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The study aims to conduct big data analysis (BDA) on the massive data generated in the smart city Internet of things (IoT), make the smart city change to the direction of fine governance and efficient and safe data processing. Aiming at the multi-source data collected in the smart city, the study introduces the deep learning (DL) algorithm while using BDA, and puts forward the distributed parallelism strategy of convolutional neural network (CNN). Meantime, the digital twins (DTs) and multi-hop transmission technology are introduced to construct the smart city DTs multi-hop transmission IoT-BDA system based on DL, and further simulate and analyze the performance of the system. The results reveal that in the energy efficiency analysis of model data transmission, the energy efficiency first increases and then decrease as the minimum energy collected α 0 increases. But a more suitable power diversion factor ρ is crucial to the signal transmission energy efficiency of the IoT-BDA system. The prediction accuracy of the model is analyzed and it suggests that the accuracy of the constructed system reaches 97.80%, which is at least 2.24% higher than the DL algorithm adopted by other scholars. Regarding the data transmission performance of the constructed system, it is found that when the successful transmission probability is 100% and the exponential distribution parameters λ is valued 0.01 ∼ 0.05, it is the closest to the actual result, and the data delay is the smallest, which is maintained at the ms level. To sum up, improving the smart city’s IoT-BDA system using the DL approach can reduce data transmission delay, improve data forecasting accuracy, and offer actual efficacy, providing experimental references for the digital development of smart cities in the future.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most frequently diagnosed neurodegenerative disease. The purpose of this study was to investigate the link between microbiota composition in important mucosal interfaces (oral, nasal, and intestinal) and PD. Sequencing was undertaken of the V4-V5 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene of the microbiome from the oral cavity, nasal cavity, and gut of 91 PD patients and 91 healthy controls. Significant differences were found in microbiota composition in the oral cavity and gut, but not the nasal cavity, between PD patients and healthy controls after adjusting for age, gender, and body mass index (BMI). More genera in the oral cavity were significantly positively correlated with clinical characteristics, such as the HAMA and HAMD rating scales. The taxa c_Clostridia, o_Clostridiales, and f_Ruminococcaceae in the gut microbiota were associated with weight and MMSE score. Furthermore, as a result of dysbiosis, there was an enrichment of ion channel-, oxidative phosphorylation-, and carbohydrate metabolism-related pathways in the oral cavity and glycolysis/gluconeogenesis- and propanoate metabolism-related pathways in the intestine. Changes in these pathways can influence metabolism and inflammation, thereby contributing to PD pathogenesis. In addition, several subnetworks containing differentially abundant microbiota in the oral cavity and gut samples from PD patients may regulate microbial composition and function in PD. Overall, our results indicate that oral and gut dysbiosis may affect PD progression and provide a basis for understanding the pathogenesis of PD and identifying potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of this disease.

This letter studies the problem of air-to-air visual detection of micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by monocular cameras. This problem is important for many applications such as vision-based swarming of UAVs, malicious UAV detection, and see-and-avoid systems for UAVs. Although deep learning methods have exhibited superior performance in many object detection tasks, their potential for UAV detection has not been well explored. As the first main contribution of this letter, we present a new dataset, named Det-Fly, which consists of more than 13 000 images of a flying target UAV acquired by another flying UAV. Compared to the existing datasets, the proposed one is more comprehensive in the sense that it covers a wide range of practical scenarios with different background scenes, viewing angles, relative distance, flying altitude, and lightning conditions. The second main contribution of this letter is to present an experimental evaluation of eight representative deep-learning algorithms based on the proposed dataset. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive experimental evaluation of deep learning algorithms for the task of visual UAV detection so far. The evaluation results highlight some key challenges in the problem of air-to-air UAV detection and suggest potential ways to develop new algorithms in the future. The dataset is available at https://github.com/Jake-WU/Det-Fly .

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text, Background Surgical left atrial appendage occlusion (SLAAO) may be associated with a lower risk of thromboembolism in patients with atrial fibrillation undergoing cardiac surgery. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of SLAAO in patients undergoing mechanical heart valve replacement (MHVR) is lacking. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between SLAAO and the cardiovascular outcomes in patients with atrial fibrillation undergoing MHVR. Methods We retrospectively analyzed data for 497 patients with atrial fibrillation; 27.6% of the patients underwent SLAAO, and the remainder of the patients did not (No-SLAAO group). The primary outcome was a composite of ischemic stroke, systemic embolism, and all-cause mortality. Cumulative event-free survival rates were estimated using Kaplan-Meier curves, and we performed multivariate Cox analyses to evaluate the association between SLAAO and outcomes. We used one-to-one propensity score matching to balance patients’ baseline characteristics, and analyzed 120 matching pairs. Results Five patients died within 30 days postoperatively, and there were no significant differences between the two groups regarding in-hospital complications (all P > 0.05). After a median follow-up of 14 months, 14 primary events occurred. Kaplan-Meier curves showed no difference in the cumulative incidence of freedom from the primary outcome (log-rank P = 0.830), hemorrhagic events (log-rank P = 0.870), and the secondary outcome (log-rank P = 0.730), between the two groups. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed no association between SLAAO and any outcome (all P > 0.05). After propensity score matching, cardiopulmonary bypass time and aortic cross-clamp time, and the postoperative length of stay were significantly longer in the SLAAO group (all P

AimsThe visualisation of HBV DNA in liver sections of patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in our previous report uncovered a mosaic distribution of viral antigens and nucleic acids. Here we aim to further explore the clinical utility of the in situ hybridisation (ISH) assay for HBV DNA.MethodISH of HBV DNA along with immunohistochemistry (IHC) of HBsAg, HBcAg and routine histopathology analysis was performed in 313 treatment-naive patients with CHB. Serum HBcrAg and HBcAb titre were also measured in addition to basic biochemical and virological parameters.ResultsThe ISH of HBV DNA, HBsAg and HBcAg showed 95.2%, 97.1% and 42.8% positive rate, respectively. The staining pattern of HBV DNA differs significantly with that of HBsAg. Intrahepatic HBV DNA exhibited high-level of correlations with viral load, HBcrAg and HBsAg titre. In HBeAg-negative patients, higher intrahepatic HBV DNA is associated with histological evidence of liver inflammation and fibrosis, whereas no such trend was observed in HBeAg-positive patients. Finally, a triple staining protocol that combined the detection of HBV DNA, HBsAg and collagen fibre was developed to enable better evaluation of viral replication and antigen expression in the context of disease progression.ConclusionsThe ISH assay for HBV DNA reflects the vigour of intrahepatic viral replication. It is complementary to the routine IHC assay for viral antigens and also related to the histopathological progression of liver diseases. The application of the HBV DNA ISH assay may help a better evaluation of virological and pathological condition of patients with CHB.

