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A novel methodology to create metallic waveguides with multilayer integrated vertical electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is proposed in this paper, and the structure realizes low-cost millimeter-wave (mmWave) slot array antennas. A multilayer stack of easy-to-process thin metallic etching plates is introduced to design mmWave waveguide using compression-fit instead of diffusion bonding and welding assembly process. The electromagnetic (EM) wave leakage from the gaps between the metallic plates is suppressed using the vertical-EBG structure and anti-phasing feeding. The dispersion diagrams of the vertical-EBG unit cell are investigated to illustrate the suppression of leakage. Another leakage wave intercepting methodology is adopted by anti-phase feeding to prevent leakage wave from adjacent slot sub-arrays. Finally, two examples of 2×8 and 8×8 slot array antennas are presented to verify our design concept. The measured impedance bandwidths of the two antennas are 77.1-84.6 GHz (9.3%) and 78.6-84.9 GHz (7.7%), respectively. In addition, the 3-dB broadside gain bandwidths are 73.1 to 85.3 GHz (15.1%) and 76.8 to 84.4 GHz (9.4%), respectively. The results show aperture efficiencies up to 56.4%.

Pansharpening is about fusing a high spatial resolution panchromatic image with a simultaneously acquired multispectral image with lower spatial resolution. In this paper, we propose a Laplacian pyramid pansharpening network architecture for accurately fusing a high spatial resolution panchromatic image and a low spatial resolution multispectral image, aiming at getting a higher spatial resolution multispectral image. The proposed architecture considers three aspects. First, we use the Laplacian pyramid method whose blur kernels are designed according to the sensors’ modulation transfer functions to separate the images into multiple scales for fully exploiting the crucial spatial information at different spatial scales. Second, we develop a fusion convolutional neural network (FCNN) for each scale, combining them to form the final multi-scale network architecture. Specifically, we use recursive layers for the FCNN to share parameters across and within pyramid levels, thus significantly reducing the network parameters. Third, a total loss consisting of multiple across-scale loss functions is employed for training, yielding higher accuracy. Extensive experimental results based on quantitative and qualitative assessments exploiting benchmarking datasets demonstrate that the proposed architecture outperforms state-of-the-art pansharpening methods. Code is available at https://github.com/ChengJin-git/LPPN .

This paper presents a novel unequal power divider based on an inverted microstrip gap waveguide. This new geometry can achieve a large power ratio of the two output ports and a small phase difference less than 5°. Based on this novel geometry, a few distinctive unequal power dividers with different output power ratios were proposed for designing a low sidelobe array antenna at 39 GHz. To verify the design, a 16×16 antenna array was designed and measured. The measurement results indicate that the entire array antenna achieves a -10 dB impedance bandwidth of 18.5% (in the range of 35.9-43.2 GHz), a gain greater than 29 dBi from 37.5 to 41.8 GHz and an antenna efficiency greater than 50% over the entire operating frequency band. Based on the application of the newly invented distribution network, the proposed array antenna is below -23 dB on both the E-and H-planes at 37-42 GHz. Furthemore, the radiation pattern of the entire array complies with the ETSI-Class II standard for all azimuth angles.

In this paper, an integrated low-profile low radar cross section (RCS) circularly polarized (CP) antenna array based on multi-functional modes generation method is proposed, which can realize good in-band radiation performance and wide out-of-band RCS reduction characteristics on the same layer without additional subassembly except resistors. By embedding a resistor in the center of a metallic strip, the half and one and a half wavelength resonant modes are changed into the absorption modes; while the one wavelength resonant mode is excited as the radiation mode when offset feeding at an appropriate location. Furthermore, the CP radiation performance is achieved with four bent and center-rotating-symmetric metallic strip and the sequentially rotated feeding network. The simulation results show that the designed integrated antenna array generates the same left-hand CP radiation performance as the array without embedding resistors, and the monostatic RCS of the array is significantly reduced in the lower and upper bands, with an average reduction value of 10 dB. Prototypes of the designed antenna array with 4×4 elements are fabricated and measured to validate the simulation results.

Introduction: The use of drugs that modulate the immune system during paediatric severe sepsis and septic shock may alter the course of disease and is poorly studied. This study aims to characterise these children who received immunomodulators and describe their clinical outcomes. Methods: This is a retrospective chart review of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock admitted into the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Clinical, haematological and outcome characteristics of patients with or without exposure to immune-modulating drugs were compared. Primary outcome was PICU mortality; secondary outcomes were 28-day ventilator-free days (VFD) and intensive care unit-free days (IFD). Univariate and multivariable analyses were performed for these outcomes. Results: A total of 109 patients with paediatric severe sepsis or septic shock were identified. Of this number, 47 (43.1%), 16 (14.7%) and 3 (2.8%) patients received systemic corticosteroids, intravenous immunoglobulins and granulocyte colony stimulating factor, respectively. Patients who received immune-modulating drugs were more likely to require invasive ventilation (38/54 [70.4%] versus 26/55 [47.3%], P=0.019) compared to those who did not. PICU mortality was indifferent between the 2 groups (20/54 [37.0%] vs 11/55 [20.0%], P=0.058) even after accounting for chronic complex conditions and admission organ dysfunction (PELOD score) (adjusted odds ratio 1.90, confidence interval [0.72–5.01], P=0.193). However, VFD (19.5 [0–28] vs 25 [12–28] days, P=0.038) and IFD (15 [0–24] vs 22 [9–26] days, P=0.024) were decreased in the immunomodulator group compared to the non-immunomodulator group. Conclusion: Immune-modulating drugs were frequently used in paediatric severe sepsis and septic shock. Patients who received these drugs seemed to require more PICU support. Further studies are required to examine this association thoroughly. Keywords: Children, immunomodulatory drugs, infection, paediatric intensive care unit, sepsis

