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Background and Aims Stool DNA testing is an emerging and attractive option for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. We previously evaluated the feasibility of a stool DNA (sDNA) test of methylated SDC2 for CRC detection. The aim of this study was to assess its performance in a multicenter clinical trial setting. Methods Each participant was required to undergo a sDNA test and a reference colonoscopy. The sDNA test consists of quantitative assessment of methylation status of SDC2 promoter. Results of real-time quantitative methylation-specific PCR were dichotomized as positive and negative, and the main evaluation indexes were sensitivity, specificity, and kappa value. All sDNA tests were performed and analyzed independently of colonoscopy. Results Among the 1110 participants from three clinical sites analyzed, 359 and 38 were diagnosed, respectively, with CRC and advanced adenomas by colonoscopy. The sensitivity of the sDNA test was 301/359 (83.8%) for CRC, 16/38 (42.1%) for advanced adenomas, and 134/154 (87.0%) for early stage CRC (stage I–II). Detection rate did not vary significantly according to age, tumor location, differentiation, and TNM stage, except for gender. The follow-up testing of 40 postoperative patients with CRC returned negative results as their tumors had been surgically removed. The specificity of the sDNA test was 699/713 (98.0%), and unrelated cancers and diseases did not seem to interfere with the testing. The kappa value was 0.84, implying an excellent diagnostic consistency between the sDNA test and colonoscopy. Conclusion Noninvasive sDNA test using methylated SDC2 as the exclusive biomarker is a clinically viable and accurate CRC detection method. Chinese Clinical Trial Registry Chi-CTR-TRC-1900026409, retrospectively registered on October 8, 2019; http://www.chictr.org.cn/edit.aspx?pid=43888&htm=4.

In recent years, the chaos-based cryptographic algorithms have attracted a lot of attention. Specially, chaotic tent map (CTM)-based schemes show some good performances in randomness properties and security level. However, several shortcomings still can be found from them. In this paper, based on the security analysis of the pure CTM-based scheme, we propose a novel image encryption algorithm by using the combination of the rectangular transform and the CTM principle. It encrypts the three channels of the plain image at the same time, and these channel encryptions associate with each other. In addition, by generating the key streams related to both the secret keys and the plain image, its key-sensitivity has been further improved. The security of the proposed scheme has been verified by security analysis and experimental evaluations, and our results show that many drawbacks of pure CTM-based schemes have been overcome.

Study purpose: Previously, we had a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of a stool DNA test of methylated Syndycan-2 (SDC2) for colorectal cancer (CRC) detection. The purpose of this continuing investigation was to assess the performance of this test in a multicenter hospital-based setting. Methods: Each participant was required to undergo both a stool DNA test and a reference colonoscopy. The stool DNA test assesses the methylation status of a single target of SDC2 gene. Results of real-time methylation-specific PCR were dichotomized as positive and negative by a prespecified cut-off value. The main evaluation indexes were sensitivity, specificity, and kappa value, which was used to assess the diagnostic consistency between stool DNA test and colonoscopy. Tests were performed in blinded fashion and processed independently of the colonoscopic results. Results: Among the 1110 participants from three hospitals included for analysis, 359 and 38 had CRC and advanced adenomas, respectively, according to colonoscopy findings. The sensitivity of the stool DNA test was 83.8% for CRC and 42.1% for advanced adenomas. For CRC at early stage confined to bowel wall (I to II), the sensitivity was 87.0%. Detection rate for CRC did not vary significantly according to age, tumor location, differentiation, and TNM stage, except for gender (P=0.041). The specificity of the stool DNA test was 98.0% among participants with nonadvanced colorectal neoplasia, non-neoplastic disorders, or negative results on colonoscopy. Diagnostic consistency for CRC assessed by kappa value was 0.84, indicating that the agreement in outcome between the stool DNA test and colonoscopy was excellent. Conclusion: Noninvasive stool DNA test using methylated SDC2 as a molecular marker was a sensitive and accurate method for CRC detection. Citation Format: Jianping Wang, Side Liu, Hui Wang, Lei Zheng, Changchun Zhou, Guoxin Li, Rongkang Huang, Huaiming Wang, Chujun Li, Xinjuan Fan, Xinhui Fu, Xinying Wang, Hongliang Guo, Jie Guan, Yanlai Sun, Xilin Song, Zengjun Li, Dianbin Mu, Jujie Sun, Xianglin Liu, Yan Qi, Feng Niu, Chunhua Chen, Xiaolin Wu, Xianshu Wang, Xianrang Song, Hongzhi Zou. A multicenter clinical study of stool DNA test of methylated syndecan-2 for colorectal cancer detection [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 4611.

