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ObjectiveExisting guidelines for ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy lack specifications on sampling sites, but the number of biopsies improves diagnostic reliability. We propose the use of class activation maps (CAMs) and our modified malignancy-specific heat maps that locate important deep representations of thyroid nodules for class predictions.MethodsWe applied adversarial noise perturbations to the segmented concentric “hot” nodular regions of equal sizes to differentiate regional importance for the malignancy diagnostic performances of an accurate ultrasound-based artificial intelligence computer-aided diagnosis (AI-CADx) system using 2,602 retrospectively collected thyroid nodules with known histopathological diagnosis.ResultsThe AI system demonstrated high diagnostic performance with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.9302 and good nodule identification capability with a median dice coefficient >0.9 when compared to radiologists’ segmentations. Experiments confirmed that the CAM-based heat maps reflect the differentiable importance of different nodular regions for an AI-CADx system to make its predictions. No less importantly, the hot regions in malignancy heat maps of ultrasound images in comparison with the inactivated regions of the same 100 malignant nodules randomly selected from the dataset had higher summed frequency-weighted feature scores of 6.04 versus 4.96 rated by radiologists with more than 15 years of ultrasound examination experience according to widely used ultrasound-based risk stratification American College of Radiology (ACR) Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TI-RADS) in terms of nodule composition, echogenicity, and echogenic foci, excluding shape and margin attributes, which could only be evaluated on the whole rather than on the sub-nodular component levels. In addition, we show examples demonstrating good spatial correspondence of highlighted regions of malignancy heat map to malignant tumor cell-rich regions in hematoxylin and eosin-stained histopathological images.ConclusionOur proposed CAM-based ultrasonographic malignancy heat map provides quantitative visualization of malignancy heterogeneity within a tumor, and it is of clinical interest to investigate in the future its usefulness to improve fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) sampling reliability by targeting potentially more suspicious sub-nodular regions.

BackgroundRecurrent hypoglycemia (RH) is well known to impair awareness of hypoglycemia and increase the risk of severe hypoglycemia; the underlying mechanism requires further understanding. We aimed to investigate the metabolic characteristic profile for RH in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients and explore the potential metabolic mechanism and prevention strategies.MethodsWe screened 553 community-based T2DM patients. T2DM with RH (DH group, n=40) and T2DM without hypoglycemia (DC group, n=40) were assigned in the case-control study, matched by propensity score matching. Non-targeted, global metabolite profiling was conducted using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Principal component analysis and supervised projections to latent structures-discriminant analysis were constructed to evaluate the potential biomarkers. Metabolites with a fold change of >2.0 or q-value 1 were identified as significantly differential metabolites. MetaboAnalyst was performed to analyze the related metabolic pathways.ResultsWe identified 12 significantly distinct metabolites as potential biomarkers of RH, which were enriched in five pathways; the caffeine metabolic pathway was the most dominant related one. Caffeine and its main downstream metabolites (theophylline and paraxanthine, all q <0.05) were significantly lower during RH. The combination of these metabolites can serve as a reliable predictor biomarker for RH (area under the curve = 0.88). Regarding lipid metabolism, triglyceride was upregulated (P=0.003) and the O-Acylcarnitine was downregulated (q < 0.001). Besides, RH was accompanied by lower phenylalanine (q=0.003) and higher cortisone (q=0.005) levels.ConclusionsRH in T2DM is accompanied by caffeine, lipolysis, phenylalanine, and cortisone metabolism abnormalities. Caffeine might be a reliable candidate biomarker and potential prevention strategy for RH, but further validation studies are needed.Clinical Trial RegistryChi CTR 1900026361, 2019-10-3.

g-C3N4 has great application prospect in the field of photocatalytic nitrogen fixation owing to the advantages of abundant raw materials, low toxicity, low consumption, high efficiency and stability. However, the low surface-active site and high carrier recombination rate limit their nitrogen fixation activities. Defect regulation is one of the effective methods to improve photocatalytic nitrogen fixation activity. In this paper, g-C3N4 nanosheets are successfully modified by ZnS containing zinc vacancy, which enhanced the carrier transport capacity and active site of g-C3N4 for photocatalytic nitrogen fixation. Thus, without any sacrificial agent, an optimized nitrogen fixation activity of 2.1 µmol·h−1 (105 µmol·h−1·g−1) is achieved with the irradiation of visible light, which presents obvious advantages among the latest reported g-C3N4 related photocatalysts. The morphology, structure and photocatalytic carrier dynamics of the photocatalyst are studied by a series of experimental characterizations.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Analysis of association between TRIM15 expression and clinicopathological parameters in NSCLC.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jit-10.1177_15280837221078535 for Omniphobic polyurethane – superabsorbent polymer – fluoropolymer surface coating on cotton fabric for chemical protection and thermal comfort by M A Rahman Bhuiyan, Lijing Wang, Zinia Anjuman Ara, Tanushree Saha and Xin Wang in Journal of Industrial Textiles