The accurate alignment between visual features and semantic concepts is a challenging problem in zero-shot object detection. To address that, this brief proposes a new algorithm using attributes based category similarity. An unsupervised learning method is utilized to evaluate and adjust an attribute table, which helps to establish a better synergy between visual and semantic domains. Based on that, the similarity between categories is exploited to simultaneously detect and recognize novel concept instances with visual attributes. Experimental results on the MS-COCO dataset show that the proposed algorithm can achieve the highest mean average precision (15.34%), compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Objective To investigate whether mutations in the minichromosome maintenance complex component 9 (MCM9) gene were present in 192 patients with sporadic premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) of Chinese descent. Design Genetic and functional study. Setting University-based reproductive medicine center. Patient(s) A total of 192 patients with sporadic POI and 192 control women with regular menstruation. Intervention(s) Sanger sequencing performed in 192 sporadic POI patients, and potential pathogenic variants were excluded in matched controls. Functional effects of mutations on MCM9 were explored based on etoposide-induced DNA damage response, and DNA repair capacity was evaluated by histone H2AX phosphorylation level. Main Outcome Measure(s) Sanger sequencing and functional characteristics. Result(s) Three novel heterozygous mutations in MCM9, c.C1423T (p.L475F), c.T2921C (p.L974S), and c.G3388A (p.A1130T), were identified in three POI patients separately, which were absent in 192 controls. Functional studies showed that the human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells overexpressing mutant MCM9 presented with diminished DNA repair capacity compared with wild type. Conclusion(s) This study identified novel mutations in MCM9 that are potentially causative for sporadic POI in Chinese women and further highlighted the role of DNA repair capacity in maintenance of ovarian function.

Background: Lake is a critical part of Tibet's hydrological cycle, the lake-terrestrial ecotone is the most sensitive area in the water and terrestrial ecosystem. For the ecological protection and maintenance of the lakeside zone, defining the upper boundary of the lake-terrestrial ecotone is a key issue that needs to be solved urgently. However, the ecological characteristics of lake-terrestrial ecotone made it diffcult to delimit. Wetland herbs are characteristic plants of the radiant belt toward the land of the lake-terrestrial ecotone, and their distribution range can be used to reflect the upper boundary of the lake-terrestrial ecotone. We took Baksum Lake, Yambdroktso, Namtso, Siling Co as examples, based on the spatial structure of the lake-terrestrial ecotone, used the moving split-window technology (MSWT) delimited the range of wetland herbs.Results:The results of MSWT showed the distribution range of wetland herbs in each lake-terrestrial ecotone with the natural-wetland type sampling line of Baksum Lake, Yambdroktso, Namtso, Siling Co was 51m, 56m, 33~53m, 19~31m. DCA showed number of wetland herbs species,BK1＞YT1=NT1＞NT2＞SC1=SC2. PCA, RDA showed SMO, pH, SSC, and soil nutrient content had obvious correlation with distribution range. Conclusion:MSWT was a feasible method to delimit the distribution range of wetland herbs. SMO, pH, SSC, and soil nutrient content were all-important environmental factors affect the wetland herbs distribution range of the four lakes, however, the SMO was the most important factor. Besides, compare with the lakes in the lower Yangtze Plain,the high-density population distribution,high-intensitive human activity invaded the plants' growth area, resulting in a smaller distribution range.

On account of a large scale of dataset need to be annotated to train the deep learning based modern object detection model, zero-shot object detection has become an important research field which aims to simultaneously localize and recognize unseen objects that are not observed during training. In order to improve the performance of zero-shot object detection, recent state of the art methods tend to make complicated modifications to the modern object detectors in terms of the model structure, loss function and training process. They always take the simple modification as a baseline, and think it is worse than more complicated methods. In contrast, we find that simple modification can achieve better performance. Considering that the redundant modification may increase the risk of over-fitting in seen classes and reduce generalization performance on unseen classes, we propose a visual language based succinct zero-shot object detection framework, which only replaces the classification branch in the modern object detector with a lightweight visual-language network. Since zero-shot object detection is a classic multi-modal learning protocol which consists of a visual feature space and a language space, our visual-language network learns the visual language alignment from the image and language data of seen classes and transfers this alignment to detect unseen objects. Following the Occam's razor principle that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily", extensive experimental results show that our succinct framework can suppress all existing zero-shot object detection methods on several benchmarks and gets the new state-of-the-art.

MoS2 ultra-thin films were prepared on different substrates, including highly doped p-Si (P-sample), highly doped n-Si (N-sample) and SiO2/Si substrate (C-sample), in order to form vertical stacking junctions. Using these different junctions, the electronic structures of MoS2 in different junctions are characterized by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. The nominated bandgap is found to be about 1.0–2.5 eV for the atomic layer MoS2 on different substrates. In the range of atomic layers, the work function decreases with decreasing thickness. Comparing the films with similar thickness, the trend of the selected bandgap Eg and work function Φ are found to be EgN > EgC > EgP and ΦP > ΦN > ΦC, respectively. Based on our results, electronic structures of atomic layer MoS2 can be tuned by different substrates, and the selected bandgap and work function are different using different substrates. The presence of tip-induced band bending has been confirmed to contribute to the measured bandgap and work function values. Our results offer valuable reference to the influence of substrates on electronic structure of MoS2 films.

Targeting cell division by chemotherapy is a highly effective strategy to treat a wide range of cancers. However, there are limitations of many standard-of-care chemotherapies: undesirable drug toxicity, side-effects, resistance and high cost. New small molecules which kill a wide range of cancer subtypes, with good therapeutic window in vivo, have the potential to complement the current arsenal of anti-cancer agents and deliver improved safety profiles for cancer patients. We describe results with a new anti-cancer small molecule, WEHI-7326, which causes cell cycle arrest in G2/M, cell death in vitro, and displays efficacious anti-tumor activity in vivo. WEHI-7326 induces cell death in a broad range of cancer cell lines, including taxane-resistant cells, and inhibits growth of human colon, brain, lung, prostate and breast tumors in mice xenografts. Importantly, the compound elicits tumor responses as a single agent in patient-derived xenografts of clinically aggressive, treatment-refractory neuroblastoma, breast, lung and ovarian cancer. In combination with standard-of-care, WEHI-7326 induces a remarkable complete response in a mouse model of high-risk neuroblastoma. WEHI-7326 is mechanistically distinct from known microtubule-targeting agents and blocks cells early in mitosis to inhibit cell division, ultimately leading to apoptotic cell death. The compound is simple to produce and possesses favorable pharmacokinetic and toxicity profiles in rodents. It represents a novel class of anti-cancer therapeutics with excellent potential for further development due to the ease of synthesis, simple formulation, moderate side effects and potent in vivo activity. WEHI-7326 has the potential to complement current frontline anti-cancer drugs and to overcome drug resistance in a wide range of cancers.

