Search

BackgroundCancer and ischemic heart disease are the leading causes of mortality. The optimal management for patients with concomitant acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and cancer remains challenging.ObjectiveTo evaluate in-hospital and 1-year adverse outcomes in cancer patients receiving percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to treat AMI.MethodsThis was a single-center, retrospective cohort study, patients with cancer admitted to The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University for AMI and discharged between January 2015 and June 2020 were analyzed. The outcomes were all-cause mortality at 1-year follow up and incidence of in-hospital adverse events, including arrhythmias, heart failure, major bleeding, stroke, and all-cause death.ResultsA total of 119 patients were included, of these, 68 (57.1%) received PCI (PCI group) and 51 (42.9%) did not (non-PCI group). Patients in the PCI group had a lower incidence of in-hospital arrhythmias (22.1 vs. 39.2%; p = 0.042), major bleeding (2.9 vs. 15.7%; p = 0.013), and all-cause mortality (1.5 vs. 11.8%; p = 0.018) than those in non-PCI group. On 1-year follow-up, the PCI group had a lower all-cause mortality than the non-PCI group (log-rank test = 14.65; p < 0.001). Multivariable Cox regression showed that PCI is an independent protective factor (adjusted HR = 0.503 [0.243–0.947], p = 0.045) for cancer patients who have concomitant AMI.ConclusionCancer patients receiving PCI for AMI had a lower risk of in-hospital adverse events and mortality as well as 1-year all-cause mortality compared to those who refused PCI. Our study therefore supports the use of PCI to improve prognosis of this selected group of patients.

Learning reinforcement learning (RL)-based recommenders from historical user-item interaction sequences is vital to generate high-reward recommendations and improve long-term cumulative benefits. However, existing RL recommendation methods encounter difficulties (i) to estimate the value functions for states which are not contained in the offline training data, and (ii) to learn effective state representations from user implicit feedback due to the lack of contrastive signals. In this work, we propose contrastive state augmentations (CSA) for the training of RL-based recommender systems. To tackle the first issue, we propose four state augmentation strategies to enlarge the state space of the offline data. The proposed method improves the generalization capability of the recommender by making the RL agent visit the local state regions and ensuring the learned value functions are similar between the original and augmented states. For the second issue, we propose introducing contrastive signals between augmented states and the state randomly sampled from other sessions to improve the state representation learning further. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed CSA, we conduct extensive experiments on two publicly accessible datasets and one dataset collected from a real-life e-commerce platform. We also conduct experiments on a simulated environment as the online evaluation setting. Experimental results demonstrate that CSA can effectively improve recommendation performance.

The plant glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are versatile proteins encoded by several genes and play vital roles in responding to various physiological processes. Members of plant GSTs have been identified in several species, but few studies on cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) have been reported. In this study, we identified 46 GST genes, which were divided into 11 classes. Chromosomal location and genome mapping revealed that cucumber GSTs (CsGSTs) were unevenly distributed in seven chromosomes, and the syntenic regions differed in each chromosome. The conserved motifs and gene structure of CsGSTs were analyzed using MEME and GSDS 2.0 online tools, respectively. Transcriptome and RT-qPCR analysis revealed that most CsGST members responded to cold stress. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses for differentially expressed CsGSTs under cold stress revealed that these genes responded to cold stress probably through “glutathione metabolism.” Finally, we screened seven candidates that may be involved in cold stress using Venn analysis, and their promoters were analyzed using PlantCARE and New PLACE tools to predict the factors regulating these genes. Antioxidant enzyme activities were increased under cold stress conditions, which conferred tolerance against cold stress. Our study illustrates the characteristics and functions of CsGST genes, especially in responding to cold stress in cucumber.

