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Rapid and accurate pathogen identification is necessary for appropriate treatment of pneumonia. Here, we describe the use of shotgun metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of bronchoalveolar lavage for pathogen identification in pneumonia in a large-scale multicenter prospective study with 159 patients enrolled. The results of mNGS were compared with standard methods including culture, staining, and targeted PCR, and the clinical impact of mNGS was evaluated. A positive impact was defined by a definitive diagnosis made using the mNGS results, or change of management because of the mNGS results, leading to a favorable clinical outcome. Overall, mNGS identified more organisms than standard methods (117 versus 72), detected 17 pathogens that consistently were missed in all cases by standard methods, and had an overall positive clinical impact in 40.3% (64 of 159) of cases. mNGS was especially useful in identification of fastidious and atypical organisms causing pneumonia, contributing to detection of definitive pathogens in 45 (28.3%) cases in which standard results were either negative or insufficient. mNGS also helped reassure antibiotic de-escalation in 19 (11.9%) cases. Overall, mNGS led to a change of treatment in 59 (37.1%) cases, including antibiotic de-escalation in 40 (25.2%) cases. This study showed the significant value of mNGS of bronchoalveolar lavage for improving the diagnosis of pneumonia and contributing to better patient care.

To improve the selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3 over active coke (AC), coal–biomass ACs were prepared from the mixture of poplar and 1/3 coking coal for increasing the active sites. The resultant ACs were characterized by N2 adsorption and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Furthermore, the denitrification performance was tested at laboratory scale. In addition, density functional theory was used to analyze active sites on the surface of AC. The result revealed that, with an increase in poplar content, the decrease in micropores volume appeared in the reduction of denitrification space. However, C−O group including hydroxyl and ether increased with the increase in poplar content, which was found to be most likely responsible for the promoted catalytic activity of AC toward NO reduction mainly because of enhancing NH3 adsorption. The comprehensive effect of two factors made the denitrification ability of AC increased first and then decreased.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to mitigate gender bias in entrepreneurial financing. The authors aim to unveil the role entrepreneurs’ gender played in formal and informal financing under Chinese context, as well as the moderating role corporate social responsibility (CSR) played in such relationships. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts ANOVA test and multiple regression method to empirically examine the relationship of entrepreneurs’ gender, formal financing, informal financing and CSR with second hand data from The Eleventh Private Enterprise Survey covering a sample of firms across China. Findings The results demonstrate that comparing to start-ups led by men, start-ups led by women are less likely to get either formal or informal financing. The results also suggest that CSR negatively moderates the impact entrepreneurs’ gender has on formal financing but not on informal financing. Originality/value By focusing on both formal and informal financing, the research of gender’s effects on firms’ financing has been extended. Also, by proving that CSR can help to mitigate gender bias in formal financing, contribution has also been made to the research field of gender financing. This paper contributes to the CSR literature by sorting out another benefit CSR has in new venture financing. Overall, findings of this study deepen the existing understanding of gender issues in the context of entrepreneurial financing.

Searchable encryption is an efficient and secure solution that can perform search operation in ciphertext on cloud servers. It is widely used by a growing number of businesses and individuals. However, most existing searchable encryption schemes typically overestimate the security level of the cloud server, which is an untrusted and centralized third party in fact. The emergence of blockchain technology solves the trustworthiness problem of the third party with features such as decentralization, verifiability and immutability. The combination of searchable encryption and blockchain technology uses the smart contract instead of the cloud server to execute ciphertext search task, which improves security and efficiency of search significantly. We propose a Fuzzy Multi-keyword Search Scheme for Encrypted Cloud Data based on Multi-chain Network (FMSM). FMSM is a distributed searchable encryption scheme since we adopt a multi-chain architecture. It not only supports fuzzy multi-keyword search and dynamic updates for encrypted cloud data, but also supports parallel processing of data. In FMSM, counting bloom filter and MinHash algorithm are used to construct index vectors and query vectors on the corresponding two chains, besides, the search is done on a third chain. All of these calculation tasks are executed in the way of distributed computing, which makes the index construction and search process more efficient and the sorting results more accurate. The security analysis and performance evaluation show that the FMSM has high security, reliability, search efficiency and accuracy.

Women entrepreneurship is designated as the new engines of economic growth in developing countries. Prior research shows how men and women differ in starting a business, with women normally facing more restrictions on entrepreneurial financing, entrepreneurial growth, and entrepreneurial performance. This has often been explained by gender role, yet we still lack a systematic understanding of how gender roles impact on women's entrepreneurial process in developing countries. In this chapter, we review literatures on female entrepreneurship in developing countries to show how gender role works in developing countries and especially its influence on the intention/entry/business participation and performance of female entrepreneurs.

We developed and tested a model linking safety innovation intention with safety innovation behavior and safety performance. Participants were 407 employees of blasting, chemical, mining, and other high-risk industries in China. The results indicated that safety innovation intention was positively associated with safety performance, and safety innovation behavior played a partial mediating role in this relationship. In addition, safety climate moderated the relationship between safety innovation intention and safety innovation behavior, which mediated the interaction of safety climate and safety innovation behavior in predicting safety performance. The results support the importance of the effect of organizations' subjective intention and climate on their innovation behavior and performance in the safety domain.

