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Background The most common etiologies of Cushing's syndrome (CS) are adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-producing pituitary adenoma (pitCS) and primary adrenal gland disease (adrCS), both of which burden patients with metabolic disturbance. The aim of this study was to compare the metabolic features of pitCS and adrCS patients. Methods A retrospective review including 114 patients (64 adrCS and 50 pitCS) diagnosed with CS in 2009–2019 was performed. Metabolic factors were then compared between pitCS and adrCS groups. Results Regarding sex, females suffered both adrCs (92.2%) and pitCS (88.0%) more frequently than males. Regarding age, patients with pitCS were diagnosed at a younger age (35.40 ± 11.94 vs. 39.65 ± 11.37 years, P = 0.056) than those with adrCS, although the difference was not statistically significant. Moreover, pitCS patients had much higher ACTH levels and more serious occurrences of hypercortisolemia at all time points (8 AM, 4 PM, 12 AM) than that in adrCS patients. Conversely, indexes, including body weight, BMI, blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, LDL-C, HDL-C, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose, and uric acid, showed no differences between adrCS and pitCS patients. Furthermore, diabetes prevalence was higher in pitCS patients than in adrCS patients; however, there were no significant differences in hypertension or dyslipidemia prevalence between the two. Conclusions Although adrCS and pitCS had different pathogenetic mechanisms, different severities of hypercortisolemia, and different diabetes prevalences, both etiologies had similar metabolic characteristics.

The point spread function (PSF) reflects states of a telescope and plays an important role in development of data processing methods, such as PSF based astrometry, photometry and image restoration. However, for wide field small aperture telescopes (WFSATs), estimating PSF in any position of the whole field of view is hard, because aberrations induced by the optical system are quite complex and the signal to noise ratio of star images is often too low for PSF estimation. In this paper, we further develop our deep neural network (DNN) based PSF modelling method and show its applications in PSF estimation. During the telescope alignment and testing stage, our method collects system calibration data through modification of optical elements within engineering tolerances (tilting and decentering). Then we use these data to train a DNN (Tel--Net). After training, the Tel--Net can estimate PSF in any field of view from several discretely sampled star images. We use both simulated and experimental data to test performance of our method. The results show that the Tel--Net can successfully reconstruct PSFs of WFSATs of any states and in any positions of the FoV. Its results are significantly more precise than results obtained by the compared classic method - Inverse Distance Weight (IDW) interpolation. Our method provides foundations for developing of deep neural network based data processing methods for WFSATs, which require strong prior information of PSFs., Comment: Accepted by the MNRAS

Background: Lower-grade gliomas (LGG) are a diverse group of primary brain tumors with relatively poor overall survival in young adults. In this study, we aimed to establish novel method that are effectively predictive of prognosis of LGG patients. Methods: We detected and validated prognosis-associated genes using gene expression and c`Clinical data of LGG patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) databases. We then established a novel prognostic 71-gene score and 17-gene nomograms and analyzed their relationship with overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) in LGG patients. We also performed Gene Set Enrichment Analysis to investigate the altered signalling pathways associated with the 71-gene score phenotype and hierarchical clustering analysis of 71 genes to detect subgroups of LGG patients with distinct clinical characteristics. Results: We identified 1489 genes significantly correlated with patients’ prognosis in LGG. The 71-gene score was predictive of favourable OS and RFS in LGG patients independently of clinicopathological characteristics. The wnt signalling pathway, glutathione metabolism, primary immunodeficiency, galactose metabolism were the potential pathways involved in the prognostication of the 71-gene score. Hierarchical clustering analysis of the 71 genes revealed three subgroups of LGG patients in the TCGA dataset. The cluster2 LGG tumours were associated with higher grade, more frequent radiation therapy, poorer OS and RFS than cluster1 and cluster3 tumours. The 71-gene nomogram incorporating the survival‐related clinical factors showed good prediction accuracies for overall survival, 3-year and 5‐year survival (area under curve [AUC] = 0.79, 0.67 and 0.75 respectively). Conclusions: The 71-gene nomogram may turn out to be a useful and robust method to remarkably ameliorate the prognostic prediction in LGG.

