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Objectives Simple reaction time (SRT) and choice reaction time (CRT) have been shown to be good indicators for quantitatively assessing the level of human cognitive impairment, but these parameters have also been linked to the risk of human death. This study aimed to quantitatively assess the independent predictive value of SRT or CRT for all-cause mortality or cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality by conducting a meta-analysis of prospective studies. Study design The study design of this study is a prospective cohort study. Methods We conducted a meta-analysis by combining hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of SRT or CRT with all-cause mortality or CVD mortality in healthy community residents aged 18 and over. Heterogeneity was evaluated by using Q statistics and Cochrane’s I2 statistics. Results A total of seven prospective studies that examined all-cause mortality and CVD mortality were included. The pooled HR of all-cause mortality in SRT was 1.099 (1.065–1.134, I2 = 11.9%), and an increased risk of CVD mortality was associated with lower SRT (HR = 1.186, 95% CI = 1.137–1.236; I2 = 52.4%). Similarly, the pooled HR of all-cause mortality in CRT was 1.140 (95% CI = 1.085–1.197, I2 = 33.7%). However, lower CRT was not statistically associated with an increased risk of CVD mortality. Conclusion SRT may be a predictor of all-cause-mortality and CVD mortality, and CRT is significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality.

ED-initiated addiction treatment holds promise for enhancing access to treatment for those with opioid use disorder (OUD). We present a literature review summarizing the evidence for buprenorphine induction in the ED including best practices for dosing, follow-up care, and reducing implementation barriers. A literature search of Pubmed, PsychInfo, and Embase identified articles studying OUD treatment in the ED published after 1980. Twenty-five studies were identified including eleven scientific abstracts. Multiple studies suggest that buprenorphine induction improves engagement in substance treatment up to 30 days after ED treatment. Many different induction protocols were presented, but no particular approach was best supported as criteria for induction and initial dosing vary widely. Similarly, transition of care models focused on either a "hub and spoke" model or "warm hand-offs" model, but no studies compared these approaches. Common barriers to implementing induction programs were provider inexperience, discomfort with addiction treatment, and limited time during the ED visit. No studies described the number of EDs offering induction. While ED buprenorphine induction is safe and enhances adherence to addiction treatment, uncertainty persists in how to best identify patients needing treatment, how to initiate buprenorphine, and how to enhance follow-up after ED-initiated treatment.

It is well known that the lattice structure for a crystal can be manipulated through mechanical strain, temperature, an electric field, a magnetic field, and light. In the past, the photostriction commonly occurs at the surface and the bulk photostriction is very small in most semiconductors. Here, the 532 nm laser can excite the excess electron-hole pairs in the surface layer and consequently these carriers diffuse in the millimeter-thick MAPbBr3-xIx crystal and introduce a giant bulk photostriction of 0.17, 0.28, and 0.35% for the 0.5 mm-thick MAPbBr3-xIx single crystals at x = 0, 1, and 2, respectively. Furthermore, the displacement of each crystal linearly increases from hundreds of picometers to several micrometers when the light intensity increases from about 0.2 to 536 mW/cm2. Since both the maximum strain and the displacement accuracy are as good as those of PZT ceramics used in piezoelectric actuators, these crystals can be used in light-driven actuators for precise positioning.

Background Dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) are noninvasive techniques for the diagnosis of skin lesions. Their accuracy for amelanotic/hypomelanotic melanoma (AHM) has not been systematically studied. Objectives We aimed to investigate systematically the accuracy of dermoscopy and RCM and to compare the accuracy between them for diagnosing AHM. Methods We searched the PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Cochrane Library databases for eligible studies about dermoscopy, RCM and AHM from inception to 31 June 2019. The quality of the studies was assessed with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool. The pooled results were calculated using a random effects model in Stata 14, Meta-DiSc, RevMan 5·3 and SAS 9·4. We also explored the sources of heterogeneity by sensitivity analysis. Results Seven studies with a total of 1111 lesions were included. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of dermoscopy for the diagnosis of AHM were 61% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0·37-0·81] and 90% (95% CI 0·74-0·97), respectively. The corresponding respective values of RCM for the diagnosis of AHM were 67% (95% CI 0·51-0·81) and 89% (95% CI 0·86-0·92). In three studies including the performance of both RCM and dermoscopy, the relative diagnostic odds ratio of RCM over dermoscopy was 4·69 (95% CI 0·81-27·3) (P = 0·068). Conclusions Our study demonstrates that both dermoscopy and RCM offer good diagnostic accuracy with high specificity and moderate sensitivity in the diagnosis of AHM. RCM is more accurate than dermoscopy in diagnosing AHM but the comparison needs to be confirmed. What's already known about this topic? Amelanotic/hypomelanotic melanoma (AHM) is the most lethal skin cancer. The diagnosis of AHM is a great challenge because of its nonspecific clinical manifestation. Early diagnosis can improve the prognosis. Dermoscopy and reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) have high diagnostic accuracy for pigmented melanoma. What does this study add? Both dermoscopy and RCM offer good diagnostic accuracy with high specificity and moderate sensitivity for AHM. RCM might be more accurate than dermoscopy for diagnosis of AHM. More research on the diagnostic accuracy of dermoscopy and RCM for AHM is required in support of these findings.