The thermal behavior of poplar-fat coal (biomass-coal) blends and organic functional structure of formed coal-char in the co-pyrolysis temperature were investigated using Thermogravimetric analyzer, Differential scanning calorimetry, Mass spectrometry and Attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis. Furthermore, the interactions between poplar and coal during co-pyrolysis were deduced. The results indicate that poplar decomposed prior to the decomposition of fat coal is not surprising, but results also indicate that the presence of poplar enhanced the thermal decomposition of fat coal at low temperature. The occurring interactions showed positive and negative effects with increasing temperature, which could be explained by chemical reaction and physical interaction, respectively. In the blends, these interactions lowered the apparent activation energy and frequency factor. The added poplar had a positive effect on decomposition of the organic functional groups. Interactions would indirectly cause higher hydrocarbon-generating potential and thermal maturity, and reduced aliphatic chains length and aromaticity. The synergistic effects between fat coal and poplar during co-pyrolysis occurred mainly at lower temperature. For the better application of poplar-fat coal blends, the suitable blending ratio of poplar to coal is below 16%. In addition, the pyrolysis temperature should be kept in 345–390 °C to obtain biomass-coal tar.

Scholars striving to start new ventures suffer from high failure rates. Most researchers believe that guanxi networks motivate entrepreneurial growth, but few have paid any attention to the impact of scholars’ guanxi networks on their entrepreneurial activities. We draw upon social capital theory and the resource-based view to explore the effect and mechanism of scholars’ guanxi networks on entrepreneurial performance in the Chinese context. Using survey data from a sample of new ventures in China, we demonstrate that the different dimensions of scholars’ guanxi networks, namely family, community, and political ties are significantly related to entrepreneurial performance. We also find that the positive relationship between guanxi networks and entrepreneurial performance is mediated by resource acquisition (i.e., human, financial, and customer). Specifically, family and community ties are positively related to the three resource acquisitions, while government ties are not positively related to customer resource acquisition. Explanations and directions for future research are discussed.

Pancreatic cancer has an extremely low prognosis, which is attributable to its high aggressiveness, invasiveness, late diagnosis, and lack of effective therapies. Among all the drugs joining the fight against this type of cancer, microtubule-targeting agents are considered to be the most promising. They inhibit cancer cells although through different mechanisms such as blocking cell division, apoptosis induction, etc. Hereby, we review the functions of microtubule cytoskeletal proteins in tumor cells and comprehensively examine the effects of microtubule-targeting agents on pancreatic carcinoma.

We tackle the problem of sharing eHealth data across different jurisdictions. As a general rule, and due to the sensitive nature of the information, different national regulations impose severe limits on what can be exchanged, even in case of emergencies. Furthermore, different systems in different jurisdictions do not communicate. We propose BRUE as a scheme that allows eHealth data to be securely exchanged, with the data subject always in the position of mediation. We combine several technologies, namely, Blockchain, OAuth and User-Managed Access, and concept Receipts, to achieve our aim.

Retailers face a major operational challenge in fulfilling online orders while managing their traditional store-based distribution processes. In this context, the following order fulfillment options available to retailers are considered: store-facing distribution centers (DCs), dedicated order fulfillment facilities (DTCs), retail stores, and direct-fill by vendors. The current study provides an order fulfillment evaluation for the Disposable Products Industry, which is one of the industries that have a tremendous effect over the downstream industries, as it is the source for production. Also, the differences in the factor focus are provided for various parties and countries. The results show that the order fulfillment risk factors identified from various research studies are good enough for the Disposable Products Industry, even though they are not intentionally designed for this highly diversified industry. Among them, sustainability is the most important factor that the companies in the Disposable Products Industry should pay attention to. This is because sustainability is believed to lead to large deviations in various types of order fulfillment losses and incur a higher chance of having the order fulfillment failure for the companies with an international customer base. The companies should focus on how to improve the sustainability (long-term relationships with the various parties along the chain) rather than over-emphasis on the short-term documentation accuracy as the long-term improvement is likely to result in an overall improvement in performance on order fulfillment.

Columnar activated carbons (ACs) were prepared from the bituminous coal/poplar blends using KOH as an activation agent by varying the mass ratio (bituminous coal/poplar and KOH/carbon materials). The specific 2D-NLDFT surface area and total pore volume of the prepared ACs are in the range of 436–825 m2/g and of 0.193–0.360 cm3/g, respectively. The pore size distribution of ACs shows that most of the pores are in the range from large micropores to small mesopores and their distribution can be controlled by both mass ratios. While the obvious differences in surface morphology between the wood and coal phase, as expected from the intrinsic property of the two materials, were observed from SEM images, the former was irregular, heterogeneous, and highly porous, while the latter showed a smooth and regular surface.