Background: High plasma levels of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and its precursor choline have been linked to stroke; however, their association with cerebral small vessel disease remains unclear. Here we evaluated the association of plasma levels of TMAO and choline with imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease, including white matter hyperintensities, lacunes, and cerebral microbleeds.Methods: We performed a baseline cross-sectional analysis of a multicenter hospital-based cohort study from 2015 to 2018. The data were collected from 30 hospitals in China and included 1,098 patients with ischemic stroke/transient ischemic attack aged ≥18 years. White matter hyperintensities, lacunes, and cerebral microbleeds were evaluated with the patients' demographic, clinical, and laboratory information removed. White matter hyperintensities were rated using the Fazekas visual grading scale, while the degree of severity of the lacunes and cerebral microbleeds was defined by the number of lesions.Results: Increased TMAO levels were associated with severe white matter hyperintensities [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for the highest vs. lowest quartile, 1.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.0–2.1, p = 0.04]. High TMAO levels were more strongly associated with severe periventricular white matter hyperintensities (aOR for the highest vs. lowest quartile, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1–2.3, p = 0.009) than deep white matter hyperintensities (aOR for the highest vs. lowest quartile, 1.3; 95% CI, 0.9–1.9, p = 0.16). No significant association was observed between TMAO and lacunes or cerebral microbleeds. Choline showed trends similar to that of TMAO in the association with cerebral small vessel disease.Conclusions: In patients with ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack, TMAO and choline appear to be associated with white matter hyperintensities, but not with lacunes or cerebral microbleeds; TMAO and choline were associated with increased risk of a greater periventricular, rather than deep, white matter hyperintensities burden.

Weight loss and muscle wasting can have devastating impacts on survival and quality of life of patients with cancer cachexia. Here, we have established a hybrid mouse of ApcMin/+ mice and MMP12 knockout mice (ApcMin/+; MMP12-/-) and found that knockout MMP12 can suppress the weight and muscle loss of ApcMin/+ mice. In detail, we found that interleukin 6 was highly upregulated in the serum of cancer patients and MMP12 was increased in muscle of tumor-bearing mice. Interestingly, the interleukin 6 secreted by tumor cells led to MMP12 overexpression in the macrophages, which further resulted in degradation of insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 and interruption of glycolipid metabolism. Notably, depletion of MMP12 prevented weight loss of ApcMin/+ mice. Our study uncovers the critical role of MMP12 in controlling weight and highlights the great potential of MMP12 in the treatment of cancer cachexia.

Rod pumping unit is the main equipment of oil exploitation. The automatic and intelligent of the management, control, running of pumping units are important goals for the construction of the smart oil field. The continuous development of network and deep learning technology provides strong support for the realization of intelligent pumping unit systems. The use of real-time collected pumping unit operating data for working condition supervision and intelligent analysis and decision-making has become an important part of the new generation of vertical pumping unit systems. This article is based on the collected operating data such as the dynamometer diagram of the pumping unit, using the deep learning technology, the intelligent working condition analysis, and the fault diagnosis model of the new generation vertical pumping unit are established. The training time of the model is short while the accuracy of identification and classification is high, which meets the practical application requirements well.

