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Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is the foundation of autonomous navigation for unmanned systems. The existing SLAM solutions are mainly divided into the visual SLAM(vSLAM) equipped with camera and the lidar SLAM equipped with lidar. However, pure visual SLAM have shortcomings such as low positioning accuracy, the paper proposes a visual-inertial information fusion SLAM based on Runge-Kutta improved pre-integration. First, the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) information between two adjacent keyframes is pre-integrated at the front-end to provide IMU constraints for visual-inertial information fusion. In particular, to improve the accuracy in pre-integration, the paper uses the Runge-Kutta algorithm instead of Euler integral to calculate the pre-integration value at the next moment. Then, the IMU pre-integration value is used as the initial value of the system state at the current frame time. We combine the visual reprojection error and imu pre-integration error to optimize the state variables such as speed and pose, and restore map points' three-dimensional coordinates. Finally, we set a sliding window to optimize map points' coordinates and state variables. The experimental part is divided into dataset experiment and complex indoor-environment experiment. The results show that compared with pure visual SLAM and the existing visual-inertial fusion SLAM, our method has higher positioning accuracy.

One of the most widely discussed issues in banking regulation and research is transparency. Yet, whether depositors – banks’ most important claimholders – are affected by transparency, is an empirical open question. Analyzing US commercial banks from 1994-2019, we show that uninsured deposit flows are more sensitive to information about bank performance when banks are more transparent. We also link transparency to deposit rates, banks’ investment funding patterns, and profitability. Using the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, we provide evidence of a causal link. Overall, our findings demonstrate that transparency is important in shaping depositors’ behavior and highlight its potential costs.

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a systematic and proactive risk prevention and management tool used to improve the reliability and safety of a system, process or service. However, many defects around the traditional FMEA affect the effectiveness of its practical applications. When dealing with the FMEA problems, the first and the most important step is to collect the risk assessment information of experts regarding failure modes. Moreover, clustering failure modes is more adaptable to actual needs, especially under a tight resource constraint. In this article, a new FMEA model using double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (DHHFLTSs) and k-means clustering is developed to evaluate and cluster the risk of failure modes. First, the DHHFLTSs are utilized to describe the complex linguistic assessments on failure modes given by FMEA team members. Next, an improved k-means algorithm is proposed and used to cluster failure modes into priority classes. Finally, a case study concerning the risk evaluation over floating offshore wind turbine is provided to illustrate the effectiveness and usefulness of our proposed FMEA. The results show that the new risk classification approach is more reasonable and practical for risk management decision making.

Bike-sharing systems have made notable contributions to cities by providing green and sustainable mobility service to users. Over the years, many studies have been conducted to understand or anticipate the usage of these systems, with the hope to inform their future developments. One important task is to accurately predict usage patterns of the systems. Although many deep learning algorithms have been developed in recent years to support travel demand forecast, they have mainly been used to predict traffic volume or speed on roadways. Few studies have applied them to bike-sharing systems. Moreover, these studies usually focus on one single dataset or study area. The effectiveness and robustness of the prediction algorithms are not systematically evaluated. In this study, we propose a Spatial-Temporal Memory Network (STMN) to predict short-term usage of bicycles in bike-sharing systems. The framework employs Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory models and a feature engineering technique to capture the spatial-temporal dependencies in historical data for the prediction task. Four testing sites are used to evaluate the model. These four sites include two station-based systems (Chicago and New York) and two dockless bike-sharing systems (Singapore and New Taipei City). By assessing STMN with several baseline models, we find that STMN achieves the best overall performance in all the four cities. The model also achieves superior performance in urban areas with varying levels of bicycle usage and during peak periods when demand is high. The findings suggest the reliability of STMN in predicting bicycle usage for different types of bike-sharing systems.

The idea of ‘citizen sensing’ and ‘human as sensors’ is crucial for social Internet of Things, an integral part of cyber-physical-social systems (CPSS). Social media data, which can be easily collected from the social world, has become a valuable resource for research in many different disciplines, e.g. crisis/disaster assessment, social event detection, or the recent COVID-19 analysis. Useful information, or knowledge derived from social data, could better serve the public if it could be processed and analyzed in more efficient and reliable ways. Advances in deep neural networks have significantly improved the performance of many social media analysis tasks. However, deep learning models typically require a large amount of labeled data for model training, while most CPSS data is not labeled, making it impractical to build effective learning models using traditional approaches. In addition, the current state-of-the-art, pre-trained Natural Language Processing (NLP) models do not make use of existing knowledge graphs, thus often leading to unsatisfactory performance in real-world applications. To address the issues, we propose a new zero-shot learning method which makes effective use of existing knowledge graphs for the classification of very large amounts of social text data. Experiments were performed on a large, real-world tweet dataset related to COVID-19, the evaluation results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms six baseline models implemented with state-of-the-art deep learning models for NLP.

Background Postoperative renal function impairment represents a main limitation for delivering adjuvant chemotherapy after radical nephroureterectomy (RNU). Objective To create a model predicting renal function decline after minimally invasive RNU. Design, setting, and participants A total of 490 patients with nonmetastatic UTUC who underwent minimally invasive RNU were identified from a collaborative database including 17 institutions worldwide (February 2006 to March 2020). Renal function insufficiency for cisplatin-based regimen was defined as estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) 50 ml/min/1.73 m2 (n = 361) were geographically divided into a training set (n = 226) and an independent external validation set (n = 135) for further analysis. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis Using transparent reporting of a multivariable prediction model for individual prognosis or diagnosis (TRIPOD) guidelines, a nomogram to predict postoperative eGFR Results and limitations The model that incorporated age, body mass index, preoperative eGFR, and hydroureteronephrosis was developed with an area under the curve of 0.771, which was confirmed to be 0.773 in the external validation set. The calibration curve demonstrated good agreement. Besides, the model was converted into a risk score with a cutoff value of 0.583, and the difference between the low- and high-risk groups both in overall death risk (hazard ratio [HR]: 4.59, p Conclusions A nomogram incorporating immediately available clinical variables can accurately predict renal insufficiency for cisplatin-based adjuvant chemotherapy after minimally invasive RNU and may serve as a tool facilitating patient selection. Patient summary We have developed a model for the prediction of renal function loss after radical nephroureterectomy to facilitate patient selection for perioperative chemotherapy.

