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The unlimited possibilities of machine learning have been shown in several successful reports and applications. However, how to make sure that the searched results of a machine learning system are not tampered by anyone and how to prevent the other users in the same network environment from easily getting our private data are two critical research issues when we immerse into powerful machine learning-based systems or applications. This situation is just like other modern information systems that confront security and privacy issues. The development of blockchain provides us an alternative way to address these two issues. That is why some recent studies have attempted to develop machine learning systems with blockchain technologies or to apply machine learning methods to blockchain systems. To show what the combination of blockchain and machine learning is capable of doing, in this paper, we proposed a parallel framework to find out suitable hyperparameters of deep learning in a blockchain environment by using a metaheuristic algorithm. The proposed framework also takes into account the issue of communication cost, by limiting the number of information exchanges between miners and blockchain.

Muscles serve as a critical regulator of locomotion and damping, resulting in changes of soft tissue vibration. However, whether muscle fibre compositions of different individuals will cause different extents of soft tissue vibration during gait is unclear. Therefore, this study investigated the differences in lower extremity vibration frequencies among power-trained and non-power-trained athletes during walking and running. Twelve weightlifting athletes were assigned to the power-trained group and twelve recreational runners were assigned to the non-power-trained group. Accelerometers were used to detect soft tissue compartment vibration frequencies of the rectus femoris (RF) and gastrocnemius medialis (GMS) during walking and running. Results indicated that power-trained athletes, as compared to the non-power-trained, induced significantly (p 0.05) higher vibration frequencies in their soft tissue compartments during walking and running. This suggests that power-trained athletes, who have higher ratios of fatigable fast-twitch muscle fibres, may have induced higher soft tissue compartment vibration frequencies. As a result, there is a likelihood that power-trained athletes may recruit more fatigable fast-twitch muscle fibres during muscle tuning, causing dysfunctions during prolonged exercises.

The Infectious Disease Surveillance of Pediatrics (ISPED) program was established in 2015 to monitor and analyze the trends of bacterial epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in children. Clinical bacterial isolates were collected from 11 tertiary care children’s hospitals in China in 2016 to 2020. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out using the Kirby-Bauer method or automated systems, with interpretation according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute 2019 breakpoints. A total of 288,377 isolates were collected, and the top 10 predominant bacteria were Escherichia coli, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenzae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii. In 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic year, we observed a significant reduction in the proportion of respiratory tract samples (from 56.9% to 44.0%). A comparable reduction was also seen in the primary bacteria mainly isolated from respiratory tract samples, including S. pneumoniae, H. influenzae, and S. pyogenes. Multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in children were commonly observed and presented higher rates of drug resistance than sensitive strains. The proportions of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP), carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB), carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa (CRPA), and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains were 19.7%, 46.4%%, 12.8%, and 35.0%, respectively. The proportions of CRKP, CRAB, and CRPA strains all showed decreasing trends between 2015 and 2020. Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and CRPA gradually decreased with age, while CRAB showed the opposite trend with age. Both CRE and CRPA pose potential threats to neonates. MDROs show very high levels of AMR and have become an urgent threat to children, suggesting that effective monitoring of AMR and antimicrobial stewardship among children in China are required. IMPORTANCE AMR, especially that involving multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), is recognized as a global threat to human health; AMR renders infections increasingly difficult to treat, constituting an enormous economic burden and producing tremendous negative impacts on patient morbidity and mortality rates. There are many surveillance programs in the world to address AMR profiles and MDRO prevalence in humans. However, published studies evaluating the overall AMR rates or MDRO distributions in children are very limited or are of mixed quality. In this study, we showed the bacterial epidemiology and resistance profiles of primary pathogens in Chinese children from 2016 to 2020 for the first time, analyzed MDRO distributions with time and with age, and described MDROs’ potential threats to children, especially low-immunity neonates. Our study will be very useful to guide antiinfection therapy in Chinese children, as well as worldwide pediatric patients.

Global food insecurity is becoming more severe under the threat of rising global carbon dioxide concentrations, increasing population, and shrinking farmlands and their degeneration. We acquired the ISI Web of Science platform for over 31 years (1988–2018) to review the research on how climate change impacts global food security, and then performed cluster analysis and research hotspot analysis with VosViewer software. We found there were two drawbacks that exist in the current research. Firstly, current field research data were defective because they were collected from various facilities and were hard to integrate. The other drawback is the representativeness of field research site selection as most studies were carried out in developed countries and very few in developing countries. Therefore, more attention should be paid to developing countries, especially some African and Asian countries. At the same time, new modified mathematical models should be utilized to process and integrate the data from various facilities and regions. Finally, we suggested that governments and organizations across the world should be united to wrestle with the impact of climate change on food security.

Diastolic dysfunction is an emerging challenge among hemodialysis (HD) patients, and the associations between serum zinc with echocardiographic parameters and diastolic function remain uncertain. A total of 185 maintenance HD patients were stratified by the tertiles of serum zinc level to compare their clinical characteristics and echocardiography. Correlations of serum zinc levels with echocardiographic parameters were examined using Pearson’s analysis. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate the determinants of E/e’ ratio &gt, 15 and left atrial volume index (LAVI) &gt, 34 mL/m2, both indicators of diastolic dysfunction. Patients belonging to the first tertile of serum zinc level had a significantly higher E/e’ ratio and LAVI. Serum zinc levels were negatively correlated with E (r = −0.204, p = 0.005), E/e’ ratio (r = −0.217, p = 0.003), and LAVI (r = −0.197, p = 0.007). In a multivariate analysis, older age, diabetes, coronary artery disease, and lower serum zinc levels (OR = 0.974, 95% CI = 0.950–0.999, p = 0.039) were significantly associated with E/e’ ratio &gt, 15. Furthermore, diabetes and lower serum zinc levels (OR = 0.978, 95% CI = 0.958–0.999, p = 0.041) were significantly associated with LAVI &gt, 34 mL/m2. Reduced serum zinc level was significantly associated with diastolic dysfunction among HD patients. Further prospective studies are warranted to investigate whether zinc supplementation can attenuate cardiac dysfunction in maintenance HD patients.