Background and aims The role of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection in carotid atherosclerosis remains inconsistent and sometimes controversial. We aimed to determine whether H. pylori infection is associated with carotid atherosclerotic plaques in a large number of Chinese adults. Methods We recruited 108,210 Chinese adults who participated in a standard medical screening with both carotid ultrasonic examination and 13C-urea breath test for H.pylori infection from two Chinese cohorts. A total of 93,915 adults were included in the analysis after excluding participants with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and carotid plaques at baseline. Hazard ratio (HR) for developing carotid plaques by H. pylori infection was analyzed using the Cox proportional hazard model, with sociodemographic and clinical factors adjusted. Findings across cohorts were pooled by meta-analyses. Results 11,208 (13.13%) participants occurred carotid plaques at a median follow-up of 20 months in the MN cohort, while 1279 (14.95%) participants occurred carotid plaques at a median follow-up of 24 months in the MJ cohort. Compare with participants without H. pylori infection, participants with H. pylori infection were more likely to occur carotid plaques. After adjusting for age, sex, annual personal income, body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and estimated glomerular filtration rate, the HR was 1.04 (95%CI: 1.01–1.08). After further adjusting for education level, marital status, smoking status, alcohol drinking status, physical activity, and family history of CVD, the HR changed minimally. Additional sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the results. Significant interactions of age, sex, blood pressure, blood glucose, or chronic inflammation were not observed in this research. Conclusions H. pylori infection was associated with carotid plaque onset in a large number of Chinese adults without previous CVD. These data suggested that the prevention of H. pylori infection may reduce the burden of carotid atherosclerosis.

A metal pipe is a key factor affecting the performance of the oil well downhole radio frequency identification (RFID) system. This letter investigates the optimum separation for coping with the impact of metal pipe on the solenoid coil antenna so as to improve the performance of the downhole RFID system. Through the equivalent circuit model of RFID communication, a new objective of maximizing the reader antenna inductance is introduced from the perspective of demodulating the tag data easily. Then, a small optimum separation with a large antenna diameter is given out by the electromagnetic simulation of solenoid antenna in the metal pipe, which could not only ensure the trafficability of tag ball and decrease the tag speed in the antenna area but also reduce the minimum magnetic field required for the reader to read the tag. Finally, the calculation of optimum separation is compared with that of the experimental test and shows good agreement.

A novel theory is proposed in this article to design a bandpass frequency-selective surface (FSS) with a stable angular response. Based on this theory, the performance of the structure is closely related to its tangential and normal components of permittivity and permeability. Theoretical formulas are derived to realize a high-efficiency transmission response with angular independence. To validate our design concept, an ultrawide-angle bandpass FSS with metallic strips and square patch printed on the dielectric substrate is designed, and it exhibits a characteristic impedance matching for nearly all incident angles from 0° to 80 °. Moreover, varactor diodes are mounted at the center of the square patch, and the transmission window can be tuned by changing the capacitance of the varactors from 6.07 to 6.61 GHz without affecting its ultrawide-angle characteristic. Finally, a prototype of the tunable ultrawide-angle bandpass FSS is fabricated and measured, and the experimental results are in satisfying agreement with the predicted ones.

Introduction Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is associated with the onset of several major liver diseases. Inactive hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) carriers (IHCs) may be successfully treated with PEGylated interferon-α2b (PEG-IFNα2b)-based antiviral therapy; however, studies on this treatment have been insufficient. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy and safety of PEG-IFNα2b treatment in IHCs. Methods Nineteen IHCs were treated with subcutaneous PEG-IFNα2b (180 μg/week) for 48 weeks (treatment group). Patients were followed up for 24 weeks after treatment discontinuation. Twenty untreated control patients were observed for 72 weeks (control group). HBsAg clearance (HBsAg

Mutual inductance is a crucial parameter in the design and optimization of coupled antennas in underground radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. In this article, a simple and accurate modeling method for determining the mutual inductance between two coaxial solenoid antennas with a large ferrite core is proposed. This proposed model is verified by comparing the results obtained from the commonly used method for small ferrite core antennas, high-precision filament method, and finite element method (FEM). An experimental setup has also been built to validate the proposed method. This new method for predicting mutual inductance has greater adaptability and higher accuracy, and is much better suitable to optimize the performance of RFID antennas with a large ferrite core.