Thermoelectric devices enable direct conversion between thermal and electrical energy. Recent studies have indicated that the thin film/substrate heterostructure is effective in achieving high thermoelectric performance via decoupling the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity otherwise adversely inter-dependent in homogenous bulk materials. However, the mechanism underlying the thin film/substrate heterostructure thermoelectricity remains unclear. In addition, the power output of the thin film/substrate heterostructure is limited to the nanowatt scale to date, falling short of the practical application requirement. Here, we fabricated the CrN/SrTiO3−x heterostructures with high thermoelectric output power and outstanding thermal stability. By varying the CrN film thickness and the reduction degree of SrTiO3−x substrate, the optimized power output and the power density have respectively reached 276 μW and 108 mW/cm2 for the 30 nm CrN film on a highly reduced surface of SrTiO3−x under a temperature difference of 300 K. The performance enhancement is attributed to the CrN/SrTiO3−x heterointerface, corroborated by the band bending as revealed by the scanning Kelvin probe microscopy. These results will stimulate further research efforts towards interface thermoelectrics.

Tinea capitis is still common in developing countries, such as China. Its pathogen spectrum varies across regions and changes over time.This study aimed to clarify the current epidemiological characteristics and pathogen spectrum of tinea capitis in China.A multicentre, prospective descriptive study involving 29 tertiary hospitals in China was conducted. From August 2019 to July 2020, 611 patients with tinea capitis were enrolled. Data concerning demography, risk factors and fungal tests were collected. When necessary, the pathogens were further identified by morphology or molecular sequencing in the central laboratory.Among all enrolled patients, 74·1% of the cases were in patients aged 2-8 years. The children with tinea capitis were mainly boys (56·2%) and were more likely than adults to have a history of animal contact (57·4% vs. 35·3%, P = 0·012) and zoophilic dermatophyte infection (73·5% vs. 47%). The adults were mainly female (83%) and were more likely than children to have anthropophilic agent infection (53% vs. 23·9%). The most common pathogen was zoophilic Microsporum canis (354, 65·2%), followed by anthropophilic Trichophyton violaceum (74, 13·6%). In contrast to the eastern, western and northeastern regions, where zoophilic M. canis predominated, anthropophilic T. violaceum predominated in central China (69%, P 0·001), where the patients had the most tinea at other sites (20%) and dermatophytosis contact (26%) but the least animal contact (39%). Microsporum ferrugineum was the most common anthropophilic agent in the western area, especially in Xinjiang province.Boys aged approximately 5 years were the most commonly affected group. Dermatologists are advised to pay more attention to the different transmission routes and pathogen spectra in different age groups from different regions.

Corynebacterium glutamicum is an important workhorse in industrial white biotechnology. It has been widely applied in the producing processes of amino acids, fuels, and diverse value-added chemicals. With the continuous disclosure of genetic regulation mechanisms, various strategies and technologies of synthetic biology were used to design and construct C. glutamicum cells for biomanufacturing and bioremediation. This study mainly aimed to summarize the design and construction strategies of C. glutamicum-engineered strains, which were based on genomic modification, synthetic biological device-assisted metabolic flux optimization, and directed evolution-based engineering. Then, taking two important bioproducts (N-acetylglucosamine and hyaluronic acid) as examples, the applications of C. glutamicum cell factories were introduced. Finally, we discussed the current challenges and future development trends of C. glutamicum-engineered strain construction.

Circadian dysregulation involves malignant tumor initiation and progression, but the understanding of circadian rhythm's roles in bladder cancer (BCa) remains insufficient. The circadian rhythm-related genes were collected and clustered based on the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the clustering was significantly associated with the prognosis and risk clinicopathological features. Through genomic difference analysis and gene pairing, a circadian rhythm-related signature was successfully established. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and time-dependent receiver operating curves displayed that the prognosis model was a reliable prognosis biomarker both in the training cohort (n = 396, P = 2.687e-10) and external validation cohort (n = 224, P = 1.45e-02). The patients with high risk have high immune infiltration and high expression of immune checkpoint genes, which partly account for the poor prognosis. TIDE algorithm and the validation in IMvigor210 cohort indicated that the risk signature was a promising marker for the immunotherapeutic response. The risk model could also predict the therapeutic response of cisplatin, which was validated in the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer database (P = 0.0049), TCGA (P = 0.038), and T24 BCa cells treated with cisplatin. The functional enrichment showed the risk model was significantly correlated with some malignant phenotypes, such as angiogenesis, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and KRAS signaling pathway. Totally, we proposed a novel circadian rhythm-related signature for prognosis evaluation, which also helped to predict the immune infiltration and cisplatin sensitivity in BCa.

Lack of knowledge is a common consequence of data incompleteness when learning from real-world data. To deal with such a situation, this work utilises transfer learning to re-use knowledge from different (yet related) but complete domains. Due to its powerful feature construction ability, genetic programming is used to construct feature-based transformations that map the feature space of the source domain to that of the target domain such that their differences are reduced. Particularly, this work proposes a new multi-tree genetic programming-based feature construction approach to transfer learning in symbolic regression with missing values. It transfers knowledge related to the importance of the features and instances in the source domain to the target domain to improve the learning performance. Moreover, new genetic operators are developed to encourage minimising the distribution discrepancy between the transformed domain and the target domain. A new probabilistic crossover is developed to make the well-constructed trees in the individuals more likely to be mated than the other trees. A new mutation operator is designed to give more probability for the poorly-constructed trees to be mutated. The experimental results show that the proposed method not only achieves better performance compared with different traditional learning methods but also advances two recent transfer learning methods on real-world data sets with various incompleteness and learning scenarios.

Neutrophilic asthma (NA) is a severe type of steroid resistant asthma, and so far the immune mechanisms underlying NA are not clear. In this article, we performed a comprehensive assessment of Th-cell subsets and cytokines in severe NA patients. A total of 13 healthy individuals and 31 severe asthma patients were enrolled in this study. Refractory asthma patients were defined as those with eosinophilic asthma (EA, accounted for 32% of asthmatic patients) or NA (68%) according to sputum neutrophil/eosinophil counts or blood eosinophils. Th-cell subsets in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were analyzed by flow cytometry, and cytokines were detected by cytometric bead array (CBA). The results showed significant differences were observed in Th-cell phenotypes, where the number of Th1 cells were reduced and the numbers of Th2 cells were increased in NA and EA groups, respectively, when compared with healthy controls. Th17 cells were not strongly associated with severe neutrophilic asthma. The frequencies of mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells were strikingly reduced in severe asthma patients, especially in the NA group. This NA group also showed increased levels of IL-17A, IL-17F, TNF-α, and IL-6 in serum and increased levels of IL-17A, IL-17F, IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-5, IL-6, and IL-8 in sputum. In addition, sputum IL-6 was positively correlated with TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-17A, and IL-8. Our results uncovered a controversial role for Th17 cells, which were reduced in severe asthma patients. Severe neutrophilic asthma was associated with a striking deficiency of MAIT cells and high pro-inflammatory cytokine levels.