Objective. Menopause is associated with the increased risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and cardiovascular (CV) disease. Most studies have focused the postmenopausal women and the relationships among estrogen, androgen, and Mets risk. The main aim of the study was to investigate the Mets risk in perimenopausal women and whether the variation of FSH is associated with metabolic factors. Methods. A single-center cross-sectional retrospective analysis including 154 premenopausal women and 124 perimenopausal women was performed. Results. The prevalence of Mets in the perimenopausal group was much higher than the premenopausal group (49.19% vs. 35.71%, p = 0.023 ). The prevalence of central obesity and NAFLD also increased in the perimenopausal group than in the premenopausal group. We grouped the population by FSH tertiles; compared with women in the lowest tertile, women in the highest tertile had higher age, WC, serum TC, LDL-C, AST, ALT, and creatine levels. The prevalence of hypertriglyceridemia, raised BP and Mets also increased in the highest tertile group. Further, we subdivided the perimenopausal women according to FSH tertiles. Compared with perimenopausal women in the lowest tertile, the prevalence of raised BP significantly increased in the highest tertile. Conclusions. The risk of Mets increased in perimenopausal females than in premenopausal women. And a higher FSH level was associated with higher WC, TG, BPs, and the risk of Mets in perimenopausal women. Elevated FSH level appears to be a risk factor of MetS biomarkers in perimenopausal women.

The point spread function reflects the state of an optical telescope and it is important for data post-processing methods design. For wide field small aperture telescopes, the point spread function is hard to model, because it is affected by many different effects and has strong temporal and spatial variations. In this paper, we propose to use the denoising autoencoder, a type of deep neural network, to model the point spread function of wide field small aperture telescopes. The denoising autoencoder is a pure data based point spread function modelling method, which uses calibration data from real observations or numerical simulated results as point spread function templates. According to real observation conditions, different levels of random noise or aberrations are added to point spread function templates, making them as realizations of the point spread function, i.e., simulated star images. Then we train the denoising autoencoder with realizations and templates of the point spread function. After training, the denoising autoencoder learns the manifold space of the point spread function and can map any star images obtained by wide field small aperture telescopes directly to its point spread function, which could be used to design data post-processing or optical system alignment methods., 10 pages, 10 figures, Published by MNRAS

Objective To investigate the efficacy and safety of rituximab (RTX) as first-line treatment of acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (aTTP). Methods Twenty-five patients with acute aTTP and/or severe a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with a thrombospondin type 1 motif, member 13 (ADAMTS13) deficiency were admitted to our centre from April 2009 to March 2015. Fourteen patients received RTX plus standard therapy (plasma exchange and corticosteroids) at acute episodes. Haemoglobin, platelet count, schistocytes, lactate dehydrogenase levels, ADAMTS13 activity and its inhibitors, and the ratio of B lymphocytes in the peripheral blood, were monitored. The number of plasma exchange (PEXs), total plasma volume, remission time, relapse ratio, and adverse effects were recorded. Results The median number of PEXs was 5 (2–17) sessions and median total plasma volume was 168.43 ml/kg (62.86–469.52 ml/kg). Patients achieved haematological remission at a median of 15 days (5–22 days), and the median time of immunological remission was 2 weeks (2–8 weeks) with a median follow-up of 13 months (3–61 months). ADAMTS13 activity significantly increased after 2 weeks. The B lymphocyte percentage in peripheral blood was reduced 1 week after the first dose of RTX infusion compared with before treatment (2.21% ± 5.23% vs 18.47% ± 7.34%, P = 0.000 [the result of statistical software]), and began to gradually increase 9 months later. Severe adverse effects and relapsing TTP were not observed during therapy and follow-up. However, one patient who had sustained immunological remission died of severe pneumonia 7 months later. Conclusion Although our study was limited by its small sample number and it was a non-controlled, clinical trial, it showed potential benefits of RTX therapy for acute aTTP. RTX may be administered as a first-line therapy for lowering patients’ relapse rate in the long term. Randomized, controlled trials of RTX for aTTP are required.

A comprehensive loop parameters designing method and an auxiliary pulling module for an optical phase-locked loop system were discussed. The experiment successfully demonstrated a pull-in frequency range as wide as 2.4GHz and a frequency accuracy of 2MHz.

