Search

Background Unequal access to healthcare is a global medical problem. Telemedicine, recently made possible by technological advances, may mitigate this inequity. However, the usefulness of telemedicine for procedure-driven disciplines, such as otolaryngology, under infectious conditions (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) is unknown. Methods Telemedicine was made legal in Taiwan by an amendment to the Physician Act in 2018. Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital was the first hospital in Taiwan to provide the telemedicine service by connecting to the Chenggong Branch of Taitung Hospital (CGBTH) in November 2018. This retrospective cohort study included all new and established otolaryngology outpatient consultations between November 2018 and May 2020 at CGBTH. The Current Procedural Terminology and International Classification of Disease, 10th Revision codes, patient demographic data, and questionnaire data were obtained. Results The study included 123 patients with 218 encounters over 19 months. The majority of complaints were ear-related (52.6%). Overall, 49% of the encounters required a specialized procedure for diagnosis and treatment; of these, cerumen removal was the most common procedure. The patient subjective improvement rate increased over the study period (from 62.0% to 78.9%). The rates of return and case closure were both around 90% in 2018 and 2019. The number of otolaryngology consultations and rate of return declined after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the subjective improvement and case closure rates remained stable. The telemedicine service saved at least 2 h driving time per visit. Conclusion Telemedicine for otolaryngology is a promising approach for remote and underserved regions, as well as during an infectious disease pandemic.

This study was performed to investigate the relationship between the aspartate transaminase and/or alanine transaminase ratio (DRR) and long-term mortality of patients diagnosed with sepsis or septic shock.We conducted a retrospective study among adult septic patients who were admitted to the surgical intensive care unit (ICU) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital from January 2014 to December 2018. Baseline characteristics were compared between survivors and non survivors. We performed univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses to evaluate the relation of DRR with 180-day mortality. The potential prognostic value of DRR in predicting mortality rate was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. In addition, we conducted subgroup analysis by the optimal DRR cutoff value.We included a total of 183 patients in the current study, and 44 (24%) patients died within 180 days of hospitalization. Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses revealed that DRR was an independent predictor of 180-day mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.421, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.073-1.883, P = 0.014). The predictive accuracy of DRR for 180-day mortality was presented as an ROC curve, which had an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.708 (95% CI 0.629-0.786, P0.001). After we stratified all enrolled patients into two groups by using the optimal cutoff value of 1.29, we observed a significantly higher mortality in patients with a relatively high DRR.An elevated DRR was associated with higher 180-day mortality among septic patients, and DRR might be an optimal marker for predicting the long-term mortality of sepsis. More prospective and randomized trials are needed to confirm the prognostic value of DRR.

Heavy ion therapy is currently recognized as the most advanced cancer radiotherapy approach in the world. This article introduces a high-precision and non-contact measurement method based on close-...

During coal mining, water is usually injected into the coal seam on site to increase permeability for fracturing. However, the expansion of clay minerals after encountering water can clog the crack...

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2021 is the ninth annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 71 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in recent years. The VOT2021 challenge was composed of four sub-challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2021 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2021 challenge focused on "real-time" short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2021 focused on long-term tracking, namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance and (iv) VOT-RGBD2021 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. The VOT-ST2021 dataset was refreshed, while VOT-RGBD2021 introduces a training dataset and sequestered dataset for winner identification. The source code for most of the trackers, the datasets, the evaluation kit and the results along with the source code for most trackers are publicly available at the challenge website 1 .

Public water supply facilities are vulnerable to intentional intrusion. In particular, Water Distribution Network (WDN) has become one of the most important public facilities that are prone to be attacked because of its wide coverage and constant open operation. In recent years, water contamination incidents happen frequently, causing serious losses and impacts to the society. Various measures have been taken to tackle this issue. Pollution or contamination isolation by localizing the contamination via sensors and scheduling certain valves have been regarded as one of the most promising solutions. The main challenge is how to schedule water valves to effectively isolate contamination and reduce the residual concentration of contaminants in WDN. In this paper, we are motivated to propose a reinforcement learning based method for valve real time scheduling by treating the sensing data from the sensors as state, and the valve scheduling as action, thus we can learn scheduling policy from uncertain contamination events without precise characterization of contamination source. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can effectively isolate the contamination and reduce the risk exclosure to the customers.

PM2.5 pollution-related diseases lead to additional medical expenses and the loss of working hours, thus affecting the macro-economy. To evaluate the health-related economic impacts of PM2.5, the Integrated Assessment Model of Climate, Economic, and Environment (ICEEH), combined with the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model, and a health impact assessment module was constructed. The impact of different air pollution control strategies was analyzed in Guangdong Province by establishing a Without Control (WOC) scenario, an Air Control (AIC) scenario, and a Blue Sky (BLK) scenario. The results show that in the WOC scenario for 2035, the death rate for Guangdong Province is 71,690 persons/year and the loss of working hours is 0.67 h/person/year. In the AIC and BLK scenarios compared with WOC for 2035, the loss of working hours is reduced by 29.8% and 34.3%, and premature deaths are reduced by 33.0% and 37.5%, respectively; GDP would increase by 0.05% and 0.11%, respectively, through strict pollution control policies. Furthermore, improved labor force quality induced by better air conditions would promote the added value in labor-intensive industries, such as agriculture (0.233%), other manufacturing (0.172%), textiles (0.181%), food (0.176%), railways transport (0.137%), and services (0.129%). The added value in the waste (−0.073%), nature gas (−0.076%), and crude oil sectors (−0.072%) would decrease because of the increased investment installment in PM2.5 treatment equipment.

LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. People Search plays an important role in fulfilling this goal by helping members find the most relevant and personalized results through a broad range of queries like names, job titles, skills, companies, locations, etc. It is one of the biggest search verticals at LinkedIn both in terms of engineering footprint and search traffic. In this paper, we present an overview of the People Search system, and discuss how we build and serve deep neural network (DNN) models, leveraging state-of-the-art deep natural language processing (NLP) techniques (e.g., convolutional neural networks (CNN) and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)). We describe our journey of applying deep neural ranking models to a real-life product, including the modeling and system bottleneck challenges, crucial design choices, and lessons learned along the way. We hope a story of our endeavors and successes will provide meaningful insights to other similar systems.