Single-cell high-throughput chromatin conformation capture methodologies (scHi-C) enable profiling long-range genomic interactions at the single-cell resolution; however, data from these technologies are prone to technical noise and bias that, when unaccounted for, hinder downstream analysis. Here we developed a fast band normalization approach, BandNorm, and a deep generative modeling framework, 3DVI, to explicitly account for scHi-C specific technical biases. We present robust performances of BandNorm and 3DVI compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. BandNorm is effective in separating cell types, identification of interaction features, and recovery of cell-cell relationship, whereas de-noising by 3DVI successfully enables 3D compartments and domains recovery, especially for rare cell types.

The incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) complicated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) is increasing day by day. CVD complication is a significant risk factor for the progression and poor prognosis of CKD. However, in terms of clinical diagnosis, treatment, and pathophysiological mechanism, there are still many things that are not clear about CKD combined with CVD. In this article, we observed the abnormal expression of long non-coding RNA ZFAS1 (lncRNA ZFAS1) in the heart and renal tissues of CKD mice, which may a target for nephropathy with CVD. We observed that exosomes containing lncRNA ZFAS1 induced fibrosis in the heart via the wnt4/β-catenin signal pathway. Luciferase assay reported that lncRNA ZFAS1 could bind with microRNA-4711-5p (miR-4711-5p), and wnt4 was a target of miR-4711-5p. In conclusion, lncRNA ZFAS1 from HCM could promote cardiac fibrosis through WNT/β-catenin signal via exosome pathways, which provided an underlying mechanism in the cardiac fibrosis from CKD.

Zero-shot detection (ZSD) is crucial to large-scale object detection with the aim of simultaneously localizing and recognizing unseen objects. There remain several challenges for ZSD, including reducing the ambiguity between background and unseen objects as well as improving the alignment between visual and semantic concept. In this work, we propose a novel framework named Background Learnable Cascade (BLC) to improve ZSD performance. The major contributions for BLC are as follows: (i) we propose a multi-stage cascade structure named Cascade Semantic R-CNN to progressively refine the alignment between visual and semantic of ZSD; (ii) we develop the semantic information flow structure and directly add it between each stage in Cascade Semantic R-CNN to further improve the semantic feature learning; (iii) we propose the background learnable region proposal network (BLRPN) to learn an appropriate word vector for background class and use this learned vector in Cascade Semantic R-CNN, this design makes “Background Learnable” and reduces the confusion between background and unseen classes. Our extensive experiments show BLC obtains significantly performance improvements for MS-COCO over state-of-the-art methods (Code has been made available at https://github.com/zhengye1995/BLC).

Deep learning has significantly improved the precision of instance segmentation with abundant labeled data. However, in many areas like medical and manufacturing, collecting sufficient data is extremely hard and labeling this data requires high professional skills. We follow this motivation and propose a new task set named zero-shot instance segmentation (ZSI). In the training phase of ZSI, the model is trained with seen data, while in the testing phase, it is used to segment all seen and unseen instances. We first formulate the ZSI task and propose a method to tackle the challenge, which consists of Zero-shot Detector, Semantic Mask Head, Background Aware RPN and Synchronized Background Strategy. We present a new benchmark for zero-shot instance segmentation based on the MS-COCO dataset. The extensive empirical results in this benchmark show that our method not only surpasses the state-of-the-art results in zero-shot object detection task but also achieves promising performance on ZSI. Our approach will serve as a solid baseline and facilitate future research in zero-shot instance segmentation., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

In order to develop a novel scoring model for the prediction of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) patients at high risk of severe disease, we retrospectively studied 419 patients from five hospitals in Shanghai, Hubei, and Jiangsu Provinces from January 22 to March 30, 2020. Multivariate Cox regression and orthogonal projections to latent structures discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) were both used to identify high-risk factors for disease severity in COVID-19 patients. The prediction model was developed based on four high-risk factors. Multivariate analysis showed that comorbidity [hazard ratio (HR) 3.17, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.96–5.11], albumin (ALB) level (HR 3.67, 95% CI 1.91–7.02), C-reactive protein (CRP) level (HR 3.16, 95% CI 1.68–5.96), and age ≥60 years (HR 2.31, 95% CI 1.43–3.73) were independent risk factors for disease severity in COVID-19 patients. OPLS-DA identified that the top five influencing parameters for COVID-19 severity were CRP, ALB, age ≥60 years, comorbidity, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level. When incorporating the above four factors, the nomogram had a good concordance index of 0.86 (95% CI 0.83–0.89) and had an optimal agreement between the predictive nomogram and the actual observation with a slope of 0.95 (R2 = 0.89) in the 7-day prediction and 0.96 (R2 = 0.92) in the 14-day prediction after 1,000 bootstrap sampling. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the COVID-19-American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) model was 0.85 (95% CI 0.81–0.90). According to the probability of severity, the model divided the patients into three groups: low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk. The COVID-19-AACC model is an effective method for clinicians to screen patients at high risk of severe disease.

Background Diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs), including diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs), have a dismal prognosis, with less than 2% surviving 5 years postdiagnosis. The majority of DIPGs and all DMGs harbor mutations altering the epigenetic regulatory histone tail (H3 K27M). Investigations addressing DMG epigenetics have identified a few promising drugs, including the HDAC inhibitor (HDACi) panobinostat. Here, we use clinically relevant DMG models to identify and validate other effective HDACi and their biomarkers of response. Methods HDAC inhibitors were tested across biopsy-derived treatment-naïve in vitro and in vivo DMG models with biologically relevant radiation resistance. RNA sequencing was performed to define and compare drug efficacy and to map predictive biomarkers of response. Results Quisinostat and romidepsin showed efficacy with low nanomolar half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values (~50 and ~5 nM, respectively). Comparative transcriptome analyses across quisinostat, romidepsin, and panobinostat showed a greater degree of shared biological effects between quisinostat and panobinostat, and less overlap with romidepsin. However, some transcriptional changes were consistent across all 3 drugs at similar biologically effective doses, such as overexpression of troponin T1 slow skeletal type (TNNT1) and downregulation of collagen type 20 alpha 1 chain (COL20A1), identifying these as potential vulnerabilities or on-target biomarkers in DMG. Quisinostat and romidepsin significantly (P Conclusions Our data highlight the utility of treatment-naïve biopsy-derived models; establishes quisinostat and romidepsin as effective in vivo; illuminates potential mechanisms and/or biomarkers of DMG cell lethality due to HDAC inhibition; and emphasizes the need for brain tumor–penetrant versions of potentially efficacious agents.

