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Solving the undesirable intermittence and fluctuation problems of renewable energy production needs complementary energy storage on a large scale. Compressed air energy storage in caverns (CAES-C) has been verified as an effective technique. To further improve the energy storage efficiency and save costs, compressed air energy storage in aquifers (CAES-A) and compressed carbon dioxide energy storage in aquifers (CCES-A) were proposed successively. However, the operation performances of CCES-A, especially the hydrodynamic and thermodynamic properties of its underground components (the wellbore-reservoir system), are not clear. Here we introduce a coupled wellbore and reservoir model, T2WELL-ECO2N, initially used for geologic carbon sequestration simulation, for simulating the dynamics of CO2 injection and production through wellbore in both the construction and operation stages of CCES-A. The temperature, pressure, CO2 saturation and transfer, energy efficiency, maximum system cycle times, total stress change induced by CO2 injection in aquifer, and sensitivity analysis of permeability in the wellbore-reservoir system of the designed CCES-A are comprehensively studied. The simulation results show that during the operation stage the CO2 is supercritical and fluctuates in both wellbore and aquifer where the CO2 saturation decreases and CO2 bubble generally moves to the central and lower parts of the target aquifer rather than the outside direction. The system itself effectively alleviates the loss of CO2 mass from the side walls of the aquifer. The fact that the cold CO2 zone in the aquifer can continuously receive energy by heat transfer from the surroundings helps the energy efficiency of the CCES-A system gradually increase, and even reach 1.1. The system cycle times exceed 1000 days when the aquifer permeability is larger than 5.0 × 10−13 m2, indicating that CCES-A needs less time to reconstruct the cushion gas compared with CAES-A and can lower the operating cost accordingly.

BACKGROUND Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common intraocular malignancy, and the prognosis of patients with advanced stage of UM is very dismal. The T cell receptor ectopic expression of butyrophilin-like 9 (BTNL9) has been observed in several types of cancers, but the expression and clinical significance of BTNL9 in UM is unclear. MATERIAL AND METHODS In our study, we detected the expression of BTNL9 in 6 pairs of UM tissues and adjacent tissues using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), and further investigated BTNL9 expression with immunohistochemistry (IHC) in a retrospective cohort consisted of 62 UM patients. The correlations between BNTL9 expression and clinicopathological factors were analyzed with Fisher's test, and the prognostic significance of BTNL9 was evaluated with univariate analysis and multivariate analysis. Using experiments in vitro, we investigated the function of BTNL9 in UM proliferation and invasion. RESULTS BTNL9 mRNAs in adjacent tissues were remarkably higher than in UM tissues. The percentages of BTNL9 low expression and high expression were 56.45% and 43.55%, respectively. High expression of BTNL9 was significantly associated with favorable prognosis of UM. BTNL9 expression was identified as a prognostic biomarker predicting better outcome of UM patients. Moreover, BTNL9 could suppress invasion instead of proliferation in melanoma cell line. CONCLUSIONS BTNL9 was a favorable prognostic factor of UM and it could suppress invasion of UM, suggesting that BTNL9 detection could help stratify high-risk patients with UM after operation and guide more precise surveillance and treatment.

Pervasive unsafe behaviors of construction workers are the primary cause of accidents on construction job sites. The workers' safety-related behaviors are subject to a variety of factors, such as interactions with coworkers and interventions by management teams. The impacts of these factors have attracted considerable attention in academia but are yet to be fully examined. To provide a quantitative assessment of these impacts and their managerial implications in practice, an agent-based modeling approach of construction safety-related behaviors, which adopts a bottom-up architecture, is proposed in this research. This approach regards safety performance as an emergent property of the behaviors and interactions of construction workers and management teams. The development of the agent-based model is based on a range of theoretical and empirical evidence, including a cognitive analysis model for modeling worker behaviors, and site observations and surveys for the design of simulated working environment and tasks, as well as the modeling of individual behaviors and interactions. Four managerial scenarios are simulated using the proposed approach. Based on the simulation results, the effects of a number of managerial factors on the safety performance of construction workers are examined. These factors include duties of supervisors, the competency and inspection strategy of safety officers, the frequency of safety training, senior managers' involvement in safety activities and emphasis on safety goals. The effects of these factors are examined in a quantitative manner, and relevant implications for construction safety management practice are discussed. The findings prove that agent-based modeling is an effective approach for analyzing the characteristics and patterns of construction safety-related behaviors and assessing possible safety management strategies.

