorrhages) is observed in persons without diabetes or hypertension and may reflect microvascular disease in other organs. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of mild retinopathy in persons without diabetes.MethodsA working group agreed on phenotype harmonization, covariate selection and analytic plans for within-cohort GWAS. An inverse-variance weighted fixed effects meta-analysis was performed with GWAS results from six cohorts of 19,411 Caucasians. The primary analysis included individuals without diabetes and secondary analyses were stratified by hypertension status. We also singled out the results from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) previously shown to be associated with diabetes and hypertension, the two most common causes of retinopathy.ResultsNo SNPs reached genome-wide significance in the primary analysis or the secondary analysis of participants with hypertension. SNP, rs12155400, in the histone deacetylase 9 gene (HDAC9) on chromosome 7, was associated with retinopathy in analysis of participants without hypertension, -1.3±0.23 (beta ± standard error), p = 6.6×10(-9). Evidence suggests this was a false positive finding. The minor allele frequency was low (∼2%), the quality of the imputation was moderate (r(2) ∼0.7), and no other common variants in the HDAC9 gene were associated with the outcome. SNPs found to be associated with diabetes and hypertension in other GWAS were not associated with retinopathy in persons without diabetes or in subgroups with or without hypertension.ConclusionsThis GWAS of retinopathy in individuals without diabetes showed little evidence of genetic associations. Further studies are needed to identify genes associated with these signs in order to help unravel novel pathways and determinants of microvascular diseases.

Singing voice separation on robots faces the problem of interpreting ambiguous auditory signals. The acoustic signal, which the humanoid robot perceives through its onboard microphones, is a mixture of singing voice, music, and noise, with distortion, attenuation, and reverberation. In this paper, we used the 3D Inception-ResUNet structure in the U-shaped encoding and decoding network to improve the utilization of the spatial and spectral information of the spectrogram. Multiobjectives were used to train the model: magnitude consistency loss, phase consistency loss, and magnitude correlation consistency loss. We recorded the singing voice and accompaniment derived from the MIR-1K dataset with NAO robots and synthesized the 10-channel dataset for training the model. The experimental results show that the proposed model trained by multiple objectives reaches an average NSDR of 11.55 dB on the test dataset, which outperforms the comparison model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]