The spectral phase of the femtosecond laser field is an important parameter that affects the upconversion (UC) luminescence efficiency of dopant lanthanide ions. In this work, we report an experimental study on controlling the UC luminescence efficiency in Sm3+:NaYF4 glass by 800-nm femtosecond laser pulse shaping using spectral phase modulation. The optimal phase control strategy efficiently enhances or suppresses the UC luminescence intensity. Based on the laser-power dependence of the UC luminescence intensity and its comparison with the luminescence spectrum under direct 266-nm femtosecond laser irradiation, we propose herein an excitation model combining non-resonant two-photon absorption with resonance-mediated three-photon absorption to explain the experimental observations.

Structural design and optimization are important for improving the overall performance of solar reactors. In this study, a coupled optics-CFD model was established to simulate the complex processes of radiation absorption, mass and heat transfer, and chemical reactions in a solar methane dry reforming reactor. The effects of structural parameters on the photothermal chemical conversion process were mainly discussed. It is found that slight changes of structural parameters, such as inclined angle and length of transition section, and cut-off ratio and acceptance half-angle of compound parabolic concentrator, could affect the radiation heat flux density distributions greatly and thus leading to significant variation of the chemical reaction. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the coupled analysis of optics and fluid dynamics when designing and optimizing the solar-type reactor. The proposed model and the obtained results are of guiding significance for the study of various solar-thermochemical and photochemical reactors.

The present study aimed to investigate the expression of microRNA (miR)-133a in patients with or without acute myocardial infarction (AMI) following radical surgery for gastric cancer, and to explore its underlying mechanisms. Blood samples were collected from patients with or without AMI in order to detect the expression levels of miR-133a and endothelial injury markers. In addition, an AMI rat model was established. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the mRNA expression levels of miR-133a and B-cell lymphoma 2-like 1 (Bcl2l1). In addition, an ELISA assay was used for endothelial injury marker analysis. To investigate the effects of miR-133a on human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), a miR-133a inhibitor was used. Cell proliferation and apoptosis were subsequently detected using an MTT assay and flow cytometry. Western blot analysis was also conducted to detect Bcl2l1 protein expression. The results suggested that patients with AMI exhibited significantly increased expression of endothelial injury markers (von Willebrand factor, heart-type fatty acid-binding protein and cardiac troponin I) and miR-133a in blood samples compared with patients without AMI. In addition, treatment with a miR-133a mimic was able to upregulate the expression of endothelial injury markers in an AMI rat model, whereas treatment with a miR-133a inhibitor had the opposite effect. Furthermore, cellular experiments indicated that a miR-133a inhibitor could promote HUVEC proliferation and reduce cell apoptosis. The present results also confirmed that miR-133a directly targets Bcl2l1 and negatively regulates Bcl2l1 expression. In conclusion, the results of the present study suggested that miR-133a was involved in the endothelial injury process after AMI by targeting Bcl2l1.

A transportation network for the coal-fired power plant is very complicated and custom-designed. It requires special transportation equipment such as coal sieving, crusher machines connecting transportation belts with different capability of input/output and speeds to different directions. In this paper, we analyze the max-cut and min-flow properties of the coal transportation network in a thermal power plant in Taiwan. Firstly, we analyze the current daily operational coal transportation and model several transportation modes based on minimum spanning tree from a dedicate ship uploaders to each coal-fired generators. Secondly, based on the derived modes, we propose fault-tolerant routing for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many transportation in different operation cases. The routing algorithms are implemented with a web-based user friendly software using JAVA. Finally, the transportation performance is evaluated by using a max-cut min-flow theorem and we conclude this paper.

Purpose Stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) represents an exciting, tolerable, and highly effective form of radiotherapy. Ongoing investigations into the interactions between radiotherapy and the immune system have uncovered new mechanisms that can be exploited to improve efficacy. We determined whether baseline or posttreatment immune parameters could predict disease control and toxicity in stage I non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with SABR. Patients and Methods Peripheral blood samples were collected from 62 patients 24 hours before treatment and within 4 weeks after treatment for lymphocyte subset count analysis. All peripheral blood samples were analyzed by flow cytometry. Associated parameters were evaluated to determine their association with progression-free survival (PFS) and symptomatic radiation pneumonitis (grade 2 or higher). The survival rates were estimated with Kaplan-Meier and multivariable analyses using binary logistic regression analysis or a Cox proportional hazards model. Results At a median follow-up time of 36.0 months, the PFS rates for years 1, 2, and 3 were 91.0%, 82.5%, and 48.9%, respectively. The multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that only proportion of lung receiving 20 Gy of radiotherapy (odds ratio = 1.41; 95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.87; P = .023) and mean lung dose (odds ratio = 2.02; 95% confidence interval, 1.16-3.53; P = .016) were associated with symptomatic radiation pneumonitis (grade 2 or higher). Moreover, the immune parameters had no predictive value. In the multivariable Cox regression analysis, an elevated posttreatment cytotoxic CD8+ T-cell level was an independent prognostic factor for longer PFS in stage I NSCLC (hazard ratio, 1.16; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.28; P = .01). Conclusion A higher posttreatment cytotoxic CD8+ T-cell level was predictive of better PFS in stage I NSCLC patients receiving SABR. Thus, enhancing tumor antigen-specific cellular immunity by combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy might be a crucial strategy for improving survival in these patients.