We sought to demonstrate whether therapeutic efficacy can be improved by combination of repeated intravenous administration and local transplantation of human induced pluripotential stem cell derived MSCs (hiPSC-MSCs). In this study, mice model of hind-limb ischemia was established by ligation of left femoral artery. hiPSC-MSCs (5x105) was intravenously administrated immediately after induction of hind limb ischemia with or without following intravenous administration of hiPSC-MSCs every week or every 3 days. Intramuscular transplantation of hiPSC-MSCs (3x106) was performed one week after induction of hind-limb ischemia. We compared the therapeutic efficacy and cell survival of intramuscular transplantation of hiPSC-MSCs with or without a single or repeated intravenous administration of hiPSC-MSCs. Repeated intravenous administration of hiPSC-MSCs could increase splenic regulatory T cells (Tregs) activation, decrease splenic natural killer (NK) cells expression, promote the polarization of M2 macrophages in the ischemic area and improved blood perfusion in the ischemic limbs. The improved therapeutic efficacy of MSC-based therapy was due to both increased engraftment of intramuscular transplanted hiPSC-MSCs and intravenous infused hiPSC-MSCs. In conclusion, our study supported a combination of repeated systemic infusion and local transplantation of hiPSC-MSCs for cardiovascular disease.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the value of the LIMAV measured by ultrasound before CABG in predicting the prognosis of patients after LIMA bypass grafting. Methods: 104 patients who underwent CABG with LIMA as the bridge vessel in the cardiovascular surgery department of our hospital between May 2018 and June 2019 were selected. All patients underwent transthoracic Doppler ultrasonography to measure LIMAV preoperatively. Intraoperatively, MGF and PI of the LIMA bridge were measured using TTFM. The primary endpoint event in this study was cardiac death within 18 months after surgery. Results: The Cox survival analysis showed that the MGF , the LIMAV and LVEF were risk factors for death after CABG . The cut-offs of MGF ,LIMAV and LVEF for the prediction of death after CABG were ≤14 ml/min [AUC: 0.830; Sensitivity:100%; Specificity: 65.6%], ≤60cm/s (AUC: 0.759; Sensitivity:65.5%; Specificity:85.3%) and ≤44%（AUC:0.724; Sensitivity:50%; Specificity: 88.5% ）respectively. Compared with the use of MGF, MGF+LIMAV, combination of the MGF+LIMAV+LVEF （AUC:0.929; Sensitivity:100%; Specificity: 81.1%）resulted in a stronger predictive value（MGF vs MGF+LIMAV+LVEF: p=0.02）. Conclusion: LIMAV measured by transthoracic ultrasound pre-operation combined with intraoperative MGF and LVEF may have a greater value in predicting patients' risk of cardiac death after CABG.

Introduction: It is rare to find that wide QRS tachycardia automatically changes to narrow QRS tachycardia, and it is more difficult to clarify the mechanism.Case Report: A 3-month-old infant with recurrent paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia underwent transesophageal cardiac electrophysiological examination. The wide QRS tachycardia was induced by atrial RS2 stimulation, and it soon changed to narrow QRS tachycardia automatically. By the accurate measurement of esophageal lead, it was found that the electrocardiogram changes completely conform to Coumel law. The mechanism of wide and narrow QRS tachycardia was orthodromic atrioventricular reentrant tachycardia with or without ipsilateral functional bundle branch block, and the accessory pathway was defined as the left free wall-concealed accessory pathway.Conclusion: Transesophageal cardiac electrophysiological examination can reveal some special electrophysiological phenomena, and its non-invasive nature is especially suitable for infants.

With the development of information technology and the popularity of Internet applications, the database outsourcing service is gaining popularity. However, since the database services provided by third parties are not completely trusted, the outsourced database model has to face a series of security issues such as privacy leakage, data theft, malicious tampering, and so forth. To both provide privacy protection and copyright tracking, this paper proposes a lossless database watermarking method based on order-preserving encryption. In the proposed method, the data owner encrypts the original data using order-preserving encryption algorithms. The outsourced database administrator then embeds the watermark bits by modifying the parities of the cover encrypted attribute values. At the database client, the database user extracts the embedded watermark bits based on the majority voting mechanism. The original database is recovered by directly decrypting the marked encrypted database. The experimental results and analysis show that the proposed method has the advantages of lossless, strong robustness, high embedding rate, no auxiliary message and low computational complexity.

The effects of ultrasound-enhanced hot air drying on the drying characteristics, microstructure and bioactive profile of germinated highland barley seeds (GHB) were studied. GHB was dried by hot air at 55 &deg, C and 70 &deg, C and ultrasonic intensities of 125.1 W/dm2 and 180.2 W/dm2, respectively. The results showed that when the drying temperature was 55 &deg, C or 70 &deg, C, the sonicated groups could shorten the drying time by 17.4&ndash, 26.1% or 18.8&ndash, 31.3%, respectively. Ultrasound drying at 125.1 W/dm2 and 55 &deg, C could mostly increase the content of organic selenium and the rehydration rate, improve the color and maintain the original structure of GHB. Compared with hot air drying alone, the phenolic content did not increase due to ultrasound-enhanced hot air drying. Therefore, drying at an ultrasonic intensity of 125.1 W/dm2 and a temperature of 55 &deg, C could effectively shorten the drying time, and enhance the quality of GHB.

