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Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are the lifeline of a country Therefore, the anomaly detection of ICS traffic is an important endeavor. This paper proposes a model based on a deep residual Convolution Neural Network (CNN) to prevent gradient explosion or gradient disappearance and guarantee accuracy. The developed methodology addresses two limitations: most traditional machine learning methods can only detect known network attacks and deep learning algorithms require a long time to train. The utilization of transfer learning under the modification of the existing residual CNN structure guarantees the detection of unknown attacks. One-dimensional ICS flow data are converted into two-dimensional grayscale images to take full advantage of the features of CNN. Results show that the proposed method achieves a high score and solves the time problem associated with deep learning model training. The model can give reliable predictions for unknown or differently distributed abnormal data through short-term training. Thus, the proposed model ensures the safety of ICSs and verifies the feasibility of transfer learning for ICS anomaly detection.

Objective To evaluate the clinical outcome of manual reduction combined with pedicle fixation through Wiltse paraspinal approach (WPA) in the treatment of thoracolumbar fractures. Methods From May 2017 to May 2019, 48 thoracolumbar fractures patients without neurological symptoms were enrolled in this study. Forty‐eight patients were randomly divided into two groups based on the different surgical treatment. Group 1 was manual reduction combined with pedicle screw fixation through Wiltse paraspinal approach treatment group. Group 2 was pedicle screw fixation through traditional posterior approach treatment group. The operation time (OT), intraoperative blood loss (BL), postoperative drainage (PD), time of brace (TB) and the cobb angle recovery of the injured kyphosis in the prone position were obtained and compared between the two groups, respectively. Comparison of cobb angle changes, serum creatine kinase (CK) level, pain visual analogue score (VAS), Oswestry disability index (ODI), and multifidus cross‐sectional (MCS) area changes were achieved between the two groups, respectively. Results Forty‐eight patients were enrolled in this study and each group had 24 patients. There was no significant difference between the two groups in patient's age, height, weight, and body mass index (BMI). There were 20 males and four females in group 1. The mean age, height, weight, and BMI of patients were 61.99 ± 11.00 years (range, 42–75 years), 175.21 ± 4.49 cm, 76.71 ± 4.87 kg, and 24.98 ± 1.03 kg/m2 in group 1, respectively. Group 2 had 18 males and six females, and the mean age, height, weight, and BMI of patients were 57.95 ± 9.22 years (range, 44–77 years), 176.37 ± 4.56 cm, 77.42 ± 4.61 kg, and 24.87 ± 1.10 kg/m2 in group 2, respectively. The mean bleeding volume of group 1 was significantly less than group 2 (64.13 ± 9.77 ml and 152.13 ± 10.73 ml, respectively) (P, In this study, the results showed that preoperative manual reduction could help restore the height of injured vertebrae. Wiltse intermuscular approach has less intraoperative blood loss, shorter operation time and paraspinal muscle damage.

Glucocorticoids are used as a first-line treatment for severe alcoholic hepatitis, and albumin reduces both the number of hospitalizations and mortality in patients with decompensated cirrhosis. However, for acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF), there is no definitive evidence that glucocorticoid therapy is beneficial. In this case report, we describe a male patient who developed into ACLF based on alcoholic cirrhosis, whose symptoms and clinical indicators continued to deteriorate after initial symptomatic treatment. The patient’s condition gradually improved after low-dose glucocorticoid therapy, and long-term albumin supplementation resulted in a satisfactory outcome. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text]

There is a large somatosensory gap between the three-dimensional (3D) printing of clothing and traditional garments due to the limitations (e.g., air permeability and skin-friendliness) of the printing materials. For this reason, the application of traditional textile materials in 3D printing has become a hot topic in the field of 3D printed clothing. Based on the above, this work prepared four kinds of cotton-containing composite solutions and then impregnated thermoplastic polyurethane core yarns in these solutions to obtain four types of 3D printed cotton-containing composite core yarns (3Dp-C-CYs). Afterward, based on the two-dimensional (2D) braiding method, four kinds of cotton-containing 3D printing wires used for fused deposition molding technology were prepared by wrapping low-melting polyester filaments around the different 3Dp-C-CYs. After comparing the printing performance of the four cotton-containing 3D printing wires, the wire containing cotton powders had the best comprehensive performance and was selected to print the cotton-containing 3D printed fabrics. The results showed that the cotton-containing 3D printed fabric has good flatness and contains a large number of cotton powders; in addition, compared with the traditional polylactic acid and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene copolymer 3D printed fabrics, the 3D printed fabric made up of cotton-containing 3D printing wire can provide a closer wearing experience to that of cotton fabric. The 3D printing wire produced by the 2D braiding method offers a new idea for applying traditional textile materials in 3D printing, showing great application potentials in the field of 3D printing of clothing.

Purpose. The previous lab and clinical studies of the correlation between the ultraviolet B and age-related cataract (ARC) did not reach in the universal agreement, especially in different morphological types of ARC. It is important to systemically summarize those previous data of epidemiological studies, which might penetrate the relevance between three morphological types of ARC, cortical, nuclear, and posterior capsular (PSC), with sunlight exposure. Methods. PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI, Embase, and Cochrane were searched online. Data were extracted and recalculated, and quality check was performed by hand. Review Manager was used to perform the fixed effects meta-analysis on ARC and its morphological types. The highest exposed dose group was defined as the exposed group, and the lowest dose group as the control group as possible. Results. Finally, the number of analyzed studies was 31: 20 for ARC and twelve, eleven, and nine for the morphological types cortical, nuclear, and PSC, respectively. The pooled OR for ARC was 1.15 (range 1.00~43.78, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.21). The cortical cataract revealed a slightly higher risk, and pooled OR was 1.03 (range 0.67~2.91, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.03). But the pooled OR for nuclear and PSC were 1.00 (range 0.50~5.35, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.00) and 0.99 (range 0.57~1.87, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.01), respectively. Conclusions. The systemic analysis of epidemiological articles reported till now reveals a significantly increased risk of ARC for those exposed with more sunlight, especially the morphological type of cortical cataract.