// Dong Chen 1, 2, 3, * , Qiang Sun 2, 3, 4, * , Lufei Zhang 2, 3, 4 , Xiaohu Zhou 2, 3, 4 , Xiaofei Cheng 1, 2, 3 , Dongkai Zhou 2, 3, 4 , Feng Ye 1 , Jianjiang Lin 1 and Weilin Wang 2, 3, 4 1 Department of Colorectal Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China 2 Key Laboratory of Precision Diagnosis and Treatment for Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Tumor of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, China 3 State Key Laboratory & Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Disease, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China 4 Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Weilin Wang, email: wam@zju.edu.cn Jianjiang Lin, email: ljjzju@163.com Keywords: colorectal cancer (CRC), HOXA11 antisense RNA (HOXA11-AS), liver metastasis, long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), peptidyl arginine deiminase 2 (PADI2) Received: March 14, 2017 Accepted: June 27, 2017 Published: August 03, 2017 ABSTRACT Several long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in the regulation of liver metastasis in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. We previously described the potential involvement of HOMEOBOX A11 (HOXA11) antisense RNA (HOXA11-AS), miR-125a-5p, and peptidyl arginine deiminase 2 (PADI2) in promoting liver metastasis in CRC patients. In the present study, we verified the significant upregulation of HOXA11-AS and PADI2, as well as the downregulation of miR-125a-5p, in CRC patients with liver metastasis. Overexpression and knockdown studies of HOXA11-AS or PADI2, as well as gain-/loss-of-function studies of miR-125a-5p, revealed a positive correlation between HOXA11-AS and PADI2 and a negative correlation with miR-125a-5p in the regulation of liver metastasis in CRC cell lines. Overall, we conclude that HOXA11-AS promotes liver metastasis in CRC by functioning as a miR-125a-5p sponge and describe a novel HOXA11-AS–miR-125a-5p–PADI2 regulatory network involved in CRC liver metastasis.

Although findings reported in an increasing number of studies shed light on the relationship between optimism and entrepreneurial outcomes, little is known of the mechanisms by which entrepreneurial optimism influences new venture performance. Researchers have found that people who are highly optimistic build more extensive social networks than others do, which can influence the outcome of their efforts. In order to explore the relationships among entrepreneurial optimism, social networks, and new venture performance, we analyzed data obtained from 142 Chinese entrepreneurs. Results indicated that entrepreneurial optimism had a significant impact on social network size, social network heterogeneity, and new venture performance. Social network size fully mediated the relationship between entrepreneurial optimism and new venture performance, but social network heterogeneity did not have a mediating role. These findings support the application of a social network perspective to gain a better understanding of the mechanism by which entrepreneurial optimism influences new venture performance.

With the continuous development of China’s economy, environmental problems are becoming more and more prominent. Since the 18th Party Congress, environmental protection has been incorporated into the national strategy, also the government has come up with development ideas of innovation, harmony, green, open and sharing during the 13th five-year period. As the microeconomic entities, companies are the main resource of environmental pollution. Therefore, enterprise have become the focus of environmental pollution control. Enterprises’ choices of environmental strategy have important meanings to the whole society’s economic and environmental development. It is important to take the study on the influential factors of proactive environmental strategy choice under the constant restraint of environmental rules. In this context, the external environment puts forward high requirements on the entrepreneurs. Facing the changes and demands of environmental strategies, entrepreneurs have to identify risks and opportunities and make decisions to respond in good time. However, the different characteristics and traits of entrepreneurs also influence the coping styles and strategies of entrepreneurs facing changes of environment. In addition, the differences in the nature of the entrepreneur’s enterprise have an impact on the implementation of the relevant business strategy. The enterprise ownership is worth further exploration. Based on the review on the theory of upper echelons, the paper selected entrepreneurs from 6 kinds of industry and 126 companies as the research objects. The paper explored the education level and work experience of entrepreneurs’ characteristics impact on proactive environmental strategy, and investigated the effect of enterprise ownership on the relationship between entrepreneurs’ characteristics and proactive environmental strategy. The paper considered the enterprise ownership as state-owned and non-state-owned. The results showed that entrepreneurs’ environmental education level and environmental work experience have a positive impact on proactive environmental strategy. The results of the regression analysis of the moderating variables show that the different ownership of the enterprise will have different moderating effects on the influence of entrepreneurs’ characteristics on proactive environmental strategy. That is to say, the regulation effect of non-state-owned enterprises on the relationship between entrepreneurs’ characteristics on proactive environmental strategy is greater than that of state-owned enterprises. On this basis, this paper puts forward suggestion as follows: at the entrepreneurial level, entrepreneurs should pay attention to practical knowledge and ability, to accumulate environmental experience, to respond to changes in the environment effectively. At the same time, not only should the entrepreneur have a correct understanding of the environmental protection, but also they have a strong sense of responsibility and mission to transform the concept of environmental protection for practical action, taking environmental protection as a long-term strategic mission. At the government level, they need to help and support enterprises to enhance their experience and innovative ability to cope with external challenges actively. Also, the government should formulate strict and reasonable environmental rules and truly implement environmental strategies.With the continuous development of China’s economy, environmental problems are becoming more and more prominent. Since the 18th Party Congress, environmental protection has been incorporated into the national strategy, also the government has come up with development ideas of innovation, harmony, green, open and sharing during the 13th five-year period. As the microeconomic entities, companies are the main resource of environmental pollution. Therefore, enterprise have become the focus of environmental pollution control. Enterprises’ choices of environmental strategy have important meanings to the whole society’s economic and environmental development. It is important to take the study on the influential factors of proactive environmental strategy choice under the constant restraint of environmental rules. In this context, the external environment puts forward high requirements on the entrepreneurs. Facing the changes and demands of environmental strategies, entrepreneurs have to identify risks and opport...