Introduction Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) clearance is the treatment goal for hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). However, its rate is extremely low with nucleoside (acid) analogues (NAs) monotherapy. Peginterferon could enhance HBsAg clearance. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of peginterferon alfa-2b (PegIFNα-2b) in NAs-experienced patients with CHB with negative HBeAg and low HBsAg level. Methods HBeAg-negative patients with CHB who had received NAs therapy over 24 weeks with HBsAg

This communication presents a wideband high-efficiency reflectarray antenna with a low radar cross section (RCS) based on metal pillars inserted absorptive frequency-selective reflector (AFSR). The AFSR is realized by the bent resistor-embedded metal strip, whose multimode resonance is utilized to obtain the wideband absorption-reflection-absorption performance. In addition, the realized AFSR is with compact lattice spacing characteristics, which enhances the antenna’s radiation efficiency. Then, the metal pillars with variable heights are inserted into the AFSR serving as a phase shifter to flexibly control the reflection phase within the wide reflection band. Simulated and measured results show that the proposed reflectarray antenna has a pencil-beam radiation pattern from 6 to 8 GHz with an aperture efficiency up to 60.4%. Additionally, two RCS reduction bands with the fractional bandwidth of 66.7% and 32.3% are obtained.

Summary Objective The HPV vaccine has been licensed in mainland China since 2017. This study aimed to assess the epidemiological characteristics of HPV genotypes in the pre-vaccine era in China. Methods We conducted a multicentric population-based study nested in the largest health clinic chain in China. Between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017, 427,401women aged 20 years or older with polymerase chain reaction-based HPV genotyping tests were included in the study. The cervicovaginal infection of 14 high-risk HPV genotypes and 9 low-risk genotypes was assessed using adjusted prevalence, multivariable logistic regression, cluster analysis, and heatmap. Results HPV prevalence was 15.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 14.1–15.9%) in China, with high- and low-risk genotypes being 12.1% (95%CI: 11.4–12.7%) and 5.2% (95%CI: 4.8–5.7%), respectively. The prevalence of HPV genotypes corresponding to bivalent, quadrivalent, and nonavalent vaccines were 2.1%, 2.4%, and 8.3%, respectively, whereas the prevalence of non-vaccine high-risk genotypes was 5.7%. The most common high-risk genotypes were HPV-52 (3.5%), HPV-58 (2.1%), and HPV-16 (1.6%), and the prevalence of HPV-18 (0.6%), HPV-6 (0.1%), and HPV-11 (0.2%) were relatively low. Infection with HPV genotypes differed significantly across age groups and geographic locations. Conclusion HPV prevalence was high in the pre-vaccine era in China, and a population-based HPV vaccination strategy is needed in the future.

BACKGROUND Single measurements of waist circumference (WC) predict the incident cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, long-term patterns of WC and their association with the incidence of CVD are poorly characterized. OBJECTIVE We aimed to identify WC trajectories and determine their association with incident CVD (stroke and myocardial infarction) and examine whether the association persisted among individuals without obesity. METHODS We included 75,535 participants from a community-based cohort in China who were aged >18 y and free of stroke, coronary artery disease, and cancer in 2010 (the baseline). WC and other covariates were repeatedly measured in 2006, 2008, and 2010. WC trajectories were identified by latent mixture modeling. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the association between WC trajectories and incident CVD, after adjustment for age, sex, income, education, systolic blood pressure, lipid profiles, plasma concentrations of glucose, C-reactive protein, smoking, and alcohol drinking. RESULTS We identified 4 WC trajectories based on 2006 WC measurement and change patterns during 2006-2010: low stable (n = 12,072; mean WC 74.1-75.1 cm), moderate stable (n = 41,750; mean WC 85.1-86.6 cm), moderate-high stable (n = 19,914; mean WC 95.6-97.2 cm), and high stable (n = 1,799; mean WC 106.3-110.9 cm). During 2010-2016, we documented 2819 incident CVD events. Compared with the low-stable group, groups with elevated WC trajectories had a higher risk of CVD events during 6 y of follow-up (2010-2016). Adjusted HRs (95% CIs) were 1.49 (1.21, 1.83) for the moderate stable group, 1.71(1.38, 2.12) for the moderate-high stable group, and 1.45 (1.06, 2.00) for the high stable group. After further adjusting for BMI or excluding obese participants, we observed similar results. The positive association between WC and incident CVD was higher in individuals who were aged

Laser polishing technology plays an increasingly important role in the material processing technology.In order to study the influence of scanning interval on the polishing effect of S136D die steel, the single factor experiment method is used in this paper. The continuous fiber laser is used to carry out many laser polishing experiments and the influence of laser scanning interval on the surface morphology of S136D die steel is analyzed.The results show that the surface roughness of polished samples decreases first and then increases with the of scanning interval. When the scanning interval is in the range of 0.03-0.1mm, the surface roughness of samples is relatively flat, and the lowest surface roughness can be reduced to 0.781μm, and the reduction rate of surface roughness can reach 90.2%.