Fatigue damage in engineering structures is universal. The occurrence of fatigue cracks brings unpredictable hidden dangers to a structure in terms of safety and service performance. Traditional damage identification methods, such as power spectrum analysis, are mostly based on linear elasticity theory that cannot reflect the typical nonlinear characteristics of fatigue cracks and cannot meet the higher requirements of the signal analysis method put forward by current mass detection data. To solve this problem, a numerical model of a cantilever beam with a breathing crack is established in this study. A method for diagnosing fatigue damage is studied by combining bispectral analysis and a statistical normal cloud model, which characterize the nonlinear characteristics of the structure. This method can effectively describe the nonlinear characteristics of the structure and reasonably evaluate the degree of fatigue damage in the structure. The bispectrum-normal cloud model method proposed in this study overcomes the limitations of existing linear damage detection methods in nonlinear damage detection, and can improve the efficiency of signal analysis from a statistical point of view. It has good prospects for structural nonlinear damage assessment.

In this article, an equivalent modeling approach of quantum dots (QDs) photodetector is proposed and simple model has been constructed. Experimental results show that the simulation curves ...

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images acquired by Earth observation satellites often constitute the only source of information for monitoring the progression of flood events over larger regions. Particularly attractive are the SAR data acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites because they are free and open, and combine a short revisit time with a good spatial and radiometric resolution. In this contribution, we discuss how a Sentinel-1 data processing system should be designed to optimally benefit from the dense Sentinel-1 time series and advanced algorithms such as change detection or machine learning methods. This was one of the questions addressed by an expert group tasked by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission to investigate the feasibility of an automated, global, satellite-based flood monitoring product for the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Drawing from the expert group report, we distinguish three broad categories of data processing architectures, namely single-image, dual-image, and data cube processing architectures. While the latter architecture is the most demanding in terms of large storage and compute capacities, it is also the most promising to derive high-quality Sentinel-1 flood maps comprised not just of the flood mask but also of data fields describing the retrieval uncertainty and masks showing where Sentinel-1 cannot detect floods due to physical reasons. Therefore, we recommend to use data cube processing architectures and showcase the use of the Austrian Data Cube for monitoring a small-scale flood event that occurred in Austria in November 2019.

Background and aims The American Heart Association has outlined seven cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics, including smoking, body mass index, physical activity, dietary pattern, total cholesterol, and fasting plasma glucose, to define and monitor CVH status. Our study was to evaluate the global CVH in adults. Methods and results We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and reference lists of relevant articles for studies published between 1 January 2010 and 30 June 2018. Included studies should report the proportions of ideal status for the seven CVH metrics and/or provide the prevalence of overall poor (having 0–2 ideal metrics) or ideal (having 5–7 ideal metrics) CVH status in adults. 88 articles were identified: 75 for the prevalence of ideal CVH metrics, 58 for the proportion of overall poor CVH status, and 55 for the proportion of overall ideal CVH status. Smoking had the highest prevalence of ideal status (69.1%) while dietary pattern has the lowest (12.1%). 32.2% and 19.6% of participants had overall poor and ideal CVH, respectively. Females and young adults had better CVH status when compared to males and older adults. There existed regional variations in ideal CVH metrics and overall CVH status. The overall CVH status had improved over study time. Conclusion The prevalence of ideal status was low for some metrics, such as dietary pattern, and the overall CVH status was still unsatisfactory. We should continue to measure the CVH status and carry out lifestyle interventions to improve the CVH status in the whole population.