This paper focuses on the train service design problem within a given period in an urban rail transit line, where multiple either full-length or short-turn service routes can be operated, and each service route can utilize one of several different train compositions. The problem lies on determining the turn-back stations, train composition and frequency of each service route operated on the line. Considering the interests of operators and passengers, we decompose the problem as two subproblems namely train service configuration and passenger assignment. The first subproblem is formulated as an integer linear programming model with the objective of minimizing operators’ cost. Given a train service scheme, the second subproblem is modelled as a capacitated continuous multi-commodity flow model to minimize passengers’ waiting time cost and transfer cost. The optimal strategy is extended to determine the behaviour of passengers and capture the extra waiting time of passengers under capacity constraint. The two sub-models are weighted and integrated into a mixed integer nonlinear programming model, which is further transformed into a mixed integer linear programming model using a novel linearization method. By exploiting the special characteristics of the model, a tailored and easy to implement local search algorithm is developed to solve large-scale instances. Starting from the operator-optimum solution which can be easily obtained, the algorithm solves the two sub-models iteratively to search better solutions within a precalculated search range which is smaller than the complete feasible domain. Finally, different sizes of instances constructed from two urban rail transit lines are utilized to demonstrate the performance and practicability of the proposed approaches.

Urban vibrancy is the key and the foundation for monitoring the status of urban spatial development, assisting in data-driven urban development planning and realizing sustainable urban development. Based on a dataset of multisource geographical big data, the understanding and analysis of urban vibrancy can be deepened with fine granularity. The working framework in this study focuses on the comprehensive perspective of urban morphology, which is decomposed into two dimensions (formality and functionality) and four elements (road, block, building, point of interest). The geographically and temporally weighted regression model was first applied to determine the spatiotemporal effect of the morphological metrics on vibrancy, and then, the geographical detector was employed from the perspective of spatially stratified heterogeneity to reveal the synergetic impacts. The following findings were revealed. (1) Dense street networks, small and medium-sized blocks, and the diversification and intensification of building and land use are beneficial to urban vibrancy. (2) Under the premise of adapting to local conditions, urban spaces combine multiple morphological metrics for the accomplishment of a full-region and all-time vibrancy. (3) The mixture of urban functions is worthy of attention for vibrancy growth because of its extraordinary synergy, not its capacity. Morphological metrics serve to foster and prolong urban vibrancy, adapt to urban sustainability, and contend against inefficient, disorderly urban sprawl. These findings provide significant implications for urban planners/designers and policymakers to optimize urban morphology, improve the vibrancy in large cities, and implement high-quality city planning.

Background Stroke is one of the world's leading causes of death. Many studies have checked the relationship between short-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) and stroke, but few have focused on the effect of long-term exposure to PM2.5 (particulate matters with an aerodynamic diameter of ≤2.5 μm). This study aimed to quantitatively examine the relationship of long-term exposure to PM2.5 with stroke incidence and mortality. Methods We identified relevant studies by searching the PubMed, EMBASE and MEDLINE. After the systematical review of pertinent studies, random-effect meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the association between long-term exposure to PM2.5 and stroke. Results Our meta-analysis included 16 cohort studies with more than 2.2 million people and above 49 149 endpoint events (incident stroke and death from stroke). The pooled hazard ratio (HR) for each 5 μg/m3 increment in PM2.5 was 1.11 (95% CI: 1.05, 1.17) (CI for confidence interval) for incidence of stroke and 1.11 (95% CI:1.05, 1.17) for mortality of stroke. In the region-specific analysis, significant association between PM2.5 and incidence of stroke was found in North America (HR=1.09, 95% CI:1.05, 1.14) and Europe (HR=1.07, 95% CI:1.05, 1.10), while the pooled result of Asia showed no significance (HR=2.31, 95% CI:0.49, 10.95). Conclusions Long-term exposure to PM2.5 is an important risk factor for stroke. Since air quality is intimately related to everyone, policies aimed at reducing particulate matters will benefit public health a lot.