This paper proposed an intelligent plant disease detection system that uses the modified Alexnet. As a convolutional neural network (CNN), Alexnet is good at objection detection from images. However, plant disease detection by the leaf image is a difficult task compared to traditional object detection. Therefore, Alexnet is modified for the different size images and angles to fit the requirement of a practical scenario. A training corpus gathered from the internet and with human leveling is used to train the detection models. According to the experimental results, the proposed approach achieves a good performance.

BACKGROUND Acupuncture, which has many good effects and few adverse effects, is widely recognized as an alternative therapy for depression in clinical practice. This study aimed to explore the mechanism of acupuncture in antidepressant treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS In this experiment, Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: control, chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS), acupuncture, and fluoxetine groups. The CUMS, acupuncture, and fluoxetine groups were orphaned and subjected to chronic unpredictable stress for 6 weeks, and the acupuncture and fluoxetine groups were treated with their respective intervention in weeks 4-6. The body weight of rats was monitored weekly. After behavioral tests were completed, serum, feces, and hippocampal tissue of rats were collected. RESULTS The results showed that the acupuncture and fluoxetine treatments could alleviate the behavioral changes caused by CUMS. The treatments increased the total distance of rat crossing in the open-field test, prolonged the activity time of the open cross maze in the open arm, and improved the rate of sucrose consumption in the sucrose preference test. In addition, both the decreased level of dopamine (DA) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in serum and hippocampus caused by CUMS were improved after the treatments with acupuncture and fluoxetine, and the decreased expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling and the astrocytes in the hippocampus caused by CUMS were increased after the treatments with acupuncture and fluoxetine. Acupuncture and fluoxetine also decreased the ß isoform of calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II in the hippocampus, which was increased by CUMS. Furthermore, acupuncture regulated intestinal microbial disorders caused by CUMS, which reduced the relative abundance ratio of Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes in rats. CONCLUSIONS Our experimental results indicate that acupuncture can alleviate depression-like performance in CUMS rats by regulating intestinal microbes and neurotransmitters.

Background: Acupuncture therapy in Traditional Chinese Medicine has been widely believed as a complementary treatment for depression with numerous clinic and research reports. However, mechanisms of neural plasticity about the positive effects of acupuncture still rarely reported. The purpose of our paper aim to investigate the efficiency of acupuncture in curing depressive-like behaviors and discuss the mechanism underling neural plasticity and its related proteins BDNF/PSD95/SYN/PKMZ in prefrontal cortex.Methods: 32 rats with the same baseline were divided into 4 groups at random: control group(8rats), model group(8rats), acupuncture group(8rats) and flouxetine group(8rats). Depression rat models were induced by chronic unpredictable mild stress combined with single cage isolation for 6 weeks. Acupuncture group and fluoxetine group then give 3-weeks treatment during the later 3weeks of modeling procedure. The open field test (OFT), elevated-plus-maze (EPM) and sucrose preference test (SPT) were executed to estimate the depressive behaviors. The number of nerve cells, the length of dendrites, and the spines density in prefrontal cortex were observed by Golgi staining. The expression of prefrontal cortex BDNF, PSD95, SYN and PKMZ protein were detected by western blot and their related mRNA were detected by RT-PCR.Results: Acupuncture could alleviate depressive-like behaviors and promote the recovery of the neural plasticity functions in prefrontal cortex, which exerted similar antidepressant effect as fluoxetine, increasing cells number, prolonging the dendrites length, enhancing the spine density. Conclusion: Acupuncture therapy could alleviate depressive-like behaviors which may contribute to the recovery of the neural plasticity functions and the repair of neural plasticity-related proteins BDNF/PSD95/SYN/PKMZ in the prefrontal cortex of CUMS-induced depressed rats.

Excessive utilization of chemical fertilizers (CF) is not a sustainable agricultural development strategy due to adverse effects on soil health. In contrast, a combination of organic and mineral fertilizers has a positive effect on both soil health and productivity. Chinese medicinal herbal residues (CMHR) is the plant material wastes remaining after drug extraction but has not been extensively used as fertilizer. We evaluated application of CMHR to maize fields over 3 consecutive growing seasons in the presence and absence of standard CF to assess improvements in soil fertility, maize yields and sustainable development. CMHR fertilization increased soil organic matter and total N and K when mixed with chemical fertilizer at 50 and 75% the standard application rate. Soil organic matter increased by 27.0-51.4% and available -N, -P and -K levels and grain yields as well as N and P use efficiency in the presence of CMHR mixes were similar to levels obtained with chemical fertilizer only. These increases in production were due to increased leaf areas, photosynthetic rates, grain number and 1000-grain weights. The addition of CMHR to fields posed a slightly risk of toxic-metal pollution. Overall, we found that (1) CMHR can be used as an effective organic fertilizer and replace up to 50% of the amount of chemical fertilizer normally applied to fields without hampering maize grain yields and (2) CMHR application to agricultural fields is an effective recycling strategy and nutrient management practice to improve soil fertility under CF usage reduction.

Objective: To explore the status quo of anxiety and its influencing factors among rural residents in Hunan Province during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic, and to provide an effective basis for prevention of and intervention for anxiety symptoms among rural residents.Methods: Convenience sampling was used. An online questionnaire was distributed to Hunan rural residents through the questionnaire star platform from February 26–29, 2020. The general data and anxiety of Hunan rural residents were investigated, and the data were analyzed using SPSS 18.0.Results: The mean Self-Rating Anxiety Scale score of 179 rural residents in Hunan was 40.93 ± 9.36. Based on the cutoff criteria, 32 residents had anxiety, including 26 with mild anxiety, five with moderate anxiety, and one with severe anxiety. The detection rate of anxiety was 17.88%. Self-rated health status, level of concern about the epidemic, and self-rated impact of the epidemic on one's life were the factors influencing the anxiety score of rural residents in Hunan (P < 0.05).Conclusion: During the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic, the detection rate of anxiety in rural residents in Hunan was higher than that of the general population in China. The relevant departments should pay attention to the mental health of rural residents and implement targeted mental health prevention and intervention measures during the epidemic situation.