To maximize signal collection in nonlinear optical microscopy, non-descanned epi-detection is generally adopted for in vivo imaging. However, because of severe scattering in biological samples, most of the emitted fluorescence photons go beyond the collection angles of objectives and thus cannot be detected. Here, we propose an extended detection scheme to enhance the collection of scattered photons in nonlinear fluorescence microscopy using a silicon photomultiplier array ahead of the front apertures of objectives. We perform numerical simulations to demonstrate the enhanced fluorescence collection via extended epi-detection in the multi-photon fluorescence imaging of human skin and mouse brain through craniotomy windows and intact skulls. For example, with red fluorescence emission at a depth of 600 µm in human skin, the increased collection can be as much as about 150% with a 10×, 0.6-NA objective. We show that extended epi-detection is a generally applicable, feasible technique for use in nonlinear fluorescence microscopy to enhance signal detection.

Inter-country related events which have been reported by news media have become important data for the study of international and regional cooperation relations. Cooperation event data from 1980 to...

HighlightsAutomatic navigation technology in autonomous tractors is one of the key technologies in precision agriculture.A path-tracking control algorithm based on lateral deviation and yaw rate feedback is proposed.The modified steering angle was obtained by comparing the ideal yaw rate with the actual yaw rate.The results demonstrate the efficiency and superior accuracy of the proposed algorithm for tractor path-tracking control.Abstract. The performance of path-tracking control systems for autonomous tractors affects the quality and efficiency of farmland operations. The objective of this study was to develop a path-tracking control algorithm based on lateral deviation and yaw rate feedback. The autonomous tractor path lateral dynamics model was developed based on preview theory and a two-degree-of-freedom tractor model. According to the established dynamic model, a path-tracking control algorithm using yaw angular velocity correction was designed, and the ideal steering angle was obtained by lateral deviation and sliding mode control. The modified steering angle was obtained by a proportional-integral-derivative feedback controller after comparing the ideal yaw rate with the actual yaw rate, which was then combined with the ideal steering angle to obtain the desired steering angle. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and superior accuracy of the proposed tractor path-tracking control algorithm, enabling its application in automatic navigation control systems for autonomous tractors. Keywords: Autonomous tractor, Path-tracking control, Sliding mode control, Yaw rate feedback.

Rationale: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic. A classifier combining chest X-ray (CXR) with clinical features may serve as a rapid screening approach. Methods: The study included 512 patients with COVID-19 and 106 with influenza A/B pneumonia. A deep neural network (DNN) was applied, and deep features derived from CXR and clinical findings formed fused features for diagnosis prediction. Results: The clinical features of COVID-19 and influenza showed different patterns. Patients with COVID-19 experienced less fever, more diarrhea, and more salient hypercoagulability. Classifiers constructed using the clinical features or CXR had an area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of 0.909 and 0.919, respectively. The diagnostic efficacy of the classifier combining the clinical features and CXR was dramatically improved and the AUC was 0.952 with 91.5% sensitivity and 81.2% specificity. Moreover, combined classifier was functional in both severe and non-serve COVID-19, with an AUC of 0.971 with 96.9% sensitivity in non-severe cases, which was on par with the computed tomography (CT)-based classifier, but had relatively inferior efficacy in severe cases compared to CT. In extension, we performed a reader study involving three experienced pulmonary physicians, artificial intelligence (AI) system demonstrated superiority in turn-around time and diagnostic accuracy compared with experienced pulmonary physicians. Conclusions: The classifier constructed using clinical and CXR features is efficient, economical, and radiation safe for distinguishing COVID-19 from influenza A/B pneumonia, serving as an ideal rapid screening tool during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A method for designing a wideband low radar cross section (RCS) antenna is proposed based on hybrid absorptive and diffusive frequency selective reflector (AD-FSR) in this paper. The low RCS antenna exhibits manifold frequency responses in three artificial bands, which are created by its different components. A simple U-slot patch antenna is borrowed, which is integrated with the diffusion metasurface, and placed under the absorptive sheet with about quarter wavelength. Then, the out-of-band incident wave is captured by the absorber in the lower frequency band, and diffused by the metasurface in the upper frequency band achieving the RCS reduction. The design strategies are explained and verified with the aid of the corresponding equivalent circuit model and current distributions. To illustrate the efficacy of the proposed approach, the low RCS antenna using the proposed hybrid AD-FSR structure is fabricated and tested, and the results demonstrate that the proposed structure is an attractive candidate for designing wideband low RCS antennas.

The trade ties between China and the "Belt-and-Road" Countries have been developing rapidly since the "Belt-and-Road Initiative" was proposed in 2013. Understanding the potential of renewable energy trade products in this region is of great significance for the renewable energy industry. By adopting the gravity model and data of 81 products from 2007 to 2017 across 66 countries, empirical evidence was examined of China’s renewable energy product trade potential in the “Belt and Road” countries. The results indicated that: (1) The gross domestic product (GDP) of the “Belt and Road” countries and the total energy consumption of two trading parties were the main factors affecting China’s export of renewable energy products; (2) Among the 65 countries along the “Belt and Road”, China had great potentials for exporting renewable energy products in 26 countries, and most of them were in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, West Asia, South Asia and Central Asia; and (3) China’s trade potentials for renewable energy products had increased year by year during the study period in the 16 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and experienced ups and downs in other regions. In recent years, China’s trade potential in the CIS countries had rebounded significantly.