Background: Anti-infective treatment has become troublesome owing to aggravated resistance to antibacterial agents. Objectives: This study aimed at investigating the distribution characteristics and drug resistance changes of pathogenic bacteria in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with intracranial infection receiving neurosurgery, and to provide evidence for rational use of antibacterial agents. Methods: Bacteria were collected from CSF cultures of all patients receiving neurosurgery in the hospital of the current research, from January 2013 to December 2015, and the same types of strains cultured from each case during the same infection were combined. A hospital information system (HIS) was then used to analyze the data of 120 patients, who received neurosurgery from January 2015 to June 2016 and had positive CSF bacterial culture results after surgery, and to treat them by rationally selecting antibacterial agents. Results: A total of 845 pathogenic bacterial strains were isolated from the CSF samples and cultured, of which 629 were Gram-negative bacteria, accounting for 74.4%. Particularly, Acinetobacter baumannii had severe pan-resistance. There were 216 Gram-positive bacteria, which accounted for 25.6% of all strains, and were mainly methicillin-resistant staphylococci, being basically resistant to penicillins and only susceptible to vancomycin and linezolid. After rational selection of antibacterial agents using HIS, based on the retrospective analysis results, 101 of the 120 patients were cured by vancomycin and linezolid (cure rate: 84.17%). Conclusions: Since the treatment outcomes after rational selection of antibacterial agents (i.e. vancomycin and linezolid) using HIS were satisfactory, the findings of retrospective analysis are of high clinical value.

Dome A is the highest point on the Antarctic Plateau, and the Chinese expedition team was the first to arrive there in 2005 January. It is an excellent site for astronomical observations. The Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope (KDUST), a proposed next-generation Chinese Antarctic optical telescope, is currently being planned. KDUST is a coaxial three-mirror anastigmatic telescope with an entrance pupil diameter of 2.5 m and a field of view of 1.5 0 . The telescope should be fully aligned in order to achieve diffraction-limited image quality. Based on the current optical model for KDUST, in this study we describe a modified alignment metrology and give the preliminary results of numerical simulations. Using the acquisition of field-dependent aberrations, the algorithm, which is based on double Zernike polynomial decomposition and the least-squares fitting method, delivers a suitable set of corrections for resolvingmisalignments including themulti-axismotion of the secondary and tertiary mirrors. Moreover, the algorithm can also be used to calculate the primary mirror’s low-order figure errors mixing with the misalignments of the secondary mirror.

Digital IIR filter design problem is a crucial research issue in control and signal processing. From the viewpoint of optimization, IIR filter designing problems can be formulated as a multi-modal optimization problem with multiple decision variables. This study investigate the feasibility of applying a newly proposed optimization method labeled as water wave optimization (WWO) algorithm to identify the unknown parameters for IIR filter. To enhance its fine (local) searching performance of WWO, Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm based local improvement is incorporated into WWO so as to continually search for the global optima through the reflection, expansion, contraction, and shrink operators. By working on well-known IIR designing benchmark problems, we evaluate the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed improved WWO algorithm. Experimental results as well as the comparisons with some state-of-the-art algorithm illustrate merit of the hybrid algorithm in which the local search and global search are well balanced.

I Ching (Chinese characters: $$$) philosophy, stemming from ancient Chinese culture, is Chinese view of empiricism, world outlook and dialectics. Over thousands of years of evolving and interpretation, its cosmological wisdom has broad and profound influences not only on Chinese prevailing philosophy, but also on westerns. I Ching concentrates on the virtue of being moderate and appropriate, representing the balance by which it is contended that power/destiny can be well generated/controlled. Among the whole 64 hexagrams in I Ching, is the QIAN hexagram which is ranked in the first place, standing for the strong action and the everlasting desire for success. Behind I Ching philosophy lie the thinking and action models of optimization, specifically, identification from changing states, embracing vision, and optimal action obeying the balance of moderateness and appropriateness. I Ching philosophy could act as the driving force to establish and develop new optimization scheme. In this regard, enlightened by I Ching philosophy, particularly the QIAN hexagram, we propose I Ching philosophy inspired optimization, labeled as ICO for continuous optimization problems. Characterized by population-based, stochastic, iterative, and empiricism inspired features, the ICO evolves the population of solutions by multiple searching operators derived from underlying mechanism of the QIAN hexagram, as expected that the balance between global exploration and local exploitation can be well achieved. Specifically, the whole population is divided into four subpopulations, each of which corresponds to one solid line (state in the QIAN hexagram), then five search operators are developed to perform the learning, emerging, controlling, chasing and stabilizing operations on each subpopulation. The performances of the proposed ICO are investigated on well-known testing benchmarks and digital IIR filter designing problem which is crucial in control field. Comparisons with several state-of-the-art algorithms show the efficacy of the proposed ICO algorithm.