Heavy metals (HM) are ubiquitous in environments, and HM pollution has become a severe global crisis. Previous studies have identified HM levels in Qinling panda habitats but their levels and the associated risks in Sichuan panda habitats are still unknown. Risk-based conservation management is in urgent need and should rely upon identifying risk distributions, quantified risk-source apportionment and collaborative governance. We carried out research in Sichuan panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca melanoleuca) habitats taking soil, bamboo, and water samples from three different areas (nature reserves, potential habitats, and surrounding regions) of five mountains. The concentrations of HM in the soil were higher than those in bamboo, but both exceeded the background or national standards to varying degrees, suggesting long-term pollution and multi-element contamination. Regional and geographical distribution differences revealed a positive correlation between intensity of human activities and HM pollution. HM contaminants observed in the Sichuan panda habitats, based on their sources, were categorized into coal combustion (34%), industry (44%), and traffic (22%). In particular, our results showed the northern and southern parts of habitat were of highest concern, as they had environmental conditions that could be harmful to the health of giant pandas. Coupling models applying positive matrix factorization model/risk were used to quantify source contributions to various risk types, which was based on real-time monitoring and served as a positive role in multi-step process for developing countermeasures, with the goal of collaboratively reframing the vision and governance of panda conservation in order to incorporate regional disparities.

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the clinical efficacy and safety of Habib™ VesOpen, a new intravascular radiofrequency ablation (RFA) catheter in percutaneous puncture of portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) in patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Materials and Methods: Collected data of patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma with portal vein trunk or main branch who were treated by the RFA of portal vein tumor ablation with Habib™ VesOpen, a new intravascular RFA catheter. The postoperative success rate, complications, liver and kidney function, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), portal vein patency, and tumor thrombus were analyzed, and the survival status of patients was analyzed by Kaplan–Meier survival analysis, and the COX proportional hazards regression model was used to analyze the factors influencing the clinical prognosis of patients. Results: All the 44 patients were operated successfully without complications such as vascular perforation, infection, liver abscess, and intraperitoneal hemorrhage. The liver function index, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, and serum albumin (ALB) were significantly different before and after surgery at 2 weeks and 4 weeks after operation (P < 0.05); AFP before and after surgery, the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Doppler ultrasonography showed blood flow through the original portal vein after 4 weeks of surgery; enhanced computed tomography examination or magnetic resonance examination on the abdomen suggested patients with varying degrees of tumor thrombosis or disappearance after 8 weeks of surgery. The overall survival time was 284.72 ± 27.20 days (95% confidence interval: 231.42–338.02 days). The cumulative survival rates of 90, 180, and 360 days were 97.7%, 72.7%, and 17.2%, respectively. Cox multivariate regression analysis showed that tumor size and the size of ALB before RFA treatment was an independent factor in the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma with PVTT ablation (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The use of Habib™ VesOpen intravascular RFA catheter percutaneous puncture of the portal vein tumor RFA has positive clinical effect which is safe and reliable, expected to become one of the effective means in treatment of primary hepatocellular carcinoma with PVTT.

As an additive manufacturing process, 3D printing provides conceptualizers and designers an opportunity to quickly produce physical components and concept models at reasonable costs. Such manufacturing is distinct from mass production involving traditional subtractive machining processes. This paper briefly describes microscale manufacturing involving a series of 3D-printing-related processes, including 3D modeling, 3D model slicing, printing, and production. Furthermore, specifications of 3D printers, a major component of the 3D printing process, impedes the entry of new micro-manufacturing businesses, such as the maximum printing volume, printing material, positioning accuracy, layer thickness, and price, were analyzed. In addition, online 3D printing service could be an alternative to overcome the difficulty of new entry to micro-manufacturing by a step-by-step instruction through internet. Commercially available online 3D printing services were surveyed and compared in material and cost in this paper.

This study, an important groundwork for clinical tongue diagnosis and future traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research, tested the hypothesis that some tongue features vary significantly between different gender and age groups by utilizing an automatic tongue diagnosis system (ATDS). A cross-sectional study of 1487 participants from a community-based population was performed. Study subjects with ages ranging from 20 to 92 were categorized into 3 groups

Background Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is caused mostly by enteroviruses. However, other viral agents also can cause similar syndromes, and hence, the infections they cause are often misdiagnosed clinically. To determine non-enterovirus etiologic agents in HFMD-like cases, we screened enterovirus-negative samples collected from the patients who were clinically diagnosed as HFMD in China. Methods Two hundred enterovirus-negative samples were collected previously in Wenzhou city of Zhejiang province, China. Both high throughput sequencing and RT-PCR were used to screen viral agents. In addition, their clinical features were analyzed. Results Norovirus (NoV) and human parechovirus (HPeV) were identified from 22 (11.00%) and 9 (4.50%) samples, respectively. In addition, the complete genome sequences were recovered from 4 NoV-positive samples, and the VP1/3Dpol gene sequences were recovered from 5 HPeV-positive samples. Phylogenetic analyses of the NoV sequences revealed that they were closely related to those circulated in other regions of China. Notably, 4 genotypes of HPeVs, including HPeV-1, HPeV-4, HPeV-5 and HPeV-14, were found, indicating high genetic diversity of the virus. Frequent recombination between various genotypes was also observed in the HPeVs. Although most of the patients presented with the clinical features of HFMD, 4 patients infected with NoV GII.4 and 3 patients infected with HPeV-1 (1) and HPeV-4 (2) were characterized with diarrhea. Finally, tonsillitis, convulsion and granulocytopenia were observed in 1 NoV GII.4 patient, while liver dysfunction was found in 1 NoV GII.17 patient. Conclusions These data reveal the variety of agents in the cases clinically diagnosed as HFMD.