Additional file 2. Table S1

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jit-10.1177_15280837221078535 for Omniphobic polyurethane – superabsorbent polymer – fluoropolymer surface coating on cotton fabric for chemical protection and thermal comfort by M A Rahman Bhuiyan, Lijing Wang, Zinia Anjuman Ara, Tanushree Saha and Xin Wang in Journal of Industrial Textiles

Additional file 1. Figure S1

Additional file 3. Table S2

Situational awareness is very important for pilots to recognize and deal with crew warning information. In order to make pilots maintain good situational awareness, it is necessary to understand the process of situational cognition while pilots handling with warnings and analyze the factors that affect pilots' situational awareness. For this reason, combines the goal oriented task analysis (GDTA) method and fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) method, establishes the situation cognitive model of crew warnings, divides the task of handling the warnings, determines the operation process of handling the warnings, and obtains the influence degree of various factors affecting the situation awareness. By comparing the model with the existing typical crew warning scenarios, it is found that they are highly matched, which verifies the rationality of the model. The model is helpful to understand the key information needed by pilots to eliminate the warning, and has a certain guiding role for the design of crew warning system which is helpful for pilots to maintain situational awareness, identify and process the warning.

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We present a derivation of classical Hermite, Laguerre, and Jacobi orthogonal polynomials directly through the Gram-Schmidt orthogonization process. The derivation uses certain generalized Vandermonde determinants with entries defined by Gamma and Beta functions. We also provide a geometric formulation of Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization using the Hodge star operator.

Background Having an adverse impact on systemic health, periodontitis is an inflammatory disease which is characterized by the loss of integrity in tooth-supporting tissues. Middle-aged human (MAH) have been reported to have a higher incidence of periodontitis and a greater extent of bone loss. Although middle-aged monkey (MAM) shares similar dental anatomy and physiology with humans, it is still unclear whether they both display same disease phenotype or not, given that literature comparing the periodontal status between MAH and MAM is limited. CBCT examination and histological analysis were performed to characterize the periodontal condition, while 16 s rRNA sequencing was carried out to evaluate the possible mechanism that may explain the difference between these two primates. Results The present study revealed a more severe disease phenotype in MAH than in MAM, along with significantly higher levels of alveolar bone loss accompanied with increased blood vessels and inflammatory cells infiltration. High-throughput gene sequencing based on 16S rRNA gene demonstrated that the diversity of salivary microorganisms in MAH was lower than that of MAM. In addition, at the phylum level, the relative abundance of Proteobacteria in the MAH was higher than MAM, while Bacteroidetes showed a totally opposite trend. At the genus level, the relative abundances of Alloprevotell, Aggregatibacter, Haemophilus, Gemella and Porphyromonas in the MAH group were significantly less than that of the MAM group. One of the possible factor that may explains for this observation would be the dietary factors, affecting the oral microbial composition and diversity, and subsequently contributing to the alterations of periodontal status. Conclusions Altogether, these results demonstrated a potential link that may explain for the difference in inflammatory status in the oral cavity of MAH and MAM – the oral microbiota, prompting further investigation to explore specific roles of these bacterial population in the maintenance of oral health.

The Mumbai Suburban Railways, \emph{locals}, are a key transit infrastructure of the city and is crucial for resuming normal economic activity. To reduce disease transmission, policymakers can enforce reduced crowding and mandate wearing of masks. \emph{Cohorting} -- forming groups of travelers that always travel together, is an additional policy to reduce disease transmission on \textit{locals} without severe restrictions. Cohorting allows us to: ($i$) form traveler bubbles, thereby decreasing the number of distinct interactions over time; ($ii$) potentially quarantine an entire cohort if a single case is detected, making contact tracing more efficient, and ($iii$) target cohorts for testing and early detection of symptomatic as well as asymptomatic cases. Studying impact of cohorts using compartmental models is challenging because of the ensuing representational complexity. Agent-based models provide a natural way to represent cohorts along with the representation of the cohort members with the larger social network. This paper describes a novel multi-scale agent-based model to study the impact of cohorting strategies on COVID-19 dynamics in Mumbai. We achieve this by modeling the Mumbai urban region using a detailed agent-based model comprising of 12.4 million agents. Individual cohorts and their inter-cohort interactions as they travel on locals are modeled using local mean field approximations. The resulting multi-scale model in conjunction with a detailed disease transmission and intervention simulator is used to assess various cohorting strategies. The results provide a quantitative trade-off between cohort size and its impact on disease dynamics and well being. The results show that cohorts can provide significant benefit in terms of reduced transmission without significantly impacting ridership and or economic \& social activity., Will be presented at AAMAS 2021. Minor edits to styling (per conf guidelines) and acknowledgement