Despite great advances in lipid-lowering therapy, the gender-based disparities in lipid goal success among Chinese coronary heart disease (CHD) patients receiving lipid-lowering treatment remained uncharacterized. Furthermore, little is known about potential causes for this gender imbalance. This cross-sectional trial included 25 697 patients treated with lipid-lowering agents from 122 centres between April 2012 and October 2012; data for 9420 participants with CHD were analysed in the present study; all underwent clinical examination and had their latest fasting lipid profiles while on lipid-lowering therapy recorded. Logistic regression was used to explore possible factors associated with gender disparity in goal attainment rates, and to what extent each factor contributes. Of 9420 CHD patients (42.5% women) evaluated, women had a significantly lower overall low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) success rate than men (46.2 vs. 62.7%, P < 0.0001). Among CHD patients with diabetes, only 31.5% of women and 46.4% of men ( P < 0.0001) attained the optional LDL-C target of

In order to develop the peripheral part of Daqing oilfield, one mixed bacteria system was screened and used for microbial flooding on Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR) process in Daqing low permeability oilfield where there are huge resource potentials but many disadvantageous conditions. From 2004 to 2009, Microbial flooding field test was conducted in Chaoyanggou oilfield. In 2004, Microbial flooding pilot test with 2 injectors and 10 producers was carried out. Seven out of 10 oil wells showed effective results, with 14.5 thousand tons of accumulative incremental oil. In October 2009, expanding field test with 9 injectors and 24 producers was carried out in the same block. By now, 15 oil wells have shown good effect. The daily oil production increased from 32.4 tons to 43.2 tons and the incremental oil amounts to 9370 tons. The microbial flooding results showed that wells along the main channel sand and developed fracture zones had a better response.

A novel Null-type sampling nozzle with six sampling holes was developed to measure the particle concentrations and size distributions in high-pressure natural gas flows under isokinetic sampling conditions. The isokinetic sampling performances of sampling nozzles were investigated by experiments and numerical simulations with standard κ–e turbulent model. The maximum deviation between the experimental and numerical data was less than 4%. In order to ensure reliability and stability, sampling nozzles were calibrated in standard wind tunnel. Furthermore, this novel Null-type sampling nozzle was used to measure the separation efficiency of filter with an operation pressure of 6.0 MPa in a natural gas compressor station. The results of experiment and numerical simulation show that the new Null-type sampling nozzles have relatively smaller isokinetic sampling errors and reliable sampling efficiencies, which enable it competent to sample high-pressure natural gas.

This paper focuses the multi-robot cooperative simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. First, we proposed a decoupled fashion of the map building. Through this fashion, each robot builds the local sub-map independently. The sub-map fusion approach based on Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is provided. Second, we implemented the active motion of each robot during the local sub-map building process. Each robot will choose the optimized control input of the next step. The optimal objective for this paper is to address the accuracy, the information gain, and the multi-robots cooperation. Finally, an experiment system called IIPSLAMPlatform is built to implement the multi-robot cooperative map building. The IIPSLAMPlatform is built in hybrid architecture. The experiments are conducted under this experiment system. We also compared the multi-robot map building with the single robot condition from the view of uncertainty. The result shows the advantage of multi-robot map building.