Emerging preclinical data suggest that splanchnic sympathetic nerve activation may play an important role in the pathophysiology of hypertension. We sought to determine the potential therapeutic application of catheter-based splanchnic denervation in a clinically relevant large animal model of hypertensive cardiomyopathy (hCMP). Sustained elevated blood pressure was induced in adult pigs using a combination of intravenous infusion of Ang II (angiotensin II) and subcutaneous implantation of deoxycorticosterone acetate pellets to establish a large animal model of hCMP. Serial changes in cardiac echocardiographic and invasive hemodynamic parameters and neurohumoral biomarkers were investigated in animals with hypertension alone (n=9) and hypertension with catheter-based splanchnic denervation (n=6). Another 6 pigs without hypertension induction served as controls. At 10 weeks, hypertensive animals developed sustained elevated blood pressure and phenotype of hCMP with significant systolic and diastolic dysfunction, and left ventricular remodeling and hypertrophy as determined by invasive hemodynamic and echocardiogram assessments, respectively, and increased venoarterial norepinephrine gradient over the myocardium, kidneys, and splanchnic organs compared with baseline. Catheter-based splanchnic denervation decreased the venoarterial norepinephrine gradient over the splanchnic organs associated with the reduced splenic sympathetic nerve innervation; attenuated the elevated blood pressure, left ventricular remodeling, and hypertrophy; and preserved left ventricular systolic and diastolic function at 20 weeks in pigs with hCMP. Our results provide novel mechanistic insight into the role of splenic sympathetic nerve innervation in hypertension and important proof-of-principle data for the therapeutic application of catheter-based splanchnic denervation in a large animal model of hCMP.

Summary Background Anthracycline dose optimisation in the treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma has rarely been tested. We aimed to find out whether R-CEOP70 was non-inferior to R-CHOP50 with less cardiotoxicity, and whether R-CEOP90 had a superior efficacy to R-CHOP50 or R-CEOP70 with acceptable toxic effects. Methods In this multicentre, phase 3, randomised, controlled study (NHL-001), patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma or follicular lymphoma grade 3B were enrolled from 20 centres of the Multicenter Hematology–Oncology Programs Evaluation System in China. Young patients (16–60 years) were randomly assigned 1:1:1 (block size of six) to six courses of R-CHOP50, R-CEOP70, or R-CEOP90, and older patients (61–80 years) were assigned 1:1 (block size of four) to R-CHOP50 or R-CEOP70. Patients were randomly assigned using computer-assisted permuted-block randomisation. Investigators and patients were not masked to treatment assignment. In the R-CHOP50 group, patients were given rituximab 375 mg/m2 intravenously on day 0, cyclophosphamide 750 mg/m2, doxorubicin 50 mg/m2, and vincristine 1·4 mg/m2 (maximum dose 2 mg) intravenously on day 1, and prednisone 60 mg/m2 (maximum dose 100 mg) orally from day 1–5; in the R-CEOP70 group, epirubicin 70 mg/m2 replaced doxorubicin; and in the R-CEOP90 group, high dose epirubicin 90 mg/m2 replaced doxorubicin. All patients received two additional courses of rituximab 375 mg/m2 intravenously every 21 days. Consolidation radiotherapy was given to patients with bulky disease at diagnosis or residual disease at the end of treatment. The primary endpoint was 2-year progression-free survival. The non-inferiority margin for R-CEOP70 versus R-CHOP50 was defined by hazard ratio [HR] as the upper limit of its 95% CI being no greater than 1·50. Analysis of efficacy and safety were of the intention-to-treat population. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov , number NCT01852435 . Findings From May 15, 2013, to March 16, 2016, a total of 648 patients were enrolled, including 404 (62%) young patients (R-CHOP50 [n=135], R-CEOP70 [n=134], or R-CEOP90 [n=135]), and 244 (38%) older patients (R-CHOP50 [n=122] or R-CEOP70 [n=122]). Four patients were excluded from the study for consent withdrawal and one patient for misdiagnosis before treatment. The 2-year progression-free survival in the R-CHOP50 group was 72·5% (95% CI 66·6–77·6) and in the R-CEOP70 group was 72·4% ([66·5–77·5]; HR 1·00 [0·73–1·38]; p=0·99). The non-inferiority was met and adverse events were similar between the two groups. Fewer patients in the R-CEOP70 group (14 [13%] of 110) presented with over 10% decrease in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) than those in the R-CHOP50 group (31 [29%] of 108) at 3 years after remission. For young patients, the 2-year progression-free survival in the R-CEOP90 group was 88·8% (82·1–93·1) and was significantly improved compared with the R-CHOP50 group (75·9% [67·7–82·3]; 0·44 [0·25–0·76]; p=0·0047) and the R-CEOP70 group (77·4% [69·4–83·7%]; 0·49 [0·27–0·86]; p=0·017). Grade 3–4 neutropenia occurred more frequently in the R-CEOP90 group (97 [72%] of 134) than in the R-CHOP50 group (87 [65%] of 133) and R-CEOP70 group (84 [63%] of 133) in young patients but without further increase of clinically significant infections. Fewer patients in the R-CEOP70 group (7 [11%] of 66) and in the R-CEOP90 group (10 [13%] of 79) presented with more than 10% decrease in LVEF than those in the R-CHOP50 group (17 [26%] of 66) at 3 years after remission. Interpretation R-CEOP70 could serve as an alternative regimen to R-CHOP50 with mild long-term cardiotoxicity. Young patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma might benefit from high-dose epirubicin. Epirubicin is an alternative drug to doxorubicin in regular R-CHOP with mild long-term cardiotoxicity. Funding National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program, Shanghai Commission of Science and Technology, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Gaofeng Clinical Medicine Grant Support, Multicenter Clinical Research Project by Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Clinical Research Plan of Shanghai Hospital Development Center, and Chang Jiang Scholars Program.

With the continuous development of pulse load represented by laser weapon and electromagnetic railgun, its application to the naval combat platform becomes a tendency. These pulse loads have the characteristic of high power as well as instantaneous which will impact the volume limited DC ship power system and challenge its stability. For this purpose, the simulation model of a medium voltage DC ship power system is built in PSCAD/EMTDC. Choose electromagnetic railgun which has two-level energy storage system as the representation of the pulse load. The model of the railgun is built through derivation then added to the DC ship power system to study the influence it does to the system voltage stability. The small disturbance method is used to compute the voltage stability of the whole system and the result is compared with the simulation figures. The comparison shows that the two-level energy storage based electromagnetic railgun can works normally in the system thus provides a new method to the way that the pulse load applies to the DC ship power system.