An important aspect of ensuring the power integrity of a power distribution network (PDN) design is to determine the layout, value, package size, and number of decoupling capacitors. To solve the limitation of the vertical connection of the surface-mounting-type capacitor to the power net area fill, a new concept of a capacitor denoted the Z-directed component (ZDC) is proposed in this paper. There are many applications possible with the ZDC with the first implementation as a decoupling capacitor. The ZDC capacitors can be integrated within the printed circuit board (PCB) substrate directly below the package ball and eliminate the integrated circuit (IC) to decoupling capacitor horizontal distance across the power net area fill. Furthermore, the inductance associated with the vertical current paths on the vias from the IC package to the horizontal power net area fill and similarly for the surface-mounted technology decoupling capacitors is eliminated. Since only the inductance of the ZDC capacitor itself remains, there is the possibility of using far fewer capacitors to achieve a high-frequency target impedance specification. The ZDC is a promising technology that gives the PCB designer the opportunity to integrate low equivalent series inductance decoupling capacitors much closer to the noise source than traditional surface-mount capacitors. In addition, in this paper, a high-order model is introduced for the ZDC capacitor to better understand the high-frequency characteristics of the component and is verified with measurements.

The power distribution network (PDN) of a high-speed printed circuit board requires a high-performance power supply. The total equivalent inductance above the top ground plane is an important part of PDN design and is regarded as L above. In this paper, an inductance library for different structures of capacitor connections and capacitor sizes has been built, which is essential for PDN design. computer simulation technology (CST) and partial element equivalent circuit method are applied to obtain the shorted pattern design curves at various design data. The shorted pattern design curve means the total equivalent inductance varies with the distance between pad and ground plane. In addition, an approximate shorted model is established for a decoupling capacitor-mounted model, which will be convenient for us to get the inductance of L above. In this paper, the design curve provides an intuitive guideline in designing PDN and facilitates the industry to choose what they want with consideration of the inductance, space, via numbers, etc.

Fatigue damage is a type of damage usually occurring to repeatedly loaded elements of structures in various engineering fields. Accumulation of fatigue damage may cause failure of structural elements. Identification of incipient fatigue damage is essential to ensure safety of structures. Fatigue crack under repeated loads commonly behaves in a nonlinear dynamic manner, typically manifested by both occurrence of higher harmonic components and interaction of harmonic components. Interrogation of nonlinear dynamic manner provides a promising way to characterize structural fatigue damage. This study aims at developing a new method to interrogate nonlinear dynamic manner for fatigue damage identification. This method is based on bispectral analysis of structural vibrational responses. This method portrays fatigue damage by inspecting the presence of higher harmonic components and quantifying the interaction of these harmonic components. The method can precisely locate and quantify a small-sized fatigue damage in a cantilever beam, presenting great accuracy in fatigue damage identification.

Summary Background Increased blood pressure is the biggest contributor to the global burden of disease and mortality. Data suggest that less than half of the population with hypertension is aware of it. May Measurement Month was initiated to raise awareness of the importance of blood pressure and as a pragmatic interim solution to the shortfall in screening programmes. Methods This cross-sectional survey included volunteer adults (≥18 years) who ideally had not had their blood pressures measured in the past year. Each participant had their blood pressure measured three times and received a a questionnaire about demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. The primary objective was to raise awareness of blood pressure, measured by number of countries involved, number of people screened, and number of people who have untreated or inadequately treated hypertension (defined as systolic blood pressure ≥140 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mm Hg, or both, or on the basis of receiving antihypertensive medication). Multiple imputation was used to estimate the mean of the second and third blood pressure readings if these were not recorded. Measures of association were analysed using linear mixed models. Findings Data were collected from 1 201 570 individuals in 80 countries. After imputation, of the 1 128 635 individuals for whom a mean of the second and third readings was available, 393 924 (34·9%) individuals had hypertension. 153 905 (17·3%) of 888 616 individuals who were not receiving antihypertensive treatment were hypertensive, and 105 456 (46·3%) of the 227 721 individuals receiving treatment did not have controlled blood pressure. Significant differences in adjusted blood pressures and hypertension prevalence were apparent between regions. Adjusted blood pressure was higher in association with antihypertensive medication, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Blood pressure was higher when measured on the right arm than on the left arm, and blood pressure was highest on Saturdays. Interpretation Inexpensive global screening of blood pressure is achievable using volunteers and convenience sampling. Pending the set-up of systematic surveillance systems worldwide, MMM will be repeated annually to raise awareness of blood pressure. Funding International Society of Hypertension, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Servier Pharmaceutical Co.

