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Objective To investigate the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on serum levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), interleukin (IL)-1β, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in elderly patients with refractory depression. Methods A total of 58 elderly patients diagnosed with refractory depression between January 2015 and December 2016 were divided randomly into two groups: 29 patients who received rTMS and 29 controls without rTMS. Thirty healthy individuals were also enrolled and all received rTMS. Serum levels of BDNF, IL-1β, and TNF-α were measured before the study (0 days), and at 48 hours and 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks after the first TMS treatment. Results BDNF levels gradually increased with treatment duration in the rTMS group and were significantly higher compared with the control group. In contrast, IL-1β and TNF-α levels gradually decreased and were significantly lower than in the control group. None of the serum factors were affected by rTMS in the healthy individuals. BDNF levels were negatively correlated and IL-1β and TNF-α levels were positively correlated with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-24 scores. Conclusion These results suggest that rTMS may increase BDNF and decrease IL-1β and TNF-α serum levels in elderly patients with refractory depression.

Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) system is widely utilized in engineering. However, the performance evaluation method for an ATR system is limited. This paper resolves the problem based on the theory of Sugeno fuzzy integration. The performance metrics are firstly measured. Then, a performance evaluation model is developed. Simulation result shows that, compared to the existing technologies, the novel method can offer more objective performance conclusions for an ATR system.

Based on the theory of bone conduction, a novel circular piezoelectric bone conduction hearing device with a new structure of leaf spring support and excellent low-frequency response is proposed in this paper. The simulation analysis of the circular piezoelectric vibrators with different support ways was carried by ANSYS. And the prototype of piezoelectric bone conduction headphone supported by the optimal way was produced. The experimental test was conducted and the results showed that the maximum response amplitude of headphone could reach up to 26.14μm in the low frequency region ranging from 20Hz to 1000Hz. The zero-distance loudness of the headphone is between 60dB and 90dB, and the 1m close distance loudness is between 30dB and 40dB.The experimental results confirmed that the headphone can meet the hearing needs without healthy risk and ambient noise.

With the development of organic agricultural certification, organic certification company as a professional economic form to organize organic certification activities with information service function is well aware of growing importance. Organic agricultural certification spatial network is composed of company organizing network and service network of organic certification, whose united operation generates the spatial network of organic certification. Much attention is paid to the spatial network of organic certification company. The organic agricultural information centers in China are classified into three types: monolayer endogenous type, monolayer radiation type and multilayer divergence type. This paper analyses the spatial networks of organic certification information centers of Nanjing and Beijing. The interaction between company organizing network and service network of organic certification spatial network is one of the main drivers of Chinese organic agriculture.

Document NO.1 of the Central Government and the report of the eighteenth National Congress has aroused widespread concern in academic circles with its emphasis on rural micro-management body, while research on spatial organization of organic agricultural enterprise under the paradigm of enterprise network is still insufficiency. The paper analyzed the organic agricultural spatial organization of headquarters, processing factories and bases in China by the end of 2012, which reflects the overall development level of the enterprise network is low, and the organizational structure shows an inverted "T" type distribution. Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Shandong and Sichuan provinces scale the highest level. Regional organizations are quite different on spatial distribution, while strong networking provinces mainly gather in the east coast, northeast and west regions, and due to the strength of the dominant organizational functions, provinces can be divided into seven types, such as headquarters-type, base-type, headquarters-processing type. Natural resources, geographical embeddedness, institutional environment, flexible production level and regional innovation capability are the five drivers of spatial organization, and measures can be taken to develop organic agriculture from four aspects of policy guidelines, strategic planning, marketing planning and technical guidance.

In recent years, considerable worldwide development in organic agriculture has attracted widespread attention from scholars both within and outside China, driven by its effects on environmental protection, food safety and health, international green barriers, At present, most of the existing research focuses on the production technology, development mode and benefit evaluation of organic agriculture, with relatively less concern about the activities of organic agricultural enterprises. Based on the indicators of number of enterprises, number of certificates, and certificate types, this paper analyzes the features characterizing the spatial distribution of organic agricultural enterprises in China. The results show that there are significant spatial variations in degree of diversity, degree of concentration, and evolving trajectories. It suggests that provinces and autonomous regions should give full play to the regional comparative advantages in order to facilitate the development of different types of organic agriculture.