This letter presents an integrated design of a frequency modulation (FM) radio antenna and a band-stop frequency selective surface (FSS) printed on a thin and transparent glass substrate. The glass is enclosed by a rectangular aluminum frame. Such a structure can be readily applied to the windows of a car or building. The FSS is implemented with an array of cross dipoles printed using silver compound, which is able to prevent the penetration of incident 2.4 GHz signal. On the other hand, the FM antenna is also implemented on the same surface as the FSS. By joining 19 cross elements with conductive strips, the FM antenna forms a T-shaped monopole within the frame. The antenna is then fed by a 50 Ω coaxial probe and its 6 dB return loss bandwidth covers the entire FM radio channels from 87.5 to 108 MHz. The ingenious integration of the FM antenna and FSS is potentially very useful in applications that require both shielding and wireless communications, while maintaining the optical transparency at the same time.

Introduction Sepsis is a complication in acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) patients associated with high rates of mortality and morbidity. Early diagnosis of sepsis in ACLF patients can improve prognosis. This study aimed to explore potential effective biomarkers for the early diagnosis of sepsis in ACLF patients. Methods Ninety-four ACLF patients with sepsis were enrolled from 10 hospitals across China from January 2015 to June 2016 as well as 49 ACLF patients without infection from Xiangya Hospital. The first-day admission data and SOFA score and CLIF-SOFA score were collected. The differences of indicators between groups were compared with Kruskal-Wallis test. The receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve was analyzed to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of the selected factors. Results Soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-1 (sTREM-1) and presepsin were significantly higher in ACLF-sepsis patients compared with ACLF patients with no infection (P

Background Acute fatty liver of pregnancy (AFLP) is a potentially lethal condition of pregnant women with a high mortality rate. Potential predictors related to postpartum recovery time and prognostic factors of AFLP are still unclear. This study aimed to evaluate potential predictors for prognosis and postpartum recovery time of AFLP. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 76 AFLP patients in our hospital from 2002 to 2017 and investigated potential predictors using univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) was found to be associated with prognosis in AFLP patients (P = 0.005, OR = 26.844). The postpartum recovery time analysis showed that AFLP patients with a age P = 0.134, OR = 5.952). The postpartum recovery time of patients with liver failure (LF) was significantly prolonged compared to those without LF (P = 0.036, OR = 10.052). Cryoprecipitate, and plasma infusion showed no significant effect on prognosis or recovery time. Artificial liver support therapy (ALST) had no effect on prognosis, but it might affect postpartum recovery time with no statistical significance (P = 0.128, OR = 5.470). Conclusion HE is a potential predictor for prognosis of AFLP. LF is a potential predictor for postpartum recovery time.

Early detection of COVID-19 based on chest CT enables timely treatment of patients and helps control the spread of the disease. We proposed an artificial intelligence (AI) system for rapid COVID-19 detection and performed extensive statistical analysis of CTs of COVID-19 based on the AI system. We developed and evaluated our system on a large dataset with more than 10 thousand CT volumes from COVID-19, influenza-A/B, non-viral community acquired pneumonia (CAP) and non-pneumonia subjects. In such a difficult multi-class diagnosis task, our deep convolutional neural network-based system is able to achieve an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 97.81% for multi-way classification on test cohort of 3,199 scans, AUC of 92.99% and 93.25% on two publicly available datasets, CC-CCII and MosMedData respectively. In a reader study involving five radiologists, the AI system outperforms all of radiologists in more challenging tasks at a speed of two orders of magnitude above them. Diagnosis performance of chest x-ray (CXR) is compared to that of CT. Detailed interpretation of deep network is also performed to relate system outputs with CT presentations. The code is available at https://github.com/ChenWWWeixiang/diagnosis_covid19., In some contexts, rapid detection of COVID-19 from CT scans can be crucial for optimal patient management. Here, the authors present a Deep Learning system for this task with multi-center data, human reader comparison and age stratified results.

A new methodology for designing a dual-polarized absorptive frequency-selective reflector (AFSR) with wide reflection and absorption bands is proposed in this communication. The AFSR is made up by an array of interweaved bent metallic strips embedded with chip-resistors in the center on a metallic ground. The absorption–reflection–absorption response is obtained by generating multimode resonance with wave antinode and wave-node characteristics of the proposed structure. Four metallic strips are interweaved together to realize dual-polarized performance for its rotational symmetry characteristic. The designed AFSR is fabricated and measured, and the measured results agree well with simulation. It is shown that the measured fractional 3 dB reflection bandwidth is 46.2% between two absorption bands. In addition, the AFSR has stable performance for both TE and TM polarizations under various oblique incidence angles up to 40°, and the whole profile of the structure is only $0.076~\lambda _{L}$ , where $\lambda _{L}$ is the lowest frequency of the operating frequency band.