Ultrasonic cutting with a disc cutter is an advanced machining method for the high-quality processing of Nomex honeycomb core. The machining quality is influenced by ultrasonic cutting parameters, as well as tool orientations, which are determined by the multi-axis machining requirements and the angle control of the cutting system. However, in existing research, the effect of the disc cutter orientation on the machining quality has not been studied in depth, and practical guidance for the use of disc cutters is lacking. In this work, the inclined ultrasonic cutting process with a disc cutter was analyzed, and cutting experiments with different inclination angles were conducted. The theoretical residual height models of the honeycomb core, as a result of the lead and tilt angles, were established and verified with the results obtained by a linear laser displacement sensor. Research shows that the residual height of the honeycomb core, as a result of the tilt angle, is much larger than that as a result of the lead angle. Furthermore, the tearing of the cell wall on the machined surface was observed, and the effects of the ultrasonic vibration, lead angle, and tilt angle on the tear rate and tear length of the cell wall were studied. Experimental results revealed that ultrasonic vibration can effectively decrease the tearing of the cell wall and improve the machining quality. Changes in the tilt angle have less effect than changes in the lead angle on the tearing of the cell wall. The determination of inclination angles should consider the actual processing requirements for the residual height and the machining quality of the cell wall. This study investigates the influence of the inclination angles of a disc cutter on the machining quality of Nomex honeycomb core in ultrasonic cutting and provides guidelines for machining.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Effect of various nitrogen sources on D-lactic acid production. The amount of each nutrient source added was equivalent to a nitrogen dose of 10 g/l YE (corresponding to 0.1% nitrogen). The concentration of nitrogen sources added (g/l): yeast extract (YE), 10; meat extract (ME), 8.4; corn steep liquor (CSL), 14.2; peptone (PEP), 7.7.

Ultrasonic cutting with a straight blade is an advanced method for cutting Nomex honeycomb cores. However, crushing has generally been observed on the machining surface of the honeycomb core during ultrasonic cutting (UC). In this paper, to avoid crushing, a new blade-inclined ultrasonic cutting (BIUC) method is proposed to decrease the geometric interference between the cutting tool and the honeycomb cores. The cutting geometry systems of UC and BIUC with a straight blade are systematically established to study the effect of the cutting geometry on the machining quality. The crushing degrees caused by the major flank under different tool orientations in UC and BIUC are analyzed. The causes of crushing during the machining of the honeycomb core were revealed from the aspects of machining quality, cutting force, and geometric interference between the major flank and the material. Experiments involving the quantitative analysis of the crushing and cutting forces verify that the BIUC method is able to avoid crushing by controlling the cutting angle. This paper provides a new method for solving the crushing problem in machining honeycomb core with a straight blade.

Recently, single-site observables have been shown to be useful for the detection of dynamical criticality due to an emergence of a universal critically-prethermal temporal regime in the magnetization [arXiv:2105.05986]. Here, we explore the potential of single-site observables as probes of quantum phase transitions in integrable and nonintegrable transverse-field Ising chains (TFIC). We analytically prove the requirement of zero modes for a quasi-stationary temporal regime to emerge at a bulk probe site, and show how this regime gives rise to a non-analytic behavior in the dynamical order profiles. Our $t$-DMRG calculations verify the results of the quench mean-field theory for near-integrable TFIC both with finite-size and finite-time scaling analyses. We find that both finite-size and finite-time analyses suggest a dynamical critical point for a strongly nonintegrable and locally connected TFIC. We finally demonstrate the presence of a quasi-stationary regime in the power-law interacting TFIC, and extract local dynamical order profiles for TFIC in the long-range Ising universality class with algebraic light cones., Comment: 22 pages, 23 figures. Revised with new analytical calculations, new content and improved presentation