Based on an existing pressure-swing distillation process for tetrahydrofuran recovery, heat integration system is investigated in which the condenser of the high-pressure column is integrated with the reboiler of the low-pressure column. Rigorous simulations for the base case and the retrofitted one are carried out with the commercial software aspen plus. Simulation results show that the integrated structure is feasible, and the energy consumption is reduced by 33.31% compared with the base case. Meanwhile, the product purity is increased in the integrated structure. © 2013 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effect of adjusting feed thermal conditions on the throughput of complex distillation columns was investigated by using the concept of the Fractional utilization of area (FUA) proposed by Liu and Jobson (Chem. Eng. Res. Des, 2004, 82, 3-9). The FUA curve can be used to identify the bottleneck of an existing complex distillation column when the throughput is to be increased. According to the shape of the FUA curve, it can be known that how to adjust feed thermal condition of a complex distillation column to increase its throughput. The results show that the FUA method is a powerful tool for complex distillation column analysis.

Water-using processes can be classified as either fixed flowrate operations or fixed contaminant load ones. This article presents a new design method for the water-using networks involving both fixed flowrate operations and fixed contaminant load ones. The definitions of the concentration potential concepts (Liu et al., 2009b, AIChE J. 55, 374–381) are improved to deal with recycling operation in the design. The values of the Concentration Potential of Demands (CPDs) are used as the key factor to determine the performing order: the process with the lowest CPD value will be performed first. While satisfying a demand stream, the internal source streams with descending order of the maximum quasi-allocation amounts will be considered first, and the external source streams will be chosen by the concentrations of the key contaminant (for fixed flowrate operation) or the minimum required amount (for fixed contaminant load operation). The results of a few illustrated examples show that the amounts of freshwater consumptions obtained in this work are close to the best results obtained using mathematical programming methods in the literature, and the calculation of the proposed method is simple.

In P-SV seismic data processing, there are some aspects different from conventional P-P seismic data processing, such as S-wave static correction, CCP binning, P-SV velocity analysis and migration. Among them, the most difficult procedure is S-wave static correction. Unlike P-wave velocity, the S-wave velocity is almost unaffected by the water table and generally very low. Hence, the P-wave and S-wave static solutions are largely different from each other, sometimes S-wave statics is near ten times of P-waves. So the approximation of the S-wave statics by simply scaling the known P-wave statics will lead to large errors and a good image can not be obtained. It has been proven that the time difference of first break between X and Z component in same receiver represent travel time difference of P- and S-wave in weathering layer and it can be utilized to calculate S-wave statics. This paper presents an accurate statics expression with respect to the time difference of first break and some velocity ratio parameter of near surface. Combined with residual statics estimated from common receiver stack section, an integrated converted-wave static correction method is presented. The method was applied to 2D-3C and 3D-3C data processing of Sulige gas field. The results show a good image which indicates that this method is effective for P-SV data processing. This method is especially suitable for statics estimation of thick weathering area where other methods are disabled. Long period S-wave statics are considered simultaneously.

Response to statin therapy for cardiovascular disease is variable among different individuals. The authors aimed to investigate the effect of the CYP3AP1 * 3 polymorphism on the lipid-lowering efficacy of statins. They recruited 379 unrelated hyperlipidemic patients: 202 (103 men) treated with simvastatin and 177 (87 men) with atorvastatin as single-agent therapy (20 mg day ―1 orally) for 4 weeks. CYP3AP1 * 3(-44G>A) was genotyped using the PCR restriction fragment-length polymorphism method. Serum levels of total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides (TGs) were determined before and after treatment. The frequency of the CYP3AP1 * 3 variant allele in Chinese hyperlipidemic patients was 70.6%. In the simvastatin treatment group, the percentage reduction of LDL-C level was greater in the CYP3AP1 * 3/ * 3 carriers than in the CYP3AP1* 1 carriers. This difference was statistically significant for women but not for men. In contrast, the authors found no significant association between the lipid-lowering efficacy of atorvastatin and the CYP3AP1* 3 polymorphism in all participants. However, in women, the percentage change of the TC level was significantly lower in the CYP3AP1* 3 /* 3 carriers than in the CYP3AP1 * 1 carriers. These findings suggest that the CYP3AP1 * 3 allele may be a biomarker for the lipid-lowering efficacy of simvastatin and atorvastatin in Chinese women with hyperlipidemia.