Background Delineation of clinical target volume (CTV) for radiotherapy is a time‐consuming and labor‐intensive work. This study aims to propose a novel convolutional neural network (CNN)‐based model for fast auto‐segmentation of CTV. To evaluate its performance and clinical utility, a blind randomized validation method was used. Methods Our proposed model was based on the generally accepted U‐Net architecture using computed tomography slices with CTV contours delineated by experienced radiation clinicians from 135 rectal patients receiving neoadjuvant radiotherapy. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and 95th percentile Hausdorff distance (95HD) were used to measure segmentation performance. The validated dataset of additional 20 patients for clinical evaluation by 10 experienced oncology clinicians from 7 centers was randomly and blindly divided into two groups for clinicians' scoring and Turing test, respectively. Second evaluation was performed with different randomization after 2 weeks. Results The mean DSC and 95HD values of the proposed model were 0.90 ± 0.02 and 8.11 ± 1.93 mm for CTV of rectal cancer patients, respectively. The average time for automatic segmentation in the validation groups was 15 s per patient. By clinicians' scoring, the AI model performed better than manually delineating, though the differences were not significant (Week 0: 2.59 vs. 2.52, p = 0.086; Week 2: 2.55 vs. 2.47, p = 0.115). Additionally, the mean positive rates in the Turing test were 40.5% in Week 0 and 45.2% in Week 2, which demonstrated the great intelligence of our model. Conclusions Our proposed model can be used clinically for assisting contouring of CTVs in rectal cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant radiotherapy, which improves the efficiency and consistency of radiation clinicians' work., This study first developed an auto‐segmentation system using U‐Net deep learning architecture in patients receiving neoadjuvant radiotherapy and obtained great measurement performance. Besides, we first reported a blind system for clinical evaluation, including clinicians' scoring and Turing test by multicenter radiologists, which can eliminate inter‐ and intra‐observer discrepancy as much as possible. Our proposed methods may be helpful for the assessment of AI‐assisted models in clinical practice.

Purpose: We assessed whether perioperative circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) could be a biomarker for early detection of molecular residual disease (MRD) and prediction of postoperative relapse in resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Experimental Design: Based on our prospective, multicenter cohort on dynamic monitoring of ctDNA in lung cancer surgery patients (LUNGCA), we enrolled 950 plasma samples obtained at three perioperative time points (before surgery, 3 days and 1 month after surgery) of 330 stage I–III NSCLC patients (LUNGCA-1), as a part of the LUNGCA cohort. Using a customized 769-gene panel, somatic mutations in tumor tissues and plasma samples were identified with next-generation sequencing and utilized for ctDNA-based MRD analysis. Results: Preoperative ctDNA positivity was associated with lower recurrence-free survival (RFS; HR = 4.2; P < 0.001). The presence of MRD (ctDNA positivity at postoperative 3 days and/or 1 month) was a strong predictor for disease relapse (HR = 11.1; P < 0.001). ctDNA-based MRD had a higher relative contribution to RFS prediction than all clinicopathologic variables such as the TNM stage. Furthermore, MRD-positive patients who received adjuvant therapies had improved RFS over those not receiving adjuvant therapy (HR = 0.3; P = 0.008), whereas MRD-negative patients receiving adjuvant therapies had lower RFS than their counterparts without adjuvant therapy (HR = 3.1; P < 0.001). After adjusting for clinicopathologic variables, whether receiving adjuvant therapies remained an independent factor for RFS in the MRD-positive population (P = 0.002) but not in the MRD-negative population (P = 0.283). Conclusions: Perioperative ctDNA analysis is effective in early detection of MRD and relapse risk stratification of NSCLC, and hence could benefit NSCLC patient management.

Objective To identify barriers to seeking health care among returning travellers with malaria with the aim of developing targeted interventions that improve early health care-seeking behaviour, diagnosis and treatment. Methods Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of published medical literature, selecting studies that investigated and reported barriers to seeking health care among returning travellers and migrants with malaria. In total, 633 articles were screened, of which four studies met the inclusion criteria after a full-text review. Results The four studies reported barriers to seeking healthcare among returning travellers in China, the USA, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. Three studies had an observational design. The identified barriers were summarized based on the appraisal delay, illness delay, and utilization delay stages. During appraisal delays, low awareness of malaria was the most significant factor. Once the patient assessed that he or she was ill, belonging to a specific minority ethnicity, being infected with P. vivax, and receiving a low level of social support were predictors of delayed health care-seeking. Finally, the most significant factor associated with utilization delays was the monetary cost. Conclusion The health care-seeking behaviour of returning travellers with malaria should be further investigated and improved. Addressing the identified barriers and gaps in health care-seeking behaviour among returning travellers with malaria, particularly among groups at high risk of travel-associated infections, is important to prevent severe disease and deaths as well as secondary transmission and epidemics.

Non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) is among the most severe factors for male infertility, but our understandings of the latent biological mechanisms remain insufficient. The single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data of 432 testicular cells isolated from the patient with NOA was analyzed, and the cell samples were grouped into 5 cell clusters. A sum of 455 cell markers was identified and then included in the protein-protein interaction network. The Top 5 most critical genes in the network, including CCT8, CDC6, PSMD1, RPS4X, RPL36A, were selected for the diagnosis model construction through the random forest (RF). The RF model was a strong classifier for NOA and obstructive azoospermia (OA), which was validated in the training cohort (n = 58, AUC = 1) and external validation cohort (n = 20, AUC = 0.9). We collected the seminal plasma samples and testicular biopsy samples from 20 OA and 20 NOA cases from the local hospital, and the gene expression was detected via Real-Time quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) and Immunohistochemistry. The RF model also exhibited high accuracy (AUC = 0.725) in the local cohort. In summary, a novel gene signature was developed and externally validated based on scRNA-seq analysis, providing some new biomarkers to uncover the underlying mechanisms and a promising clinical tool for diagnosis in NOA.