Introduction Lymphodepletion chemotherapy followed by infusion of autologous T cells engineered to express a CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) has shown high response rates in relapsed or refractory high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Durable remissions were observed, particularly in patients (pts) who achieved minimal residual disease (MRD)-negative (neg) complete response (CR) in the marrow with no detectable malignant clone by IGH sequencing. Here, we present long-term outcomes of CLL pts treated with CD19 CAR-T cell immunotherapy, and single-cell cellular indexing of transcriptomes and epitopes by sequencing (CITE-seq) analyses of infusion products (IPs) to identify intrinsic T cell characteristics associated with outcomes. Methods Pts were treated on a phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT01865617) of CD19 CAR-T cell immunotherapy in two cohorts: no ibrutinib (ibr) cohort (No-ibr; ibr discontinued prior to leukapheresis or lymphodepletion) or concurrent ibr cohort (Con-ibr; ibr started at least 2 weeks prior to leukapheresis and continued until at least 3 months after CAR-T cell infusion). Responses were evaluated according to the 2018 International Workshop on CLL (iwCLL) criteria (Hallek et al. Blood 2018). MRD in the marrow was assessed 4 weeks after CAR-T cell infusion using flow cytometry (sensitivity, 10 -4) and IGH sequencing (sensitivity, 10 -6). Multiomics profiling was performed on IPs from 25 pts selected based on distribution of ibr washout time before leukapheresis and clinical response (Table 1). All pts received cyclophosphamide and fludarabine lymphodepletion and 2 x 10 6 CAR-T cells/kg. CD3 + CAR-T cells isolated from IPs underwent CITE-seq (10x Genomics), with generation of gene expression, full-length paired V(D)J, and cell surface protein expression libraries. Differential gene expression (DEG) analyses were performed using Model-based Analysis of Single-cell Transcriptomics (MAST). Blood transcriptome modules were used for Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). Results Forty-seven pts (median age, 61 years) with CLL (excluding Richter's transformation without coexisting CLL) received lymphodepletion and CD19 CAR-T cell infusion. Among 29 pts with a pretreatment trackable malignant IGH clone who achieved MRD-neg CR by flow cytometry, at a median follow-up of 23.5 months (interquartile range, 11.0-33.8), the median progression-free survival was 8.5 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.9-not reached) for those with a detected post-treatment malignant IGH clone in marrow (n = 11) and could not be estimated (95% CI, 22.2-not reached) in those without a detected post-treatment malignant IGH clone (n = 18; P = .0006; Figure 1A). In the pts without a detected malignant IGH clone 4 weeks after infusion, only 3 (17%) relapsed; 1 died of a myocardial infarction while in ongoing response. We performed multiomics studies on IPs from a selected subset (n = 25) of pts (Table 1) to identify gene expression patterns impacting outcomes. GSEA revealed association with T cell activation, oxidative phosphorylation, transcription initiation and cell cycle modules in IPs of pts who did compared to did not achieve MRD-neg CR (Figure 1B, left), consistent with the hypothesis that CAR-T cell quality is a key determinant of depth and duration of remission in CLL. IPs studied in the multiomics subset were manufactured from pts treated in either the No-ibr or the Con-ibr cohort (Table 1) and our prior data showed a trend towards higher rates of IGH-neg CR in the Con-ibr cohort (85 vs 60%, P = .34). Because ibr administration before leukapheresis might improve CAR-T cell quality and function, we compared IPs of patients in the No-Ibr vs. Con-Ibr cohorts. GSEA revealed that the T cell differentiation via ITK and PKC module was less enriched in IPs of pts in the Con-ibr vs. No-ibr cohort (Figure 1B, right), consistent with ibr-induced inhibition of T cell differentiation as a mechanism for enhanced CAR-T cell quality in the IP. Analyses are ongoing and full results will be presented at the meeting. Conclusion Long-term follow-up confirmed that achieving a malignant IGH-neg response after CAR-T cell therapy is associated with durable remissions in high-risk CLL. Integrated multiomics profiling suggests that CAR-T cell IP quality is a key determinant of MRD-neg CR. Ibr-related inhibition of ITK signaling in T cells can further contribute to the quality of infused CAR-T cells. Figure 1 Figure 1. Disclosures Hirayama: Novartis: Honoraria; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria. Sheih: Umoja Biopharma: Current Employment. Gauthier: Janssen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Legend Biotech: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Multerra Bio: Consultancy; Larvol: Consultancy; JMP: Consultancy; Eusapharma: Consultancy. Maloney: A2 Biotherapeutics: Divested equity in a private or publicly-traded company in the past 24 months; BioLineRx, Juno, Celgene, Kite, a Gilead Company, Gilead, Novartis, and Pharmacyclics: Honoraria; A2 Biotherapeutics: Consultancy; Kite, a Gilead Company, Juno, and Celgene: Research Funding; Juno: Patents & Royalties. Gottardo: Illumina: Consultancy; 10x Genomics: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company; Ozette Technologies: Current holder of individual stocks in a privately-held company; Modulus Therapeutics: Current holder of individual stocks in a privately-held company. Turtle: PACT Pharma: Consultancy; TCR2 Therapeutics: Research Funding; Nektar Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy; Juno Therapeutics/BMS: Patents & Royalties: Right to receive royalties from Fred Hutch for patents licensed to Juno Therapeutics, Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Consultancy, Research Funding; Arsenal Bio: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; Asher Bio: Consultancy; Century Therapeutics: Consultancy, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; Eureka Therapeutics: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; Precision Biosciences: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; Myeloid Therapeutics: Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; Allogene: Consultancy; Caribou Biosciences: Consultancy, Current holder of stock options in a privately-held company, Other: Scientific Advisory Board; T-CURX: Other: Scientific Advisory Board.

The visualization of intrahepatic hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA by in situ hybridization (ISH) has uncovered some interesting aspects of HBV life cycle at the single-cell level. In the current study, we intend to evaluate the reliability and robustness of this assay in the real-world clinical scenario and its relationship with currently available clinical biomarkers in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients. In this cross-sectional study, 94 CHB patients and 10 patients with non-HBV related liver diseases were enrolled. Liver biopsies and routine histopathology analysis were performed. Intrahepatic HBV DNA and viral antigens (HBsAg and HBcAg) were detected by ISH and immunohistochemistry (IHC), respectively. The basic biochemical and virological parameters such as alanine transaminase, serum HBV DNA, and serum HBsAg were measured. The HBV DNA-ISH assay showed 55.8% (53/94 cases) positive rate in CHB patients, no false positive was found in non-HBV related hepatitis. The IHC of HBsAg and HBcAg showed a positive rate of 94.7% (89/94 cases) and 19.5% (17/87 cases), respectively. Quantification of HBV DNA-ISH signal showed a significant correlation with serum HBV DNA (rs = 0.6223, P

The traditional cement production wastes a large amount of natural resources and energy, and causes environmental pollution, which cannot meet the green and sustainable development needs of modern building materials. Geopolymer is an environmentally friendly materials that can utilize industrial solid wastes and have low environmental load and energy consumption, which is expected to become a substitute for OPC. However, geopolymers also have shortcomings in some properties that need to be improved. This paper reviews the recent research progress on the performance improvement, potential new applicationw and sustainability assessment of geopolymer materials. Discussion from this paper showed that the properties of geopolymer materials, including rheology, hardening properties, toughness, etc., can be significantly improved by some methods such as chemical additives, mineral admixtures, nanoparticles, fibers, etc. Furthermore, this paper proves that geopolymers have great application potential as porous thermal insulation materials and 3D printing building materials, and points out some performance optimization methods for geopolymer-based porous materials and 3D printing materials. In this work, it was also concluded that geopolymer shows significant advantages over OPC in sustainable analysis index such as E-energy and E-CO2 (Energy and CO2 emission) based on LCA method. Finally, a few potential opportunities and development directions have been suggested for future research on geopolymer materials.

In order to improve the processing efficiency and quality of nanosecond pulse laser drilling, a new double-pulse technique is put forward. Two single pulse lasers with different pulse duration or different repetition rate are spectrally combined by a home-made polarization-independent multilayer dielectric reflective diffraction grating. The pulse energy of single lasers and the inter-pulse separation can both be set at one's option. Then, double-pulse lasers represent two closely conjoint pulses with tunable pulse duration and tunable repetition rate and tunable pulse energy and tunable inter-pulse separation are obtained.