Emergent resistance to antibiotics among Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates is a severe problem worldwide. Antibiotic resistance profiles for S pneumoniae isolates identified from pediatric patients in mainland China remains to be established. The clinical features, antimicrobial resistance, and multidrug resistance patterns of S pneumoniae were retrospectively analyzed at 10 children's hospitals in mainland China in 2016. Among the collected 6132 S pneumoniae isolates, pneumococcal diseases mainly occurred in children younger than 5 years old (85.1%). The resistance rate of S pneumoniae to clindamycin, erythromycin, tetracycline, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole was 95.8%, 95.2%, 93.6%, and 66.7%, respectively. The resistance rates of S pneumoniae to penicillin were 86.9% and 1.4% in non-meningitis and meningitis isolates, while the proportions of ceftriaxone resistance were 8.2% and 18.1%, respectively. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine was administered to only 4.1% of patients. Penicillin and ceftriaxone resistance, underling diseases, antibiotic resistant risk factors, and poor prognosis appeared more frequently in invasive pneumococcal diseases. The incidence of multidrug resistance (MDR) was 46.1% in patients with invasive pneumococcal disease which was more than in patients with non-invasive pneumococcal disease (18.3%). Patients with invasive pneumococcal disease usually have several MDR coexistence. S pneumoniae isolates showed high resistance to common antibiotics in mainland China. Penicillin and ceftriaxone resistance rate of invasive streptococcal pneumonia patients were significantly higher than that of non-invasive S pneumoniae patients. Alarmingly, 46.1% of invasive clinical isolates were multidrug resistant, so it is important to continued monitor the resistance of S pneumoniae when protein conjugate vaccine (PCV13) is coming in mainland China.

Traditional Chinese medicine residue (TCMR) is the solid substances remaining after the extraction of pharmaceutical ingredients from medicinal plant materials, which include abundant soil nutrients. However, TCMR is nearly lost as domestic garbage, which not only occupies a large amount of land but also leads to the waste of resource, as well as causing the eco-environment potential pollution. Therefore, we implemented this study to assess whether TCMR could be used as an organic fertilizer in agricultural practices for realizing waste resource utilization, improving soil fertility, and enhancing plant growth. The results showed that (1) application of TCMR could improve soil fertility, particularly in enhancing the soil contents of SOM, TN, NaOH-N, NaHCO3-P, and HNO3-K; (2) the higher application ratios of TCMR (0.8–1.0%) that increased the soil EC values would cause the risk of soil secondary salinization; (3) the lower application ratios of TCMR (0.2–0.6%) has a better positive effect on improved the maize seedlings’ physiological parameters and photosynthetic performance than the higher application ratios; (4) although application of TCMR lead to the heavy metal (Cr, Pb, Cd, As, and Hg) content increased in soil, there was no ecology risk under below 0.8% application ratio, compared with the China soil risk control standards, geo-accumulation index (Igeo), and pollution load index (PLI). Thus, TCMR could potentially be used as an organic fertilizer in agricultural practices. This approach is an effective strategy not only for achieving TCMR disposal but also for realizing waste resource utilization, as well as for improving soil fertility and plant growth.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a public problem closely associated with numerous oral complications, such as coated tongue, xerostomia, salivary dysfunction, etc. Tongue diagnosis plays an important role in clinical prognosis and treatment of diabetes in the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This study investigated discriminating tongue features to distinguish between type 2 DM and non-DM individuals through non-invasive TCM tongue diagnosis. The tongue features for 199 patients with type 2 DM, and 372 non-DM individuals, serving as control, are extracted by the automatic tongue diagnosis system (ATDS). A total of 9 tongue features, namely, tongue shape, tongue color, fur thickness, fur color, saliva, tongue fissure, ecchymosis, teeth mark, and red dot. The demography, laboratory, physical examination, and tongue manifestation data between 2 groups were compared. Patients with type 2 DM possessed significantly larger covering area of yellow fur (58.5% vs 22.5%, P

This study aimed to investigate the effects of multi-drug-resistant organism (MDRO) infection and other factors on the length of hospital stay (LOS) of patients in the respiratory care ward (RCW) of a regional hospital in Taiwan. In this retrospective study, we collected cases from MDRO-infected patients in the RCW from January 2016 to March 2020. The RCW comprises 13 beds in total. There were 106 infected patients, of which 42 were in the case group (infected with MDROs) and 64 were in the control group (not infected with MDROs). Clinical specimens were inoculated in a selective medium to isolate the pathogenic bacteria by standard procedures. The results showed the main factors affecting the LOS were: patients with MDRO infection, patients discharged from the RCW, and patients who underwent catheterization. The LOS of patients infected with MDROs was significantly longer than that of patients without MDRO infection (β = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.02–1.09), with the case group and the control group being 479.8 ± 546.5 and 307.3 ± 436.2 days, respectively. Infection with carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) was associated with a longer LOS than other MDRO strains. These findings have important implications for infection control in RCW and in better tracking the health of patients.