Remifentanil combined with sevoflurane is a standard protocol for obstetric general anesthesia (GA).In this study, we performed a randomized clinical trial to evaluate whether remifentanil has an effect on the median effective concentration (EC50) of sevoflurane and compare anesthetic outcomes of them in cesarean section with Supreme™ laryngeal mask airway (SLMA) under narcotrend monitoring. Ninety parturients with singleton births undergoing elective cesarean delivery (CD) with initial inhaled 1.0 minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) sevoflurane for anesthesia maintenance were assigned to three groups randomly and evenly: Group A (0.05 µg·kg-1·min-1 remifentanil combined with sevoflurane), Group B (0.1 µg·kg-1·min-1 remifentanil combined with sevoflurane), and Group C (normal saline combined with sevoflurane). Narcotrend was used to monitor the depth of anesthesia during the operation, with the level of anesthesia depth controlled within the D-E stage. The EC50 of sevoflurane was determined by Dixon's sequential method. The Narcotrend index, amount of bleeding, neonatal Apgar score, and corresponding treatment measures in the three groups were recorded.The results showed that the estimated EC50 of sevoflurane for obstetric GA was 0.80 MAC (95% CI: 0.63-0.95 MAC) in group A, 0.82 MAC (95% CI: 0.63-0.96 MAC) in group B, and 0.80 MAC (95% CI: 0.63-0.95 MAC) in group C. There was no statistically significant difference in the estimated EC50 of sevoflurane, time to wakefulness, Apgar score, amount of intraoperative bleeding, and postoperative bleeding within 24 hours between the three groups (all P0.05).The addition of remifentanil at 0.05-0.1 µg·kg-1·min-1 did not change the EC50 of sevoflurane and anesthetic quality. The concentration of inhaled anesthetics can be minimized with Narcotrend monitoring.Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2000034512.

Zhikai Liu,1 Fangjie Liu,2,&ast; Wanqi Chen,1,&ast; Yinjie Tao,1 Xia Liu,1 Fuquan Zhang,1 Jing Shen,1 Hui Guan,1 Hongnan Zhen,1 Shaobin Wang,3 Qi Chen,3 Yu Chen,3 Xiaorong Hou1 1Department of Radiation Oncology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, 100730, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou, 510060, People’s Republic of China; 3MedMind Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing, 100055, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xiaorong Hou Tel +86 138 1196 3013Email hxr_pumch@163.comObjective: Delineation of clinical target volume (CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) is important for radiotherapy but is time-consuming. We trained and evaluated a U-ResNet model to provide fast and consistent auto-segmentation.Methods: We collected 160 patients’ CT scans with breast cancer who underwent breast-conserving surgery (BCS) and were treated with radiotherapy. CTV and OARs were delineated manually and were used for model training. The dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and 95th percentile Hausdorff distance (95HD) were used to assess the performance of our model. CTV and OARs were randomly selected as ground truth (GT) masks, and artificial intelligence (AI) masks were generated by the proposed model. Two clinicians randomly compared CTV score differences of the contour. The consistency between two clinicians was tested. Time cost for auto-delineation was evaluated.Results: The mean DSC values of the proposed method were 0.94, 0.95, 0.94, 0.96, 0.96 and 0.93 for breast CTV, contralateral breast, heart, right lung, left lung and spinal cord, respectively. The mean 95HD values were 4.31mm, 3.59mm, 4.86mm, 3.18mm, 2.79mm and 4.37mm for the above structures, respectively. The average CTV scores for AI and GT were 2.89 versus 2.92 when evaluated by oncologist A (P=0.612), and 2.75 versus 2.83 by oncologist B (P=0.213), with no statistically significant differences. The consistency between two clinicians was poor (kappa=0.282). The time for auto-segmentation of CTV and OARs was 10.03 s.Conclusion: Our proposed model (U-ResNet) can improve the efficiency and accuracy of delineation compared with U-Net, performing equally well with the segmentation generated by oncologists.Keywords: clinical target volume, organ at risk, auto-segmentation, breast cancer radiotherapy, clinical evaluation

Electromagnetic forming (EMF) is a type of noncontact and high-speed forming process that offers several advantages, such as high material formability, low springback, and low die cost. In this study, titanium bipolar plates (BPPs) for proton exchange membrane fuel cells are fabricated by EMF using a uniform pressure actuator that provided a uniform pressure distribution and high efficiency. A three-dimensional coupled electromagnetic-mechanical simulation model is established to optimize the dynamic forming process. Simulation results show that the channel depth is proportional to the impact velocity of the titanium workpiece. A forming window is established as a design guideline. Finally, a titanium BPP with sufficient channel depth (0.4 mm), high aspect ratio (0.67), low thinning rate (not exceeding 15.89%) and high corrosion resistance is successfully fabricated at a velocity of 286 m/s, thereby demonstrating that EMF is a feasible process for fabricating titanium BPPs.

Recent optical stimulation suggests a vital non-contact pathway to manipulate both macroscopic and microscopic ferroelectric properties and paves the foundation for optoelectronics devices. However, up to date, most optical-related manipulation of ferroelectric properties is restricted due to their intrinsic bandgap and limited visible light spectrum absorption. Here, we reveal non-oxide Sn2P2S6 single crystal possesses full-visible-spectrum absorption (from 300 to 800 nm) with a unique disproportionation mechanism of photoexcited Sn ions and Urbach tail, which is not contradicting to the intrinsic band gap. Interestingly, we observed the existence of conductive domain walls (c-DW) and the light illumination induced significant enhancement of the domain wall conductivity caused by such disproportionation reaction. In addition, the domains separated by c-DW also exhibited noticeable electrical conductivity difference in the presence of optical illumination owing to the interfacial polarization charge with opposite signs. The result provides a novel opportunity for understanding the electrical conductivity behavior of the domains and domain walls in ferroelectrics with full-visible-spectrum absorption and achieving greatly enhanced performances for optoelectronics.