In this paper, the authors mainly studies on optical and electrical characteristics of 64 pixels quantum dots photodetector, and explore the application of micro-spectrometer as well. The photodete...

Radiation is a vital mechanism affecting electromagnetic interference (EMI), noise control, and performance optimization in today's electronic designs. Due to tight electromagnetic compatibility standards, it becomes increasingly important to diagnosis the radiation hot spot in the radiation process before the mitigation is applied. In this paper, the characteristic mode analysis has been implemented together with the integral equation based numerical methods to identify the hot spots for EMI radiation. During this process, the current is split into radiating and nonradiating ones. The radiated power from each part of the structure can be quantified using the radiating current. Therefore, the radiation hot spot can be identified. Several numerical examples are applied to benchmark the proposed approach. This paper provides a guideline in discovering radiation related geometrical features, and designing methodologies for real geometries.

Recently, Yingzhou Bridge with a main span of 120 m has been built in Luoyang, China. Although the bridge’s unique concrete-filled steel tubular arch-rib system satisfies the aesthetic demand of the public, the innovative structure’s mechanics behaviors in extreme events are unknown yet, including both static and dynamic structural performances. To this end, numerical analyses have been undertaken based on ANSYS finite-element (FE) platform (version 9.0). A simplified computational FE model is established and effectively updated using reference information obtained from a detailed FE model. Using the validated simplified FE model, the bridge’s stability, ultimate load-carrying capacity and seismic performance are studied considering the original design and several modified designs. It is found that the bridge’s performances basically meet the design requirements; however, the structure’s lateral stability and stiffness are relatively weak for the original design. Adding K-shaped struts and reducing subarches’ angle of inclination can effectively solve this problem.

Proper power integrity (PI) analysis is required for printed circuit board (PCB) power distribution network (PDN) design. Top-layer interconnect inductance for PI has always been a vital concern for high-speed industry. Developing a simple physics-based equivalent circuit model for critical structures is essential for understanding the physics of the system and for intelligent designs. In this paper, a physics-based model size reduction (PMSR) method is applied to get the equivalent circuit model for the above-ground geometries. The extracted physics-based models are also based on the partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method, and can be used in analyzing the structure in its parts. By applying PMSR method, a physics-based equivalent circuit model can be proposed and this circuit model is related to the geometric features of the design. In this way, PMSR method can provide an intuitive guideline in designing PCB and reducing above inductances, therefore, a low-ripple dc voltage can be delivered through PDN. Taking advantage of PEEC and PMSR methods, the top-layer inductances of three different geometries are calculated and the physics-based circuit models are obtained, respectively.

Hidden damage severely threatens the safety of structures due to its invisibility and indistinguishability. Debonding is typical hidden damage in steel-reinforced bridges. Detection of multiple debondings in steel-reinforced bridges poses a challenge for traditional nondestructive methods that require damage location as prior knowledge, but this condition is usually not satisfied for debonding located within the bridge. Differing from existing studies, this study explores a vibrational method of detecting multiple debondings needing no prior knowledge, that uses a scanning laser vibrometer to acquire densely-sampled operating deflection shapes of bridges. The operating deflection shape carries richer information than mode shapes for damage characterization. Nevertheless, densely-sampled deformed quantities are commonly susceptible to noise when used to identify damage. To detect multiple debondings, a new feature is developed, the wavelet-transform curvature operating deflection shape. This feature is used to identify multiple debondings in a steel-reinforced concrete slab dismantled from a bridge, clearly demonstrating the strengths of suppressing noise, intensifying the signatures of debonding, and requiring no prior knowledge of damage location. The proposed method holds promise for detecting multiple hidden damage in various structures besides bridges.

A new capacitor package and PCB embedding technique is introduced to significantly reduce the system power distribution network impedance at the pads of surface mounted integrated circuits. The capacitor is multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) that is a right cylindrical shape with via channels in the outer wall along the axis of the part. The capacitor called a Z-Directed component (ZDC) is then pressed into a hole in the PCB. The connections to the component are then made by the copper plating process similar to via hole construction. This new configuration dramatically improves the PDN performance of PCBs with fewer components than the conventional solution with SMD decoupling capacitors.