During the past two decades, developing and improving intelligent optimization algorithms (IOAs) has been one of the hottest research topics in evolutionary computing. Most of the IOAs are inspired by natural phenomena, and shown to be highly effective in solving complex optimization problems. In this study, we propose a new population based metaheuristic algorithm named Team Effectiveness Based Optimization (TEBO), which is inspired from human society rather than natural world. The high-intelligence of human beings together with the research achievements in the field of team effectiveness motivate the development of this novel optimization algorithm. In this paper, we present how the members learn and cooperate in a team environment in order to improve the overall team performance. We investigate the proposed TEBO on a comprehensive set of 30 benchmark problems in CEC 2014 competition on Single Objective Real-Parameter Numerical Optimization. The results confirm the competitiveness of the proposed algorithm comparing to other state-of-the-art intelligent optimization algorithms, including invasive weed optimization (IWO), biogeography-based optimization (BBO), gravitational search algorithm (GSA), hunting search (HuS), bat algorithm (BA) and water wave optimization (WWO).

Immunosuppressive therapy (IST) with antithymocyte globulin (ATG) and cyclosporine (CsA) is the standard treatment for children with severe aplastic anemia (SAA) with no human leukocyte antigen-matched siblings. Due to the unavailability of horse ATG in China, porcine antilymphocyte globulin (p-ALG), which is less expensive and more effective than rabbit ATG, is widely used. We sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety profile of modified IST with p-ALG plus delayed CsA at day 21 in 50 SAA children. Eighteen SAA patients who progressed from nonsevere aplastic anemia (NSAA) were classified as SAA-II; the other 32 patients were classified as SAA-I. Overall response (OR) rates at 3, 6 and 12 months were 56, 64 and 62%, respectively. The 10-year overall survival (OS) rate and disease-free survival (DFS) rate were 80 and 56%. The OR, OS and DFS rates in the SAA-I group were clearly better than those in the SAA-II group. Death rate from infection within 30 days was 4%. Modified IST with p-ALG plus delayed CsA is a reliable and well-tolerated treatment for children with SAA, and reduces early death due to infection. Modified IST is more suitable for children with SAA-I.

An all-inorganic thin film solar cell was fabricated with colloidal CdTe and CdSe nanocrystals. Its temperaturedependent photovoltaic characterization was measured, and an open circuit voltage decay technique was used to determine the electron lifetime. The photovoltaic parameters, such as the exact carrier lifetime, were remarkably different between under low-temperature region and under temperature above 267 K. It is suggested that the temperature-dependent carrier conductivity results from a thermally-activated hopping process and this nanocrystals device is a kind of donor-acceptor solar cell.

Flower-like BiOCl and Ag–BiOCl nanocomposite have been successfully fabricated via a microwave irradiation process. The structure and morphology of the samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The photocatalytic property of the BiOCl and Ag–BiOCl nanocomposite was evaluated by photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light illumination. Results of photodegradation tests reveal that the Ag–BiOCl nanocomposite has much better photocatalytic activity than pure BiOCl. The excellent photocatalytic activity can be ascribed to the high effective electron–hole separation which results in the significant improvement of the photocatalytic activity of BiOCl.