IFN-I provide a rapid antiviral defense, but they limit antigen availability during priming. Here, the authors demonstrate that short-term IFN-I blockade after primary viral infection improves adaptive immunity and protection against reinfection. This “adjuvant” effect is generalizable to viral vaccines., Type I interferons (IFN-I) are a major antiviral defense and are critical for the activation of the adaptive immune system. However, early viral clearance by IFN-I could limit antigen availability, which could in turn impinge upon the priming of the adaptive immune system. In this study, we hypothesized that transient IFN-I blockade could increase antigen presentation after acute viral infection. To test this hypothesis, we infected mice with viruses coadministered with a single dose of IFN-I receptor–blocking antibody to induce a short-term blockade of the IFN-I pathway. This resulted in a transient “spike” in antigen levels, followed by rapid antigen clearance. Interestingly, short-term IFN-I blockade after coronavirus, flavivirus, rhabdovirus, or arenavirus infection induced a long-lasting enhancement of immunological memory that conferred improved protection upon subsequent reinfections. Short-term IFN-I blockade also improved the efficacy of viral vaccines. These findings demonstrate a novel mechanism by which IFN-I regulate immunological memory and provide insights for rational vaccine design., Graphical Abstract

Aluminum honeycomb, as the core part of sandwich structure, has been widely used in aeronautics and astronautics industry owing to its superior properties. Ultrasonic cutting has a great potential to reduce the machining defects relative to traditional milling. To have an insight comprehension on the ultrasonic cutting mechanism of aluminum honeycomb by disc cutter, a finite element model is developed. It is found that the widened cell wall, which is a typical phenomenon, is generated on the machined surface. A plastic deformation model for cell wall was established based on the plastic strain energy theory to study the relationship between the width of machined cell wall and ultrasonic cutting parameters. Experiments are performed to verify the developed models and study the relationship between cell wall morphologies and cutting parameters. According to that, an alternating up and down cutting process and plastic deformation of material are observed, which is confirmed to be the reason of cell wall widening; a better machining quality of cell wall can be achieved utilizing a greater ultrasonic amplitude and a lower feed speed.

The synergy effects of hydrodynamic conditions and cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) on the distribution behavior of bisphenol A (BPA) in sediment have been investigated using particle entrainment simulator (PES) and water bath shaker. The results showed that when the concentration of CTAB is below its critical micelle concentration (CMC), the shear stress has almost no effect on the equilibrium sorption amount of BPA on sediment, which is mainly related to the surfactant concentration. The sorption rates in the rapid sorption phase increased with increasing CTAB content and shear stress. When the concentration of CTAB exceeded CMC, equilibrium sorption amount and corresponding time of BPA on sediment both decreased with increasing shear stress, mainly because the hydrodynamic conditions enhanced the solubilization ability of the surfactant on BPA. It was also found that the sorption rate constant showed a linear increase trend with increasing shear stress.

Aluminum honeycomb has been widely used in many industrial fields, especially the aeronautics and aerospace industries, owing to its high strength and stiffness to weight ratio. Machining of aluminum honeycomb is usually associated with deformations and burrs. Ultrasonic cutting has been introduced as a promising method to overcome these constraints. In order to conduct in-depth research on the ultrasonic cutting for aluminum honeycomb by disc cutter, a 3D finite element model is carried out and verification tests are performed. Comparison result of simulated and experimental cutting forces indicates that the developed model agrees well with the experiment. Based on the developed model, cutting forces and contact relationship between cutter and honeycomb during the cutting process are studied. The reason for the periodic increase in cutting force is analyzed, subsequently. Moreover, the stress distribution in the cutting zone and honeycomb morphologies under different cutting conditions are compared and analyzed. Results show that the hexagonal structure of aluminum honeycomb can be protected and machining quality can be improved by using ultrasonic vibration. Therefore, high quality and efficient machining for aluminum honeycomb can be achieved.

Scanning measurement with laser displacement sensor is an effective method to measure the surface precision of honeycomb cores. Due to the special discontinuous structure of honeycomb cores, cell wall recognition plays an important role in its measurement data processing. The existing method is not stable enough in actual application because it is susceptible to burr data owing to its poor accuracy of identifying the true vertex from the detected corners. In this study, a new cell wall recognition method was proposed based on the corner type identification considering the regular structural features of the cell walls. The corner type identification method is used to distinguish the 3 types of corners according to the directions of the cell walls surrounding the given corner. By selectively determining the endpoints from the identified corners, the cell walls are recognized. One endpoint is determined once the neighbouring cell wall is recognized, and the other one is determined through detailed local analysis around the determined endpoint based on the corner type identification method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is significantly robust to burrs. Quantitatively, the recognition rate has an accuracy above 98%, and the mean position accuracy is below 0.2 mm.