This paper aims at conducting an explorative study to investigate three research questions: 1) whether culture in cross-cultural business context still matters, 2) why it matters, and 3) how we can deal with cultural differences. Drawing upon theories of international business, social/cultural psychology and the contributions of positive psychology, this study in the context of Sino-European FDI provides a more integrative and constructive view of culture (cultural differences) as an evergreen phenomenon in international business. Extant literature contains numerous studies about culture, mostly from the perspective of countries and organizations. We fill the void in our study by focusing on the individual level and explore the perceptions of culture of European managers investing in China. Our sample consists of managers representing their European companies investing in China. Managers’ perceptions were inquired along 12 dimensions within the psychic distance model, elaborated and operationalized by international business scholars. Managers agreed on replying to a series of questions under the form of an interview, including Likert scale questions, reflecting their perceptions along each psychic distance dimension, including culture. Main findings show that culture is perceived as the most relevant dimension in Sino-European contexts. This paper contributes to the literature on cultural impact in international business settings by focusing on the individual’s subjective perceptions. This study highlights how intergroup relations between European and Chinese managers coming from different cultural background are challenging, while the diversity and perceived differences also provide opportunities.

With the widespread application of WIFI networks and embedded system technology, the device monitoring system based on Embedded System and wireless network came into being. In this paper, we introduce a device monitoring system based on ARM upper computer and WIFI transmission, and we tested this system on workshop equipment. The hardware adopts ARM Cortex-A8 processor architecture of TI company as the main control chip, using IAC-335X-Kit development board for system design, external USB camera module and WIFI wireless module for video capture and data transmission. The software is based on embedded Linux as the platform. The system will collect production data accurately and objectively, and the statistical analysis. At the same time, the system uses QT to develop the upper computer software GUI interface. Compared with the traditional system based on the wired network, our design is more convenient and flexible, which reduces the implementation restriction and maintenance cost of traditional network cabling.

The specific mechanisms by which acupuncture affects the central nervous system are unclear. In the International Standard Scalp Acupuncture system, acupuncture needles are applied at the middle line of the vertex, anterior parietal-temporal oblique line, and the posterior parietal-temporal oblique line. We conducted a single-arm prospective clinical trial in which seven healthy elderly volunteers (three men and four women; 50-70 years old) received International Standard Scalp Acupuncture at MS5 (the mid-sagittal line between Baihui (DU20) and Qianding (DU21)), the left MS6 (line joining Sishencong (EX-HN1) and Xuanli (GB6)), and the left MS7 (line joining DU20 and Qubin (GB7)). After acupuncture, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated changes in the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity in various areas, showing remarkable enhancement of regional homogeneity in the bilateral anterior cingulate, left medial frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, right middle frontal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus. Functional connectivity based on a seed region at the right middle frontal gyrus (42, 51, 9) decreased at the bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus. Our data preliminarily indicates that the international standard scalp acupuncture in healthy elderly participants specifcally enhances the correlation between the brain regions involved in cognition and implementation of the brain network regulation system and the surrounding adjacent brain regions. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the China-Japan Union Hospital at Jilin University, China, on July 18, 2016 (approval No. 2016ks043).

MicroRNA‑132 (miR‑132) has been shown to be dysregulated in certain types of human malignancies and is associated with tumor progression. However, its function in non‑small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and whether it is differentially expressed in this disease, remain unclear. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of miR‑132 on NSCLC tumorigenesis and progression. Using reverse transcription‑quantitative polymerase chain reaction, miR‑132 expression was detected in NSCLC cell lines and primary tumor tissues. The association between miR‑132 expression, and clinicopathological factors and prognosis was assessed using statistical analysis. An MTT assay, flow cytometry, Transwell invasion assays and scratch migration assays were conducted in order to examine the proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and migration of NSCLC cells that had been transfected with miR‑132 mimics or inhibitors. The results showed that miR‑132 expression levels were significantly downregulated in NSCLC cells compared with that in corresponding non‑cancerous lung tissues (P

The number of mobile-end businesses in power industry has surged drastically in recent years, rendering increasing demands for penetration tests over these mobile applications. On the other hand, with the raising awareness of information security, most of the applications are traffic-encrypted, which significantly reduce the efficiency during penetration test since additional decryption and re-encryption steps are required before and after forwarding test data. In order to improve the efficiency, this paper proposes a man-in-the-middle-based three-layer proxy mode to achieve automated switching between the encryption and decryption scripts. Experiment results show that the average testing duration is reduced by around 95% and can be further reduced if automated penetration test tools such as AppScan and sqlmap are utilized.

The centralized distribution of a large number of power equipment in the switchyard of 500kV substations leads to complicated magnetic field distribution in the switchyard. High-voltage open circuit breakers under maintenance will generate induced currents, which is a safety hazard for circuit breaker maintenance workers. This article first measures the induced current of the circuit breaker, cable, grounding grid, and two grounding wires and the grounding switch in the 500kV switchyard of the substation, and then measures the power frequency magnetic field in the 500kV switchyard of the substation. simulation Research. The measurement and calculation results show that the peak-to-peak value of the induced current generated by the circuit breaker in the 500kV switching field in the 500kV switching field is 3.93∼7.33A, the magnetic induction intensity ranges between 0.44∼8.76µT, and the maximum power frequency magnetic field intensity is mainly concentrated Below the second bus, the closer to the normal working bus, the greater the magnetic induction intensity, which leads to the greater the induced current generated in the high-voltage open circuit breaker. When the high-voltage open circuit breaker is under maintenance, the ground wire is suspended at both ends of the circuit breaker to effectively reduce the induced voltage, thereby ensuring the safety of the operators.