The internal crack defect is prone to appear in the inner part of casting products during the production process due to the influence of casting craft and on-site environment. In order to ensure the internal quality of the casting products, nondestructive examination and defect detection technology should be used to detect the internal crack of the casting product. The existing defect detection technologies have some problems such as poor generalization and low accuracy. Therefore, an internal crack defect detection method based on the Relief algorithm and Adaboost-SVM is proposed in this paper. Firstly, casting image is preprocessed by grayscale transformation, bilateral filtering, and adaptive image segmentation. Secondly, HOG feature, invariant moment feature, and LBP feature are extracted, and sensitive feature set is selected by Relief algorithm. Finally, the Adaboost-SVM is used to construct the internal crack detection model to realize the crack detection with high generalization and accuracy. The effectiveness of the method is verified by the casting image dataset collected in the actual industrial field. The experimental result reveals that the proposed method could not only extract sensitive feature set but also has better classification performance and generalization ability than other common classifiers.

Escape of cancer cells from chemotherapy is a problem in the management of cancer patients. Research on chemotherapy resistance has mainly focused on the heterogeneity of cancer cells, multiple gene mutations, and quiescence of malignant cancer cells. However, some studies have indicated that interactions between cancer cells and vascular cells promote resistance to chemotherapy. Here, we established mouse leukemia models using the cell lines THP‐1 or MEG‐1. These were derived from acute and chronic myeloid leukemias, respectively, and highly expressed DNA replication factor PSF1, a member of the GINS complex. We found that, after anti‐cancer drug administration, surviving GFP‐positive leukemia cells in the bone marrow were located adjacent to blood vessels, as previously reported in a subcutaneous solid tumor transplantation model. Treating THP‐1 and MEG‐1 cells with anti‐cancer drugs in vitro revealed that those most strongly expressing PSF1 were most chemoresistant, suggesting that PSF1 induces not only cell cycle progression but also facilitates cell survival. Indeed, when PSF1 expression was suppressed by shRNA, the growth rate was reduced and cell death was enhanced in both cell lines. Furthermore, PSF1 knockdown in leukemia cells led to a change in their location at a distance from the blood vessels in a bone marrow transplantation model. These findings potentially reflect a mechanism of escape of leukemic cells from chemotherapy and suggest that PSF1 may be a possible therapeutic target to enhance the effect of chemotherapy., Chemotherapy (AraC) in a leukemia cell transplantation model. We found that cancer cells strongly expressing PSF1 and localising near vascular areas were drug‐resistant. These findings suggest that the vascular niche might play a critical role in chemotherapy resistance. PSF1 might act as a potential therapeutic target to enhance the effect of chemotherapy and prognosis.

A method for designing a dual-polarized wideband absorber with low profile by using dual-resistor-loaded metallic strips is proposed in this paper. Each unit cell consists of a resistive sheet with dual-resistor-loaded metallic strips and an underlying conducting plate. Two-dimensional arrays of two unequal metallic strips are printed on the dielectric substrate, and two resistors are embedded in the metallic strips. By properly designing the resonant frequencies of these metallic strips, a wide absorption band with three resonances is obtained. An equivalent circuit model is introduced, and the current distributions are examined to understand the physical mechanism of the proposed absorber. An example of the absorber is fabricated and measured to verify our designed concept. The measured results show that the wideband absorption performance with a fractional bandwidth of 129% under the normal incidence and the stable angular response are achieved. In addition, the proposed absorber has a low profile with 0.08λL, where λL is the wavelength at the lowest operating frequency.

This article proposes a new method to realize a low-profile broadband absorber. The unit cell of the proposed absorber consists of two layers: a lossy layer with four rotationally symmetric bent metallic strips embedded with two chip-resistors, which is modified from a doubly fed dipole antenna, and a metallic ground separated from the lossy layer by an air spacer. Three resonant modes of the metallic strip embedded with two chip-resistors are generated, and the current in the strip passes through the chip-resistors under different modes and it is finally consumed, resulting in energy dissipation. As a result, an ultrawideband absorber is realized. The designed absorber is fabricated and measured, and the measured absorption band with a fractional bandwidth of 127.9% is achieved for at least 10-dB reflectivity reduction under the normal incidence. In addition, the thickness of the designed absorber is only $0.08\lambda _{L}$ , where $\lambda _{L}$ is the wavelength at the lowest operating frequency.

The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the survival rates and analyze the factors that affect survival rate after primary treatment with medial open wedge high tibial osteotomy (MOWHTO) for medial unicompartmental knee osteoarthritis.Clinical evaluation using Knee Society Score (KSS) and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index score and radiographic evaluation, including mechanical axis, were done before and after surgery. The main failure criteria for survival included the conversion to total knee arthroplasty or KSS of60 points. Furthermore, risk factors that affected the survival after MOWHTO were analyzed.Three hundred thirty-nine knees were included after a minimum of 5 years' follow-up. Their mean age was 56 years, and mean follow-up duration was 9.6 years. The mean KSS and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index scores were significantly improved after surgery (87.3 and 18.5 points at 5 years and 81.7 and 23.6 points at 10 years). The mean hip-knee-ankle (HKA) angle was corrected from 7.2° varus to 3.4° valgus 1 year after surgery, which was maintained until 10 years after surgery (2.9° valgus at 5 years and 2.3° valgus at 10 years, P.05). Using Kaplan-Meier survival estimates, the probability of survival for MOWHTO was 96.8% at 5 years, 87.1% at 10 years, and 85.3% at 13 years. The multivariate regression analysis revealed that age ≥65 years (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.34, P = .046), medial compartment cartilage damage International Cartilage Repair Society grade ≥4 (HR = 2.46, I = .045), lateral compartment cartilage damage International Cartilage Repair Society grade≥2 (HR = 3.38, P = .006), postoperative HKA angle0° (HR = 4.69, P.001) were associated with failure.MOWHTO seems to be a good treatment option for young and active patients with medial knee osteoarthrosis and varus alignment, with acceptable survival rates and satisfactory outcomes. Age ≥65 years, grade 4 cartilage damage in medial compartment, grade ≥2 cartilage damage in lateral compartment, and undercorrection of HKA angle appear to be significant risk factors associated with failure.Level IV: retrospective case series.