The building texture features of multi-temporal remote sensing images were introduced into the VGG neural network. Building extraction accuracy of multi-temporal images can reach 90.6%, which is significantly higher than that of single-phase images.

After segmentation, the fast marching method algorithm is employed acquire the initial centerline and the tensor voting is applied for connecting the broken centerline. The correctness of the centerline is up to 95%.

Four Chinese bituminous coals were analyzed using X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and the relationships between structural parameters and coal rank were then established. X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that amorphous and crystalline carbon types exist in coals, and average stacking heights and lateral sizes of the layer structures are various. Good correlations between coal crystalline volume, aromaticity and maximum vitrinite reflectance exist, reflecting their level of maturity. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy analysis shows that A-factor, reflecting the coal hydrocarbon-generating potential, decreases with the increase of maximum vitrinite reflectance. Meanwhile, small values of C-factor and C=O/C=C show little amount of C=O components in coal samples. A good correlation between CH2/CH3 and R0 indicates that the length of aliphatic chains declines with the increase of coal rank. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis shows that the relative amounts of C–C and C–O groups rise with the increase of R0 value. The higher the R0 is, the lower the amount of C vacancy exists, which results in coal reactivity decreasing, all of which suggest that the variety of coal structure mainly depends on the coal rank.

Magneto-optical (MO) imaging can be used to detect weld defects under alternating magnetic field excitation. However, in an alternating magnetic field, an MO sensor is more sensitive to defects perpendicular to the excitation direction than defects with other directions. This paper introduces a rotating magnetic field generated by an orthogonal inducer and proposes a multidirectional MO imaging nondestructive testing (NDT) system using rotating magnetic field excitation for the detection of natural weld defects. The relationship between imaging characteristics of MO images and magnetic field strength is analyzed based on the Faraday rotation effect. A finite element analysis (FEA) model of cruciform weld cracks is established to study the distribution of rotating magnetic fields at different transient time. MO imaging NDT experiments were performed on weld defects including surface crack, subsurface crack, and non-penetration. The finite element model is proved by MO imaging experiments of cruciform weld cracks. Defect information of the MO images is extracted through fusion image technology. The MO imaging effects of weld defects under alternating magnetic field excitation and rotating magnetic field excitation are compared. The maximum difference of image gray value is analyzed to determine the effect difference between the two magnetic fields. Research results show that MO imaging under rotating magnetic field excitation overcomes the limitation of directional detection of MO imaging under alternating magnetic field excitation and effectively realizes the detection of multidirectional invisible weld defects.

The internationalisation performance of enterprises has been affected by many factors. Designing scientific and effective evaluation index system and conducting comprehensive evaluation are important means to help international enterprises to evaluate their internationalisation performance reasonably. This paper comprehensively reviews the research findings of factors influencing internationalisation performance and indexes at home and abroad, focusing on two quantifiable factors of financial performance and structural proportion, and constructs a hierarchy of internationalisation performance evaluation index system. Secondly, artificial neural network (ANN) is used for adaptive training to obtain the optimised connection weights. Finally, the data of some enterprises' internationalisation performance indexes are collected for empirical research to illustrate the rationality and effectiveness of the method.

Biometric authentication, and notably using fingerprints, are now common. Despite its usability, biometrics have however a caveat which is the impossibility of revocation: once the raw fingerprint is breached, and depending on the technology of the reader, it is impossible to stop an illegitimate authentication. This places a focus on auditing both to detect fraud and to have clear indications that the fingerprint has been breached. In this paper we show how to take advantage of the immutability property of Blockchains to design an auditable protocol based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange with applications to fingerprint authentication.

In recent times, there has gained an increasing interest in corporate social responsibility concept initiatives have emerged in developing countries, in particular Kazakhstan. However, many of these studies investigate in the Western and Chinese context of CSR, preferring to rely on theories and hypotheses from studies undertaken developed countries. The Kazakhstani CSR initiatives include laws, and regulations, governmental instructions, non-governmental organizations standard guidance. We develop a historical CSR concept with chronological evaluation. Based on the social, economic, political-environments, with completely different legal systems and cultural influences. This paper contributes to extend mainly considering specific context, and stages of evaluation CSR.