As all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and arsenic trioxide (ATO) are widely accepted in treating acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), deescalating toxicity becomes a research hotspot. Here, we evaluated whether chemotherapy could be replaced or reduced by ATO in APL patients at different risks. After achieving complete remission with ATRA-ATO–based induction therapy, patients were randomized (1:1) into ATO and non-ATO groups for consolidation: ATRA-ATO versus ATRA–anthracycline for low-/intermediate-risk patients, or ATRA-ATO–anthracycline versus ATRA–anthracycline–cytarabine for high-risk patients. The primary end point was to assess disease-free survival (DFS) at 3 y by a noninferiority margin of –5%; 855 patients were enrolled with a median follow-up of 54.9 mo, and 658 of 755 patients could be evaluated at 3 y. In the ATO group, 96.1% (319/332) achieved 3-y DFS, compared to 92.6% (302/326) in the non-ATO group. The difference was 3.45% (95% CI –0.07 to 6.97), confirming noninferiority (P < 0.001). Using the Kaplan–Meier method, the estimated 7-y DFS was 95.7% (95% CI 93.6 to 97.9) in ATO and 92.6% (95% CI 89.8 to 95.4) in non-ATO groups (P = 0.066). Concerning secondary end points, the 7-y cumulative incidence of relapse (CIR) was significantly lower in ATO (2.2% [95% CI 1.1 to 4.2]) than in non-ATO group (6.1% [95% CI 3.9 to 9.5], P = 0.011). In addition, grade 3 to 4 hematological toxicities were significantly reduced in the ATO group during consolidation. Hence, ATRA-ATO in both chemotherapy-replacing and -reducing settings in consolidation is not inferior to ATRA–chemotherapy (https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/, NCT01987297).

The artificial immune danger theory is introduced into the analysis of user behavior characteristics to effectively identify the dormant member users of pharmacies. Take pharmacy members as an example, analyze the behavior characteristics of pharmacy members, select characteristic attributes such as purchasing behavior, medical history, gender and age, payment method, activity level, membership card points, etc.Use the attribute analysis result as the characteristic signal to distinguish between quasi-sleeping member users and normal users, and based on Dendritic Cells Algorithm(DCA) to realize the identification of quasi-sleeping members of pharmacies.The effectiveness of the algorithm is verified and compared with the real data of pharmacy member users. The results show that the method can effectively detect users who may become sleeping members among pharmacy members, and has a high detection accuracy rate.

Anthropometric body measurements are importantfor industrial design, garment fitting, medical diagnosis andergonomics. A number of methods have been proposed toestimate the body measurements from images, but progress hasbeen slow due to the lack of realistic and publicly availabledatasets. The existing works train and test on silhouettes of3D body meshes obtained by fitting a human body model tothe commercial CAESAR scans. In this work, we introduce theBODY-fit dataset that contains fitted meshes of 2,675 female and1,474 male 3D body scans. We unify evaluation on the CAESAR-fit and BODY-fit datasets by computing body measurements fromgeodesic surface paths as the ground truth and by generating two-view silhouette images. We also introduce BODY-rgb - a realisticdataset of 86 male and 108 female subjects captured with an RGBcamera and manually tape measured ground truth. We propose asimple yet effective deep CNN architecture as a baseline methodwhich obtains competitive accuracy on the three datasets. acceptedVersion

The chapter discusses the concept of technology transfer from bench to industry in context of circular bioeconomy. Technologies using waste sources, as an example, to produce value-added products have been discussed with their economic and environmental benefits. Scale-up parameters are important for transferring a technology from bench scale to pilot scale and industrial scale. For a successful transfer of a technology, several other factors need to be also considered including economic feasibility, market demand, location of the industry, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, recycling of materials from waste in order to “close the loop,” or recovery of energy from waste. Waste disposal should be phased out, and, where it is unavoidable, it must be adequately controlled to be safe for human health and the environment. This chapter also discusses challenges in the transfer of the existing technologies and measures to be taken by scientists, engineers, policymakers, and government for a successful technology transfer.

In order to utilize the low-concentration gas directly discharged into the atmosphere from 1.1% to 1.50% in coal mine production, the heat storage and oxidation equipment of gas was improved, and the heat storage and safety of gas under high-temperature environment were tested. The experimental results show that the regenerative oxidation system could provide a high-temperature oxidation environment of 1000°C for gas oxidation after changing the heating mode and enhancing the sealing property. The pressure curves of air and gas in the burner were similar. With the increase of gas concentration, the pressure difference between inlet and outlet tended to increase linearly with a minimum pressure differential of 4 kPa (air) and a maximum pressure differential of 11 kPa (1.50% gas). The internal pressure was relatively stable without an instantaneous pressure surge or explosion. The result of this study provides a reference for further research on the low-concentration gas regeneration oxidation unit at high temperatures.

Lumbar disc herniation is a common lumbar disease in clinics, which is related to improper use of lumbar vertebrae and osteoporosis. Surgical removal of nucleus pulposus and maintenance of lumbar structural stability are important for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation. At present, in clinical percutaneous intervertebral foramen endoscopic surgery for lumbar disc herniation, interlaminar and intervertebral foramen approaches can be selected. Different approaches have different degrees of difficulty in the treatment of lumbar disc herniation, and the clinical effects that may be obtained are different. In this study, we observed the influencing factors of plasma nitric oxide (NO) and free radical metabolism in patients with lumbar disc herniation and the correlation between the effects of focus separation. The organic combination of local and total illness differentiation and dialectics, conventional acupuncture, and electrical stimulation was highlighted in this study, which linked local acupoints squeezed by nerve roots with distant acupoints along meridians. The use of authoritative quantitative standards and a multifactor assessment of the disease can accurately represent the disease's severity. The patient's condition changes in each period may be expressed more accurately, thoroughly, and objectively through the rise or reduction of the score, making self-evaluation easier for the patient. Electroacupuncture at point may be one of the most important strategies to minimize free radical damage, based on changes in plasma levels.

Background: Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) is an effective measure for improving the prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC). However, the role of HIPEC in CRC patients at high risk of PC remains controversial. The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of HIPEC in CRC patients at high risk of PC. Methods: We performed a systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and other online databases up to July 30, 2020. The clinical data, including overall survival, disease free survival, peritoneal metastasis rate, and postoperative adverse reaction were screened and analyzed after data extraction. Risk ratios (RRs) were applied to analyze these dichotomous outcomes with a random effects model. Results: A total of 6 available clinical studies involving 603 patients were finally included. CRC patients at high risk of PC who proactively underwent HIPEC treatment showed a significantly reduced peritoneal metastasis rate (RR: 0.41, 95% CI: 0.21-0.83, P = 0.01; I 2 = 58%) compared to the similarly high-risk in CRC patients who did not receive HIPEC treatment. However, in terms of overall survival (RR: 1.13, 95% CI: 0.97-1.33, P = 0.12; I 2 = 77%), disease-free survival (RR: 1.10, 95% CI: 0.75-1.59, P = 0.63; I 2 = 53%), progression free survival (RR: 1.85, 95% CI: 0.48-7.14, P = 0.37; I 2 = 93%), and postoperative adverse reactions (RR: 0.1.07, 95% CI: 0.36-3.15, P = 0.90; I 2 = 78%), there was no significant difference between the HIPEC treatment and control groups. Conclusions: Proactive HIPEC treatment did not show the expected clinical efficacy in prolonging the overall survival time, disease-free survival time, and progression-free survival time of CRC patients at high risk of PC. However, the preemptive administration of HIPEC was associated with a reduced peritoneal metastasis rate and did not cause adverse additional postoperative effects.