A methodology of designing an E-band waveguide 32×32 slot array antenna with high-efficiency and low-cost manufacturing characteristics is proposed in this article, which is based on an integrated electronic bandgap (EBG) ridge waveguide designed by integrating a cross rectangle-hollow EBG structures in the conventional ridge waveguide. The integrated EBG structure intercepts the leakage from the unconnected gap in between the two metallic plates of the waveguide, and then it decreases the manufacturing cost without using the diffusion bonding technology and multi-layer welding assembly process. The design guideline is discussed, and then the antenna is fabricated. The measured radiation characteristics are in good agreement with predicted ones, which confirms that the proposed cross rectangle-hollow EBG structures is an attractive candidate of high-performance millimeter wave antenna.

This paper proposes a new concept of designing compact high precision millimeter-wave wideband variable phase shifters. The phase shifter is implemented with a stacked shim with extremely short length of 0.9 mm and two waveguide flange adaptors with length of 0.5 mm. High precision phase shifting is achieved over entire D-band (110-170 GHz) by rotating the shim 90 degrees from aligned to perpendicular with consistent impedance matching performance. In addition, a glide-symmetric holey electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is adopted to avoid wave leakage from the gap between the shim and the flange adaptors. A proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrator is designed, manufactured, and tested. The measured results show that the designed stacked shim phase shifter with embedded EBG structure ensures return loss higher than 10 dB across 110-170 GHz with a 75 μm airgap between waveguide flanges. The studied phase shifter provides a 0.88° phase shifting with each degree of mechanical rotation. The fabricated PoC phase shifter has a worst-case insertion loss of 0.92 dB and a return loss of 20 dB across the entire 110-170 GHz band and a maximum phase shift of 30°. At 10° phase shifting, the measured insertion loss is lower than 0.52 dB, and return loss is higher than 23 dB, respectively.

This article describes a dual-band diffusive metasurface-based reflector, with a specular reflection band together with two sidebands which exhibit low radar cross-section (RCS). A rhombus-shaped patch-ring type of polarizer with dual-band characteristics is chosen as the fundamental unit cell. The polarizer and its mirror structure have opposite phases in the polarization-rotating bands, while their phase is the same in the reflection band, which is juxtaposed in-between the middle of the two polarization-rotating bands. The designed metasurface is constructed, based on the phase cancellation theory, by arranging arrays of these two unit cells in a two-dimensional pattern. The measured results show that the realized metasurface-based reflector achieves a high-efficiency specular window from 26.2 to 38.8 GHz together with two low-RCS sidebands from 18.18 to 24.6 GHz and 40.61 to 56.4 GHz. The proposed diffusive metasurface can be potentially used as a reflector for reflector antennas, which provides a highly efficient in-band radiation together with low backscattering out-of-band.

Rhizoma Picrorhizae (RP) is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has always been used to treat many diseases like infantile epilepsy and malnutrition. In modern applications, it has been used to treat hepatitis B and various liver injuries with remarkable curative effects. So far, more than 90 chemical components have been reported in RP, mainly including iridoid glycosides, cucurbitacins, phenylethanoid glycosides, and phenolic glycosides. Among these, iridoid glycosides are the most important active ingredients, and about 30 such compounds have been isolated at present. In pharmacology, RP is beneficial to the choleresis, liver protection, anti-inflammation, asthma relief, immune regulation, and protection of heart, brain, kidney, and other organs. There have been many investigations on this medicinal herb in recent years, and it has attracted much attention in the medicine domain. In this paper, through systematically consulting the relevant books and electronic databases, we analyzed, arranged, and summarized the available information on this herb to provide reference for its further research.

Data center networks (DCNs) have widely deployed RDMA to support data-intensive applications such as machine learning. While DCNs are designed with rich multi-path topology, current RDMA (hardware) technology does not support multi-path transport. In this paper we advance Maestro- a purely software-basedmulti-path RDMA solution - to effectively utilize the rich multi-path topology for load balancing and reliability. As a "middleware" operating at the user-space, Maestro is modulaR@and software-defined:Maestro decouples path selection and load balancing mechanisms from hardware features, and allows DCN operators and applications to make flexible decisions by employing the best mechanisms as needed. As such, Maestro can be readily deployed using existing RDMA hardware (NICs) to support distributed deep learning (DDL) applications. Our experiments show that Maestro is capable of fully utilizing multiple paths with negligible CPU overheads, thereby enhancing the performance of DDL applications.