The SARS-CoV-2 replication and transcription complex (RTC) comprising nonstructural protein (nsp) 2-16 plays crucial roles in viral replication, reducing the efficacy of broad-spectrum nucleoside analog drugs such as remdesivir and evading innate immune responses. Most studies target a specific viral component of the RTC such as the main protease or the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. In contrast, our strategy is to target

Dislocations in a finite medium bring about image stresses. These image stresses play important roles in the dislocation behavior in finite sized systems such as thin films. Since the ratio of surface to volume is higher for thin films than for bulk materials, dislocation behaviors in thin films are greatly different from those in a corresponding infinite medium, which make it necessary to take into account the effects of free surfaces on the evolution of dislocations in thin films. In the investigations[4, 5], image stresses in an elastic cylinder and thin films are calculated by employing a Fourier transform (FFT) approach and isotropically elastic fields due to dislocations are adopted in their formulation. However, most crystals are anisotropic, and the anisotropic ratio changes with environment physical parameters, such as the temperature, moisture, electron field, magnetic field. A theorem based on anisotropic Stroh’s formula for calculating the image stress of infinite straight dislocations in anisotropic bicrystals has been developed by Barnett and Lothe[6]. Wu et al.[3] recently also make use of the FFT technique to investigate the general dislocation image stresses of cubic thin films, thus extending the formalism by Weinberger et al.[4,5] from isotropic to anisotropic thin films. It is clear that for the assumed in-plane elastic fields to be periodically defined within an unbounded region is an essential and indispensable prerequisite for the above FFT-based approach to be effectively implemented, thus ruling out the possibility of its being employed to analyse image stresses in bounded and/or voided thin cubic films. Our motivation here is then to make an further extension by first calculating the anisotropic elastic fields of dislocation loops in an unbounded thin film with cavities and then invoking FEM and the principle of superposition to seek the image stress solution.

For energy conservation and CO2 emission reduction, renewable energy facilities, such as solar equipments and rooftop gardens, are considered effective for energy management of institutional buildings in a community. This study integrated an energy mixture facility model with a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II optimizer as a multiobjective optimal facility allocation model (MOFAM) for allocating renewable energy facilities on the rooftop of campus buildings. A case study was conducted on a college campus to demonstrate the feasibility of MOFAM. MOFAM offers simple steps and provides more allocation plans to satisfy decision-makers’ requirements for minimum investment cost, maximum CO2 reduction, and maximum investment returns. In addition, the result demonstrates that the multiobjective optimal model considering three objectives resulted in optimal solutions that include the optimal solutions generated from two-objective optimization. In this campus case, MOFAM helped decision-makers optimize the installation area of solar photovoltaic panels, the installation area of solar water heaters, and the area of rooftop gardens on campus rooftops to perform effective management for institutional buildings for conserving energy and CO2 reduction.

To understand the research trends and areas of focus on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), a bibliometric study based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) was performed. This study presented a comprehensive overview of the field based on the annual outputs, research areas, temporal trends in keywords, marked journals, institutions, and authors. In the SCI-E database, only 17 outputs occurred before 1991. Thus, we chose the study period between 1991 and 2018. The results revealed that the annual number of publications increased, with an especially rapid increase after 2006. Geology, environmental sciences and ecology, agriculture, water resources, and physical geography were the most popular Web of Science research areas. A keyword analysis indicated that “climate” was the most popular study area. After 2006, the research areas changed to “impact”, “dynamics”, and “land use change” topics in mechanisms and regulation. Since 2011, coupled effects among the environmental factors have been incorporated in research on the CLP. The areas of focus range from classical geology to agriculture research, ecological construction research, and research on the efficient use of resources. Catena and Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology were the most popular journals for researchers to publish their research results, and these two journals also had greater influence in the field with larger numbers of citations than other journals. The institution with the greatest research output and most citations was the Chinese Academy of Sciences. An Z. S., Fu B. J., Liu T. S., Ding Z. L., Shao M. A., and Lu H. Y. were the most competitive authors based on their large numbers of papers and citations. This paper presents an attempt to better understand the progress in research on the CLP.

The Yellow River is an important water source for north China, which is the fifth largest river all over the world. Here the upstream, midstream and downstream of the Yellow River were selected as case study for well understanding the sustainability of water quality and quantity. The results showed the runoff of Yellow River has decreased since the 1950s due to human activities. Moreover, the water quality of the Yellow River is deteriorating with the rapid development of industry and urbanization. Especially heavy metals pollution, the concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, lead and total nitrogen increased gradually from upstream to downstream, while the concentrations of chromium, mercury, zinc and total phosphorous were highest in the midstream. The concentrations of nitrogen (e.g. ammonium and nitrate), volatile phenol and total amount of Escherichia coli displayed decreasing trends from upstream to downstream. In addition, the concentrations of heavy metals showed the highest value in the corresponding farmland of midstream except for Pb, which displayed the significant positive correlation with yellow river water, moreover As and Cr also showed the carcinogenic risk in irrigated farmland. Further analysis found the agriculture, industry and urban residential areas accounted for influence of 40%, 26%, and 16% on water amount reduce, respectively. Industrial wastewater, domestic wastewater, phosphorus and nitrigen accounted for 66%, 21%, 8% and 5% of the influence on water quality, respectively. The results suggested that the sustainability of the water resource of the Yellow River is at risk in terms of quality and quantity. There is an urgent need to readjust the water allocation plan (namely 87 plan), establishing a water rights trading system, implement the precision irrigation on agricultural practices and adjust the industrial structure of the Yellow River Basin.

To determine the water quality status of the primary tributaries in middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, water collected from the confluence of the ten tributaries and some physical, chemical and biological parameters were analyzed, and then water quality index and health risk were evaluated. Of the ten main tributaries in the middle and lower reaches, only the Qingshui River had water of medium quality in the upper reaches, while all the other tributaries contributed water of poor quality. The Jindi and Dawen rivers in the lower reaches had the poorest water quality, especially the Jindi River. TP, TN, BOD5, COD, TOC and coliform bacteria exceeded the national criteria by 155%, 1%, 97.5%, 35.5%, 114.2%, and 80%, respectively. Cluster analysis indicated that industrial, agricultural, and domestic sewage, along with industrial waste gas, were the main sources of pollution in these tributaries. An analysis of the bacterial community structure showed that the Jindi River was the most polluted and had the largest species diversity and richness of bacteria. Also, its number of pathogenic microorganisms was much higher than that of other areas, and the bacterial functional genes of related metabolic pathways were significantly enriched. This was in sharp contrast with that of the Qingshui River, which had the best water quality. We suggest more specifics policy should be taken for different tributaries, and poor water quality of Jindi and Dawen River should be further studied to explore the most suitable pollution control methods.