To improve water injection effect, microemulsions (MEs) were used to wet coal seam compared with water and sodium dodecyl sulfate solution (SDS). Wetting effects were characterized by contact angle, X-ray diffraction, Fourier infrared spectroscopy. The results showed that the microemulsion has better spreadability on coal surface and has stronger wettability for coals of different ranks and different particle sizes than traditional wetting agents. The W/O type microemulsion is more affinity to coal than the O/W type and the bicontinuous type.Oxygen and hydrogen contents contributed to wetting. Different wetting agents have the greatest impact on the oxygen-containing functional group absorption zone of coal, but have little impact on the change of clay mineral composition.As the content of quartz increased, the content of montmorillonite was decreased, and the hydrophilicity of coal was increased. This research proposes new ideas for solving coal dust problems and reducing coal mine disasters.

Keemun black tea is classified into 7 grades according to the difference in its quality. The appearance and flavour are crucial indicators of its quality. This research demonstrates a rapid grading method of jointly using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) and computer vision systems (CVS) to evaluate the flavour and appearance quality of tea. A Bruker MPA Fourier Transform near-infrared spectrometer was used to record the spectrum of samples. A computer vision system was used to capture the image of tea leaves in an unobstructed manner. 80 tea samples for each grade were analyzed. The performance of four NIRS feature extraction methods (principal component analysis, local linear embedding, isometric feature mapping, and convolutional neural network (CNN)) was compared in this study. Histograms of six geometric features (leaf width, leaf length, leaf area, leaf perimeter, aspect ratio, and rectangularity) of different tea samples were used to describe their appearance. A feature-level fusion strategy was used to combine softmax and artificial neural networks (ANN) to classify NIRS and CVS features. The results indicated that for an individual NIRS signal, CNN achieved the highest classification accuracy with the softmax classification model. The histograms of the combined shape features indicated that when the softmax classification model was used, the classification accuracy was also higher than ANN. The fusion of NIRS and CVS features proved to be the optimal combination; the accuracy of calibration, validation and testing sets increased from 99.29%, 96.67% and 98.57% (when the optimal features from a single-sensor were used) to 100.00%, 99.29% and 100.00% (when features from multiple-sensors were used). This study revealed that the combination of NIRS and CVS features can be a useful strategy for classifying black tea samples of different grades.

Creative digital artwork is usually the outcome of a long period of intellectual creation and labor of an artist. Similarly, computer-created digital artwork is an outcome of a large amount of machine time and computational resources. However, such intellectual properties can be easily copied by illegal users. Copyright protection of digital art is increasingly more important than before. Recently, using a computational approach to generate string art tends to be popular and attractive. To protect the illegal usage of the digital form of string art, we propose a data hiding algorithm specifically designed for string art. A digital string art image consists of a sequence of string lines, each specified by two nails fixed at the two ends of that line. The encrypted secret data (the watermark) is embedded into the list of line segments by odd&ndash, even modulation, where a bit &lsquo, 1&rsquo, is embedded by forcing the next node to be an odd node, and a bit &lsquo, 0&rsquo, is embedded by forcing the next node to be an even node. To minimize the impact of data embedding on the quality of the original string art image, a local optimization algorithm is developed to select the nodes that produce minimal distortion. To quantify the embedding distortion, we introduce a smoothing filter model for the human vision system (HVS) specifically tailored to string art image. Experimental results show that using the proposed algorithm, the distortion between the original string art image and the watermarked string art image is unnoticeable. The modified string art image is statistically indistinguishable from the original string art, and hence is secure under steganalysis. To our best knowledge, this is the first work towards data hiding and copyright protection of digital string art.

Fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) plays an important role in the development of chronic kidney disease-mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD). Abnormally elevated levels of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D cause osteocytes to secrete FGF23, which subsequently induces phosphaturia. Recent studies have reported that iron deficiency, erythropoietin (EPO) and hypoxia regulate the pathways responsible for FGF23 production. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the interactions between FGF23 and anemia-related factors are not yet fully understood. The present review discusses the associations between FGF23, iron, EPO and hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs), and their impact on FGF23 bioactivity, focusing on recent studies. Collectively, these findings propose interactions between FGF23 gene expression and anemia-related factors, including iron deficiency, EPO and HIFs. Taken together, these results suggest that FGF23 bioactivity is closely associated with the occurrence of CKD-related anemia and CKD-MBD.

Although advances have been achieved in the treatment of heart failure (HF) following myocardial infarction (MI), HF following MI remains one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity around the world. Cell-based therapies for cardiac repair and improvement of left ventricular function after MI have attracted considerable attention. Accordingly, the safety and efficacy of these cell transplantations should be tested in a preclinical large animal model of HF prior to clinical use. Pigs are widely used for cardiovascular disease research due to their similarity to humans in terms of heart size and coronary anatomy. Therefore, we sought to present an effective protocol for the establishment of a porcine chronic HF model using closed-chest coronary balloon occlusion of the left circumflex artery (LCX), followed by rapid ventricular pacing induced with pacemaker implantation. Eight weeks later, the stem cells were administered by intramyocardial injection in the peri-infarct area. Then the infarct size, cell survival, and left ventricular function (including echocardiography, hemodynamic parameters, and electrophysiology) were evaluated. This study helps establish a stable preclinical large animal HF model for stem cell treatment.