// Weilin Wang 1, 2, 3, * , Pengfei Huang 1, 3, * , Panyisha Wu 2, 3 , Rong Kong 1 , Jiang Xu 1 , Lufei Zhang 1 , Qifan Yang 1 , Qingsong Xie 1 , Linshi Zhang 2 , Xiaohu Zhou 1 , Linghui Chen 1 , Haiyang Xie 1, 3 , Lin Zhou 1, 3 , Shusen Zheng 1, 2, 3 1 Key Lab of Combined Multi-Organ Transplantation, Ministry of Public Health, Hangzhou 310003, China 2 Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Department of Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310003, China 3 Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Hangzhou 310003, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Shusen Zheng, e-mail: shusenzheng@zju.edu.cn Keywords: BCL6B, hepatocellular carcinoma, liver fibrosis, prognostic biomarker Received: February 2, 2015 Accepted: April 14, 2015 Published: April 27, 2015 ABSTRACT B cell CLL/lymphoma 6 member B (BCL6B) is expressed in many normal tissues but expressed at very low levels in cancer tissues. It was reported that BCL6B inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) metastases, but the exact role of BCL6B in HCC remains to be investigated. BCL6B expression was significantly decreased in HCC tissues compared with paired non-cancer tissues. Low BCL6B expression in tumors was correlated with shorter overall survival in patients, and multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that BCL6B expression was an independent prognostic factor for human HCC patients. Moreover, a positive correlation between BCL6B expression and hepatic cirrhosis was found in an analysis of HCC clinicopathological characteristics. BCL6B expression was increased in rat fibrotic liver samples in response to liver injury. BCL6B transgenic rats were less susceptible to hepatocellular damage, inflammation and fibrosis. In vitro studies demonstrated that BCL6B inhibited the activation of hepatic stellate cells though upregulation of hepatocyte growth factor. In addition, transcriptomic microarray analysis was performed to explore the mechanisms in which BCL6B confers protection from tumorigenesis. In conclusion, BCL6B plays a pivotal role as a prognostic biomarker for HCC, and the restoration of BCL6B may be a novel strategy as an anti-fibrogenic therapy for human HCC.

A novel distributed power management scheme is proposed in this paper for a DC microgrid system, which is enabled by Solid-State transformer (SST). The proposed system includes distributed renewable energy resource (DRER) and distributed energy storage device (DESD). The proposed distributed control algorithm, which only relies on the local information and guarantees full utilization of each module in the system based on their characteristics, is applied to both SST and DC microgrid. To this end, a simulation platform is developed in MATLAB/Simulink, in which Photovoltaic (PV), fuel cell and battery are selected as the typical DRERs and DESD, respectively. Lastly, several typical case studies are carried out and the simulation results verify the proposed distributed power management.

S-1 monotherapy is widely used following gemcitabine failure in pancreatic cancer, especially in East Asia. We performed a meta-analysis to determine whether S-1-based combination therapy had better efficacy and safety compared with S-1 monotherapy. We searched Pubmed, Web of Science, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Cochrane CENTRAL and subsequently included five trials with a total of 690 patients. The combined hazard ratio (HR) or risk ratio; the corresponding 95% confidence intervals of progression-free survival, overall survival, and overall response rate; and grade 3–4 adverse events were examined. Five randomized controlled trials were included. Meta-analysis demonstrated S-1-based combination therapy significantly increased progression-free survival (HR = 0.78, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67–0.90, p = 0.0009) and overall response rate (HR = 1.74, 95% CI: 1.20–2.52, p = 0.003). Evidence was insufficient to confirm that S-1-based combined regimens improved overall survival (HR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.75–1.00, p = 0.05). There was no significant difference in adverse events between the two treatment arms. In conclusion, S-1-based combination therapy improved progression-free survival and overall response rate compared to S-1 monotherapy with acceptable toxicity.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play crucial roles in cancer occurrence and progression. However, the relationship between the expression levels of lncRNAs and the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) process is unclear. The goal of this study was to determine the expression level of ZNF674-AS1, a newly found lncRNA, in HCC and its clinical association. The expression of ZNF674-AS1 in 137 pairs of tumorous and adjacent normal tissues from patients with HCC was detected by quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Additionally, the potential associations between its level in HCC tissue and clinicopathological features were analyzed. The expression of ZNF674-AS1 in the HCC cell lines HepG2, HCCLM3, SK-Hep1, HuH7, Hep3B, and MHCC97H was significantly downregulated compared with that in the normal liver cell line QSG-7701. The expression of ZNF674-AS1 was downregulated in 72% (99/137) of HCC tissues compared with that in paired adjacent normal tissues (p<0.01). The results showed that the ZNF674-AS1 expression level was significantly correlated with metastasis (p=0.041), clinical stage (p=0.039), and histopathologic grading (p=0.045). In addition, the Kaplan–Meier survival curves revealed that low ZNF674-AS1 expression was associated with poor prognosis in patients with HCC. Our data suggest that ZNF674-AS1 may play some role during cancer occurrence and progression and may be a new biomarker for HCC.