Objective: Despitemany therapeutic advances, atherosclerosis remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. Moreover, substantial residual cardiovascular risks, associated co-morbidities, and toxicological side-effects of conventional treatment remain key issues for successful therapeutic target, and highlight an urgent need for natural and comparatively less toxic agents. We found that housefly (Musca domestica) maggot-derived and protein-enriched extracts (PE) exhibited anti-oxidant effects in viroid had the potential to counter atherosclerosis in lipopolysaccharide-induced mice. The aim of this study was to explore the anti-atherosclerotic effect of PE and its possible anti-oxidative mechanisms in apolipoprotein E knockout (apoE−/−) mice. Methods and Results: apoE−/− mice (aged 8 weeks) were gavaged with PE and fed on a cholesterol enriched diet for 12 weeks. The results of aortic and aortic sinus analysis revealed that PE reversed the process of atherosclerotic lesion formation, retarded smooth muscle cell (SMC) hyperplasia, and decreased macrophage accumulation. Analysis of anti-oxidants showed that PE decreased levels of oxidized low density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and malondialdehyde (MDA), whilst simultaneously increasing the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in the plasma. Conclusions: observation indicated that PE displayed similar anti-atherosclerotic effects as did probucol. A putative mechanism might be associated with increased HDL levels, reduced oxidative stress, and dampened Ox-LDL levels in apoE−/− mice.

Nowadays, nanotechnology environmental health and safety (nanoEHS) is gaining attention. We previously found that silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) could induce vascular endothelial damage. However, the subsequent toxicologic response to SiNPs-induced endothelial damage was still largely unknown. In this study, we explored the inflammation–coagulation response and thrombotic effects of SiNPs in endothelial cells and zebrafish embryos. For in vitro study, swollen mitochondria and autophagosome were observed in ultrastructural analysis. The cytoskeleton organization was disrupted by SiNPs in vascular endothelial cells. The release of proinflammatory and procoagulant cytokines including IL-6, IL-8, MCP-1, PECAM-1, TF and vWF, were markedly elevated in a dose-dependent manner. For in vivo study, based on the NOAEL for dosimetry selection, and using two transgenic zebrafish, Tg(mpo:GFP) and Tg(fli-1:EGFP), SiNPs-induced neutrophil-mediated inflammation and impaired vascular endothelial cells. With the dosage higher than NOAEL, SiNPs significantly decreased blood flow and velocity, exhibiting a blood hypercoagulable state in zebrafish embryos. The thrombotic effect was assessed by o-dianisidine staining, showed that an increasing of erythrocyte aggregation occurred in SiNPs-treated zebrafish. Microarray analysis was used to screen the possible genes for inflammation–coagulation response to SiNPs in zebrafish, and the JAK1/TF signaling pathway was further verified by qRT-PCR and Western blot assays. For in-deepth study, il6st was knocked down with specific morpholinos. The whole-mount in situ hybridization and qRT-PCR analysis showed that the expression jak1 and f3b were attenuated in il6st knockdown groups. In summary, our data demonstrated that SiNPs could induce inflammation–coagulation response and thrombotic effects via JAK1/TF signaling pathway.

A series of modified solution-polymerized styrene butadiene rubbers (M-S-SBRs) with different molar contents of polar groups were prepared through grafting 3-mercaptopropionic acid into solution-polymerized styrene butadiene rubber (S-SBR) chains. The molar contents of the polar groups in M-S-SBR were calculated using 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy. Thermodynamic analytical methods, including the surface energy of M-S-SBR and filler flocculation, show that the introduction of polar groups increases the work of adhesion of filler–rubber (Wrf), which is an indicator for the compatibility of the filler with rubber. The thermodynamic results can be further proved by TEM micrographs. Strain sweep experiments were carried out to investigate the temperature dependent nonlinear strain-dependence of elastic moduli, referred to as the Payne effect. The filler–filler network and interfacial strength were studied in terms of critical strain γc and activation energy Ea. Dynamic mechanical measurements show that a combination of higher energy dissipation in the low temperature range and higher elasticity in the high temperature region were achieved for M-S-SBR/Silica when compared with their non-modified counterpart.