Photovoltaic properties of the two polymers (named as PBQ-0F and PBQ-4F) were investigated by employing [6, 6]-phenyl-C-71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) as the acceptor and a water-alcohol-soluble polymer interlayer material (named as PFNBr) to fabricate photovoltaic devices. For the PBQ-0F:PC71BM blend, the device using Ca/Al as cathode showed very similar efficiency as the device using PFNBr/Al as cathode, while for the PBQ-0F:PC71BM blend, photovoltaic performance of the device can be distinctly improved by replacing Ca/Al with PFNBr/Al. As a result, the best PCE of the PBQ-4F:PC71BM based devices reached 9.04%, which is much higher than that of the PBQ-0F:PC71BM based devices. The results obtained from the quantum chemistry calculations and water contact angle measurements demonstrate that these two polymers are low polar materials, and also the films based on them have hydrophobic surfaces. Since PFNBr has an amphipathic structure (hydrophobic backbone and hydrophilic side chain) and the blend films of PBQ-4F:PC71BM and PBQ-4F:PC71BM have different surface energies, the PFNBr organization atop these two blend types of should be different, which will affect device photovoltaic performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Focused on the requirement of Gigabit level throughput of 5G networks, two typical backhaul solutions in ultra-dense networks architectures are investigated. Moreover, an efficient protocol scheme was designed for device-to-device communication in ultra-dense networks on the basis of the two backhaul network architectures. The different devices can implement communication directly through multi-hop relay without macro base stations forwarding. Additionally, according to the characteristics of millimeter-wave coverage in ultra-dense networks, the paper presents the millimeter-wave dynamic bandwidth improvement mechanism of multi-user communication. Simulation results show that the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and correctness of the protocol analysis compared with the traditional mechanism, which can be seen that the proposed scheme improve the bit error rate (BER) performance effectively.

Perovskite solar cells have attracted significant attention in just the past few years in solar cell research fields, where the power conversion efficiency was beyond 22. 1%. Now, the most important challenge for perovskite solar cells in practical applications is the stability issue. In this mini-review, we will summarize the degradation mechanism of perovskite solar cells, including the perovskite material itself and also the interfaces. While we also provide our opinion on improving the stability of perovskite solar cells.

Objectives Preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality with incompletely understood pathogenesis. The purpose of the current study is to determine whether there is a relationship between the presence of autoantibody against M 2 -muscarinic receptor and severe preeclampsia. Methods Peptide corresponding to amino acid sequences of the second extracellular loops of M 2 receptor was synthesised as antigens to test 60 patients with severe preeclampsia, 60 normal pregnant women and 40 non-pregnant controls for the presence of autoantibody using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results The frequencies for autoantibody against M 2 receptor was 31.7% (19/60) in severe preeclampsia patients, while it was 10.0% (6/60) (p = 0.006) in normal pregnant women and 8.3% (5/60) (p = 0.002) in non-pregnant controls. The geometric mean titer of autoantibody was also increased in severe preeclampsia patients. By logistic regression analysis, positivity for autoantibody against M 2 receptor was associated with fetal distress (OR, 22.4; 95% CI, 4.4-114.5; p Conclusions This novel pilot study demonstrated for the first time that the presence of autoantibody against M 2 receptor is increased in patients with severe preeclampsia. Pregnant women who are positive for autoantibody against M 2 receptor are at increased risks of neonatal mortality and morbidity. We posit that autoantibody against M 2 receptor may be involved in the pathogenesis of severe preeclampsia.