Computer worms are serious threats to Internet security and have caused billions of dollars of economic losses during the past decades. In this study, we implemented a susceptible–infected–recovered–dead (SIRD) model of computer worms and analyzed the characteristics and mechanisms of worm transmission. We applied the ordinary differential equation model to simulate the transmission process of computer worms and estimated the unknown parameters of the SIRD model through the methods of least squares, Markov chain Monte Carlo, and ensemble Kalman filtering (ENKF). The results reveal that the proposed SIRD model is more accurate than the susceptible–exposed–infected–recovered–susceptible model with respect to parameter estimation.

Organic solar cells are a current research hotspot in the energy field because of their advantages of lightness, translucency, roll to roll printing and building integration. With the rapid development of small molecule acceptor materials with high-performance, the efficiency of organic solar cells has been greatly improved. Further improving the device efficiency and stability and reducing the cost of active layer materials will contribute to the industrial development of organic solar cells. As a novel type of carbon nanomaterials, carbon dots gradually show great application potential in the field of organic solar cells due to their advantages of low preparation cost, non-toxicity and excellent photoelectric performance. Firstly, the synthesis and classification of carbon dots are briefly introduced. Secondly, the photoelectric properties of carbon dots and their adjusting, including adjustable surface energy level structure, good film-forming performance and up/down conversion characteristics are summarized. Thirdly, based on these intrinsic properties, the feasibility and advantages of carbon dots used in organic solar cells are discussed. Fourthly, the application progress of carbon dots in the active layer, hole transport layer, electron transport layer, interface modification layer and down-conversion materials of organic solar cells is also reviewed. Finally, the application progress of carbon dots in organic solar cells is prospected. Several further research directions, including in-depth exploration of the controllable preparation of carbon dots and their application in the fields of interface layer and up/down conversion for improving efficiency and stability of device are pointed out.

Objectives (1) To establish evidence of the transmission pathway of venous pulsatile tinnitus (PT) associated with sigmoid sinus wall anomalies (SSWAs) and (2) quantify the efficacy of transtemporal surgery. Methods This retrospective study included 33 surgical cases of PT associated with SSWAs and 15 controls with venous PT without SSWAs. Quantitative water occlusion test (q‐WOT) and imaging data were acquired for preoperative evaluation prior to strategized transtemporal osteovascular reconstruction surgery. A condenser microphone and hydrophone were intraoperatively deployed to assess and monitor in vivo amplitude variations of the PT in eight participants. Results A total of 23 (69.6%) participants with SSWA responded to the q‐WOT with a median solution volume of 1.3 (1.1/1.6), which significantly differed from that observed in controls (p

BACKGROUND Connecting the antegrade wire (AW) and the retrograde wire (RW) is a goal of chronic total occlusion (CTO) treatment, but angiographic guidewire location is sometimes misleading. AIMS The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)-defined AW and RW position and procedural outcomes when treating CTO lesions using the retrograde approach. METHODS Overall, 191 CTO lesions treated using an IVUS-guided retrograde approach at three centres in Japan, China, and the USA were included. RESULTS When the AW and RW angiographically overlapped, four wire positions were seen on IVUS: (i) AW within the plaque (AW-intraplaque) and RW-intraplaque in 34%; (ii) AW-intraplaque and RW in the subintimal space (RW-subintima) in 28%; (iii) AW-subintima and RW-subintima in 22%; or (iv) AW-subintima and RW-intraplaque in 16%. The procedure succeeded without repositioning the wire in 89% of AW-intraplaque/RW-intraplaque, 61% of AW-intraplaque/RW-subintima and 57% of AW-subintima/RW-subintima, but only one (3%) AW-subintima/RW-intraplaque. Lesion and procedure complexity and failure/complications were greatest in AW-subintima/RW-intraplaque. CONCLUSIONS IVUS-identified vascular compartment concordance versus IVUS-identified vascular compartment mismatch leads to higher success rates irrespective of intraplaque or subintimal passage. AW-subintima/RW-intraplaque was associated with the most complex CTO morphology and procedure, and repositioning the wire was almost always necessary. Visual summary. When the antegrade wire is in the subintimal space and the retrograde wire is in the intraplaque, re-wiring is almost always necessary.

This systematic review aimed to assess the methods used to classify mammographic breast parenchymal features in relation to prediction of future breast cancer including the time from mammogram to diagnosis of breast cancer, and methods for the identification of texture features and selection of features for inclusion in analysis. The databases including Medline (Ovid) 1946-,Embase.com1947-, CINAHL Plus 1937-, Scopus 1823-, Cochrane Library (including CENTRAL), andClinicaltrials.gov. were searched through October 2021 to extract published articles in English describing the relationship of parenchymal texture features with risk of breast cancer. Twenty-eight articles published since 2016 were included in the final review. Of these, 7 assessed texture features from film mammograms images, 3 did not report details of the image used, and the others used full field mammograms from Hologic, GE and other manufacturers. The identification of parenchymal texture features varied from using a predefined list to machine-driven identification. Reduction in number of features chosen for analysis in relation to cancer incidence then varied across statistical approaches and machine learning methods. The variation in approach and number of features identified for inclusion in analysis precluded generating a quantitative summary or meta-analysis of the value of these to improve predicting risk of future breast cancers. This updated overview of the state of the art revealed research gaps; based on these, we provide recommendations for future studies using parenchymal features for mammogram images to make use of accumulating image data, and external validation of prediction models that extend to 5 and 10 years to guide clinical risk management. By following these recommendations, we expect to improve risk classification and risk prediction for women to tailor screening and prevention strategies to level of risk.