Introduction: Uveal melanoma is one of the most common primary intraocular malignant tumors with poor prognosis and limited treatments. Programmed cell death receptor-1 (PD-1) blockade represents the primary treatment strategy of immune checkpoint inhibition; however, there is a lack of studies on whether PD-1 expression in primary (ocular) uveal melanoma affects tumor progression. Methods: PD-1 expression in 82 cases of primary (ocular) uveal melanoma was detected by immunohistochemistry. The clinical significance of PD-1 expression was evaluated using univariate and multivariate analysis. PD-1 overexpression and knockdown studies were conducted in C918 and Mum-2B cell lines to analyze the effect of PD-1 expression on tumor cell proliferation and intracellular cell signaling transduction. real-time qPCR (RT-qPCR) and western blot analysis were performed to investigate the gene expression level. CCK8 assays were performed to examine the cell proliferation ability. Results: High expression of primary (ocular) intratumor PD-1 was associated with poor patient survival. Moreover, PD-1 expression was correlated with the largest tumor diameter. PD-1 expression and optic nerve invasion were independent prognostic risk factors. PD-1 overexpression in uveal melanoma cell lines promoted tumor cell proliferation, while knockdown of PD-1 inhibited cell proliferation capacity. Conclusion: Our study established the role of PD-1 in the progression of uveal melanoma and provided a new potential treatment selection for uveal melanoma.

BACKGROUND BCL2 19 kD protein-interacting protein 3 (BNIP3) is a BH3-containing protein of the BCL-2 family; it can regulate cell death, autophagy, and cytoprotection. The upregulation of BNIP3 has been reported to relate to progression and poor prognosis in different cancer types. However, the clinical significance of BNIP3 in uveal melanoma (UM) is still unknown. MATERIAL AND METHODS In our study, 47 patients with UM were enrolled; the expression of BNIP3 was detected with immunohistochemistry. According to BNIP3 immunohistochemical scores, the patients were divided into BNIP3 high- and low-expression subgroups. The correlation between the expression of BNIP3 and clinicopathological factors was evaluated with Fisher's test; the associations with survival rates were analyzed with log-rank test. The independent prognostic factors were identified with the Cox-regression model. RESULTS BNIP3 was mainly localized in the cytoplasm, and high expression of BNIP3 accounted for 31.9% (15/47) of the patients in our study. High expression of BNIP3 was demonstrated to be significantly associated with more pigment (P=0.018) and deeper scleral invasion (P=0.013). High expression of BNIP3 was also correlated with lower overall survival rate (P=0.006). Multivariate analysis confirmed positive ciliary body involvement and lymphatic infiltration as independent prognostic factors. CONCLUSIONS High expression of BNIP3 was significantly associated with poor prognosis of patients with UM, indicating that BNIP3 detection could help stratify high-risk patients and identify new therapies targeting BNIP3 as a promising approach to treat UM.

We theoretically investigate the enhanced charge-dependent generation of the optical second-order sidebands (OSS) in a gain-cavity-assisted optomechanical (GCAOM) system coupled to a charged object. The hybrid optomechanical system is coherently driven by an external two-tone laser field which consists of a continuous-wave pump field and a pulsed probe field. Beyond the conventional linearized description of optomechanical interactions, the nonlinear optomechanical interactions are included in the Heisenberg-Langevin equations and are treated analytically by means of the perturbation method. It is shown that an assisted gain cavity can significantly enhance the OSS generation and can also lead to higher charge dependence of the output OSS spectrum than that achieved from a lossy cavity optomechanical system. Subsequently we discuss the application of such a GCAOM system as a family of high-sensitivity sensor for measuring the charges. Using experimentally achievable parameters, we identify the conditions under which the assisted gain cavity allows us to enhance the OSS generation and improve sensitivity of the sensor beyond what is achievable in a lossy cavity optomechanical system. The present investigation may provide a route toward modulating the nonlinear optical properties of the electro-optic hybrid system, as well as to guide the design of sensitive devices.