Background: The study was performed to investigate the relationship between aspartate transaminase/alanine transaminase ratio (DRR) and long-term mortality among patients diagnosed with sepsis or septic shock. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study among adult septic patients who were admitted to surgical intensive care unit (ICU) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital from January 2014 to December 2018. Baseline characteristics were compared between survivors and non-survivors. We applied univariate as well as multivariate Cox regression analyses to evaluate DRR in relation to 180-day mortality. The potential prognostic value of DRR in predicting mortality rate was assessed by receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis. Besides, we conducted subgroup analysis by stratifying patients via optimal DRR cut-off value. Results: We included a total number of 183 patients in the current study, 44 (24%) patients died within 180-day hospitalization. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis revealed that DRR was an independent predictor of 180-day mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.421, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.073-1.883, P = 0.014). The predicting accuracy of 180-day mortality for DRR was presented as ROC with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.708 (95% CI 0.629–0.786, P < 0.001). As we stratified all enrolled patients into two groups by using the optimal cut-off value of 1.29, we observed a significantly higher mortality in patients with relatively high DRR. Conclusions: An elevated DRR was associated with higher 180-day mortality among septic patients, and DRR might be an optimal marker for predicting the long-term mortality of sepsis. More prospective and randomized trials are needed to confirm the prognostic value of DRR.

Background Work-life balance is associated with health behaviors. In the face of digitalization, understanding this link requires a theory-based investigation of problematic internet use and perceived stress, which are so far unknown. Objective On the basis of the compensatory carry-over action model, this study aimed to determine whether problematic internet use and perceived stress mediate the relationship between health behaviors and work-life balance in two groups of internet users from different environments (residents in Germany and China). We also investigated whether the place of residence was a moderator. Methods An online questionnaire (N=877) was administered to residents from Germany (n=374) and China (n=503) in 3 languages (German, English, and Chinese). Moderated mediation analyses were run with health behaviors as the independent variable, work-life balance as the dependent variable, problematic internet use and perceived stress as the mediator variables, and place of residence as a potential moderator. Results On a mean level, individuals in Germany reported less problematic internet use and more health behaviors than individuals in China; however, they also had lower work-life balance and higher perceived stress. Results showed that health behaviors seem to be directly related to work-life balance in both groups. Among the residents of Germany, a partial mediation was revealed (β=.13; P=.01), whereas among the residents of China, a full mediation was found (β=.02; P=.61). The mediator role of perceived stress was compared with problematic internet use in all the serial models and the parallel model. Residence moderated the relationship between health behaviors and work-life balance: The interrelation between health behaviors and work-life balance was stronger in Germany (β=.19; P Conclusions The findings of this study are in line with the compensatory carry-over action model. To promote work-life balance, individuals should perform health behaviors to help overcome problematic internet use and perceived stress. Both problematic internet use and perceived stress mediated health behaviors and work-life balance partially in German study participants and fully in Chinese study participants.

Rationale: Poor survival and engraftment are major hurdles of stem cell therapy in the treatment of myocardial infarction (MI). We sought to determine whether pre-transplantation systemic intravenous administration of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (hiPSC-MSCs) could improve the survival of hiPSC-MSCs or hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) following direct intramyocardial transplantation in a mouse model of MI. Methods: Mice were randomized to undergo intravenous administration of saline or 5×105 hiPSC-MSCs one week prior to MI, induced by ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery. Mice were further assigned to undergo direct intramyocardial transplantation of hiPSC-MSCs (1×106) or hiPSC-CMs (1×106) 10 minutes following MI. Echocardiographic and invasive hemodynamic assessment were performed to determine cardiac function. In-vivo fluorescent imaging analysis, immunofluorescence staining and polymerase chain reaction were performed to detect cell engraftment. Flow cytometry of splenic regulatory T cells (Tregs) and natural killer (NK) cells was performed to assess the immunomodulatory effects. Results: Pre-transplantation systemic administration of hiPSC-MSCs increased systemic Tregs activation, decreased the number of splenic NK cells and inflammation, and enhanced survival of transplanted hiPSC-MSCs and hiPSC-CMs. These improvements were associated with increased neovascularization and decreased myocardial inflammation and apoptosis at the peri-infract zone with consequent improved left ventricular function four weeks later. Co-culture of splenic CD4 cells with hiPSC-MSCs also modulated their cytokine expression profile with a decreased level of interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, and interleukin (IL)-17A, but not IL-2, IL-6 and IL-10. Conclusion: Pre-transplantation systemic intravenous administration of hiPSC-MSCs induced immunomodulation and facilitated the survival of intramyocardially transplanted cells to improve cardiac function in MI.

The best RGBD trackers provide high accuracy but are slow to run. On the other hand, the best RGB trackers are fast but clearly inferior on the RGBD datasets. In this work, we propose a deep depth-aware long-term tracker that achieves state-of-the-art RGBD tracking performance and is fast to run. We reformulate deep discriminative correlation filter (DCF) to embed the depth information into deep features. Moreover, the same depth-aware correlation filter is used for target redetection. Comprehensive evaluations show that the proposed tracker achieves state-of-the-art performance on the Princeton RGBD, STC, and the newly-released CDTB benchmarks and runs 20 fps. acceptedVersion

Hospital wastewater contains various pharmaceuticals and pathogens. Improper management of the wastewater has caused the leakage of these harmful materials to the environment. The presence of pathogens, pharmaceuticals, and their derivatives such as antibiotic resistance genes as the most typical one in the environment leads to physical, chemical, and biological harmful impact. This chapter has reviewed the pharmaceuticals and pathogens in the hospital; discussed the development of antibiotic resistance genes; and revealed the possible impact of these harmful materials in microorganisms, organism, and human being. In addition, the measures that can be taken to prevent the transportation of pharmaceuticals and pathogens into environment have been stated in this chapter.

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2020 is the eighth annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 58 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in the recent years. The VOT2020 challenge was composed of five sub-challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2020 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2020 challenge focused on “real-time” short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2020 focused on long-term tracking namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance, (iv) VOT-RGBT2020 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB and thermal imagery and (v) VOT-RGBD2020 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. Only the VOT-ST2020 datasets were refreshed. A significant novelty is introduction of a new VOT short-term tracking evaluation methodology, and introduction of segmentation ground truth in the VOT-ST2020 challenge – bounding boxes will no longer be used in the VOT-ST challenges. A new VOT Python toolkit that implements all these novelites was introduced. Performance of the tested trackers typically by far exceeds standard baselines. The source code for most of the trackers is publicly available from the VOT page. The dataset, the evaluation kit and the results are publicly available at the challenge website (http://votchallenge.net).