Dental computed tomography (CT) images and optical surface scan data are widely used in dental computer-aided design systems. Registration is essential if they are used in software systems. Existing automatic registration methods are either time-consuming or rough, and interactive registration methods are experience-dependent and tedious because of a great deal of purely manual interactions. For overcoming these disadvantages, a two-stage registration method is proposed. In the rough registration stage, the rough translation and rotation matrices are obtained by applying unit quaternion based method on the points interactively selected from the two types of data. In the precise registration stage, the stridden sampling is used to reduce computational complexity and the proposed registration algorithm with scale transformation is used for precise registration. The proposed method offers a good trade-off between precision and time cost. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides faster convergence and smaller registration errors than existing methods.

Phosphorescent carbon dots (CDs) have great potential in energy, information, biomedicine, and other fields because of their long lifetime, long wavelength emission, and low background interference. However, there are still some challenges in their preparation and understanding their luminescence mechanism. For example, their triplet states are easily affected by the external environment, which leads to phosphorescence quenching. The phosphorescence mechanism and the effects of element doping, rigidity of structure, and conjugated structure on their properties are reviewed to address these issues. The synthesis methods include one step and two step methods. The uses of phosphorescent CDs are summarized and include information security, light emitting diodes, ion detection, and biological imaging. The existing problems are discussed and development directions are proposed.

Objective: Venous pulsatile tinnitus (PT) has received increasing attention recently. As analyses of psychophysical and neuropsychological dimensions of venous PT are lacking, this study aimed to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the correlation among audiometric, hydroacoustic, and subjective outcomes in patients with PT. Methods: Fifty-five venous PT patients, with or without sigmoid sinus wall anomalies (SSWAs), were subdivided into SSWAs (n = 30) and non-SSWAs (n = 25) groups. Audiometric and hemodynamic evaluations were assessed. Questionnaires including the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS) were deployed to evaluate the psychological impacts of PT. Results: Among 55 subjects, PT frequency-related pure-tone audiometry (PTA) was significantly different between ipsilesional non-PT frequency-related PTA (p < 0.01), ipsilateral jugular vein compression PTA (p < 0.01), and contralesional ear PTA (p < 0.01). In contrast with the pulsatility index and flow velocity, bilateral EOET and flow volume were significantly different (p < 0.01). Of the 3 questionnaire types, there was a strong correlation between HADS anxiety and AIS scores (r = 0.658, p < 0.01). The duration of PT was not correlated with subjective outcomes, and there was no statistical significance found among audiometric, hemodynamic, and subjective outcomes between SSWAs and non-SSWAs groups. Conclusions: (1) The duration of PT was irrelevant to the increase of PTA. (2) Venous PT is the perception of vascular flow sound, in which hydroacoustic characteristics can be highly independent. (3) Anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders commonly prevail among PT patients.

Purpose Due to the inability to directly apply an intra-oral image with esthetic restoration to restore tooth shape in the computer-aided design system, this paper aims to propose a method that can use two-dimensional contours obtained from the image for the three-dimensional dental mesh model restoration. Design/methodology/approach First, intra-oral image and smiling image are taken from the patient, then teeth shapes of the images are designed based on esthetic restoration concepts and the pixel coordinates of the teeth’s contours are converted into the vertex coordinates in the three-dimensional space. Second, the dental mesh model is divided into three parts – active part, passive part and fixed part – based on the teeth’s contours of the mesh model. Third, the vertices from the teeth’s contours of the dental model are matched with ones from the intra-oral image and with the help of matching operation, the target coordinates of each vertex in the active part can be calculated. Finally, the Laplacian-based deformation algorithm and mesh smoothing algorithm are performed. Findings Benefitting from the proposed method, the dental mesh model with esthetic restoration can be quickly obtained based on the intra-oral image that is the result of doctor-patient communication. Experimental results show that the quality of restoration meets clinical needs, and the typical time cost of the method is approximately one second. So the method is both time-saving and user-friendly. Originality/value The method provides the possibility to design personalized dental esthetic restoration solutions rapidly.

When the ball bearing serving under the combined loading conditions, the ball will roll in and out of the loaded zone periodically. Therefore the bearing stiffness will vary with the position of the ball, which will cause vibration. In order to reveal the vibration mechanism, the quasi static model without raceway control hypothesis is modeled. A two-layer nested iterative algorithm based on Newton–Raphson (N-R) method with dynamic declined factors is presented. The effect of the dispersion of bearing parameters and the installation errors on the time-varying carrying characteristics of the ball-raceway contact and the bearing stiffness are investigated. Numerical simulation illustrates that besides the load and the rotating speed, the dispersion of bearing parameters and the installation errors have noticeable effect on the ball-raceway contact load, ball-inner raceway contact state and bearing stiffness, which should be given full consideration during the process of design and fault diagnosis for the rotor-bearing system.

Biomass-based materials usually evolve well-developed and unique structures for the transportation of water and nutrition to their pivotal organs. These natural intricate designs allow fascinating properties when harnessed in specific real-world application. Herein, we demonstrate that 3D carbonized corncob (C-corncob) harmoniously coordinates light absorption, water supply, vapor escape, and efficiently utilizes the environmental energy to enhance the performance of the steam generation device due to its multilevel inside and side surface structures. The interfacial solar steam generation based on C-corncob achieves as high as 4.16 kg m−2 h−1 evaporation rate under 1.0 sun illumination and readily overcomes the salt deposition problem. These findings not only demonstrate the competence of the recrement corncob as the lost cost material for interfacial solar steam generation, but also provide inspiration for the creation of solar steam generation devices with the new concept.