In this paper, a new type of distributed permutation flow-shop scheduling problem (DPFSP) is proposed, in which different transport timetable and different loading capacity for each factory are considered. Under this model generalization, we assume that there are a total of F different factories and then a sequence has to be calculated for the jobs assigned to each factory. We also assume that the distances to different factories are not equal, transport timetables and loading capacities are also considered. Even though the assumption in this study is necessary for today's economy, there are seldom studies in literature dealing with such constraints. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report on incorporating vehicle timetables and vehicle capacities to DPFSP. Standard DPFSP is a typical NP-hard problem and this problem is even harder. A simulated annealing based local search with multiple different neighborhoods is used to solve the problem with the objective to minimize the maximum completion time. Three different neighborhood searching methods are also proposed. A comprehensive computational and statistical analysis is conducted in order to analyze the performance of the proposed method.

This paper studies a new extension of distributed permutation flow shop scheduling problem (DPFSP) referred to as the DPFSP with flowline eligibility. Under this extension, the problem contains two stages. At the first assignment stage, a set N of n jobs is distributed among F factories with flowline eligibility constraint, i.e., not all the factories are available for every job. Then each factory can be regarded as a regular permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSP) in which jobs assigned to each factory have to be processed on m machines according to the given permutation. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time or makespan of all the factories. The flowline eligibility constraint adds asymmetry and complexity to the regular DPFSP. In the proposed hybrid estimation of distribution algorithm (hybrid EDA), a heuristic of Framinan and Leisten (FLH) based solution-generate method (FLHSGM), two novel factory-based operators are proposed, and an effective local search based on variable neighborhood search (VNS) is employed and incorporated into EDA. Numerical simulations with comprehensive computational and statistical analysis are carried out. The experimental results and comparisons with existing algorithms show that the FLHSGM and the VNS-based local search enhances the search ability of EDA and the effectiveness of the hybrid EDA in solving both small-scale and large-scale DPFSP with flowline eligibility.

Despite the global fast coarse search capability of Teaching-Learning Based Optimization (TLBO), analysis in literature on the performance of TLBO reveals it often risks getting prematurely stuck in local optima for numerical optimization problems. In this study, Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) quasi-Newton method is incorporated into the conventional TLBO to enhance its local searching performance through local search operators. The proposed TLBO-BFGS would enrich the searching modes and behaviors, and balance the global exploration and local exploitation as well. Simulation results on six well-known benchmark problems and comparisons with Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and standard TLBO show that our proposed TLBO-BFGS can effectively enhance the searching efficiency and greatly improve the searching quality.

Keywords: Modal test; Supporting system; Air spring; Stiffness; Added mass Abstract. Modal test is one of the basic works of studying on dynamic characteristics of aircraft. The ideal state is to make the specimen in the "free-free" state when doing modal test. In actual, specimen is supported by an elastic supporting system, the stiffness, added mass and supporting position of the supporting system will affect the rigid-body modal frequency of the system directly. In this paper, we took a certain aerospace products as an example and used ANSA, NASTRAN software, studied on the influence of stiffness, added mass and supporting position of the supporting system on modal test results, and put forward the design method of modal test supporting system.

airplane oil pressure reservoirs are major fuel supplying parts of airplanes to have flight maneuvers. Since they are always working under alternating loadings, they are prone to produce fatigue fractures. Therefore, they will undergo vibration endurance tests in general. And the fixed-frequency vibration endurance test is commonly used in engineering. This paper has established a finite element model for the vibration test system, taken into consideration the influence of liquid fuel and introduced the fluid-solid coupling method to conduct harmonic response analysis on different excitation conditions with MSC.Nastran, thus obtaining the stress distribution under different loading conditions. Moreover, the results have been compared with the test results to verify correctness of the method, thus providing references for the improvement in structural design.

