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Traditional Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm registration is slow, especially when the scale of the point cloud is relatively large. This paper proposes a new algorithm which is the iterative closest registration based on the normal distribution transform (NDT-ICP). The algorithm uses NDT as the coarse registration algorithm, because the NDT algorithm does not use the features of the corresponding points to calculate and match during the registration process, and does not need to consume a large price to find the nearest neighbor matching points, which speeds up the registration speed. The ICP algorithm is used as fine registration to further improve the accuracy of the overall registration. The results show that the NDT-ICP algorithm has obvious speed advantage while ensuring considerable accuracy. Especially for large-scale point cloud registration with few features, the accuracy of this algorithm is about twice that of SAC-IA-NDT algorithm, and slightly improved compared to SAC-IA-ICP algorithm. In terms of registration speed, the registration time of the NDT-ICP algorithm is about 10% and 11% of the SAC-IA-NDT algorithm and the SAC-IA-ICP algorithm, respectively. The experimental results show that the algorithm is efficient and effective.

Objective To study the association between the serum creatine kinase (CK) level and aggressive behavior in patients with schizophrenia. Method This retrospective study recruited 2780 Chinese patients with schizophrenia from January 2009 to December 2013 at the psychiatric inpatient units of West China Hospital. The diagnosis was made according to the DSM-IV criteria. The serum level of CK was checked. Results Aggressive behavior was positively correlated with the serum CK level (r = 0.262, p = 0.000). The OR value is 8.084 when comparing the high CK group and normal CK group prior to admission. The aggressive behavior rate in the 5 times group (serum level ≥ 1130 U/L) after admission (28.2%) is higher than the rate prior to admission (16.5%). Conclusion The aggressive patients with schizophrenia displayed increased serum CK level. It may be useful to include a lab test of CK level in patients with schizophrenia and history of aggression. It would help the staff to take precautions to protect the patients and others.

This study investigates the anti-angiogenic effect of 3β, 12β, 20(S)-trihydroxy dammarane-3-O-β- d -glucopyranosyl(1–2)-β- d -glucopyranoside(HRG), a new chemical compound obtained by structure modification on Ginseng saponins Rg3, associated with the regulation of matrix metalloproteinases(MMPs) and its upstream signal-regulated molecule of vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor(b-FGF) in vitro, which plays an critical role in angiogenesis during the process of carcinoma. In our study, to investigate the anti-angiogenesis effect of HRG in HUVECs, we utilized cell proliferation assay, tube formation assay, wound-healing assay, Semi-quantitative reverse transcription PCR, and Western blot assay. Our results demonstrated that HRG plays a major role in the regulation of proliferation, migration and tube formation of HUVECs by suppressing the expression of VEGF and b-FGF in both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. In addition, the expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9, which were related to the ECM degradation, were down-regulated after administration of HRG as well. Overall, our results revealed that HRG strongly inhibited the process of angiogenesis and shows better effectiveness than Rg3.

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation is a major source of error for accurate time-of-arrival (TOA) location estimation. The two-step least square (LS) method, which does not need any information about the distribution of the NLOS error, has been studied in related researches to provide efficient location estimation of the mobile terminal (MT). By observing the estimation of the error covariance matrix in the two-step LS method, this paper finds that the measured distances are more suitable than the initial estimated distances by maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm in NLOS environments. Moreover, by making use of the geometry relations among fixed terminals (FTs), some measured distances which are corrupted by big NLOS errors may be reduced. Further, an iteration method can be adopted to further improve the performance of the algorithm. Accordingly, an improved algorithm based on the two-step LS method is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that the improved algorithm has better performance than the two-step LS method and converges more quickly. Meanwhile, it is robust in different NLOS environments.

Acetoxybenzofurans and acetoxybenzothiophenes were obtained in good yields by palladium catalyzed cyclocarbonylation of 3-furylallyl and 3-thienylallyl acetates, respectively.