Spontaneous senile osteoporosis severely threatens the health of the senior population which has emerged as a severe issue for society. A SAMP6 mouse model was utilized to estimate the impact of intragastrically administered Astragalus Membranaceus (AR) on spontaneous senile osteoporosis. Bone mineral density (BMD) and bone microstructure were measured using Micro-CT; contents of calcium and phosphorus were determined with the colorimetric method; and gene and protein expressions of fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), Klotho, Vitamin D receptor (VDR), CYP27B1 and CYP24A1 were detected using qPCR, Western blot and ELISA assays, respectively. The findings indicated that AR could improve the femoral BMD and bone microstructure, elevate the contents of calcium and phosphorus, and increase the expression of Klotho, VDR, and CYP27B1 whereas decreasing the expression of FGF23 and CYP24A1 in SAMP6 mice in a dose independent manner. The present study has demonstrated that AR can promote osteogenesis and alleviate osteoporosis. It is also expected to provide a new insight for the treatment of spontaneous senile osteoporosis and to serve as a research basis for AR application., Graphical Abstract

Recently gait recognition receives increasing attention since it can be conducted at a long distance without the cooperation of subjects and suit for the cases of changing clothes. A key challenge is to learn gait features from the silhouettes that are invariant to the external factors such as clothing, carrying conditions and camera viewpoints. In this work, we propose a Set Residual Network for gait recognition which tries to learn more discriminative features from the silhouettes. Specifically, the silhouettes of each gait sequence are regarded as an unordered set and we propose a Set Residual Block to extract the silhouette-level and set-level features in a parallel way. Particularly, a residual connection is adopted to connect the two-level features inside each block, which enables more silhouette-set interaction and effectively coordinates the silhouette-level and set-level information for set-based feature learning from the silhouettes. Besides, we propose an efficient strategy to exploit the features from the shallow layers to learn more robust part representations for gait recognition, where the upsampling or lateral connections are unnecessary and only marginal memory cost is required. The experiments on CASIA-B and OUMVLP show that our approach can bring consistent improvement over the baselines for all walking conditions.

Revealing the dynamics of soil organic carbon (Corg) and nutrients at aggregate scales is essential for improving our understanding of soil Corg mitigation and nutrient restitution in the Cunningha...

Background Cadmium (Cd) is a common heavy metal that mainly causes renal damage. There is a lack of research on the large-scale and systematic evaluation of the association between urinary Cd (U-Cd) and various effect biomarkers among Chinese residents. Methods Based on the establishment process of dietary Cd limit standards by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the dose–response relationships between U-Cd and four biomarkers, β2-microglobulin (β2-MG), N-acetyl-β-glucosidase (NAG), microalbumin (mALB), and retinol binding Protein (RBP) were explored, respectively. Toxicokinetic model was used to derive the dietary Cd exposure limit for Chinese residents after critical U-Cd concentration was calculated. Results As the sensitive biomarkers of renal injury, β2-MG and NAG were selected to estimate the 95% confidence interval lower limit of the U-Cd benchmark dose (BMDL5) to be 3.07 and 2.98 μg/g Cr, respectively. Dietary Cd exposure limit was calculated to be 0.28 μg/kg bw/day (16.8 μg/day, based on the body weight of 60 kg), which was lower than the average Chinese Cd exposure (30.6 μg/day) by the China National Nutrient and Health Survey. Conclusion This study established an overall association between U-Cd and renal injury biomarkers, and explored the Chinese dietary Cd exposure limits, which helps improve Chinese Cd exposure risk assessment and provides a reference basis for formulating reasonable exposure standards.

Background Meniere's disease (MD), characterized by episodic vertigo attacks and fluctuating progressive hearing loss, is treated by low-dose intratympanic gentamicin (ITG) injections. Whether ITG causes hearing loss is controversial, and knowledge about its effects on the contralateral hearing and vestibular function is lacking. Aims/objectives We aimed to evaluate the effect of ITG on bilateral auditory and otolith organ function in patients with unilateral refractory MD. Material and methods The data of 30 patients was collected, including history, and pure tone audiometry and vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) results before and one month after ITG treatment. Changes in vertigo were assessed at a two-year follow-up. Results One month after ITG injection, auditory thresholds between 125 Hz and 8 kHz on the injection side remained unchanged but have improved on the contralateral side at 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 1 kHz. The cervical and ocular VEMP solicitation rates on the injection side were lower than before the injection. Two years after treatment, vertigo was improved in 88.5% and complete controlled in 76.7% patients respectively. Conclusions and significance The intractable vertigo of MD can be effectively controlled by ITG injection. This can improve the low and medium frequency hearing level in the contralateral ear, suggesting that it might help prevent contralateral MD occurrence.

n/a Funding Agencies|Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW) through a Wallenberg Scholar grant

The success of recent efforts in Question Generation (QG) has amazed scientists from academia and industry. In this paper, we explore to harvest shopping advice through a novel QG engine for e-commerce platforms. Unlike traditional QG methods conditioned on factual data, generating purchase-oriented questions depends on open-ended product properties and customer reviews. Besides, these questions should follow not only natural expressions but also user-interested aspects simultaneously. For this challenging task, an innovative generative adversarial net-based QG model is proposed – a generator featuring multi-source attention mechanism is employed to yield questions from multiple information sources; a discriminator featuring quality control is applied to fine-tune generated questions in terms of both language performance and aspect compatibility. We conduct extensive experiments on a new dataset comprised of Question-Review-Aspect-Property (Q-RAP) tuples from a real e-commerce site. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves a significant superiority over seven state-of-the-art QG solutions. Meanwhile, this study indicates that customer reviews play a critical role in generating purchase-oriented questions, which confirms the validity of previous practices using buyer feedback to address natural language generation in e-commerce.