The polarization modulation strategy of the femtosecond laser field was shown to be a well-established method to control up-conversion luminescence in rare-earth ions. In this work, we further extend the polarization control behavior from weak to intermediate femtosecond laser fields. We experimentally show that the polarization control efficiency of the up-conversion luminescence in the Sm3+-doped glass will be affected by the femtosecond laser intensity, which decreases with the increase of the laser intensity. We theoretically propose a fourth-order perturbation theory to explain the experimental observation, which includes the two-photon and four-photon absorptions, and the destructive interference between the two-photon and four-photon absorption will result in the suppression of the polarization control efficiency due to their different polarization control degrees. These experimental and theoretical results provide a new insight into understanding the polarization control process of up-conversion luminescence in rare-earth ion doped luminescent materials under an intermediate femtosecond laser field, and also can open a new opportunity for the polarization control application in some related areas.

How obesity affects immune function is not well understood. Clinically, obesity is strongly associated with severe TH2 immunopathology1-3, though the physiological, cellular, and molecular underpinnings of this association remain obscure. Here, we demonstrate that obese mice are susceptible to severe atopic dermatitis (AD), a major manifestation of TH2 immunopathology and disease burden in humans4,5. Mechanistically, we show that dysregulation of the nuclear hormone receptor (NHR) PPARγ (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma) in T cells is a causal link between obesity and the increased TH2 immunopathology. We find that PPARγ oversees a cellular metabolic transcriptional program that restrains nuclear gene expression of the chief TH2 priming and effector cytokine interleukin-4 (IL-4). Accordingly, thiazolidinediones (TZDs), potent PPARγ agonists, robustly protect obese mice from TH2 immunopathology. Collectively, these findings establish PPARγ as a molecular link between obesity and TH2 immune homeostasis and identify TZDs as novel therapeutic candidates for TH2 immunopathology. Fundamentally, these findings demonstrate that shifting physiologic metabolic states can shape the tone of adaptive immune responses to modulate differential disease susceptibility.

The coal-transportation programming is a very specific application to thermal power plant. A coal-fired power plant is a very complicated, custom-designed system that requires many special transportation structures and equipment such as sieving coal machines, coal crushers with different number of input/output belts and transmission speeds to variable directions. In this paper, we propose the fault-tolerant shortest routing for a coal transportation network of the thermal power plant in Taiwan. The assumed coal transportation network starts from a dedicate ship uploaders for the power plant to each coal-fired generators. We analyze the features of existing coal transportation network and construct the minimum spanning tree. To satisfy practical transportation needs, the fault-tolerant routing consists of one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many shortest path routing algorithms based on different operation scenarios along with different transportation requirements.

Research question What are the factors associated with the increased incidence of pre-eclampsia in pregnancies conceived through IVF using autologous oocytes? Design A nested case–control study from the combined cohort of three multicentre randomized trials comparing fresh to frozen embryo transfer, including women who achieved clinical pregnancy after the first embryo transfer. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the effect of baseline characteristics, ovarian response parameters, type of fertilization, type of embryo transfer, and number of gestational sacs on the risk of pre-eclampsia. Results There were 2965 clinical pregnancies and 90 women were diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. Twin gestations (odds ratio [OR] 2.34, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.50–3.66), mean arterial pressure (OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01–1.07), frozen embryo transfer (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.27–3.35), body mass index (BMI) (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.02–1.18), progesterone level on the day of human chorionic gonadotrophin trigger (OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.07–2.20), and the total dose of gonadotrophin (OR 0.999, 95% CI 0.999–1.000, P = 0.037) were associated with the risk of pre-eclampsia. When the analysis was confined to women who underwent frozen embryo transfer, twin gestations (OR 2.44, 95% CI 1.43–4.18), BMI (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.03–1.23) and the total dose of gonadotrophin (OR 0.999, 95% CI 0.999–1.000, P = 0.014) were still related to the risk of pre-eclampsia. The embryo stage at transfer was not included in the final models. Conclusions Frozen embryo transfer was an independent risk factor of pre-eclampsia in assisted reproductive technology. The high ovarian response may also increase the risk of pre-eclampsia. The embryo stage at transfer was not related to the risk of pre-eclampsia.

The ability to simulate high-throughput chromatin conformation (Hi-C) data is foundational for benchmarking Hi-C data analysis methods. Here we present a nonparametric strategy named FreeHi-C to simulate Hi-C data from the interacting genome fragments. Data from FreeHi-C exhibit high fidelity to biological Hi-C data. FreeHi-C boosts the precision and power of differential chromatin interaction detection through data augmentation under preserved false discovery rate control. FreeHi-C takes Hi-C sequencing data as input and simulates reads with random mutations and indels from the interacting fragment pairs. FreeHi-C-simulated replicates are used for benchmarking Hi-C analysis methods and enable data augmentation for differential chromatin interaction analysis.

In this paper, we consider the shortest problem in the coal transportation network of the thermal power plant. The assumed coal transportation network connects a dedicate ship uploaders for the power plant to each coal-fired generators. We analyze the features of existing coal transportation network and construct the minimum spanning tree. To meet the practical use, the operation modes of transportation paths along with their equipment are considered. Finally, we proposed the shortest path routing algorithm and conclude the results.

Rationale: Acute kidney injury (AKI) has a high prevalence and mortality in critically ill patients. It is also a powerful risk factor for heart failure incidence driven by hemodynamic changes and neurohormonal activation. However, no drugs have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Endogenous pGC-A (particulate guanylyl cyclase A receptor) activators were reported to preserve renal function and improve mortality in AKI patients, although hypotension accompanied by pGC-A activators have limited their therapeutic potential. Objective: We investigated the therapeutic potential of a nonhypotensive pGC-A activator/designer natriuretic peptide, CRRL269, in a short-term, large animal model of ischemia-induced AKI and also investigated the potential of uCNP (urinary C-type natriuretic peptide) as a biomarker for AKI. Methods and Results: We first showed that CRRL269 stimulated cGMP generation, suppressed plasma angiotensin II, and reduced cardiac filling pressures without lowering blood pressure in the AKI canine model. We also demonstrated that CRRL269 preserved glomerular filtration rate, increased renal blood flow, and promoted diuresis and natriuresis. Further, CRRL269 reduced kidney injury and apoptosis as evidenced by ex vivo histology and tissue apoptosis analysis. We also showed, compared with native pGC-A activators, that CRRL269 is a more potent inhibitor of apoptosis in renal cells and induced less decreases in intracellular Ca 2+ concentration in vascular smooth muscle cells. The renal antiapoptotic effects were at least mediated by cGMP/PKG pathway. Further, CRRL269 inhibited proapoptotic genes expression using a polymerase chain reaction gene array. Additionally, we demonstrated that AKI increased uCNP levels. Conclusions: Our study supports developing CRRL269 as a novel renocardiac protective agent for AKI treatment.