To explore the clinical significance of the perioperative counts of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), mesenchymal CTCs (MCTCs), and CTC- white blood cells (WBCs) in renal cell carcinoma patients. A total of 131 patients with renal cancer who underwent operation excision from our hospital were enrolled. In addition, 20 patients with benign renal diseases were recruited as a control. Blood samples were collected from the 131 patients, before operation and 3 months after surgery. Samples were also obtained simultaneously from the control group. CanPatrol CTC detection technique was used to enrich and identify CTCs, MCTCs, and CTC-WBCs. All enrolled patients were T1-3N0M0. From these, 52 patients with renal cancer underwent radical resection, while other 79 patients underwent nephron-sparing surgery. The positive rate of CTC, MCTC, and CTC-WBC before surgery were 95.4% (125/131), 61.1% (80/131), and 11.5% (15/131), respectively. Preoperative total CTCs, MCTCs, or CTC-WBCs were poorly correlated with patients’ parameters. Preoperative CTC, MCTC, or CTC-WBC showed no association with progression-free survival (PFS). In contrast, postoperative total CTCs (≥6), positive MCTCs, and positive CTC-WBCs significantly correlated with recurrence and metastasis. These results remained independent indicators for worse PFS. In addition, the increased CTC and MCTC count after surgery also correlated with unfavorable PFS. The detection of six or more total CTCs, MCTC, or CTC-WBCs in peripheral blood after surgery might help to identify a subset of patients that have higher recurrent risk than the overall population of patients with at different stages of renal cancer.

Globally, prostate cancer ranks second in cancer burden of the men. It occurs more frequently in black men compared to white or Asian men. Usually, high rates exist for men aged 60 and above. In this review, we focus on the Wnt/β-catenin signal transduction pathway in prostate cancer since many studies have reported that β-catenin can function as an oncogene and is important in Wnt signaling. We also relate its expression to the androgen receptor and MMP-7 protein, both critical to prostate cancer pathogenesis. Some mutations in the androgen receptor also impact the androgen-β-catenin axis and hence, lead to the progression of prostate cancer. We have also reviewed MiRNAs that modulate this pathway in prostate cancer. Finally, we have summarized the impact of Wnt/β-catenin pathway proteins in the drug resistance of prostate cancer as it is a challenging facet of therapy development due to the complexity of signaling pathways interaction and cross-talk.

BACKGROUND: We examined the association between the number of resected lymph nodes and survival to determine the optimal lymphadenectomy for thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients with negative lymph node. METHODS: We included 1,836 patients from Chinese three high-volumed hospitals with corresponding clinicopathological characters such as gender, age, tumor location, tumor grade and TNM stage of patients. The median follow-up of included patients was 45.7 months (range, 1.03–117.3 months). X-Tile plot was used to identify the lowest number of lymphadenectomy. The multivariate model’s construction was in use of parameters with clinical significance for survival and a nomogram based on clinical variable with P

This article proposes a dual voltage/current ( V/C ) inductance controller, which has good impedance tracking capability without any high-voltage stress problems. Besides, the proposed dual-mode phase-locked loop (D-PLL) technique can detect the phase difference between voltage and current of the antenna by fast tracking PLL and the accuracy-improved PLL for inductive and capacitive loads, thereby improving efficiency. Therefore, the 5G small base station on the receiver side (RX) can receive 27.8 W of power with 50% efficiency when the wall thickness to the transmitter side (TX) is 25.2 cm. In the case where the distance between TX and RX is close to zero, 50 W higher power with 90% efficiency can be achieved. Accordingly, the efficiency of resistive and inductive loads can be increased by 13% and 41%, respectively.

OBJECTIVES This retrospective study aimed to determine the effectiveness of sacral neuromodulation (SNM) on neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction (NLUTD) and analyze the predictive factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS From January 2012 to January 2020, 152 subjects with NLUTD from four medical centers in China received SNM test stimulation. Subjects were assessed via bladder diaries, postvoid residual volumes (PRVs) and neurogenic bowel dysfunction (NBD) scores before and during the testing period. Patients who showed a minimum 50% improvement in symptoms through the SNM test phase were eligible for permanent SNM implantation. RESULTS The pooled success rate for chronic urinary retention was 31.0% (40/129), which was significantly lower (p

Purpose: To compare the efficacy and safety of plasma kinetic enucleation of the prostate (PKEP) with holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) for treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Methods: A total of 160 patients with indications for the surgical treatment of BPH were randomly assigned to receive either PKEP or HoLEP prospectively. Baseline characteristics, perioperative data, and postoperative outcomes of the patients were recorded. One hundred twenty-six (78.75%) patients (PKEP 64 vs HoLEP 62) completed the 3-year follow-up assessment. Results: Patients in both groups had similar baseline characteristics. Compared with PKEP, HoLEP was associated with shorter operative time as well as take-out time, lower perioperative hemoglobin decrease, and shorter bladder irrigation time, catheterization time, and hospital stay time. PKEP was superior to HoLEP in terms of the noise of the machine and hospitalization expenses. There were no significant differences in enucleating time, resected weight, and serum sodium levels. Both groups achieved satisfactory results and maintained improvement from baseline in terms of maximum urinary flow rate (Qmax), International Prostatic Symptomatic Score, quality of life, and postvoid residual at 3-year follow-up, with no significant differences between the two procedures. Except for re-catheterization rate, postoperative data such as transrectal ultrasound volume, International Index of Erectile Function-5, and follow-up scores of the flexible cystourethroscopy results, as well as the acute and mid-to long-term complications after surgery, were statistically similar. Conclusion: The 3-year follow-up data of this randomized trial confirmed that both PKEP and HoLEP were effective and safe surgical procedures for the transurethral management of BPH. HoLEP presented certain advantages compared to PKEP, such as reduced operative duration, decreased risk of blood loss, and less bladder irrigation, hospital stay time, and re-catheterization rate, whereas PKEP had lower noise and no additional laser cost. Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR-TRC-13004468).

Charge injection is a basic transport process that strongly affects performance of optoelectronic devices such as light-emitting diodes and photodetectors. In these devices, the charge injection barrier is related to the band bending at the active layer/electrode interface and exhibits sophisticated dependence on interface structure and device operating conditions, making it difficult to determine via either theoretical prediction or experimental measurements. Here, in operando cross-sectional scanning Kelvin probe microscopy (SKPM) has been applied in organic photodetectors to visualize the interfacial band bending. The photoinduced interfacial band bending becomes more significant with increasing reverse bias voltage, resulting in reduced charge injection barrier and facilitated charge injection. The photoinduced injection current is orders of magnitude higher than the photocurrent directly generated from light absorption and thus leads to significant photomultiplication. Furthermore, the interfacial structure is tuned to further enhance photoinduced interfacial band bending and the photomultiplication factor.

