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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between starchy vegetable consumption and subgroup consumption in the first trimester and the risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).A prospective study (Among the 1444 participants in our study, 520 were diagnosed with GDM. The adjusted RRs (95% CIs) for GDM from the lowest to the highest quartiles of total starchy vegetable consumption were 1.00 (reference), 1.29 (1.06, 1.57), 1.13 (0.93, 1.40), and 1.26 (1.02, 1.56), respectively;A higher consumption of total starchy vegetables and potatoes in the first trimester is associated with a greater risk of GDM.

Background Epidermal growth factor-like domain 7 (Egfl7), a recently identified secreted protein, was significantly increased in patients with HCC by our previous studies. However, its efficacy in the diagnosis of early HCC remains unknown. In this study, we therefore evaluate the efficacy of serum Egfl7 for early HCC diagnosis and compare it with alpha-fetoprotein (AFP). Methods Serum Egfl7 levels in testing cohort (1081 participants) and validation cohort (476 participants) were measured by a sandwich enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA). The cut-off value of Egfl7 was determined by Youden’s index and the efficacies of Egfl7 and AFP in diagnosing early HCC were estimated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC). Results Serum Egfl7 was significantly elevated in patients with early HCC than all non-HCC controls in whatever Testing Cohort or Validation Cohort. In the Testing Cohort, ROC curves showed the optimum cut-off value of Egfl7 was 2610 ng/mL and Egfl7 showed a significantly higher sensitivity than AFP in discriminating early HCC from healthy individuals (77.4% vs. 65.3%, P = 0.0013) but the area under ROC (AUROC) and accuracy of Egfl7 and AFP were similar (0.860 vs. 0.868, P = 0.704; 80.2% vs. 83.8%, P = 0.184). In distinguishing patients with early HCC from patients with chronic liver disease (CLD), the AUROC, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of Egfl7 were 0.800, 75.2, 71.7 and 73.5%, which were all significantly higher than AFP (0.675, 61.8, 62.0 and 61.9% in order). Egfl7 also showed a significant higher sensitivity and accuracy than AFP (76.6% vs. 64.0%, P = 0.0031; 79.9% vs. 66.1%, P Conclusion Egfl7 is a valuable serum marker in the diagnosis of early HCC and could complement the efficacy of AFP, especially in distinguishing early HCC from CLD and identifying patients with AFP-negative early HCC.

Click-through rate (CTR) prediction is the core problem of building advertising systems. Most existing state-of-the-art approaches model CTR prediction as binary classification problems, where displayed events with and without click feedbacks are respectively considered as positive and negative instances for training and offline validation. However, due to the selection mechanism applied in most advertising systems, a selection bias exists between distributions of displayed and non-displayed events. Conventional CTR models ignoring the bias may have inaccurate predictions and cause a loss of the revenue. To alleviate the bias, we need to conduct counterfactual learning by considering not only displayed events but also non-displayed events. In this paper, through a review of existing approaches of counterfactual learning, we point out some difficulties for applying these approaches for CTR prediction in a real-world advertising system. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a novel framework for counterfactual CTR prediction. In experiments, we compare our proposed framework against state-of-the-art conventional CTR models and existing counterfactual learning approaches. Experimental results show significant improvements.

A new hybrid film solar cell was made with a structure of Glass/ITO/PbS/P3HT/Al. PbS film was prepared by a simple solid-solid reaction and poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) film was obtained by a spin coating method. The solar cells are photosensitive in a large spectral range (extending from near infrared to high energy side regions). Without any special treatment, the cell with an area of 0.15 cm2 has shown values of open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 85 mV and fill factor (FF) of 0.33 under an illumination intensity of 100 mW/cm2.

Lead sulfide (PbS) magic cubes were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method without any organic solvent. The product was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and absorption spectrum. A solar cell, with a structure of Al/P3HT:PbS/PEDOT:PSS/ITO/Glass, was made. By a spin coating method, a hybrid film of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and PbS was prepared on the PEDOT:PSS layer. The solar cells are photosensitive in a large spectral range (visible and near infrared regions). The cells, with the area of 0.15 cm2 without any special treatment, have shown the values of open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 242 mV, short circuit current (Jsc) of 0.01 mA/cm2, energy conversion efficiency (η) of 0.01 % and fill factor (FF) of 0.31 under illumination intensity of 100 mW/cm2.