There was an error in Table 5. A correct version of the error in available here: http://www.plosone.org/corrections/pone.0074588.g005.tif

Obestatin, encoded by the same gene as ghrelin, was first described as a physiological opponent of ghrelin through an interaction with the orphan receptor GPR39. However, the effects of obestatin were not totally contrary to the effects of ghrelin in cardiovascular regulations based on the recent studies. We summarize here the current evidences surrounding the cardiovascular actions of obestatin, and the possible implications of obestatin as a therapeutic agent in common conditions such as hypertension and heart failure.

OBJECTIVE: To establish equations for the estimation of glomerular filtration rates (eGFRs) based on serum creatinine (SCr) and/or serum cystatin C (SCysC) in Chinese patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), and to compare the new equations with both the reference GFR (rGFR) and the literature equations to evaluate their applicability. METHODS: The 788 Chinese CKD patients were randomly divided into two groups, the training group and the testing group, to establish new eGFR-formulas based on serum CysC and to validate the established formulas, respectively. (99m)Tc-DTPA clearance (as the rGFR), serum Cr, and serum CysC were determined for all patients, and GFR was calculated using the Cockcroft-Gault equation (eGFR1), the MDRD formula (eGFR2), the CKD-EPI formulas (eGFR3, eGFR4), and the Chinese eGFR Investigation Collaboration formulas (eGFR5, eGFR6). The accuracy of each eGFR was compared with the rGFR. RESULTS: The training and testing groups' mean GFRs were 50.84±31.36 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and 54.16±29.45 mL/min/1.73 m(2), respectively. The two newly developed eGFR formulas were fitted using iterative computation: [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Significant correlation was observed between each eGFR and the rGFR. However, proportional errors and constant errors were observed between rGFR and eGFR1, eGFR2, eGFR4, eGFR5 or eGFR6, and constant errors were observed between eGFR3 and rGFR, as revealed by the Passing & Bablok plot analysis. The Bland-Altman analysis illustrated that the 95% limits of agreement of all equations exceeded the previously accepted limits of

There is significant inter-individual variability in the lipid-lowering effects of atorvastatin and simvastatin. Our goal was to investigate the impact of SLCO1B1 genetic polymorphism on the lipid-lowering effects of atorvastatin and simvastatin. We recruited 363 unrelated hyperlipidemic patients with the CYP3A4*1/*1, CYP3A5*1/*1, and CYP3AP1*1/*1 genotypes: 189 of these were treated with atorvastatin and 174 were treated with simvastatin as a single-agent therapy (20 mg day−1 orally) for 4 weeks. The genotyping of SLCO1B1 c.521T > C (p.V174A, OATP-C*5) was performed with allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (AS-PCR), and PCR restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was performed to detect the carriers of SLCO1B1 c.388A > G (p.N130D, OATP-C*1b). Serum triglyceride (TGs), total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels were determined before and after treatment. The frequencies of the SLCO1B1 521T > C and 388A > G variant alleles in Chinese hyperlipidemic patients were found to be 16.2% and 72.1% respectively. After treatment with 20 mg simvastatin or atorvastatin daily for 4 weeks, TC, TG, and LDL-C concentrations were lower than at baseline, on average, by 18.1 ± 3.7%, 25.8 ± 9.7%, 27.7 ± 5.4% in the simvastatin-treated group, and 17.5 ± 3.7%, 22.6 ± 8.6%, 27.5 ± 5.5% in the atorvastatin-treated group respectively, and the mean relative reduction in serum HDL cholesterol did not reach statistical significance (−1.0 ± 10.9%, 0.5 ± 9.3%). However, no significant differences were observed in the lipid-lowering effects of atorvastatin and simvastatin between subjects with different SLCO1B1 genotypes. The SLCO1B1 521T > C and 388A > G variants were found to be relatively common in Chinese patients with essential hyperlipidemia. These frequencies were found to be similar to those observed in healthy Chinese and Japanese individuals, but significantly different from Caucasians and blacks. SLCO1B1 521T > C and 388A > G polymorphisms may not be associated with the lipid-lowering effects of atorvastatin and simvastatin.