Background The mitochondrial GTPase mitofusin-2 (MFN2) gene encodes a mitochondrial membrane protein that can induce apoptosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) via the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway, as validated in our previous research. However, little is known of the clinical significance of MFN2 expression and its signaling pathways in HCC. Methods MFN2 mRNA expression in tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissues from 115 patients with HCC was investigated using quantitative real-time PCR. The association of the MFN2 mRNA expression level with clinical and pathological parameters was evaluated statistically, while a comparative microarray analysis was used to identify MFN2 signaling pathways in HepG2 cells. Results MFN2 was significantly (p

An adaptive virtual resistor-based controller is proposed to resolve the high-frequency resonance and controller instability issues associated with the integration of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) with different grid conditions. The issues related to grid integration of PHEVs are presented and analyzed. When connected with different grids, the variety of grid impedance, results in the instability of the controller with fixed compensation gain. The proposed controller uses grid current and filter capacitor current to form a virtual resistor controller. Furthermore, the resonant frequency is extracted and is the criterion used to tune the compensation gain to make the proposed control behave as a controllable virtual resistor. The control-loop modeling, design, and analysis are presented. The adaptive tuning capability is analyzed. The control loop is designed under different grid conditions and the control robustness to the impedance variation is examined. The experimental results verify that the proposed controller can be applied to a wide range of grid conditions stably and can also achieve good performance with regard to total and individual harmonics.

OBJECTIVES This study sought to observe transfection of pancreatic cancer cells BxPC-3 with recombinant plasmid pSilencer4.1-cytomegalovirus neo-hTERT-siRNA and examine the combined effect of gemcitabine and siRNA inhibition of telomerase on pancreatic cancer cells. MATERIALS AND METHODS Transfected pancreatic cancer cells BxPC-3 with recombinant plasmid pSilencer4.1-cytomegalovirus neo-hTERT-siRNA were selected as target and divided into 9 groups: (1) T1 group (pSilencer4.1-CMV neo-hTERT1-siRNA), (2) T2 group (pSilencer4.1-CMV neo-hTERT2-siRNA), (3) L group (Lipofectamine) (4) M group (mismatch group pSilence4.1-CMV, as negative control), (5) C group (cell group without transfection), (6) blank and gemcitabine group, (7) mismatch siRNA and gemcitabine group, (8) hTERT1-siRNA and gemcitabine group, and (9) hTERT2-siRNA and gemcitabine group. Expression of hTERT mRNA was detected by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Viability of cells was measured by colorimetric 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-Diphenyltetrazolium Bromide assay. Cell cycle and cell apoptosis were measured by flow cytometry. Expression of telomerase protein was measured by Western blot. RESULTS Compared with the L group, M group, and C group, expression of hTERT-mRNA and the level of telomerase protein in T1 and T2 group was down-regulated significantly (P < .05), viability of BxPC-3 cells decreased significantly (P < .05), the ratio of cells in G(0)/G(1) stage increased, the ratio of cells in the S stage and the G(2)/M stage decreased, and the ratio of apoptotic cells increased significantly in the T1 and T2 groups. Gemcitabine treatment had a comparable effect. Combination hTERT siRNA and gemcitabine killed twice as many cancer cells, showing a cumulative effect of the treatments. CONCLUSIONS Transfection of pancreatic cancer cells BxPC-3 with recombinant plasmid pSilencer4.1-CMV neo-hTERT-siRNA represents good RNAi silencing and anti-pancreatic cancer effects in vitro and could potentiate the cytotoxic effect of gemcitabine to pancreatic cancer cells.

10-kV silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are currently being developed by a number of organizations in the U.S. with prospective applications in high-voltage and high-frequency power-electronic systems. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the high-frequency and high-temperature capability of 10-kV SiC MOSFETs in the application of a dc/dc boost converter. In this study, 10-kV SiC MOSFET and junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diode were characterized and modeled in SPICE. Following this, a dc/dc boost converter based on a 10-kV 10-A MOSFET and a 10-kV 5-A JBS diode was designed and tested under continuous operation for frequencies up to 25 kHz. The boost converter had an output voltage of 4 kV, an output power of 4 kW, and operated with a junction temperature of 174degC for the SiC MOSFET. The fast-switching speed, low losses, and high-temperature operation capability of 10-kV SiC MOSFETs demonstrated in the dc/dc boost converter make them attractive for high-frequency and high-voltage power-conversion applications.

This paper presents a multi-spectral infrared image processing method, including image recovery, radiometric and geometric correction. Image recovery including pixel filled, positive and negative dislocation correcting sweep, reverse sweep consistency correction, within spectrum response consistency correction, B7 spectrum to interfere, B8 spectral, missing lines filled, B9 band interpolation, B9 band to pinstripe, B9 band to band tailing. Geometric correction includes cause deformation imaging projection, change curvature of the earth image distortion, the impact of atmospheric refraction, the earth's rotation correction. Compared with the prior methods, the research on image processing level has been significantly improved, this study method using technology to make the project a significant improvement in image quality than before.