Background rs11801299 and rs1380576, two novel polymorphisms in MDM4 gene, have been investigated in several different cancer types. However, the role of these two polymorphisms in retinoblastoma (RB) remains unclear. Methods A total of 126 patients with primary RB and 148 age-/gender-matched controls were included in this retrospective study. The frequency of rs11801299 and rs1380576 were determined between RB patients and controls. The association of these two polymorphisms with clinicopathological characteristics, prognosis were further evaluated. Results AA genotype at rs11801299 was significantly associated with an increased risk of developing RB (OR = 2.06, 95%CI 1.09–3.90). The possibility of developing RB was also significantly increased in individuals with A allele at rs11801299 (OR = 1.49, 95%CI 1.06–2.08). RB patients carrying AA genotype and A allele at rs11801299 were more likely to have tumor invasion and poor differentiation. As for rs1380576, a significantly lower risk of developing RB was observed in patients with G allele (CG + GG) compared with wild-type CC genotype (OR = 0.59, 95%CI 0.36–3.95). RB patients with GG genotype or G allele had a lower risk of developing highly aggressive cancer. Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank results revealed that RB patients carrying AA genotype or A allele (AA + GA) at rs11801299 had significantly poorer prognosis. Multivariate COX analysis showed that the rs11801299 G allele was associated with decreased survival but was not an independent prognostic factor. Conclusion rs11801299 was significantly associated with RB risk, pathological differentiation, tumor aggressiveness and poor prognosis.

In this paper, a deep learning classification model is proposed for automatically detecting the marine oil spill in Lanset-7 and Lanset-8 images, which can combine fully convolutional network (FCN) with Resnet and Googlenet respectively. The classification algorithms, i.e. FCN-Googlenet and FCN-ResNet are compared to the state-of-the-art Support Vector Machine (SVM) method. The experimental results show that our FCN-Googlenet and FCN-ResNet models outperform other approaches with a significant improvement. Moreover, our methods are more flexible in that no restriction on the size of input image is required in our algorithmic setups, which is more suitable in real applications.

Fatigue is believed to have a negative effect on workers’ safety performance. The current fatigue studies in construction have relied on questionnaire or interview survey, and due to certain limitations of such research method, the changing patterns of errors and the types of errors associated with different levels of fatigue are not well understood. By viewing an unsafe behavior as a cognitive failure, this research proposes an experimental method to study the effect of fatigue on construction workers’ safety performance. First, the research designed a typical manual handling task to simulate the actual construction work. The participant’s fatigue level could be measured by a Fatigue Assessment Scale for Construction Workers (FASCW), and the participant’s safety performance could be measured by monitoring the participant’s errors when performing the tasks. Second, a pilot study was conducted to show that the experimental tasks could induce fatigue effectively, and workers made more errors in a fatigue state. Third, the formal study found that the fatigue level of 20 was a critical point from where the effect of fatigue began to emerge. When a worker’s fatigue level exceeded 20, there was a linear relationship between fatigue levels and error rates. In terms of error types, when at a relatively low fatigue level above 20, a worker’s errors were mainly due to the failure of hazard perception. But as fatigue accumulated, its impact on the worker’s capacity of motor control became significant. Relevant implications derived from the experimental findings for safety management are also discussed.

The unsafe behaviors of construction workers are often the immediate causes of construction accidents, but the underlying causation of such behaviors are not well understood. This research regards the management of construction safety as a system, and seeks to use system dynamics to demonstrate how the system influences construction workers in terms of unsafe behaviors. First, individual and environmental conditions that can lead to an unsafe behavior are identified through a holistic cognitive analysis and management conditions that affect such conditions are identified. Second, a system dynamics model for the causation of unsafe behaviors (SD-CUB) is developed to characterize the causal structure of the system. The SD-CUB model involves relationships among management, individuals, and environmental conditions that can eventually lead to workers’ unsafe behaviors. Third, a variety of model tests are conducted to build the confidence of the SD-CUB model. A five-week survey and observation on a bui...

In order to gain deep insight into the underlying causation and identify correspondent management strategies in the prevention of construction workers’ unsafe behaviors, a conceptual system dynamics model was proposed. The paper mainly focuses on the confidence building of the model through model testing, which basically contains tests of model structure, model behavior and model’s policy implication. The conceptual model is quantified first before the formal process of model tests. Second, the paper applies semi-structured interviews for the structure-verification test to ensure the model’s appropriateness in depicting the structure of the real system. Third, tests of model behavior such as extreme-condition tests and behavior-reproduction tests are conducted, so as to demonstrate the plausibility of the patterns and behaviors the model generates. Fourth, model’s policy implication tests are presented to examine whether the model’s responses to predesigned policies are consistent with the real system. As a result, the model shows confidence in revealing the underlying causation of unsafe behaviors, which can be used as reference to the routine safety management in practice. Further suggestions for the application of the model as a tool of simulation in real construction projects are also given.