Although thoracoscopy has characteristics such as a small surgical incision and low stress response, post-surgical pain after a thoracoscopic operation is no less than that after a thoracotomy. Moreover, poor post-surgical pain management is likely to cause an increased incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) and chronic post-surgical pain. The serratus anterior plane block (SAPB) is a regional anesthesia method whereby local anesthetics (LAs) are injected into the serratus anterior space to block the lateral cutaneous branch of the intercostal nerve, long thoracic nerve, and dorsal thoracic nerve. The block range of the SAPB covers the incisions of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and the site of the chest tube, which are often located in the antero-lateral chest wall. Therefore, the SAPB can achieve effective analgesia in VATS. For example, 0.125% to 0.25% levobupivacaine (20-25 ml) is widely used for thoracic surgery, which can achieve effective analgesia and avoid adverse reactions. Moreover, it has advantages compared with thoracic segmental epidural block (TEA) and thoracic paravertebral block (TPVB), such as simple operation, increased safety, fewer complications, and hemodynamic stability. In addition, adequate analgesia is helpful for pulmonary function recovery and reduces the incidence of PPCs. This article introduces the anatomical mechanism of the SAPB, diverse operation approaches, how to choose drugs and adjuvants, and the resulting impacted area range. It summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the SAPB compared with other analgesic methods and posits that the SAPB is beneficial to the recovery of postoperative lung function, which provides more options for postoperative analgesia after VATS.

Background::A deep learning model (DLM) that enables non-invasive hypokalemia screening from an electrocardiogram (ECG) may improve the detection of this life-threatening condition. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the performance of a DLM for the detection of hypokalemia from the ECGs of emergency patients.Methods::We used a total of 9908 ECG data from emergency patients who were admitted at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Jiangxi, China, from September 2017 to October 2020. The DLM was trained using 12 ECG leads (lead I, II, III, aVR, aVL, aVF, and V 1- 6) to detect patients with serum potassium concentrations

On-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is becoming more challenging for integrated circuits (ICs) made in advanced technology nodes. The ESD-induced design overhead, including ESD parasitic effects and layout area, inherent to the traditional in-Silicon PN-junction-based ESD protection devices, rapidly becomes unbearable to high-performance and complex ICs. A disruptive above-Si mechanical ESD switch device, made in CMOS backend using a graphene nano-electromechanical-system (gNEMS) structure, was recently devised and demonstrated using poly-crystalline graphene films. This paper reports design, fabrication and comprehensive characterization of single-crystalline gNEMS ESD switch devices. Measurement using transmission line pulse (TLP) and very fast transmission line pulse (VFTLP) ESD testing reveals superior ESD protection capability of gNEMS devices made in single-crystalline graphene over its poly-crystalline counterparts, achieving a record-high ESD current handling capability of ${\text{I}}_{t2} {\sim }1.19 {\times }10^{10}\text{A}$ /cm2 under TLP zapping and ${\text{I}}_{t2} {\sim }6.09{\times }10^{9}\text{A}$ /cm2 under VFTLP stressing. The ESD robustness enhancement related to single-crystalline graphene material property is discussed.

BACKGROUND The ATP6AP1 gene coding for the accessory protein Ac45 of the vacuolar-type adenosine triphosphatases (V-ATPase) is located on chromosome Xq28. Defects in certain subunits or accessory subunits of the V-ATPase can lead to congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG). CDG is a group of metabolic disorders in which defective protein and lipid glycosylation processes affect multiple tissues and organs. Therefore, the clinical presentation of patients with ATP6AP1-CDG varies widely. In this report, we present a case of ATP6AP1-CDG in a Chinese infant, with clinical features and genotype. CASE SUMMARY An 8-mo-old boy was admitted to our hospital because unexplained hepatosplenomegaly and elevated transaminases that had been noted while he was being treated for a cough at a local hospital. A post-admission examination at our hospital revealed abnormalities in the infant’s liver, brain, and immune system. Trio-based whole exome gene analysis identified a hemizygous pathogenic mutation c.1036G>A (p.E346K) in exon 9 of the ATP6AP1 gene. This variant of the ATP6AP1 gene has not been reported in East Asian countries until now. CONCLUSION Based on the infant’s clinical manifestations and the results of genetic detection, he was clearly diagnosed with ATP6AP1-CDG. The clinical manifestations of children with CDG vary widely. Genetic testing analysis helps in the clinical diagnosis of children with CDG.

Risk prediction tools are crucial for population-based management of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, most prediction models are currently used to assess long-term risk instead of the risk of short-term CVD onset. We developed a Dynamic Risk-based Early wArning Monitoring (DREAM) system using large-scale, real-time electronic health record data from 2010 to 2020 from the CHinese Electronic health Records Research in Yinzhou study. The dynamic risk scores were derived from a 1:5 matched nested case–control set comprising 70,470 individuals (11,745 CVD events) and then validated in a cohort of 81,205 individuals (5950 CVD events). The individuals were Chinese adults aged 40–79 years without a history of CVD at baseline. Eleven predictors related to vital signs, laboratory tests, and health service utilization were selected to establish the dynamic scores. The proposed scores were significantly associated with the subsequent CVD onset (adjusted odds ratio, 1.21; 95% confidence interval, 1.20–1.23). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) was 0.6010 (0.5929–0.6092) and 0.6021 (0.5937–0.6105) for the long-term 10-year CVD risk

We encourage chief information officers (CIOs) to play more active roles in organizational level strategy making in the digital era and examine how CIOs could lead their organizations’ digital innovation initiatives. We propose that it is the CIO’s effectiveness in issue selling (i.e., the acts that are directed toward affecting top management teams’ (TMT) attention to and understanding of strategic issues), rather than his or her structural position, that directly influences the level of organizational digital innovation success. Nevertheless, CIO structural power should not be overlooked because it could amplify (i.e., positively moderate) the impact of CIO issue selling to digital innovation outcomes. In addition, we identify four enabling forces of CIO issue selling effectiveness: (1) CIO strategic decision-making authority, (2) CIO/TMT partnership, (3) CIO information technologies (IT)–related strategic knowledge, and (4) CIO political savvy. Matched-pair survey data collected from senior business and IT executives of 179 organizations largely support the research hypotheses.