歯周病はプラークおよびその他の口腔内因子に起因する炎症性疾患である。歯周病の病因論に対する考え方がここ数十年間で大きく変化した結果, 歯周病の治療を成功に導くためには患者の口腔内管理状態の向上が重要であることが再認識されている。本研究の目的は, 動機づけに際して通常のブラッシング指導に加えて, 口臭測定および定量的PCR法による細菌検査を行うことによる口腔内への影響について検討することにある。被験者としては, 日本大学松戸歯学部付属病院歯周科に来院した60名の慢性歯周炎患者を選択した。60名の被験者は, N, A, B, C群の4つ(各群15名)に分け, 術前の歯周組織検査の結果から各群間の検査値の標準化を行い, ブラッシング指導前後の歯周組織検査の改善程度を比較検討した。N群は通常のブラッシング指導, A群は通常のブラッシング指導に加えてブレストロンを用いた口臭検査, B群は通常のブラッシング指導に加えてProphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythensis, Aggregatebacter actinomycetemcomitansについて定量的PCR法による細菌検査, C群は通常のブラッシング指導に加えて口臭検査と細菌検査を行った。歯周基本治療後の歯周組織検査の結果は, すべての群で初診時に比べ改善を認めた。各群間の比較ではPlaque control record(PCR %)はN群に比べA, B, C群で有意な減少を認めた(p

An innovative texturing technique, high repetitive rate YAG laser-induced discharge texturing (LIDT), has been developed. The principle is a laser pulse synchronized with electrical pulse radiates on one of two electrodes, a plasma plume appears, that serves as discharge channel and the breakdown may occur between the electrodes far below the breakdown threshold. If the roll and a conical metal rod are the two electrodes, with the rotating of roll and the moving of laser set and conical metal rod along the axial of the roll, the deterministic or the random crater patterns are obtained on the roll surface by a serial laser-induced discharge. The experiments were carried out in different current discharge waveforms, media and electrical polarities on several materials. The results show that crater morphology is mainly determined by electrical polarity and medium. Simple explanations of the result are suggested.

Tagging systems enable users to organise their online entities with distinct tags. Exploiting these user generated content and underlying bilingual information have become more and more important in recommendation system. Probabilistic topic model has been widely used in document management and social network mining. In this paper, we propose a new method to do tag-based recommendation with topic model. Some existing methods are based on mining association rules and similarity measures. In these cases, tags serve as the essential intermediates for statistical computation, but they have the drawbacks that results are sensitive to parameter setup. Even though they are popular in some real application situations, they are simply lack of scalability as the computational procedure differs over distinguished platforms. It's natural to take tags as words, from which topics can be effectively extracted by using topic model. Under the assumption of the generating process in topic model, user's topic distribution parameter implies his or her topic preference. Recommendation results are obtained according to the final probability calculated by summing over topics. Our experiments show that the proposed model is effective to do both tags and items recommendation on two sparse datasets.

Gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide. Predicting morbidity and mortality is important in deciding timing of surgery and type of surgery offered. APACHE II, POSSUM, and P-POSSUM are the most reliable scoring methods in use today. This is the first paper to evaluate the utility of all three scoring systems in China. We collected data on 851 patients (583 male and 268 female) who underwent surgery between 1991 and 2011. Physiological and pathological data was entered in spreadsheet format and analyzed using STATA version 11.0 to generate ROC curves for each scoring system. In predicting mortality, P-POSSUM and POSSUM were most effective and APACHE II was ineffective. POSSUM predicted a higher morbidity risk than was actually encountered. Age and type of operation were found to be independent risk factors for mortality. The utility of the APACHE II score in gastric cancer patients is limited. APACHE II is suitable for considering group versus individual effect. The POSSUM score is useful in general surgery, but needs improvement. We found the P-POSSUM score to be superior for morbidity and mortality prediction. P-POSSUM is useful for both the general population and for a specific cohort. The type of surgery is a key decision point for surgeons, and independently affects prognosis. Based upon these findings and clinical scoring systems, clinicians can develop individualized treatment algorithms.

This study analyzed the bra designed for WearerSelf-caused Comfort, physical beauty Degree and Bra itself in the form of beauty and give their own psychological feelings of cultural symbols. To use the human body Ergonomic related theories, Explore the design process in bra man and man and the environment, And “Formal” and “ ergonomics ” of the harmony and unity, so that bra design with every step of the human body as the basis. Also designed an artistic component and bra wearer to best match the actual performance of the state. Thus Discusses the design of science in the bra to be expressed in the form of art, designed to achieve a bra harmony of science and art.