In the remote islands, the diesel generator sets are widely used, and their costs of the fuel and transportation are both relatively high. In order to reduce the energy dependence of fossil fuel, the architecture and control strategies of PV/diesel/battery hybrid system applied to the remote island are proposed to ensure the power quality and fuel economy. According to the operation data of the existing generator set, load profile, and climate data, the decoupling active and reactive power control are considered in the paper. HOMER software was used in the modeling proposed microgrid system. The simulation results show that the PV/diesel/battery microgrid system is helpful for reducing the fuel consumption by decreasing and replacing the diesel generation.

Brainstem encephalitis is the most common neurologic complication after enterovirus 71 infection. The involvement of brainstem, especially the dorsal medulla oblongata, can cause severe sequelae or death in children with enterovirus 71 infection. We aimed to determine the prevalence of dorsal medulla oblongata involvement in children with enterovirus 71-related brainstem encephalitis (EBE) by using conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and to evaluate the value of dorsal medulla oblongata involvement in outcome prediction.Forty-six children with EBE were enrolled in the study. All subjects underwent a 1.5 Tesla MRI examination of the brain. The disease distribution and clinical data were collected. Dichotomized outcomes (good vs. poor) at longer than 6 months were available for 28 patients. Logistic regression was used to determine whether the MRI-confirmed dorsal medulla oblongata involvement resulted in improved clinical outcome prediction when compared with other location involvement.Of the 46 patients, 35 had MRI evidence of dorsal medulla oblongata involvement, 32 had pons involvement, 10 had midbrain involvement and 7 had dentate nuclei involvement. Patients with dorsal medulla oblongata involvement or multiple area involvement were significantly more often in the poor outcome group than in the good outcome group. Logistic regression analysis showed that dorsal medulla oblongata involvement was the most significant single variable in outcome prediction (predictive accuracy, 90.5%), followed by multiple area involvement, age and initial Glasgow Coma Scale score.Dorsal medulla oblongata involvement on conventional MRI correlated significantly with poor outcomes in EBE children, improved outcome prediction when compared with other clinical and disease location variables, and was most predictive when combined with multiple area involvement, Glasgow Coma Scale score and age.

The Loess Plateau is the most severely degraded soil area worldwide and represents one of the lowest areas of soil productivity. To solve the conundrum between increasing populations and decreasing agricultural acreage, enhancing the quantity of cultivated land, gully land consolidation projects has been implemented. However, the new creation farmland soil is not enough to satisfy the demand of agricultural production. An incubation experiment was conducted to determine the effects of biochar on the new creation farmland soil. Five levels of amendments (0, 1%, 2%, 5%, and 10% (wt%) biochar soil) were used, and the soil columns remained in the laboratory for approximately 2 months. The results show that biochar proportion was a more important factor than incubation time across all soils tested. The soil moisture content and particle size clearly increased as the amendment level increased; however, the soil pH decreased gradually with incubation time and tended to slow soil salinization. These findings will have to be verified under field conditions.

Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of heat sink on the recurrence of hepatic malignant tumors

Application of multiobjective optimization in sewerage rehabilitation management is not widespread due to the limitation of data collection and complex optimization process. Thus, a few researches in literature focused on sewerage rehabilitation optimization, and only considered two-objective optimization usually between the service life and the direct cost instead of a social cost. A sewerage rehabilitation multiobjective optimization decision support system (SRMOS) was developed for sewerage rehabilitation management in this study. The nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II was used to design a set of Pareto surfaces with desirable rehabilitation effectiveness at the lowest cost by providing optimal plans comprising a construction method and substitute material. The SRMOS was applied to a real sewerage system to provide tradeoff solutions for three conflicting objectives, which are minimizing rehabilitation cost, maximizing pipe service, and minimizing traffic disruption. Compared with the experts' manual estimation, the plan derived from the SRMOS enables saving nearly 20 % of the rehabilitation cost. The contours of the rehabilitation cost show the equivalent relation between the traffic disruption and service life of pipes. The results indicate that increasing the number of objectives can make up the drawback of cost hard to be quantified and can also facilitate deriving practical plans for reference in decision-making.

The increasing demand for food safety from both the government and consumers make corn warehouse management system monitoring corn quality in real-time more and more necessary. In this paper a novel corn warehouse management system based on Internet of things (IOT) is proposed to provide real-time visibility of the condition of corn products in order to reduce waste and improve quality. The system architecture as well as main network entity is introduced. Wireless nodes as well as result are also issued.

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is one of the treatment modes for liver cancer. The trauma caused by RFA is small, and its local curative effect is reliable. Computed tomography (CT) can only be used for axial scans, and parts of the lesion are unclear on plain scans. The aim of this study is to compare the local curative effect of RFA percutaneously guided by MRI and ultrasound for small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study is a retrospective study. In this study, we examined 60 cases of 88 liver lesions and 50 cases of 52 lesions, in which RFA was guided by MRI and ultrasound, respectively. All cases were clinically diagnosed. The therapeutic effect of ablation lesions was examined by postoperative imaging follow-up. The results indicated that there were 5 (5/88) recurrences of liver lesions with MRI-guided RFA and 14 (14/52) recurrences of liver lesions with ultrasound-guided RFA. The median time to recurrence in the case of recurrent lesions was 7 months. Postoperative ablation lesions showed a low-intensity signal surrounded by a thin high-intensity signal ring on T2WI images. On T1WI images, the ablation lesion showed a concentric pattern and the central area of the original lesion continued to show a low-intensity signal with a clear ring of high-intensity signal that had a clear boundary. In conclusion, the local curative effect of MRI-guided RFA for small HCC is superior to that of ultrasound-guided RFA.