Background The anatomy of the aortic valves plays an important role in the progression of aortic valve disease (AVD) and determination of the appropriate treatment strategy. We described and compared AVD phenotypes according to detailed anatomical classifications and assessed the accuracy of imaging diagnostics using surgical diagnosis as the gold standard. Methods and Results The study enrolled 602 patients (mean age 55.5±12.9 years; 74.1% male) who underwent their first aortic valve replacement surgery between June 2017 and March 2018 at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, China. Clinical characteristics, histopathological diagnoses, preoperative transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), and other available imaging data were collected retrospectively from medical records. During surgery, 370 patients were diagnosed with a tricuspid aortic valve (TAV), 228 with a bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), and 4 with a quadricuspid aortic valve (QAV). The primary histopathological finding was myxomatous degeneration (48.4%) for those with TAV and fibrocalcification (57.9%) for those with BAV. Nearly all TAV patients (96.2%) had aortic regurgitation, while the majority of BAV patients had aortic stenosis (73.7%); the severity of stenosis and regurgitation varied across the subtypes of BAV. The overall diagnostic accuracy of preoperative TTE for aortic valve anatomy was 85.5%; accuracy was higher for TAV versus BAV (96.8% vs. 68.0%, P Conclusions We identified different phenotypes of AVD among patients with different detailed anatomical classifications. In addition, the diagnostic accuracy of preoperative TTE for BAV was suboptimal, and more attention is needed to ensure an accurate anatomic diagnosis prior to surgical intervention.

In the past 10 years, various sudden public outbreaks of diseases worldwide have posed great threats to the economic and social development of countries. However, there is a lack of case studies and empirical studies on the fight against major outbreaks in foreign public health institutions. Based on a review of classical materials and narrative research methods, this study combs the institutional profile, function allocation, and funding input of the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and focuses on the CDC’s important measures and experiences in preventing and controlling the Ebola virus in West Africa during 2014–2015. According to the research, the main characteristics of CDC’s epidemic prevention and control in the United States are effective organizational structure and system, as well as the abilities of emergency management of rapid response. Furthermore, these two advantages and characteristics have penetrated the construction of the incident management system, adoption of specialized technical means and tools, and wide cooperation network and organizational coordination. Accordingly, the enlightenment of public health institutions regarding “epidemic prevention” and “anti-epidemic” is proposed from two aspects: system construction and ability enhancement.

Objective The aim of this study was to explore the association between the polymorphism G4C14-to-A4T14 in the p73 gene and male infertility with severe spermatogenesis impairment in Chinese population. Study design Three hundreds and one infertile patients with severe spermatogenesis impairment (including azoospermia and severe oligospermia) and 252 fertile men were recruited in this study. The polymorphism G4C14-to-A4T14 in the p73 gene was genotyped using polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism assay. The differences in allelic and genotypic frequencies between patients and controls were evaluated by chi-square test. Results The frequency of allele AT (28.9% vs. 22.4%, P = 0.017, OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.07–1.85) in patients with severe spermatogenesis impairment was significantly higher than that in controls, whereas the genotype GC/GC was significantly decreased in patients compared with controls (48.5% vs. 59.1%, P = 0.048, OR = 0.65, 95% CI = 0.46–0.91). Conculusion The findings of this study suggested that the polymorphism G4C14-to-A4T14 in p73 gene might be associated with severe spermatogenesis impairment and could affect the susceptibility to male infertility with severe spermatogenesis impairment in Chinese population.

Sonography and transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) are seldom used for assessment of metastatic tumor thrombi in the cardiovascular system in routine clinical practice. We performed this retrospective study to evaluate the combination of sonography with TTE for diagnosis of metastatic tumor thrombi in heart and systemic vessels. Vascular, abdominal, pelvic, and small-part sonography was applied in 18 patients, and TTE was conducted simultaneously in 14 patients. Tumor thrombi invaded into the inferior vena cava system in 12 patients, superior vena cava system in 5 patients, and aorta in 1 patient; they extended to the right cardiac chambers in 11 patients. Six patients had diagnoses by pathologic examination. The primary neoplasms were identified by conventional imaging in 17 patients. The morphologic and echogenic characteristics of the tumor thrombi were diverse and depended on their original tumors. The thrombi were either contiguous or discrete from the original tumors. The neoplastic vascularity of the thrombi and the invasive extension were the primary characteristics that distinguished them from bland thrombi. Simultaneous application of sonography and TTE is a feasible way to comprehensively evaluate cardiovascular metastatic tumor thrombi in most patients.

The upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions has attracted considerable interest because of its important applications in photoelectric conversion, color display, laser device, multiplexed biolabeling, and security printing. Previous studies mainly explored the upconversion luminescence generation through excited state absorption, energy transfer upconversion, and photon avalanche under the continuous wave laser excitation. Here, we focus on the upconversion luminescence generation through a nonresonant multiphoton absorption by using the intense femtosecond pulsed laser excitation and study the upconversion luminescence intensity control by varying the femtosecond laser phase and polarization. We show that the upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions under the intense femtosecond laser field excitation is easy to be obtained due to the nonresonant multiphoton absorption through the nonlinear interaction between light and matter, which is not available by the continuous wave laser excitation in previous works. We also show that the upconversion luminescence intensity can be effectively controlled by varying the femtosecond pulsed laser phase and polarization, which can open a new technological opportunity to generate and control the upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions and also can be further extended to the relevant application areas.

Plasmablastic lymphoma is a rare and aggressive B cell lymphoma that is considered to be strongly associated with HIV infection. This article explores the histological morphology and immunohistochemical characteristics of HIV/AIDS-related plasmablastic lymphoma with the goal of improving the diagnosis and treatment of this rare tumor. According to criteria of the World Health Organization Classification of Tumors of Hematopoietic and Lymphoid Tissues (2008), six plasmablastic lymphoma cases admitted to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center were comprehensively analyzed with conventional hematoxylin-eosin staining, immunohistochemical staining and in situ hybridization. The morphological features of six tumors were consistent with PBL. Immunohistochemical staining showed that all six cases were negative for CD19, CD20, and CD79a, and positive for OCT-2, BOB-1, VS38c, and melanoma ubiquitous mutated 1. The Ki67 proliferation index was higher than 90% in all six cases. In situ hybridization indicated that four cases were EBER-positive. In addition, three cases had C-MYC translocation rearrangement. Our results showed that the immunophenotypes of PBL vary, which makes PBL diagnosis difficult. Therefore, morphological characteristics, immunophenotypic markers, and clinical data should be used in combination to enable an accurate diagnosis, especially in the presence of immunophenotypic variation, as this approach will facilitate timely treatment.