The clinical importance of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) of the pancreas has been increasing due to the large number of newly diagnosed cases. A meta-analysis was used to assess the accuracy of serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) for the identification of malignant and invasive IPMN. A literature search of PubMed and Web of Knowledge was conducted. Studies included in the analysis addressed the diagnostic accuracy of serum CEA and CA19-9 and pooled estimates of sensitivity, specificity, positive- and negative-likelihood ratios (PLR and NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and receiver operating characteristic curves were calculated using random-effects models. Predefined subgroup analysis was performed. Fifteen studies (published between 2001 and 2013) were analyzed, including a total of 1,629 patients. Pooled estimates of CEA in malignant and invasive IPNM prediction were: Pooled sensitivity, 18 and 18%; pooled specificity, 93 and 95%; PLR, 2.83 and 3.54; NLR, 0.89 and 0.89; and DOR, 3.35 and 3.6, respectively. Pooled estimates of CA19-9 in malignant and invasive IPMN prediction were: Pooled sensitivity, 40 and 52%; pooled specificity, 89 and 88%; PLR, 2.93 and 3.78; NLR, 0.74 and 0.6; and DOR, 4.34 and 6.33, respectively. In conclusion, serum CEA has low sensitivity and high specificity for malignant and invasive IPMN. Serum CA19-9 is a useful non-invasive preoperative tool for differentiating between invasive and benign IPMN and should be taken into account in the decision to perform surgery.

Background The enhanced liver fibrosis test (ELF) has been shown to accurately predict significant liver fibrosis in several liver diseases. Aims To perform a meta-analysis to assess the performance of the ELF test for the assessment of liver fibrosis. Study Electronic and manual searches were performed to identify studies of the ELF test. After methodological quality assessment and data extraction, pooled estimates of the sensitivity, specificity, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and summary receiver operating characteristics (sROC) were assessed systematically. The extent of heterogeneity and reasons for it were assessed. Results Nine studies were identified for analysis. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive LR, negative LR, and DOR values of ELF test, for assessment of significant liver fibrosis, were 83% (95% CI = 0.80–0.86), 73% (95% CI = 0.69–0.77), 4.00 (95% CI = 2.50–6.39), 0.24 (95% CI = 0.17–0.34), and 16.10 (95% CI = 8.27–31.34), respectively; and, for evaluation of severe liver fibrosis, were 78% (95% CI = 0.74–0.81), 76% (95% CI = 0.73–0.78), 4.39 (95% CI = 2.76–6.97), 0.27 (95% CI = 0.16–0.46), and 16.01 (95% CI: 7.15–35.82), respectively; and, for estimation of cirrhosis, were 80% (95% CI = 0.75–0.85), 71% (95% CI = 0.68–0.74), 3.13 (95% CI = 2.01–4.87), 0.29 (95% CI = 0.19–0.44), and 14.09 (95% CI: 5.43–36.59), respectively. Conclusions The ELF test shows good performance and considerable diagnostic value for the prediction of histological fibrosis stage.

In this paper, an LCL filter is proposed to replace L-type filter in a dc/dc converter for battery charging applications. The merits of using an LCL filter are compact size, and extremely low ripple of charging current. The ripple free charging can reduce the heat generated by the ripple of the charging current and improve the battery lifetime. Filter based controller is proposed to solve the control loop instability issue caused by LCL filter. Low-pass filter and notch filter based controllers are designed and compared. The controller robustness to the variation of the filter parameters is investigated. The proposed system and control methods are verified by simulation and experiment.

Using hperspectral remote sensing information method to extract geothermal resources information, choosing different objects feature parameters and classification methods, such as false color composite and enhanced processing, single-band pseudo-color image synthesis, spectral angle mapping, linear spectral unmixing, extracting geothermal energy information, achieved good results.

Solid state transformer (SST) is considered the key unit for power processing and conversion in the future distributed renewable energy network. The role of SST is to enable the active management of distributed energy resources, energy storage devices and different type of loads in a distribution grid. Inverter stage of SST supplies sinusoidal voltage to the users. In this paper an improved inductor current control based on active harmonics injection is proposed to overcome the drawback of inferior performance of conventional inductor current feedback control for the nonlinear loads. The inductor current overshoot during the load transient is investigated by using both capacitor current feedback control and inductor current feedback control. The inductor current feedback control has the capability to limit current overshoot even with a smaller inductor, which shows the potential to further reduce the size and weight of the passive components.

The digital controller is the “heart” of the PV system: it will track the maximum power point (MPP) and regulates the output current to meet the utility inter-connection standards. This paper introduced a new approach “model based design” to develop digital controller for PV inverter. This design methodology filled the gap between computer simulation and hardware implementation of the digital controller and made an easy way for the implementation of complex and high level algorithm in a digital signal processor (DSP) [1]. With the model based technique, a double loop current controller is designed based on inverter's small signal model in D-Q rotating frame. Also a Perturbation & Observation (P&O) algorithm [2] is implemented for maximum power point tracking (MPPT). The digital controller model has been verified by simulation in MATLAB. Then the controller has been implemented with a TI's DSP TMS320F28335 and tested on a PV inverter prototype with solar panels.

In this paper, a bi-directional battery charger is applied as an interface between plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and the grid. The major issue of using power electronics interface for grid integration of PHEVs is high frequency resonance. This resonance is caused by a high order filter, which is composed of the charger's LC filter and the grid impedance. An active damping method is proposed to mitigate the resonance. The modeling and controller design are presented. The damping performance to both the converter output harmonics and the grid harmonics are analyzed. The proposed controller can effectively reduce the high frequency resonance on the grid current. The proposed method is verified by the simulation and experiment.