BackgroundThe outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) poses a great threat to global public health. At present, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths is increasing worldwide. The strategy of comprehensive and scientific detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) through quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) for special populations and environments provides great support for the prevention and control of this pandemic in China. Our study focused on determining the factors associated with the length of time from symptom onset to the first positive nucleic acid test of throat swabs in COVID-19 patients, evaluating the effect of early positive nucleic acid detection on the disease severity and its significance in prognosis, and predicting the factors associated with the time from positive SARS-CoV-2 RNA test to negative conversion (negative conversion of SARS-CoV-2 virus) in COVID-19 patients.MethodsThis study included 116 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 from January 30, 2020 to March 4, 2020 in Wuhan, China. Throat swab samples were collected for qRT-PCR testing of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, and all patients included in this study were positive for this test.ResultsThe multivariate Cox proportional hazards model showed that disease severity (HR = 0.572; 95% CI 0.348–0.942; p = 0.028) was a protective factor for the time from symptom onset to positive nucleic acid detection. Meanwhile, the time from symptom onset to positive nucleic acid detection (HR = 1.010; 95% CI 1.005–1.020; p = 0.0282) was an independent risk factor for the delay in negative conversion time of SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the severity of the disease (HR=1.120; 95% CI 0.771–1.640; p = 0.544) had no correlation with the negative conversion time of SARS-CoV-2 virus.ConclusionsPatients with more severe disease had a shorter time from symptom onset to a positive nucleic acid test. Prolonged time from symptom onset to positive nucleic acid test was an independent risk factor for the delay in negative conversion time of SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the severity of the disease had no correlation with negative conversion time of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Buprenorphine extended‐release (BUP‐XR) formulation is a once‐monthly subcutaneous injection for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). Buprenorphine undergoes extensive cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4 metabolism, leading to potential drug‐drug interactions (DDIs) as reported for sublingual buprenorphine. Sublingual buprenorphine is subject to first‐pass extraction, as a significant proportion of the dose is swallowed. Because subcutaneous administration avoids first‐pass extraction, the DDI with CYP3A4 inhibitors is expected to be less than the 2‐fold increase reported for the sublingual route. The objective of this analysis was to predict the magnitude of DDI following coadministration of BUP‐XR with a strong CYP3A4 inhibitor or inducer using physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. Models were developed and verified by comparing predicted and observed data for buprenorphine following intravenous and sublingual dosing. Comparison of predicted and observed pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles and PK parameters demonstrated acceptable predictive performance of the models (within 1.5‐fold). Buprenorphine plasma concentrations following administration of a single dose of BUP‐XR (300 mg) were simulated using a series of intravenous infusions. Daily coadministration of strong CYP3A4 inhibitors with BUP‐XR predicted mild increases in buprenorphine exposures (AUC, 33%‐44%; Cmax, 17‐28%). Daily coadministration of a strong CYP3A4 inducer was also associated with mild decreases in buprenorphine AUC (28%) and Cmax (22%). In addition, the model predicted minimal increases in buprenorphine AUC (8%‐11%) under clinical conditions of 2 weeks’ treatment with CYP3A4 inhibitors administered after initiation of BUP‐XR. In conclusion, the PBPK predictions indicate that coadministration of BUP‐XR with strong CYP3A4 inhibitors or inducers would not result in clinically meaningful interactions.

Objectives: To retrospectively evaluate the clinical and immunological characteristics of patients who died of COVID-19 and to identify patients at high risk of death at an early stage and reduce their mortality. Results: Total white blood cell count, neutrophil count and C-reactive protein were significantly higher in patients who died of COVID-19 than those who recovered from it (p < 0.05), but the total lymphocyte count, CD4 + T cells, CD8 + T cells, B cells and natural killer cells were significantly lower when compared in the same groups. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that increased D-dimer, decreased CD4 + T cells and increased neutrophils were risk factors for mortality. Further multiple COX regression demonstrated that neutrophil ≥ 5.27 × 109/L increased the risk of death in COVID-19 patients after adjustment for age and gender. However, CD4 + T cells ≥ 260/μL appeared to reduce the risk of death. Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 infection led to a significant decrease of lymphocytes, and decreased CD4 + T cell count was a risk factor for COVID-19 patients to develop severe disease and death. Methods: This study included 190 hospitalized COVID-19 patients from January 30, 2020 to March 4, 2020 in Wuhan, China, of whom 85 died and 105 recovered. Two researchers independently collected the clinical and laboratory data from electronic medical records.

Tampering with images may involve the field of crime and also bring problems such as incorrect values to the public. Image local deformation is one of the most common image tampering methods, where the original texture features and the correlation between the pixels of an image are changed. Multiple fusion strategies based on first-order difference images and their texture feature is proposed to locate the tamper in local deformation image. Firstly, texture features using overlapping blocks on one color channel are extracted and fed into fuzzy c-means clustering method to generate a tamper probability map (TPM), and then several TPMs with different block sizes are fused in the first fusion. Secondly, different TPMs with different color channels and different texture features are respectively fused in the second and third fusion. The experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately detect the location of the local deformation of an image.

Background Glucocorticoid treatment is used in children with Graves’ disease (GD) only in cases of exophthalmos. The purpose of this study was to observe the effects of glucocorticoid pulse therapy on thyroid function and thyroid antibodies in children with GD. Methods Twenty children who were treated by intravenous methylprednisolone pulse therapy (MPT) followed by oral prednisolone administration and antithyroid drugs were included in the pulse group. Twenty children who were treated with antithyroid drugs alone were included in the control group. Serum concentrations of free triiodothyronine (FT3), free thyroxine (FT4), thyrotropin (TSH), thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPOAb), thyroglobulin antibodies (TGAb), and thyrotropin receptor antibodies (TRAb) were recorded at baseline and 10 days, 30 days, and 60 days after treatment. Results Significant differences in FT3, FT4, TSH, TPOAb, TGAb, and TRAb levels were found in the pulse group and the control group from baseline to follow-up time points (all p p = 0.023). However, the level of TRAb rose on the 60th day. For values of TRAb at baseline, 10 days, and 60 days after treatment, there were no significant differences respectively between the pulse group and the control group (all p > 0.05). No significant differences were observed in FT3, FT4, TSH, TPOAb, and TGAb levels between the pulse group and the control group (all p > 0.05). Conclusions The results suggested that the effect of intravenous MPT followed by oral prednisolone on TRAb level was temporary in children with GD. Glucocorticoid pulse therapy was not beneficial for the sustained recovery of thyroid function.

The dielectric properties and electromagnetic wave absorbing performance of granular polysilicon have important influences on microwave smelting efficiency. In this study, the dielectric parameters...