BACKGROUND: Osteoporosis is a systemic bone disease characterized by decreased bone density and deterioration of bone microstructure, leading to an increased probability of fragility fractures. Once segmental bone defect occurs, it is easy to cause delayed union and nonunion. METHODS: The aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy of extracorporeal shock wave (ESW) and teriparatide-loaded hydrogel (T-Gel) combined strategy on the cell activity and differentiation of osteoporosis derived bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (OP-BMSCs) in vitro and bone regeneration in osteoporotic segmental bone defects in vivo. RESULTS: In vitro, the strategy of combining ESW and T-Gel significantly enhanced OP-BMSCs proliferation, survival, migration, and osteogenic differentiation by up-regulating the alkaline phosphatase activity, mineralization, and expression of runt-related transcription factor-2, type I collagen, osteocalcin, and osteopontin. In the segmental bone defect models of osteoporotic rabbits, Micro-CT evaluation and histological observation demonstrated this ESW-combined with T-Gel injection significantly induced bone healing by enhancing the osteogenic activity of the local microenvironment in osteoporotic defects. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, ESW-combined with T-Gel injection could regulate the poor osteogenic microenvironment in osteoporotic defects and show potential for enhancing fragility fractures healing.

PurposeThis study aims to use Porter’s hypothesis (PH), which tests whether corporates’ green investment has an impact on their economic performance (EP). The study argues that corporates’ environmental strategy should allow for a “win-win” situation concerning regulatory compliance.Design/methodology/approachThe quantitative methodology used PH to test empirically the economic consequences of corporates’ green investment in China.FindingsThis study indicates that there is a U-shaped relationship between green/environmental investment (EI) and EP. When EI is less, corporates’ EP follows a downward sloping curve until the scale of EI increases and exceeds the “threshold.” From this turning point, EP follows an upward-sloping curve as EI increase. This relationship is more significant in high-polluting companies and state-owned companies.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical results extend the research field of EI and EP for listed companies in China and cover 1,324 observations over the period 2008–2017.Practical implicationsFirst, the authors expand the research on green/EI and EP using firm-level data. Second, the study empirically tests the economic consequences of corporates’ green investment. Third, this study finds a non-linear relationship between green investment and EP due to the heterogeneity of industry attributes and property rights. These findings provide better explanations for the different research conclusions regarding the economic consequences of green investment.Originality/valueCompared to global research, China’s research on EI has mainly focused on the macro and industry levels. There is still a lack of micro-level research. The paper addresses this research gap as the authors use firm-level EI data to capture companies’ green investment efforts in environmentally sustainable development and its subsequent impact on EP.

In recent years, the incidence of myopia has increased at an alarming rate among children and adolescents in China. The exploration of an effective prevention and control method for myopia is in urgent need. With the development of information technology in the past decade, artificial intelligence with the Internet of Things technology (AIoT) is characterized by strong computing power, advanced algorithm, continuous monitoring, and accurate prediction of long-term progression. Therefore, big data and artificial intelligence technology have the potential to be applied to data mining of myopia etiology and prediction of myopia occurrence and development. More recently, there has been a growing recognition that myopia study involving AIoT needs to undergo a rigorous evaluation to demonstrate robust results.

BACKGROUND: Vaginitis is one of the most common gynecological diseases in women and may severely affect the quality of life in patients. However, very few studies have investigated aerobic vaginitis (AV) in pregnant women, and our study was designed to identify the pathogen profile, clinical importance, and risk factors of AV in pregnancy. METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study enrolling 685 women who attended our hospital between July 2018 and June 2020. Based on the incidence of AV, enrolled women were divided into an AV group and healthy control group, and demographic and clinical characteristics were retrospectively collected by two independent investigators. Some pathogens of AV were tested using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction for higher accuracy. Pregnancy outcomes were also retrospectively collected. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to determine the risk factors of AV incidence and adverse pregnant outcomes. RESULTS: Enrolled women were divided into an AV group of 182 women and healthy control group of 503 women. The proportions of women with a history of cesarean delivery and history of vaginal infection differed between the groups (P=0.002 and

Hypertension (HTN) and osteoarthritis (OA) are frequent in middle-aged and elderly people, and the co-occurrence of these two diseases is common. However, the pathogenesis of the multimorbidity of both diseases and the relation with sleep quality, hyperlipemia, and hyperglycemia is unclear. We conducted a cross-sectional study to make sense of the multimorbidity of HTN and OA and the relation with sleep quality, hyperlipemia, and hyperglycemia. The relation between sleep quality and OA and its joint effect with hyperlipemia or hyperglycemia was evaluated with logistic regression models. The additive interaction was assessed with the relative excess risk due to interaction (REEI), the attributable proportion (AP), and the synergy index (S). According to this research in a remote rural area, approximately 34.2% of HTN patients are accompanied with OA and 49.1% are suffering poor sleep. Both hyperlipemia/hyperglycemia and sleep quality were related to OA prevalence with crude ORs of 1.43 (95% CI 1.014–2.029) and 1.89 (95% CI 1.411–2.519, P

We examine the effects of asymmetric timeliness in reporting good versus bad news on price informativeness when prices provide useful information to assist firms’ investment decisions. We find that a reporting system featuring more timely disclosure of bad news than of good news encourages speculators to trade on their private information. Consequently, it generates a higher expected investment level and firm value. Our analysis generates predictions consistent with empirical findings and provides a justification for the more timely reporting of bad news in the absence of managerial incentive problems. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.

Summary With the rapid progress of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), both high efficiency and sufficient stability are required simultaneously for their real-life application, wherein interfaces play an essential role. In this work, we develop sandwiched electrode buffer (SEB) with respect to the hole-transport layer (HTL), wherein dual back surface fields are implemented at two interfaces in relevance. The SEB bridges the absorber to the back electrode with the desired band alignment and multi-defect passivation effects, which stabilize the perovskite, HTL, and metal electrodes. Accordingly, planar n-i-p PSCs with SEB achieve an efficiency of 23.9% (certified 23.4%). Notably, they exhibit a remarkable operational stability with only a 3% efficiency decline for 2,000 h maximum power point tracking under 1-Sun illumination. Furthermore, the devices also show excellent thermal stability and humidity stability. Therefore, the SEB configuration boosts both efficiency and stability of PSCs, which paves the way for the commercialization of perovskite optoelectronics.

Solution processing of semiconductors is highly promising for the high-throughput production of cost-effective electronics and optoelectronics. Although hybrid perovskites have potential in various device applications, challenges remain in the development of high-quality materials with simultaneously improved processing reproducibility and scalability. Here, we report a liquid medium annealing (LMA) technology that creates a robust chemical environment and constant heating field to modulate crystal growth over the entire film. Our method produces films with high crystallinity, fewer defects, desired stoichiometry, and overall film homogeneity. The resulting perovskite solar cells (PSCs) yield a stabilized power output of 24.04% (certified 23.7%, 0.08 cm2) and maintain 95% of their initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) after 2000 hours of operation. In addition, the 1-cm2 PSCs exhibit a stabilized power output of 23.15% (certified PCE 22.3%) and keep 90% of their initial PCE after 1120 hours of operation, which illustrates their feasibility for scalable fabrication. LMA is less climate dependent and produces devices in-house with negligible performance variance year round. This method thus opens a new and effective avenue to improving the quality of perovskite films and photovoltaic devices in a scalable and reproducible manner.