Aim The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility and accuracy of 3-D ultrasound indices to evaluate fetal lung maturity, and to establish a normal reference for fetal lung volume (FLV) and fetal lung-to-liver intensity ratio (FLLIR) in a Chinese population. Methods A total of 1022 pregnant women with singleton pregnancy were prospectively studied between June 2008 to June 2011. Ultrasound examination was performed. The breathing-related nasal fluid flow (BRNFF) spectrum, FLV, pulmonary artery blood flow parameters, and echo intensity of the lung were calculated. Phosphoglycerides in the amniotic fluid were measured on thin layer chromatography. Results FLLIR and FLV were positively and linearly correlated with gestational age (F = 0.915, 0.846). Indicators of fetal lung maturity included FLLIR >1.1, FLV >50 mL, and regular BRNFF spectrum, with positive likelihood ratios of 12.28, 11.78, and 11.63, independently. Conclusion Ultrasound indices, including FLLIR, FLV and BRNFF may serve as useful alternatives to amniotic fluid phospholipids in analyzing fetal lung maturity in Chinese patients.

Objectives Takayasu arteritis is a relatively rare chronic nonspecific form of large-vessel vasculitis in which the involved vessels develop stenoses, occlusions, dilatations or aneurysms, and dissections. Dissections of the arteries in patients with Takayasu arteritis are not well understood. In this study, we explored the sonographic characterization of these rare complications secondary to Takayasu arteritis. Methods We evaluated arterial dissections in 72 patients with a clinical diagnosis of Takayasu arteritis by vascular sonography and transthoracic echocardiography. We analyzed the dissection distribution and morphologic characteristics of the dissected intima/layer and lumen of the involved vessels. Results Twelve of 72 patients had arterial dissections, in whom 16 dissected segments were identified. The involved arteries included the carotid, subclavian, vertebral, brachial, celiac, and femoral arteries, aortic arch, and abdominal aorta. The dissection lesions occurred at any age and coexisted with the aforementioned injuries. Evaluation of the dissected intima/layer and the involved lumen by sonography was technically complicated. The morphologic characteristics of the dissected intimae and involved lumens were complex, with most of the dissected intimae/layers having the characteristic "macaroni" sign in the arterial wall. High-frequency and high-resolution sonography, color Doppler flow imaging, and other techniques were useful in elucidating greater lesion details. Conclusions Arterial dissections in Takayasu arteritis can involve any anatomic vessel location and have complex morphologic characteristics. Sonography is the optimal technique for diagnosis and follow-up of patients with Takayasu arteritis and dissections.

Improving upconversion luminescence efficiency of lanthanide-doped nanocrystals is always a hot topic for scientists because of its very important application in photonics, photovoltaics, biological imaging, security printing, and therapeutics. Two-color laser field has shown to be a well-established strategy to further improve the upconversion luminescence efficiency. Here, we first propose a two-color laser field combining the 850 and 980 nm lasers to improve the green and red upconversion luminescence efficiency in Er3+-doped NaYF4 nanocrystals. In this work, an important advantage for our strategy is that the population is directly pumped to the radiation energy level of the upconversion luminescence by a cooperation excitation process, but not the spontaneous decay from other higher energy levels, and so the higher luminescence enhancement efficiency can be obtained. These studies also provide a clear physical picture for the physical control mechanism of the upconversion luminescence efficiency improvement, which can pave a way to properly design the laser fields in the future study of upconversion luminescence generation and control.

Improving up-conversion luminescence efficiency of rare-earth ions is always a research hotspot because of its important applications in laser source, color display, photoelectric conversion and multiplexed biolabeling. Herein, we first utilize a combined two-color laser field with the laser wavelengths of 800 and 980 nm to further enhance the up-conversion luminescence in an Er3+/Yb3+-codoped glass sample. We show that the green up-conversion luminescence intensity by the combined two-color laser field can be greatly enhanced by comparing it with the sum of that induced by the two individual laser fields. We also show that the luminescence enhancement can be attributed to the cooperative up-conversion excitation process by the energy transfer from Yb3+ to Er3+ ions via the 980 nm laser field excitation and then the excited state absorption via the 800 nm laser field excitation. These studies present a clear physical picture for the up-conversion luminescence generation and enhancement in an Er3+/Yb3+-codoped glass sample, which are very helpful for properly designing the laser field to generate or improve the up-conversion luminescence efficiency in various lanthanide-codoped luminescent materials.

Urban form can be reflected by many city elements, such as streets. A street network serves as the backbone of a city and reflects a city&rsquo, s physical structure. A street network&rsquo, s topological measures and statistical distributions have been widely investigated in recent years, but previous studies have seldom characterized the heavy-tailed distribution of street connectivities from a fractal perspective. The long-tail distribution of street connectivities can be fractal under the new, third definition: a set or pattern is fractal if the scaling of far more small things than large ones recurs at least twice. The number of recurred scaling patterns of far more less-connected streets than well-connected ones greatly helps in measuring the scaling hierarchy of a street network. Moreover, it enables us to examine the potential fractality of urban street networks at the national scale. In this connection, the present study aims to contribute to urban morphology in China through the investigation of the ubiquity of fractal cities from the lens of street networks. To do this, we generate hundreds of thousands of natural streets from about 4.5 million street segments over 298 Chinese cities and adopted power-law detection as well as three fractal metrics that emerged from the third definition of fractal. The results show that almost all cities bear a fractal structure in terms of street connectivities. Furthermore, our multiple regression analysis suggests that the fractality of street networks is positively correlated with urban socioeconomic status and negatively correlated with energy consumption. Therefore, the fractal metrics can be a useful supplement to traditional street-network configuration measures such as street lengths.

Tuning the color output of rare-earth ion doped luminescent nanomaterials has important scientific significance for further extending applications in color displays, laser sources, optoelectronic devices, and biolabeling. In previous studies, pre-designed phase modulation of the femtosecond laser field has been proven to be effective in tuning the luminescence of doped rare-earth ions. Owing to the complex light–matter interaction in the actual experiment, the dynamic range and optimal efficiency for color tuning cannot be determined with the pre-designed phase modulation. This article shares the development of an adaptive femtosecond pulse shaping method based on a genetic algorithm, and its use to manipulate the green and red luminescence tuning in an Er3+-doped glass ceramic under 800-nm femtosecond laser field excitation for the first time. Experimental results show that the intensity ratio of the green and red UC luminescence of the doped Er3+ ions can be either increased or decreased conveniently by the phase-shaped femtosecond laser field with an optimal feedback control. The physical control mechanisms for the color tuning are also explained in detail. This article demonstrates the potential applications of the adaptive femtosecond pulse shaping technique in controlling the color output of doped rare-earth ions.

Warehouse automation is a popular research field and it has attracted significant interests of many researchers in recent years. Amazon also has intense interest in it and has held picking challenge in last three years. The achievements made during completing the challenge mission has given great insight to the research of this field. In this paper, we present a system for warehouse picking automation. To grasp object in a cluttered environment, we propose a practical method to get a reliable grasp point in a segmented object surface. And we adopt moveIt! to complete motion planning task. In recognizing process, we make a convolutional neural network to recognize grasped objects and the network is trained by our own data set.