We described the clinical and neuroimaging characteristics of seven Chinese patients with anti-GAD65 antibody-associated neurological disorders of whom epileptic seizures were the initial and main symptoms. All patients were given immunotherapy and followed up monthly. The outcome demonstrates that immunotherapy is helpful for non-seizure manifestations of anti-GAD65-associated neurological autoimmunity and is less effective in the treatment of seizures, yet partial responses can still occur in the early stage. Taken together we suggest a trial with immunotherapy in all patients in the early stage of the disease, and in patients with non-epilepsy symptoms in the later stage.

Based on the original perspective of bank regulation capital constraint and economic capital constraint, the essay studies the effect of capital allocation of commercial banks on risk management. T...

We demonstrate a good beam quality 483 nm blue coherent radiation from a frequency doubled InGaAs multiple quantum wells semiconductor disk laser. The gain chip is consisted of 6 repeats of strain uncompensated InGaAs/GaAs quantum wells and 25 pairs of GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflector. A 4 × 4 × 7 mm3 type I phase-matched BBO nonlinear crystal is used in a V-shaped laser cavity for the second harmonic generation, and 210 mW blue output power is obtained when the absorbed pump power is 3.5 W. The M2 factors of the laser beam in x and y directions are about 1.04 and 1.01, respectively. The output power of the blue laser is limited by the relatively small number of the multiple quantum wells, and higher power can be expected by increasing the number of the multiple quantum wells and improving the heat management of the laser.

Transcatheter closure of perimembranous ventricular septal defect (VSD) has been proved to be an effective alternative to surgery [(1)][1]. Besides post-procedure complete or high-degree atrioventricular block, complete left bundle branch block (CLBBB) deserves our attention because substantial

The opening and closing time test of 500kV high voltage circuit breaker can evaluate the mechanical characteristics and three-phase synchronization performance of the circuit breaker. Due to the influence of the earth resistance circuit, the traditional test method of circuit breaker opening and closing time can not be carried out when both ends are grounded. This paper first introduces the differential coil used to collect the signal, and then according to the requirements of field test, puts forward a test method for the opening and closing time of circuit breaker under the condition of double terminal grounding, and gives the basis for judging the opening and closing signal time. Finally, it compares and analyses the results of this method with the traditional high voltage circuit breaker opening and closing time test method, and obtains the conclusion of high voltage circuit breaker. The test method of grounding time division and closing time at both ends of the circuit breaker can fully meet the needs of field maintenance, which provides a new idea for the opening and closing time test of 500kV high voltage circuit breaker.

Anemia is a common complication in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients receiving hemodialysis. The effect of high-flux dialysis (HFD) on anemia remains unclear. This prospective study aimed to evaluate the effect of HFD on anemia, and the potential of soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR) as a marker of iron status and erythropoiesis in CKD patients on hemodialysis. Forty patients, who switched from conventional low-flux dialysis to HFD for 12 months, were enrolled in this study. The levels of sTfR, hemoglobin (Hb), iron, and nutritional markers, as well as the dose of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) and use of chalybeate were determined at 0, 2, 6, and 12 months after starting HFD. HFD significantly increased the hemoglobin level and reduced sTfR level in CKD patients (p < 0.05). In addition, significant decreasing linear trends were observed for rhEPO dosage and chalybeate use (p < 0.05). The level of sTfR was positively correlated with the percentage of reticulocytes (RET%), rhEPO dose, and chalybeate use, while it was negatively correlated with Hb levels and total iron-binding capacity results (all p < 0.05). A univariate generalized estimating equation (GEE) model showed that the Hb level, RET%, rhEPO dose, and chalybeate use were the variables associated with sTfR levels. A multivariate GEE model showed that the time points when hemodialysis was performed were the variables associated significantly with sTfR levels. Overall, our findings suggest that HFD can effectively improve renal anemia in hemodialysis patients, and sTfR could be used as a marker of erythropoiesis in HFD patients.

In order to update the finite element model, the modal test results must be highly accurate since they are used as the basis. The major problems with traditional modal test method are limited measurement points and poor mode shape precision. In this paper, modal test based on 3-D Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry (SLDV) technique was carried out. High spatial resolution and accurate mode shapes were obtained, which is beneficial to subsequent correlation analysis and updating process. High order modal parameters were identified and more information can be added in the objective function. Due to the consistent coordinate system in modal test and finite element model, the measurement points and corresponding finite element nodes were easily matched in order to compare mode shapes. By means of a real liquid rocket engine nozzle, an integrated model updating process is presented from proper initial model, accurate modal test results, test/analysis correlation to automatic model updating. The single steps of detailed updating process are highlighted. The discrepancy between the finite element model predicted and the experiment measured modal parameters are minimized and satisfactory results were obtained.

Visual Abstract, Highlights • A porcine model of heart failure was induced by myocardial infarction followed by rapid ventricular pacing for 4 weeks. • Catheter-based renal denervation was performed using an expandable basket with 4 electrodes to deliver radiofrequency energy. Histological examination showed significant denervation of the renal arteries after the procedure. • Compared with the control group, animals that received renal denervation showed significant improvement of cardiac function as determined by LV ejection fraction, maximum rate of LV pressure rise normalized to instantaneous developed pressure, and reduction of myocardial and renal norepinephrine gradient at 10 weeks after procedure., Summary Renal denervation (RD) is a potential novel nonpharmacological therapy for heart failure (HF). We performed bilateral catheter-based RD in 10 adult pigs and compared them with 10 control subjects after induction of HF to investigate the long-term beneficial effects of RD on left ventricular (LV) function and regional norepinephrine gradient after conventional HF pharmacological therapy. Compared with control subjects, animals treated with RD demonstrated an improvement in LV function and reduction of norepinephrine gradients over the myocardium and kidney at 10-week follow-up. Our results demonstrated that effective bilateral RD decrease regional norepinephrine gradients and improve LV contractile function compared with medical therapy alone.