We develop and validate an empirical measure of the informativeness of accounting assets in measuring firm-specific economic capital, an important determinant of both cash flows and intrinsic values. Our validation tests show that the asset informativeness measure is sensitive to differences in both accounting methods and implementation decisions at the firm level and corresponds to the way equity investors use the information in accounting assets. We find that accounting assets contain substantial information about firms' productive capacity (economic capital) and the information is not summarized in several earnings attributes often associated with earnings quality. JEL Classifications: M41; G14; G32.

The halide perovskite X-ray detector can meet the urgent needs of low-dose medical imaging by X-rays. However, there is still a pressing challenge in lacking robust methods for large-scale fabrication of high-quality perovskite films with tunable thickness. Here we report a laminated fabrication of polycrystalline MAPbI3 by using solvent-free liquid perovskite molten-salt (PMS), that offers reduced toxic issue, scalable fabrication, and highly tunability in film thickness. Nylon membrane was chosen as a scaffold for the infiltration of PMS, which simultaneously acts as a physical barrier to suppress the ionic migration in the MAPbI3-nylon composite (denoted as MAPbI3-LLP). The enhanced material properties result in good stability and high performance of X-ray detectors that show low detection limit and high sensitivity. Additionally, single gamma-ray photon detection was realized by MAPbI3-LLP detectors. The promising performance characteristics of such polycrystalline detectors can accelerate the adoption of polycrystalline perovskites in X-ray imaging and gamma-ray detection.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is a major public health emergency characterized by fast spread, a wide range of infections, and enormous control difficulty. Since the end of December 2019, Wuhan has become the first core infection area of China's COVID-19 outbreak. Since March 2020, the domestic worst-hit areas have moved to the Heilongjiang Province due to the increased number of imported COVID-19 cases. Herein, we reported the major COVID-19 outbreak, which caused a rebound of the epidemic in Harbin, China. After the rebound, different levels of causes for the recurrence of COVID-19, including city-level, hospital-level, and medical staff-level cause, were investigated. Meanwhile, corresponding countermeasures to prevent the recurrence of the epidemic were also carried out on the city level, hospital level, and medical staff level, which eventually showed the effect of infection control function in a pandemic. In this study, we described the complete transmission chain, analyzed the causes of the outbreak, and proposed corresponding countermeasures from our practical clinical experience, which can be used as a valuable reference for COVID-19 control.

The satellite-based quantification of cloud radiative forcing remains poorly understood, due largely to the limitation or uncertainties in characterizing cloud-base height (CBH). Here, we use the CBH data from radiosonde measurements over China in combination with the collocated cloud-top height (CTH) and cloud properties from MODIS/Aqua to quantify the impact of CBH on shortwave cloud radiative forcing (SWCRF). The climatological mean SWCRF at the surface (SWCRFSUR), at the top of the atmosphere (SWCRFTOA), and in the atmosphere (SWCRFATM) are estimated to be −97.14, −84.35, and 12.79 W m−2, respectively for the summers spanning 2010 to 2018 over China. To illustrate the role of the cloud base, we assume four scenarios according to vertical profile patterns of cloud optical depth (COD). Using the CTH and cloud properties from MODIS alone results in large uncertainties for the estimation of SWCRFATM, compared with those under scenarios that consider the CBH. Furthermore, the biases of the CERES estimation of SWCRFATM tend to increase in the presence of thick clouds with low CBH. Additionally, the discrepancy of SWCRFATM relative to that calculated without consideration of CBH varies according to the vertical profile of COD. When a uniform COD vertical profile is assumed, the largest SWCRF discrepancies occur during the early morning or late afternoon. By comparison, the two-point COD vertical distribution assumption has the largest uncertainties occurring at noon when the solar irradiation peaks. These findings justify the urgent need to consider the cloud vertical structures when calculating the SWCRF which is otherwise neglected.

The study drew attention to the therapeutic effects of cold snare polypectomy guided by a deep convolutional neural network- (CNN-) based abdominal CT and hot snare polypectomy (HSP) on colonic and rectal polyps. Specifically, 90 patients were enrolled into a blank group, a control (Ctrl) group, and an experimental group. The blank group accepted HSP, the Ctrl accepted cold snare polypectomy, and the experimental group accepted cold snare polypectomy guided by deep CNN-based CT images. It was found that the experimental group had the lowest false-positive rate (9.2%) in polyp detection in contrast with the Ctrl (21.4%) and the blank group (52.3%) P < 0.05 . The complete resection rate of large polyps in the experimental group was the highest P < 0.05 , and its operation time (2.91 ± 0.75 min) was obviously shorter versus the blank group (6.18 ± 1.19 min) P < 0.05 . In conclusion, the cold snare polypectomy under the guidance of deep CNN-based CT has a relatively high complete resection rate and detection accuracy of polyps with a low complication rate, which can be adopted clinically.

The cache-enabled multicast content pushing, which multicasts the content items to multiple users and caches them until requested, is a promising technique to alleviate the heavy network load by enhancing the traffic offloading. This, in turn, has called for the optimization of content pushing strategy while considering both the transmission and caching resources, which jointly result in the complicated coupling among pushing decisions and lead to high computational complexity. Unlike most existing approaches which simplify the pushing problem via bypassing the complicated coupling, in this paper, we propose a multicast content pushing strategy to maximize the offloaded traffic with the cost on content caching based on structured deep learning. Specifically, we design the convolution stage to extract the spatio-temporal correlations of one content item between different pushing decisions, and construct the fully-connected stage to capture the spatial coupling among the decisions of pushing different content items to different user devices. Moreover, to address the absence of the ground truth on multicast content pushing, we relax the transmission constraint to derive a performance upper bound for guiding the training direction. This relaxed problem is solved based on dynamic programming in a bottom-up manner. Compared to the state-of-the-art baselines including both the traditional model-based and the general neural network-based strategies, the proposed pushing strategy achieves significant performance gain in both the random-generated dataset and the real LastFM dataset. In addition, it is also shown that the proposed strategy is robust to the uncertainty of user request information.