This paper proposes a simplified current controller for any general N-level converter based on space vector (SV) theory. Through the presented mapping technique between the subhexagon of the N-level converter and the hexagon of the two-level converter, the proper output voltage vector of the N-level converter can be identified to suppress harmonic current content in steady state and attain fast current response in transient state. Meanwhile, the redundant switching states of the voltage vectors can be used to reduce or balance the device power losses, and regulate floating capacitor voltages. The controller complexity is greatly reduced due to the use of very simple lookup tables, thus it can be easily extended to any general N-level converter. The proposed scheme is explained for a five-level active NPC converter and the simulation results are presented to prove its correctness.

There is a growing interest on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV's) due to energy security and green house gas emission issues, as well as the low electricity fuel cost. As battery capacity and all-electric range of PHEV's are improved, and potentially some PHEV's or EV's need fast charging, there is increased demand to build high power off-board charging infrastructures. A charge station architecture for municipal parking decks has been proposed, which has a DC microgrid to interface with multiple DC-DC chargers, distributed renewable power generations and energy storage, and provides functionalities of normal and rapid charging, grid support such as reactive and real power injection (including V2G), current harmonic filtering and load balance. Several non-isolated bidirectional DC-DC converters suited for charge station applications have been reviewed and compared, as the major focus of this paper. Half bridge converter is a good candidate but it is difficult to maintain high efficiency in wide battery pack voltage range. A variable frequency pulse width modulation (VFPWM) scheme is proposed to mitigate this issue. Finally three-level bi-directional DC-DC converter is suggested to be employed in this application. A 10kW prototype verifies that 95.1–97.9% full load efficiency can be achieved in charging mode with 180–360V battery pack voltage. In addition, the inductor size is only one third of the half bridge counterpart, which is a great advantage for high power converters.

The Solid State Transformer (SST) is one of the key elements proposed in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Generation-III Engineering Research Center (ERC) “Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management” (FREEDM) Systems Center. The SST is used to enable active management of distributed renewable energy resources, energy storage devices and loads. In this paper, the Generation-I SST single-phase 20kVA, based on 6.5kV Si-IGBT is proposed for interface with 12kV distribution system voltage. The SST system design parameters, overall system efficiency, high frequency transformer design, dual active bridge converter, auxiliary power supply and gate drives are investigated. Design considerations and experimental results of the prototype SST are reported.

The main objective for a grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) inverter is to feed the harvested energy from PV panels to the grid with high efficiency and high power quality. A digital controller is the “heart” of the PV system: it calculates the maximum power point (MPP) and regulates the output current to meet the utility inter-connection standards. This paper introduced a new approach “model based design” to develop current controller for PV inverter. This design methodology filled the gap between computer simulation and hardware implementation of the digital controller and made an easy way for the implementation of complex and high level algorithm in a digital signal processor (DSP) [1]. The inverter's small signal model in D-Q rotating frame is derived and a double loop current controller is designed. The performance of the developed controller has been verified by both of the simulation in MATLAB and experimental results from a 2kW single phase PV inverter prototype.

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is one promising feature of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A comprehensive comparison between the three-leg converter and H-bridge converter applied to vehicle-to-grid applications is made. This comparison focuses on the converter's passive components, power consumption and control effort. A three-leg converter with an LCL filter designed for a typical American household electric system is proposed. This converter has both vehicle-to-grid function and stand-alone function with high performance.

A new multi-function bi-directional battery charger for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) is proposed based on the power circuitry configuration of an American house. This bi-directional charger can achieve three functions including battery charging, vehicle to grid (V2G) and vehicle to home (V2H), all of which are the major research areas of PHEV's integration with the power grid. The integration infrastructure and practical design issues are analyzed. The multiple control loop designs are presented for the three operation modes. Simulation and experimental results verify the functions and performance of the proposed charger. With the capability of achieving multiple functions, the bi-directional charger will contribute and enhance grid related research of PHEVs.

The distributed power flow controller (DPFC) based-on Emitter Turn-Off (ETO) light converter is one newly proposed solid state power electronics technology based Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices which is effective to control the active power flow through the transmission lines. This modular DPFC has low cost, high reliability and makes it possible to have the transformerless connection to the existing power grid. In this paper, the development and analysis of modeling techniques and feedback schemes based on per phase control of DPFC are proposed. The simulation results and experimental results show the consistency of the propose model and the feasibility of the feedback control design for the DPFC per-phase operation.

A new bi-directional power converter for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) is proposed based on a typical household circuitry configuration. This converter can achieve three major functions: battery charger mode, vehicle to grid mode (V2G) and vehicle to home mode (V2H), which are the main topics of integration of PHEVs with the grid. The detailed converter design is presented. An improved AC/DC controller is proposed in order to achieve low input current harmonics for the charger mode. The Proportional resonant+harmonics selective compensation method is utilized for the V2G mode, and capacitor current feedback and proportional resonant control methods are adopted for the V2H mode. Compared with conventional PI controllers, the proposed controllers greatly enhance the grid-connected converter's performance in the aspects of low harmonics output and robustness against background noise.