Career situation of first and presenting author Student for a master or a PhD. Introduction The activator protein (AP)-1 transcription factor family, especially its subfamily of FOS proteins (cFos, FosB, Fra-1 and Fra-2) are associated to the regulatory network of macrophage responses. Moreover, it is well known that macrophages are central player during rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Objectives This study aims to delineate the role of Fra-1 in macrophages during the acute destructive inflammatory phase of RA. Methods Therefore, we applied the serum-induced arthritis (K/BxN) model to Fra-1 deficient mice controlled by the Mx1 promoter (Fra-1ΔMx) or the LysM promoter (Fra-1ΔLysM). Moreover, we performed in vitro analyses of macrophage polarization in wildtype and Fra-1 deficient macrophages, as well as micro-arrays and ChIP sequencing analyses to delineate Fra-1 targets in activated macrophages. We completed our analysis by studying Fra-1 expression in RA patients’ synovium. Results Fra-1 mutant mice had decreased arthritis severity compared to their littermate wildtype mice. The alleviated arthritis was accompanied to increased arginase-1 (Arg1) expression and activity in the joints, suggesting that its anti-inflammatory features milder RA inflammation. Sorting of immune cell populations revealed macrophages as the major source of Arg1, which was increased in Fra-1 mutant mice. Mechanistically, Fra-1 transcriptionally inhibited Arg1 expression in macrophages. Moreover, inhibition of Arginase in Fra-1 mutant mice restored a full blunt inflammatory RA response and the supplementation of mice with l-arginine, leading to increased arginase activity in the joint, is sufficient to milder arthritis. Synovium histological sections from RA patients showed a correlation between Arg1, Fra-1 and the DAS28 score, confirming that increased Arg1 activity is of benefit also for human inflammatory joint disease. Conclusions Our data show for the first time that Fra-1 is a pivot between pro- and anti-inflammatory macrophage. By inhibiting Arg1 activity, Fra-1 exacerbates RA inflammation and joint destruction. Disclosure of Interest None declared.

In order to reduce the environmental pollution caused by the secondary reflection of electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials, the WS2/CNTs hybrids with high absorption efficiency were successfully prepared by using a one-step hydrothermal method. The WS2/CNTs heterostructure, which combines the unique excellent dielectric properties of WS2 with the high conductivity of CNTs, promotes the effective absorption and reflection of EMW. The excellent EMI shielding performance of 5WS2/CNTs-25 can reach up to 27.8 dB, which was analyzed by the dielectric properties of the WS2/CNTs hybrids. The conductive network composed of CNTs makes the multiple reflection and absorption of EMW, which makes the WS2/CNTs hybrids promising candidates for the field of EMI shielding.

Athetis lepigone (Moschler) is a new agronomic pest which has caused serious damages to summer maize in China. In order to effectively monitor it, it is necessary to carry-out a worldwide investigation on its potential geographical distribution. In this study, we give two ecological niche models, Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Production and Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt), to predict the potential geographical distribution of A. lepigone. The results indicate that the suitable areas for A. lepigone are mainly in China (Beijing, Tianjin, central and southern Hebei, northern Jiangsu, Shandong, most of Henan, northern Anhui, central and southern Shanxi, central and southern Shaanxi, small parts of north-west in Hubei, eastern Gansu, parts of Ningxia, western of Xinjiang and Dandong, and Liaoning) and other Asian countries (South Korea, North Korea and Japan). Parts of Europe (south-western Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, parts of Austria, western Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, northern Italy, Denmark, western Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, southern Finland and Sweden) are also highly suitable for A. lepigone. In addition, in the states of the USA including Michigan, New York, Chicago, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana are also favourable for its occurrence although till now no reports about of this species has been recorded. A jackknife test in MaxEnt showed that the mean temperature of the driest quarter was the most important environmental variable affecting the distribution of this pest.

This paper examines two engineering methods of evaluating the stress intensity factors for cracked beams and bars subjected to a combined loading and proposes innovative formulations, as far as the circular cross section is concerned. Based on the definition of the stress intensity factors, the compliance matrix is determined as the inverse of the stiffness matrix, modelling the cracked section of a beam through a line-spring approximation with interactive forces computed within fracture mechanics. A comparative evaluation of numerical predictions based on the proposed methods is also performed with methods available from the literature. Results for free vibration analyses of beams with transverse non-propagating open cracks are presented and compared in order to estimate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methods, where a good agreement is generally found. More specifically, two different coupling effects are herein analysed for circular beams subjected to a combined bending, axial and shear loading, first, and a combined bending, shear and torsion loading, subsequently.