In order to make up the drawback of traditional skill assessment that is too subjective, the eye tracking has already been applied to various fields. Based on research on eye movement of flying skills, it is found that the average fixation time and eye moving trace of professional pilot varies from that of novice. It is still unclear the changes in eye movement data during key actions after improvement of flight control skill. For the purpose of further understanding these changes, the thesis takes the takeoff phase as the simulated flight mission and makes rules for assessing performance level with speed, heading, bank and pitch angle as parameters by referring to the practice test standard so as to grade simulated flight of pilots. Students and professional pilots are recruited as subjects for the test. Then correlation analysis carried on their performances and fixation count, fixation point percentage, total fixation time, fixation time percentage and average fixation time respectively. The results show that pilots' performances are related to the fixation count greatly. In the comparison of subjects in key actions of take-off, it is found the drawbacks of students in attention allocation and information extraction. These founding can provide a detailed guideline in training of flight cadets.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) are widely utilized in two-dimensional (2D) image, but can not be utilized in the three-dimensional (3D) model. The direct method gets the screenshot of 3D text model and save it as a BMP image. But this way will make the image has serious distortion. In this paper, based on texture mapping principle, using geometric knowledge to convert a 3D model into 2D images. Experimental result shows that the OCR rate is high, efficiently and accurately restore the original 3D model.

Replant diseases in strawberry caused by Rhizoctonia solani, Fusarium oxysporum and Verticillium dahliae are serious problems for its sustainable production under continuous cropping. This research studied the inhibitory effect of calcium cyanamide on pathogenic fungi in Petri dishes and on sterilized soil. Results indicated that calcium cyanamide had an obvious inhibitory effect on three pathogens on potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates. Among them, the inhibitory effect on Rhizoctonia solani was the highest. As the concentrations of calcium cyanamide was increased from 0.1 to 10 mg/mL, the inhibition rate on mycelial growth increased from −1.43% to 100%. Inhibitory effects on Fusarium oxysporum and Verticillium dahliae also existed on Petri dishes but to a lesser extent. Similar results were also observed in sterilized soil. When the concentration of calcium cyanamide in sterilized soil was 0.1%, the inhibitory effect on Fusarium oxysporum and Verticillium dahliae was 68.46% and 54.46%, respectively. The inhibitive effect of calcium cyanamide on Fusarium oxysporum and Verticillium dahliae increased quickly as the soil moisture changed from 10% to 40% for Verticillium dahliae and from 10% to 60% for Fusarium oxysporum. This indicated that the inhibitive effect of calcium cyanamide could be influenced greatly by the moisture content in the soil.

Based on the theory of classical piezoelectricity and the rapid development of piezoelectric material today, it has become possible to integrate structure and function of sensor with actuators into the single piezoelectric element. This paper analyzes and simulates integrated sensor-actuators using coupled-field analysis function in the finite element analysis software ANSYS for 3-D finite element model which of models is PZT-5 piece. In the beginning of positive piezoelectric effect, the results show that voltage and displacement generated by secondary converse piezoelectric effects respectively have linear relationship with the applied outside force. The simulation results are proved that the functions of sensors and actuators can be integrated in the single piezoelectric crystal.

With the advances of studies on multi-piezoelectric effect, it has become possible to integrate structure and function of sensor with actuators into the single piezoelectric element. This paper analyzes and simulates integrated sensor-actuators by using 3-D finite element model which of models is piezoelectric quartz and ceramic sheet PZT-5 in the beginning of positive piezoelectric effect; the results are proved that the functions of sensors and actuators can be integrated in the single piezoelectric crystal based on multi-piezoelectric effect.

The cockpit layout is evaluated by simulating human-computer interface in civil cockpit with the Cockpit Ergonomics layout and Assessment system (CEA air-V1.0). Evaluation is carried out by three steps: a) Data input: import the original digital model of cockpit which is simplified by 3D software (such as CATIA, UG, SOLIDWORKS, 3DSMAX .etc), into CEA and then 5%, 50%, 95% percentage manikin of Chinese pilots; Input the data of evaluation scenario and pilots' operation postures. b) Ergonomic analysis and evaluation: adjust pilot' s manikin eye point to the designed eye point; the accessibility and visibility of cockpit layouts main instrument panel, control display of anterior central pedestal control stand, central pedestal control stand, top control board, sun-shield, left and right-hand side console, steering column and pedal are evaluated; design eight postures in accordance with flight mission and evaluate the upper limb postures and joint movement postures in the eight types of operation postures by using CEA . c) Data output: output the data of 3D scenario, evaluation results and operation postures etc. by CEA. The deficiencies are found in the design of cockpit layout by evaluation results. This method can be used in the virtual evaluation of preliminary cockpit layout' saving resources in prototype test and improve the cockpit design efficiency.