Background The hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α)/vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)/VEGF receptor subtype 2 (VEGFR-2) pathway has been implicated in ischemia/reperfusion injury. The aim of this study was to clarify whether whole-body hypothermic targeted temperature management (HTTM) inhibits the HIF-1α/VEGF/VEGFR-2 pathway in a swine model of cardiac arrest (CA) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Methods Twenty-four domestic male Beijing Landrace pigs were used in this study. CA was electrically induced with ventricular fibrillation and left untreated for 8 min. Return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) was achieved in 16 pigs, which were randomly assigned either to normothermia at 38 °C or to HTTM at 33 °C (each group: n = 8). HTTM was intravascularly induced immediately after ROSC. The core temperature was reduced to 33 °C and maintained for 12 h after ROSC. The serum levels of HIF-1α, VEGF, VEGFR-2, and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) were measured with enzyme immunoassay kits 0.5, 6, 12, and 24 h after ROSC. The expression of HIF-1α, VEGF, and VEGFR-2 in cerebral cortical tissue was measured by RT-PCR and Western blot analysis 24 h after ROSC. Neurological deficit scores and brain cortical tissue water content were evaluated 24 h after ROSC. Results The serum levels of HIF-1α, VEGF, and VEGFR-2 were significantly increased under normothermia within 24 h after ROSC. However, these increases were significantly reduced by HTTM. HTTM also decreased cerebral cortical HIF-1α, VEGF, and VEGFR-2 mRNA and protein expression 24 h after ROSC (all p

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of cardiovascular disease. Systemic inflammation is one important characteristic in atherosclerosis. Pro-inflammatory macrophages can secrete inflammatory factors and promote the inflammation of atherosclerosis. It has a great value for the treatment of atherosclerosis by inhibiting the release of inflammatory factors in macrophages. However, the detailed mechanism of this process is still unclear. In this study, we constructed an APOE-/- mice model of atherosclerosis to research the molecular mechanism of atherosclerosis. Protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 2 (PTPN2), an anti-inflammatory gene, was dramatically decreased in inflammatory mice. Deletion of PTPN2 could significantly induce monocytes toward M1 phenotype of macrophages, enhance the secretion of IL-12 and IL-1, and promote cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis. Mechanism research showed that PTPN2-mediated p65/p38/STAT3 de-phosphorylation could block the process of macrophage inflammation. In vivo experiments showed that PTPN2 may effectively inhibit the inflammatory response during atherosclerosis. In conclusion, we uncovered the negative role of PTPN2 in the occurrence of atherosclerosis, and this study provides a new potential target for atherosclerosis treatment.

Developing dopant-free hole transporting materials (HTMs) is of vital importance for addressing the notorious stability issue of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). However, efficient dopant-free HTMs are scarce. Herein, we improve the performance of dopant-free HTMs featuring with a quinoxaline core via rational π-extension. Upon incorporating rotatable or chemically fixed thienyl substitutes on the pyrazine ring, the resulting molecular HTMs TQ3 and TQ4 show completely different molecular arrangement as well as charge transporting capabilities. Comparing with TQ3, the coplanar π-extended quinoxaline based TQ4 endows enriched intermolecular interactions and stronger π-π stacking, thus achieving a higher hole mobility of 2.08×10-4 cm2 V-1 s-1 . It also shows matched energy levels and high thermal stability for application in PSCs. Planar n-i-p structured PSCs employing dopant-free TQ4 as HTM exhibits power conversion efficiency (PCE) over 21 % with excellent long-term stability.

Highlights 3D carbon frameworks (3DCFs) constructed by interconnected nanocages show a high specific surface area, hierarchical porosity, and conductive network.The deoxidization process removed most of surface oxygen-containing groups in 3DCFs that leads to fast ion diffusion kinetics, good electric conductivity, and limited side reactions.The deoxidized 3DCFs exhibit an ultrafast charge/discharge rate as electrodes for SCs with high energy-power density in both aqueous and ionic liquids electrolytes. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s40820-020-00535-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users., Carbon-based electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs) hold tremendous potentials due to their high-power performance and excellent cycle stability. However, the practical use of EDLCs is limited by the low energy density in aqueous electrolyte and sluggish diffusion kinetics in organic or/and ionic liquids electrolyte. Herein, 3D carbon frameworks (3DCFs) constructed by interconnected nanocages (10–20 nm) with an ultrathin wall of ca. 2 nm have been fabricated, which possess high specific surface area, hierarchical porosity and good conductive network. After deoxidization, the deoxidized 3DCF (3DCF-DO) exhibits a record low IR drop of 0.064 V at 100 A g−1 and ultrafast charge/discharge rate up to 10 V s−1. The related device can be charged up to 77.4% of its maximum capacitance in 0.65 s at 100 A g−1 in 6 M KOH. It has been found that the 3DCF-DO has a great affinity to EMIMBF4, resulting in a high specific capacitance of 174 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, and a high energy density of 34 Wh kg−1 at an ultrahigh power density of 150 kW kg−1 at 4 V after a fast charge in 1.11 s. This work provides a facile fabrication of novel 3D carbon frameworks for supercapacitors with ultrafast charge/discharge rate and high energy-power density. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s40820-020-00535-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Multi-view clustering, which explores complementarity and consistency among multiple distinct feature sets to boost clustering performance, is becoming more and more useful in many real-world applications. Traditional approaches usually map multiple views to a unified embedding, in which some weighted mechanisms are utilized to measure the importance of each view. The embedding, serving as a clustering friendly representation, is then sent to extra clustering algorithms. However, a unified embedding cannot cover both complementarity and consistency among views and the weighted scheme measuring the importance of each view as a whole ignores the differences of features in each view. Moreover, because of lacking in proper grouping structure constraint imposed on the unified embedding, it will lead to just multi-view representation learned, which is not clustering friendly. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-view clustering method to alleviate the above problems. By dividing the embedding of a view into unified and view-specific vectors explicitly, complementarity and consistency can be reflected. Besides, an adversarial learning process is developed to force the above embeddings to be non-trivial. Then a fusion strategy is automatically learned, which will adaptively adjust weights for all the features in each view. Finally, a Kullback-Liebler (KL) divergence based objective is developed to constrain the fused embedding for clustering friendly representation learning and to conduct clustering. Extensive experiments have been conducted on various datasets, performing better than the state-of-the-art clustering approaches.