The electromagnetic (EM) characterization of graphene under general EM environments is becoming of interest in the engineering and scientific research fields. However, its numerical modeling process is extremely cost prohibitive due to the huge contrast between its thickness and other dimensions. In this work, for the first time, the EM features of graphene are characterized by a circuit model through the partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method. The atomically thick graphene is equivalently replaced by an impedance boundary condition. After incorporating the PEEC method, a novel surface conductivity circuit model is derived for graphene. A physical resistor and inductor are added into the conventional PEEC cell due to the dispersive conductivity property of graphene. The proposed novel method significantly reduces the memory and CPU time consumption for general graphene structures when compared with standard numerical finite element method (FEM) or finite difference (FD) methods, where 3-D meshing is unavoidable. This model also transforms the surface conductivity of graphene into a vivid circuit, and physical properties of the material can be conveniently obtained, such as radiation, scattering, and resistance properties, when compared with method of moments (MOM). In addition, the radiation and scattering calculation by MOM entail the cumbersome steps of defining a bounding surface and implementing a multidimensional integrand, while in PEEC, these complications are entirely bypassed by the concise vector–matrix–vector product (VMVP) formulas. To validate the introduced algorithm, various numerical examples are presented and compared with existing references.

Background:L-arginine is of great importance in numerous biological procedures in human body, e.g. it participates in the urea cycle for detoxification of ammonia, and functions as a modulator in immune responses (1). Our previous investigation demonstrated that treatment with L-arginine reduced clinical symptoms, bone erosion and osteoclast numbers in serum-induced arthritis (K/BxN) (2). In addition, a decreased concentration of L-arginine has been observed in the serum of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Altogether, it is suggesting that L-arginine supplementation might be a potential treatment against RA.Objectives:This study aims to investigate the treatment role of L-arginine supplementation in murine arthritis models. The project also plans to delineate the metabolic action of L-arginine supplementation during osteoclast differentiation in the presence of an inflammatory milieu.Methods:Three murine arthritis models (serum-induced arthritis (K/BxN) model, collagen-induced arthritis model and hTNFtg mice model) were applied in the presence or not of oral L-arginine supplementation. MicroCT and histomorphometry analyses were performed to quantify bone erosion and numbers of osteoclasts. In addition, in vitro osteoclastogenesis were performed in the presence of various amounts of L-arginine with or without treatment with 40ng/ml TNFa. OC differentiation was characterized by TRAP staining. Resorption activity was assessed by pit formation assay. Osteoclast markers and metabolic genes were determined with quantitative real-time PCR analysis and western blot. Dihydrorhodamine 123 staining was used to determine the level of intracellular ROS. Seahorse analyses and mass spectrometry metabolites analyses were conducted to address the metabolic condition.Results:Arthritis severities were reduced after L-arginine supplementation in arthritis models. Moreover, an amelioration of bone erosion and reduced osteoclast numbers were observed in arthritic mice treated with L-arginine.In vitrotreatment of L-arginine inhibited osteoclastogenesis, especially in the late phase of the differentiation, even with exposure to TNFa stimulation. The L-arginine induced osteoclast differentiation inhibition is likely due to an alteration in the RANKL/RANK/Traf6 pathway. L-arginine also boosted the intracellular production of ATP and ROS, promoting mitochondria-driven oxidative phosphorylations (OXPHOS), leading to the failure of activation and even death of the osteoclasts.Conclusion:These data strongly suggested that L-Arginine ameliorates bone erosion in RA through the inhibition of RANKL/RANK/Traf6 pathway as well as reprogramming of the cellular metabolism during osteoclastogenesis. The immunometabolism action of L-Arginine might therefore help to reduce joint inflammation and destruction in RA.References:[1] Geiger R, Rieckmann JC, Wolf T, Basso C, Feng Y, Fuhrer T, Kogadeeva M, Picotti P, Meissner F, Mann M, Zamboni N. L-arginine modulates T cell metabolism and enhances survival and anti-tumor activity. Cell. 2016 Oct 20;167(3):829-42.[2] Hannemann N, Cao S, Eriksson D, Schnelzer A, Jordan J, Eberhardt M, Schleicher U, Rech J, Ramming A, Uebe S, Ekici A. Transcription factor Fra-1 targets arginase-1 to enhance macrophage-mediated inflammation in arthritis. The Journal of clinical investigation. 2019 May 28;129(7).Disclosure of Interests:Shan Cao: None declared, Xiaoxiang Chen: None declared, Georg Schett Speakers bureau: AbbVie, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Roche and UCB, Aline Bozec: None declared

In this paper, the radiation physics of edge-coupled connector is investigated with sub-structure characteristic modes and the current on the signal traces of different wafers is identified as the trouble maker for the final electromagnetic interference.