3D printing as additive manufacturing enables to give concept proposers and designers a great possibility of producing physical parts and concept models at acceptable cost during a short time. Such technology is quite distinct from traditional machining techniques adopting subtractive process. The purpose of this study is to briefly describe new micro-scale manufacture utilizing a series of process of 3D printing, including 3D modeling, 3D model slicing, printing, and products. Especially, 3D modeling is one of major components in 3D printing process and becomes a barrier to entry the business of micro-scale manufacture for everyone with a 3-D printer. This paper introduces two low-cost approaches to generate 3D models, including active and passive approaches. 3D scanning as an active approach allows the replication of real objects without the need of moulding techniques. On the other hand, image-based modeling as a passive is an alternative of un-touch model reconstruction without a threat of destructive impact to the modeled object. Also, a statue in gypsum was made by a 3D printer based on a digital 3D model generated through the low-cost active approach for demonstration.

The size effects observed in the torsion of thin FCC single crystal wires is modelled by the employment of mechanism-based strain gradient crystal plasticity (MSG-CP). In the formulation the total slip resistance in each active slip system is assumed to be due to a mixed population of forest obstacles arising from both statistically stored and geometrically necessary dislocations. The MSG-CP constitutive model is implemented into the Abaqus/Standard FE platform by developing the User MATerial subroutine UMAT. By implementing the formulation, the relationship between the non-dimensional torque and the surface strain of the thin copper single crystal wires of different diameters is obtained with the [001] direction along that of the wire axis. The simulation results of torsion reveal size effects, which is in a qualitative agreement with those reported in existing literatures. An appreciable axial elongation is also found in the torsion of single crystal wires.Key words Size effect, MSG-CP model, Torsion

The idea and method of multi hiberarchy design for security is proposed in this paper with the basic theory of security for modern network. A detailed analysis on hiberarchy is done to figure out the potential security risk under various internal levels of an enterprise by deeply study on a dummy enterprise network. According to the principle of integrity, balance, combination of technology and management, a network security target which is fit for the requirement of enterprise is issued. And based on it, a total network security solution is proposed. This article focuses on the setup of firewall, design and setup of inbreak detection system, implementation of VPN and application of access control program. It also discusses the selection, setup and management system of the network hardware. This solution has a lot of advantages, such as high practicability, strong security, good performance-to-price ratio, easily exercisable, advanced setup and well extensibility.

This study evaluated the prevalence of clinical multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) and analyzed correlations between MDROs and patient characteristics in a regional teaching hospital of Taiwan. A retrospective comparative case-control study was conducted from January 2016 to August 2018 by collecting data from 486 hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients (M = 286, F = 200), including patient gender and age, microbial species, and antibiotic susceptibility. The results indicated that at least one MDRO was isolated from 5.3&ndash, 6.3% of patients (p &lt, 0.05), with an average age of 61.08 years. Of the MDROs strains, vancomycin-resistant enterococcus and carbapenem-resistant acinetobacter baumannii increased annually (p &lt, 0.002 and p &lt, 0.012, respectively). Three factors of age (over 60 years), treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU), and specimen category were statistically significant (p &lt, 0.039, p &lt, 0.001 and p &lt, 0.001, respectively) and indicated that elderly patients in an ICU have a higher risk of being infected by MDROs. The outpatients infected by methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were more frequent than inpatients, implying the existence of community-acquired MRSA strains. The results of this study could provide valuable information for the detection and colonization of multidrug-resistant organisms in hospital infection control systems.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of shared care combined with telecare in type 2 diabetic patients in an underserved community in Asia. Research Design and Methods: In total, 95 patients with type 2 diabetes who had a glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level of >7% were recruited from six community health centers in remote areas in Changhua County, Taiwan. All patients were randomly divided into intervention (shared care combined with telecare) and usual-care groups and followed up for 6 months. Results: The decrease in HbA1c level was significantly greater in the intervention group than in the usual-care group (0.7±1.3% versus 0.1±1.0%, p=0.03). There were no significant differences in lipid profiles and blood pressure changes between the two groups. Conclusions: Shared care combined with telecare could significantly reduce HbA1c levels in type 2 diabetic patients with poor glycemic control in underserved rural communities. Further studies should be conducted to clarify the target users ...

Augmented Reality (AR) is an integrated technique of image processing and display system of complex information, which involves real-time computing, motion tracking, pattern recognition, image projection, database linking, feature extraction, and coordinate transformation. In this study, such techniques through Structure From Motion (SFM), Clustering Views for Multi-View Stereo (CMVS), Patch-based Multi-View Stereo (PMVS), and Poisson surface reconstruction were smoothly integrated into a 3D reconstruction system with comparative efficiency in computation. The system can be applied to regular images taken by amateur cameras, smart phones, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices, without need of a priori internal and external camera parameters. To verify the ability of the established reconstruction system, indoor and outdoor objects at various scales, such as a helmet (a small object), a corridor (an indoor medium object), an arbor (outdoor medium object), and a building (outdoor large object) were tested. Through tracking and registration, the reconstructed 3D models were loaded in an AR environment to facilitate displaying, interacting, and rendering that provides AR applications in construction design and management for better and qualitative communication in economical and handy ways.

The ultimate goal of an electric utility is to create maximum profit while maintaining reliability and security of the power supply. The operation and control of power system is sensitive to system demand. Therefore, improvements in load-forecasting accuracy will lead to cost savings and enhance system security. Due to Taiwan's distinct climate characteristics, it is difficult to obtain satisfactory load-forecasting results by treating the whole island as a single region. In addition, weather factors, such as temperature, relative humidity, and the Heat Index (HI) (a human-perceived equivalent temperature) may also affect load-consumption patterns. This paper proposes a multiregion short-term load-forecasting methodology, taking into account the HI to improve load-forecasting accuracy in Taiwan Power Company's (Taipower's) system. The results show that adopting the HI as a parameter can effectively improve the accuracy if the temperature of the region under investigation is above 27°C (80°F). By considering both the load/weather diversity and the HI, further improvements to the load forecasting for the Taipower system during summer can be achieved.