As we increasingly depend on networked services, ensuring resiliency of networks against network failures and providing bounded latency to applications become imperative. Adding ample redundancy in the network substrate alone is not sufficient; resilient routing mechanisms that can effectively take advantage of such topological diversity also play a critical role. In this paper, we present Taproot, a resilient diversity routing algorithmthat ensures bounded latencyfor packet delivery under failures by leveraging a preordeR@routing structure with precomputed routing rules. Leveraging the centralizedcontrol plane and programmable match-actionrules in the data plane, we describe how Taproot can be realized in SDN networks. We implement Taproot in OVS and conduct extensive simulations and experiments to demonstrate its superior performance over existing solutions. Our results show that by tuning the latency allowance upon failure, Taproot reduces/eliminates the number of disconnected src-dst pairs even under 10 link failures. Finally, as a use case, we illustrate the impact of control channel failures on SDN data plane/application performance, and employ Taproot to provide a "hardened" SDN control network with bounded latency against failures. Our results show that Taproot immediately detects the failure and re-routes the control messages to a different path avoiding failed links/nodes. Hence, the control channel is maintained without interruption, or involvement from the controller, and the throughput was not affected.

International audience; The fusion of high spatial resolution panchromatic (PAN) data with simultaneously acquired multispectral (MS) data with the lower spatial resolution is a hot topic, which is often called pansharpening. In this article, we exploit the combination of machine learning techniques and fusion schemes introduced to address the pansharpening problem. In particular, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are proposed to solve this issue. The latter is combined first with the traditional component substitution and multiresolution analysis fusion schemes in order to estimate the nonlinear injection models that rule the combination of the upsampled low-resolution MS image with the extracted details exploiting the two philosophies. Furthermore, inspired by these two approaches, we also developed another DCNN for pansharpening. This is fed by the direct difference between the PAN image and the upsampled low-resolution MS image. Extensive experiments conducted both at reduced and full resolutions demonstrate that this latter convolutional neural network outperforms both the other detail injection-based proposals and several state-of-the-art pansharpening methods.

Background and Aims Diet can affect cardiovascular health by changing lipid profiles or obesity levels. However, the association of dietary patterns reflecting lipid metabolism and adiposity measures with cardiovascular disease (CVD) is unclear. This study aimed to derive dietary patterns that explained variation in blood lipids and adiposity and investigate their associations with prevalent CVD. Methods and Results A cross-sectional study was constructed in Beijing MJ Health Screening Center from 2008 to 2018. A dietary pattern was derived using reduced-rank regression among 75,159 participants without CVD. The dietary pattern explained the largest in predicting lipid profiles and adiposity measures. The dietary pattern was associated with a higher level of LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride, and high body mass index and waist circumference, but lower HDL-cholesterol. The dietary pattern was characterized by high intakes of staple food, red meat, processed food, fried food, edible offal, and less intakes of jam or honey, fruits, milk, and dairy products. Among 89,633 participants, we evaluated its association with prevalent CVD using multivariate logistic regression with adjustment for age, sex, annual income, education attainment, marital status, family history of CVD, smoking status, alcohol use, physical activity, and daily energy intake. Individuals with the highest quintile of dietary pattern score were 1%-38% more likely to have prevalent CVD than the lowest quintile (OR=1.18, 95%CI=1.01-1.38). Conclusion A diet pattern reflecting lipid profiles and obesity level was positively related to prevalent CVD, which could provide new insights in optimizing blood lipids and body shape for the prevention of CVD through dietary approaches among Chinese population.

Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been introduced to pansharpening for enhancing fusion accuracy and overcoming the drawbacks of the conventional methods. However, most of methods based on CNN fail to distinguish the difference of multispectral bands, and only use a uniform set of convolutional kernels to extract features. In this paper, we design a progressive, band-separated convolutional network architecture for discriminatively learning the features and relation among spectral bands, aiming to address the problem mentioned before. More specifically, the proposed architecture mainly consists of three aspects. First, to accurately preserve the spectral peculiarities, we divide the multispectral input image in terms of its bands into several groups. Second, our original panchromatic and multispectral inputs are filtered by a high-pass operation to further yield more spatial details. Third, we use a spectral fusion module (SFM) for each group and associate them to progressively assemble the whole architecture. It is worth mentioning that the architecture could be integrated into any other competitive CNNs to improve the performance. Both visual and quantitative experiments have demonstrated that our proposed method outperforms recent state-of-the-art pansharpening techniques.

A kind of high speed and parallel hardware architecture is proposed and designed for digital signal processing of high frequency Pulse Doppler radar here. The platform is based on one XC7K410T FPGA, two XC7K325T FPGAs, one TMS320C6678 DSP, and four sets of MT41J256M8 DDR3. The details of implementation including pulse compression, moving target detection and constant-false-alarm rate are described. The simulation results and resource consumption are presented to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed FPGA implementation architecture.