Electron ptychography can in principle convert a conventional scanning electron microscope\ud (SEM) into a good quality transmission electron microscope (TEM). An improvement in\ud resolution of about a factor of 5 over the lens-defined resolution of an SEM was first\ud demonstrated in 2012 by Humphry et.al. However, the results from that work showed some\ud delocalization in the atomic fringes of the gold particles used as a test specimen for the\ud technique. Here we explore factors that result in the delocalization effect when a defocused\ud probe is used for the ptychographic data collection: source incoherence, the effects of\ud detector faults, data truncation and a poorly calibrated illumination step size (or camera\ud length). Various mitigation strategies are tested, including modal decomposition of the\ud incoherence in the beam. We reprocess the data from the original SEM experiment to show\ud that these refinements significantly improve the reconstruction.

Our work addresses the problem of extracting trees from mobile laser scanning data. The work is a two step-wise strategy, including terrain point removal and tree segmentation. First, a voxel-based upward growing filtering is proposed to remove terrain points from the mobile laser scanning data. Then, a tree segmentation is presented to extract individual trees via a Euclidean distance clustering approach and Voxel-based Normalized Cut (VNCut) segmentation approach. A road section data acquired by a RIEGL VMX-450 system are selected for evaluating the proposed tree segmentation method. Qualitative analysis shows that our algorithm achieves a good performance.

What Is Known and Objective. To reevaluate the benefits and risks of corticosteroid treatment in adult patients with septic shock. Methods. This study was performed based on PRISMA guidelines. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of corticosteroids versus placebo were retrieved from PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Central RCTs, and ClinicalTrials.gov from January 1980 to April 2018. We also conducted a trial sequential analysis to indicate the possibility of type I or II errors and calculate the information size. Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach (GRADE) was applying to assess the certainty of evidence at the primary outcome level. Results. Twenty-one RCTs were identified and analyzed. Patients treated with corticosteroid had a 7% reduction in relative risk in 28-day all-cause mortality compared to controls (RR 0.93, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.99). However, there were no significant differences for the intensive care unit (ICU) mortality (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.86 to 1.09) or in-hospital mortality (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.92 to 1.11). Corticosteroids shortened the length of ICU stay by 1.04 days (RR -1.04, 95% CI -1.72 to -0.36) and the length of hospital stay by 2.49 days (RR -2.49, 95% CI -4.96 to -0.02). Corticosteroids increased the risk of hyperglycemia (RR 1.11, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.16) but not gastroduodenal bleeding (RR 1.06, 95% CI 0.82 to 1.37) or superinfection (RR 1.04, 95% CI 0.94 to 1.15). However, some date on secondary outcomes were unavailable because they were not measured or not reported in the included studies which may cause a lack of power or selective outcome reporting. The information size was calculated at 10044 patients. Trial sequential analysis showed that the meta-analysis was conclusive and the risk of type 2 error was minimal. What Is New and Conclusion. Corticosteroids are likely to be effective in reducing 28-day mortality and attenuating septic shock without increasing the rate of life-threatening complications. TSA showed that the risk of type II error in this meta-analysis was minimal and the result was conclusive.

Power radiation and radiated coupling among different structures represent an important area for research study. The partial element equivalent circuit method (PEEC) is a powerful technique which bridges the gap between the electromagnetic and circuit theories. In this paper, we develop a new approach for PEEC to calculate the distributive power radiation and couplings. With this approach, formulations for both the radiated power and the transferred power can be evaluated. Further, the physical meanings of the power results are interpreted according to the conservation of energy law. We use electric dipoles, magnetic dipoles and patch antennas as well as coupled microstrip lines to benchmark the method. The approach can also be applied to EMC/EMI and other power dissipation computations.

The key purpose of power distribution networks is to maintain a low impedance power source for integrated circuit(s) for the stable supply voltage. In this paper, using the equivalent series capacitor inductance leads to inaccurate estimates of power bus impedance. A simple modeling approach is presented to estimate the inductance associated with the decoupling capacitors which accounts for the capacitor geometry, for connections to the capacitor, and for the capacitor height above the return plane.