The re-entrant coupling structure is applied in a parallel-coupled microstrip filter design to ensure a wide bandwidth, compactness, and the suppression of spurious. Fan design graphs are provided to determine the dimensions of each coupled stage. The features and advantages of the proposed circuit are analyzed in detail. Two experimental filters with design bandwidths of 70 and 90% are fabricated to verify the effectiveness of the modified structure. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1795–1800, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24513

This paper presents a new method of designing tightly coupled directional couplers on printed circuit board substrates. The coupler is realized by placing a piece of floating metal plate on parallel-coupled microstrip lines to enhance the coupling between the lines. This structure yields a tightly coupled directional coupler without wire bonding and using high-resolution fabrication processes. A design procedure based on closed-form design equations of the parallel-coupled microstrips is proposed to design the new coupler. An S-band 3-dB coupler constructed from the new structure is fabricated and measured to verify the proposed design procedure. Another wideband coupler, comprising two sections of conventional microstrip couplers and one section of the new type coupler, is also fabricated and measured to demonstrate the flexibility of connecting the new structure and conventional microstrip structures or devices. The measurements of the two couplers demonstrate that the coupler operates properly with approximately 54% and 94% fractional bandwidth, respectively, showing good agreement with the electromagnetic simulations. Additionally, a broadband filter consisting of four sections of the proposed coupling structure is fabricated and tested. The measured insertion losses are around 0.8 dB associated with return losses of greater than 15 dB over a frequency range of 4.5-7.1 GHz, corresponding to a fractional bandwidth of 45%.

The demand response in the off-peak period is proposed to reduce the cost of the expensive fuel for the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower). For the lack of base-load generation units, Taipower has to meet a certain portion of the system demand by mobilizing LNG-fired and oil-fired units, even in the off-peak period. Taipower adopts the time-of-use pricing policy, which charges a pretty low rate in the off-peak period, for the purpose of load management. However, the difference between the fuel cost and income per kilowatthour incurs a huge deficit to Taipower. This paper proposes a competitive model based on the demand response in order to restrain or reduce expensive fuel usage in the off-peak period. By providing a compensation tariff, the deficit can be reduced, and Taipower can run profitably.

This paper introduces a low-cost and efficient approach to generate 3D models for as-built buildings. Image-based modeling as a passive is an alternative of 3D model generation without a threat of destructive impact to the modeled object. This paper demonstrates the applicability of image-based modeling for as-built buildings in the main campus of National Chung Hsing University. The 3D model of campus was established by image-based modeling technology due to its low cost, time-efficiency, convenience, and low requirement. A consumer camera (Canon PowerShot S100) mounted on a UAV and held in hands was used to capture aerial photographs and side shots. The 3D printed product of NCHU campus as a gypsum statue was generated through a 3D printer, color CometrueJet T52, for demonstration.

Multi-step inverse finite-element method (FEM) has been introduced to improve the accuracy of simulation in the sheet metal stamping. Moreover, it has also been used to try to obtain the strain distribution and shape of the blank in the intermediate steps. But there are two key problems which are essential for the realization of multi-step inverse FEM: the first one is the determination of initial solutions on the intermediate three-dimensional (3-D) configurations and the other is how to control the movement of nodes only on sliding constraint surfaces during Newton–Raphson iterations. In the study, the two questions above have been solved with our proposed methods: the former is obtained by mapping the arc-length of the final part onto intermediate sliding constraint surfaces with modified arc-length search method, and the latter is conducted by introducing an approach which is similar to that of contact search. The present inverse multi-step FEM has been realized and applied to a two-step deep drawing product. The obtained numerical results have been used to compare with that of incremental FEM to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedures proposed. Comparisons between multi-step inverse FEM and one-step inverse FEM have also been conducted to verify the effect of multi-step.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of Tangshenling Mixture (TSLM) and benazepril on rats with diabetic nephropathy (DN) and its mechanism. METHODS Diabetic nephropathy was induced in rats by intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin. Fifty-eight rats with DN were randomly divided into four groups: untreated group, TSLM-treated group, TSLM plus benazepril-treated group and benazepril-treated group. Another seven normal rats were included in normal control group. Then, rats in each group were accordingly given normal saline, TSLM, TSLM plus benazepril and benazepril orally for six weeks respectively. Blood and urine biochemical indexes, plasma atrial natriuretic factor (ANF), pathomorphology of renal tissue, transforming growth factor beta1 (TGF-beta1) and glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) mRNAs in renal tissue were observed. RESULTS Both TSLM and benazepril could decrease urinary albumin excretion rates, creatinine clearance and ratio of kidney weight to body weight of the rats with DN as well as reduce the pathological damages of the renal tissues. TSLM could reduce the level of plasma ANF and the expression of GLUT1 mRNA, but had no significant effect on the expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA. Benazepril could reduce the expression of TGF-beta1 mRNA, but had no significant effect on plasma ANF and the expression of GLUT1 mRNA. CONCLUSION TSLM can reduce the pathological damages of renal tissues in rats with early-stage DN, and its mechanism may relate to decreasing the level of plasma ANF and the expression of GLUT1 mRNA which is different from that of benazepril. It seems that TSLM has synergetic effect with benazepril.

The textured microstructures and the photonic nanostructures for light trapping structures are discussed. The inverted pyramidal microstructures with and without the tips were fabricated, and their light trapping performances were measured by the reflectance spectroscopy and simulated by ray tracing method. It is found that there are more chances of light reflecting between the surfaces of the tips and the inverted pyramids. Four kinds of nanophotonic light trapping structures are simulated by the finite-difference time-domain method, and their optical transmissions and light trapping performances are calculated. The results show that mixing the dielectric and metallic nanoparticles or materials can have superior light trapping performances as comparing to using dielectric nanoparticles only or using metallic nanoparticles only. The other kinds of light trapping structures and their outlooks are also given.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) assessment of the therapeutic response in small lung malignancies (