Therapeutic angiogenesis with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is promising for the clinical treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD). However, the heterogeneous proangiogenic nature of MSCs is a key challenge in developing more effective treatments with MSCs for therapeutic angiogenesis purposes. Here, we propose to enhance the therapeutic function of human placenta-derived MSCs (hP-MSCs) in hindlimb ischemia therapy by using nitric oxide (NO)-releasing chitosan hydrogel (CS-NO). Our data showed that the co-transplantation of CS-NO hydrogel with hP-MSCs remarkably improved the grafting of hP-MSCs and ameliorated the functional recovery of ischemic hindlimbs. Moreover, we found that the neovascularization of damaged hindlimbs was significantly increased after co-transplanting CS-NO hydrogel and hP-MSCs, as confirmed by bioluminescence imaging (BLI). Further analysis revealed an endothelial-like status transformation of hP-MSCs in the presence of NO, which was identified as a potential mechanism contributing to the enhanced endothelium-protective and proangiogenic capacities of hP-MSCs that promote angiogenesis in mouse models of hindlimb ischemia. In conclusion, this study provides a promising approach for using NO hydrogel to improve the proangiogenic potency of MSCs in ischemic diseases, and the strategy used here facilitates the development of controlled-release scaffolds for enhancing the therapeutic efficiency of MSCs in angiogenic therapy. Statement of significance The heterogeneous proangiogenic nature of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is a key challenge in developing more effective treatments with MSCs for therapeutic angiogenesis purposes. In this study, we investigated whether nitric oxide (NO)-releasing chitosan hydrogel (CS-NO) could improve the proangiogenic potency of MSCs in ischemic diseases. Our results revealed an endothelial-like status transformation of human placenta-derived MSCs (hP-MSCs) in the presence of NO, which was identified as a potential mechanism contributing to the enhanced endothelium-protective and proangiogenic capacities of hP-MSCs that promote angiogenesis in mouse models of hindlimb ischemia. The strategy for enhancing the pro-angiogenic activity of MSCs with biomaterials provides a practical idea for overcoming the challenges associated with the clinical application of MSCs in therapeutic angiogenesis.

Background: Paclitaxel plays a pivotal role in the chemotherapy of breast cancer, but resistance to this drug is an important obstacle in the treatment. It is reported that microRNA-152-3p (miR-152-3p) is involved in tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer, but whether it is involved in paclitaxel resistance in breast cancer remains unknown. Materials and methods: We examined the expression of miR-152-3p in breast cancer tissues and cells by qRT-PCR. After transfecting paclitaxel-resistant MCF-7/TAX cells with miR-152-3p mimics, we analyzed the function of miR-152-3p in these cells by MTT assay and flow cytometry. We screened the target gene, endothelial PAS domain-containing protein 1 (EPAS1), using bioinformatics analysis and verified it with the dual luciferase reporter gene experiment. The relationship between EPAS1 and miR-152-3p and their roles in paclitaxel resistance of breast cancer were further investigated using RNA interference and transfection techniques. Results: The expression of miR-152-3p in normal breast tissues and cells was markedly higher than that in breast cancer. Overexpression of miR-152-3p decreased the survival rate and increased the apoptosis rate and sensitivity of MCF-7/TAX cells to paclitaxel. We confirmed that EPAS1 is the target of miR-152-3p and is negatively regulated by this miRNA. Moreover, transfection with EPAS1 siRNA enhanced the susceptibility and apoptosis rate of MCF-7/TAX cells to paclitaxel. Co-transfection of miR-152-3p mimics and EPAS1 increased paclitaxel sensitivity and apoptosis induced by the drug. Conclusion: miR-152-3p inhibits the survival of MCF-7/TAX cells and promotes their apoptosis by targeting the expression of EPAS1, thereby, enhancing the sensitivity of these breast cancer cells to paclitaxel.

Purpose This paper aims to obtain a texture dental model with real images and improve the rendering effect of the dental model. Design/methodology/approach The paper proposes a semiautomatic method to construct a realistic dental model with real images based on two-dimensional/three-dimensional (2D/3D) registration. First, a 3D digital dental model and three intraoral images are obtained by a 3D scanner and digital single-lens reflex camera. Second, the camera projection poses for every intraoral images are calculated by using the single-objective optimization algorithm. Third, with camera poses, the preliminary projection texture mapping is performed; besides, the seam between two textures is marked. Finally, the marked regions are fused based on the image pyramid to eliminate obvious seams. Findings The paper provides a method to construct a realistic dental model. The method can map three intraoral images to the dental model. The experimental results show that the textured dental model without obvious distortion, dislocation and seams is constructed with simple interactions. Originality/value The proposed method can be applied to the digital smile design system to improve the communication efficiency between doctors, patients and technicians.

This study aims to investigate the specific predictive role of the preoperative Nutritional Risk Index (NRI) in oligometastatic prostate cancer (OM-PC) patients, who have undergone cytoreductive radical prostatectomy (cRP), and explored its prognostic index values. A total 89 OM-PC patients, who were identified between 2013 and 2019, were included in the present study. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis were used to separately assess the prostate specific antigen (PSA) progression-free survival (PFS). Overall accuracy was determined by analyzing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The analysis of patients in these three different groups indicated that patients with lower NRI values were significantly associated with a higher Gleason score and more neoadjuvant androgen deprivation therapy (

Controlling carbon emissions is an effective way to mitigate the greenhouse effect. According to the primary energy consumption of China, chemical looping combustion (CLC) using coal as the fuel ha...

The vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has been considered as one of the most prominent technologies for improving the efficiency and safety of modern transportation systems. However, VANET will present a unique range of challenges and opportunities for security. In particular, key management, as the footstone to build a practical security framework in VANET, becomes a research hotspot. In this paper, we investigate key management based on blockchain for VANET. We first propose an efficient decentralized key management mechanism for VANET with blockchain (DB-KMM) to automatically realize the registration, update and revocation of user's public key. At the same time, we present a lightweight mutual authentication and key agreement protocol based on the bivariate polynomial. Then, we analyze the security of DB-KMM in the universally composable framework and show that the mechanism can prevent the typical attacks including internal attacks, DoS attacks, public key tampering attacks and collusion attacks. Finally, we analyze the performance of the proposed scheme through experiments and simulation. Experiment results show that DB-KMM has better performance than the existing schemes in terms of communication, storage, computation overhead and latency.

ObjectivesTo estimate the effectiveness of endoscopic screening programme in reducing incidence and mortality of upper gastrointestinal cancer in high risks areas of China.DesignThis multicentre population-based cohort study was conducted in six areas in China from 2005 to 2015. All permanent residents aged 40 to 69 years were identified as target subjects. We refer to those who were invited for screening collectively as the invited group. Of these, we classify those who were invited and undertook endoscopic screening as the screened group and those who were invited but did not accept screening as the non-screened group. Target subjects who were not invited to the screening were assigned to the control group. The effectiveness of the endoscopic screening and screening programme were evaluated by comparing reductions in incidence and mortality from upper gastrointestinal cancer in the screened and invited group with control group.ResultsOur cohort analysis included 637 500 people: 299 483 in the control group and 338 017 in the invited to screening group, 113 340 (33.53%) of whom were screened eventually. Compared with subjects in the control group, upper gastrointestinal cancer incidence and mortality decreased by 23% (relative risk (RR)=0.77, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.81) and 57% (RR=0.43, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.47) in the screened group, respectively, and by 14% (RR=0.86, 95% CI 0.84 to 0.89) and 31% (RR=0.69, 95% CI 0.66 to 0.72) in the invited group, respectively.ConclusionAmong individuals aged 40 to 69 years in high risk areas of upper gastrointestinal cancer, one-time endoscopic screening programme was associated with a significant decrease in upper gastrointestinal cancer incidence and mortality.

Refractory lining is an indispensable part of high temperature microwave heating equipment, and its wave transmission performance exerts an important impact on the mode and efficiency of microwave heating, while the complex dielectric constant (dielectric constant and dielectric loss) of the material is the decisive factor in determining the wave transmission performance of the material. In this work, we measured the complex dielectric constant of polycrystalline mullite fiber board (PMF) in the temperature range of 25–1000 °C, and the effect of temperature on dielectric constant and dielectric loss was analyzed; The wave-transmission properties of the material were calculated according to the theory of electromagnetic wave transmission line, and the effects of temperature, material thickness, polarization modes of electromagnetic wave and incident angle on the wave transmission performance were analyzed. The results reveal that the dielectric constant of PMF does not change much with the increase of temperature, which is about 1.6; The dielectric loss does not change much within 200 °C, but when the temperature is higher than 200 °C, the change presents approximately exponential increase with the rise of temperature. The wave transmission performance fluctuates with the increase of the thickness, and there are maximum value and minimum value, and the overall wave transmission performance decreases with the increase of the material thickness. In a transverse electric (TE) field, the overall wave transmission performance decreases with the increase of the incident angle, and better wave transmission performance can be obtained by priority selection of vertical incidence of electromagnetic wave. In a transverse magnetic (TM) field, with the increase in the incident angle, the wave transmission performance firstly climbs up then declines, and there is an optimal incident angle where total transmission can occur. Finally, this work selected the thickness corresponding to different temperature as the preferred thickness. This work is of important theoretical significance for understanding the mechanism of the dynamic change of the wave transmission performance of the thermal insulation materials in microwave heating, and provides important practical guidance for the design and optimization of microwave heating equipment.

With rapid development of smart grid, terminal power load is paid more and more attention, especially that of air conditioning system, which constitute an integral part of summer peak electricity load. In this paper, through controlling indoor air temperature deduced by equivalent thermal parameters-model, daily energy consumption and energy consumption during peak hours can be adjusted and reduced to realize demand side management. To reduce peak load of grid and ensure stable and reliable operation of grid, four temperature control strategies, including constant setting temperature control strategy, pre-cooling control strategy, curtailment control strategy and improved curtailment control strategy were proposed. Meanwhile, three operation schemes of the chiller were also employed. Furthermore, considering the power consumption and curtailment, five indicators including hourly average load, hourly average load ratio, energy saving ratio, load-shedding ratio during peak hours and coefficient of performance (COP) have been proposed to evaluate the performance. Results showed that the operation scheme of operating numbers control obtained better effect. Energy saving ratio was highest of 32.5% with curtailment control strategy, while load-shedding ratio during peak hours was optimal with improved curtailment control strategy. However, COP was maximum at 3.66 when pre-cooling control strategy was employed. This study can guide the operation of water-cooled air conditioning system through energy saving ratio and COP, also it has more benefits on economy of power system by hourly average load and load-shedding ratio.

Objective: To investigate the correlation between the BRAF V600E gene mutation and clinicopathological features and thyroid function after iodine-131 treatment in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Methods: A total of 128 PTC patients who underwent iodine-131 treatment after a total thyroidectomy from February 2015 to November 2016 at Hunan Cancer Hospital, China, were recruited. There were 25 males and 103 females. The age range was 11 to 73 years old. The BRAF V600E mutation in tumor tissues was detected by amplification-restriction mutation system polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR), and the serum levels of Tg, TSH, Tg-Ab, and Tpo-Ab were measured by chemiluminescence after iodine-131 treatment. The BRAF V600E mutation was shown to be associated with clinicopathological characteristics and thyroid function indicators after iodine-131 treatment. Results: BRAF V600E mutation was detected in 75 of the 128 patients (58.6%) and was observed more frequently in cases with elevated Tg levels (Tg>1.00) at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months after treatment compared with patients without any BRAF mutations (P0.05). The BRAF V600E mutation was closely associated with the high-risk and age of the patient (≥45 years old) (P