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Background and Objectives To prevent Treponema Pallidum (TP) transmission from blood transfusion, enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (EIA) for anti‐TP has been widely used in routine blood donation screening in China for many years. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the Abbott CMIA assay for detection of anti‐TP in Chinese blood donors. Materials and methods A total of 2420 plasma samples, already routinely screened for anti‐TP by two different EIAs, from four blood Centers were tested for anti‐TP by Abbott CMIA. Subsequently, all samples with positive results by one or both EIAs and/or by Abbott CMIA were subjected to confirmatory testing (CT) using recombinant immunoblot assay (RIBA) or Treponema Pallidum particle agglutination assay (TPPA). TP infection was defined by a RIBA or TPPA positive. Results Compared with two EIAs strategy, Abbott CMIA showed a relatively best sensitivity as 98.80% (95% CI: 97.44%‐100.16%) and a relatively best specificity as 99.58% (95% CI: 99.30%‐99.85%), yielding the best consistency (99.49%) between anti‐TP CT results with the highest κ value of .98. Conclusion This is the first study to evaluate the performance of the Abbott CMIA assays for detection of syphilis in Chinese blood donors. Our results suggested that CMIA performed better than both EIAs, and implementation of CMIA replacing two different EIA reagents might help to further reduce the risk of transfusion‐transmitted TP infection, decrease unnecessary blood waste and loss of blood donors.

Enamel is the outermost layer of the tooth that protects it from invasion. In general, an acidic environment accelerates tooth demineralization, leading to the formation of cavities. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is conventionally used as an in vitro tool for the observation of tooth morphology changes with acid attacks. Yet, SEM has intrinsic limitations for the potential application of in vivo detection in the early demineralization process. In this study, a high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with the axial and transverse resolutions of 2.0 and 2.7 μm in teeth has been utilized for characterizing the effect of the acidic environment (simulated by phosphoric acid) on the enamel topology. The scattering coefficient and the surface roughness of enamel can be directly derived from the OCT results, enabling a quantitative evaluation of the topology changes with demineralization. The dynamic process induced by the acid application is also recorded and analyzed with OCT, depicting the evolution of the demineralization process on enamel. Notably, the estimated enamel scattering coefficient and surface roughness significantly increase with the application time of acid and the results illustrate that the values of both parameters after demineralization are significantly larger than those obtained before the demineralization, illustrating both parameters could be effective to differentiate the healthy and demineralized teeth and determine the severity. The obtained results unambiguously illustrate that demineralization of the tooth surface can be successfully detected by OCT and further used as an indicator of early-stage cavity formation.

Digital simulation technology is widely used in science education and has enormous potential for its development. Numerous studies have shown that the use of digital simulation in an education environment, especially in scientific education, is conducive to intuitive interaction and improves students' participation in their learning activities. This study investigated the effects of digital simulation with different interactive modes (based on gesture simulation and button simulation) on students' cognitive concepts, attention, and anxiety levels in an elementary physics course. To collect the students' cognitive concepts, attention, and anxiety levels, we developed a digital simulation with two different interactive interfaces and used a quasi-experimental design, in which a total of 40 sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to a gesture-or digital-based digital simulation. The experimental results showed that the digital simulation of gestures effectively improved students' cognitive concept levels. The EEG analysis showed that students in the gesturebased digital simulation had higher attention levels compared with those who used button-based digital simulation. Moreover, the operation of digital simulation is relatively difficult; students using gesture-based digital simulation had greater anxiety than students using button-based digital simulation. This study suggests that the use of multi-touch gestures in science education can improve students' comprehension of scientific concepts and improve their concentration in learning activities.

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important transfusion-transmitted virus with global significance. The objective of this study was to evaluate the HCV prevalence and incidence among Chinese blood donors from 2013 to 2016. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS Whole blood and apheresis platelet donations collected from five Chinese blood centers from June 1, 2013, to December 31, 2016, were screened in parallel by two different enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for anti-HIV 1/2, hepatitis B surface antigen, anti-HCV, and syphilis. Screening-reactive samples were further confirmed by western blot. Confirmatory positive rates among first-time and repeat donors were used to estimate the prevalence and incidence rates. Multivariable logistic regression modeling was used to examine factors associated with HCV infection. RESULTS A total of 1,276,544 donations were collected from five Chinese blood centers, of which an estimated 1203 were confirmed HCV positive. The overall HCV prevalence among first-time donors was 166.56 per 100,000 donors (95% confidence interval, 156.04-177.08). The HCV incidence rate was estimated to be 15.21 (95% confidence interval, 11.83-19.56) per 100,000 person-years among repeat donors. Multivariable logistic regression results showed that increased age, lower educational levels, ethnicity, and occupation were all important factors associated with HCV confirmatory status among first-time donors (p

White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is currently the most severely viral pathogen for farmed crustaceans such as shrimp and crayfish, which has been causing huge economic losses for crustaceans farming worldwide every year. Unfortunately, study on the molecular mechanisms of WSSV has been restricted by the lack of crustacean cell lines for WSSV propagation as well as the incompletely annotated genomes for host species, resulting in limited elucidation for WSSV pathogenesis at present. In addition to the findings of anti-WSSV response in shrimp, some of novel cellular events involved in WSSV infection have been recently revealed in crayfish, including endocytosis and intracellular transport of WSSV, innate immune pathways in response to WSSV infection, and regulation of viral gene expression by host genes. Despite these advances, many fundamental gaps in WSSV pathogenesis are still remaining, for example, how WSSV genome enters into nucleus and how the progeny virions are fully assembled in the host cell nucleus. In this review, recent findings in WSSV infection mechanism and the antiviral immunity against WSSV in crayfish are summarized and discussed, which may provide us a better understanding of the WSSV pathogenesis as well as new ideas for the target design of antiviral drugs against WSSV in crustaceans farming.

SUMMARY Aims To compare the prevalence of hepatitis A virus (HAV) and human parvovirus B19 (B19V) between source-plasma (SP) donors and whole blood (WB) donors. Background In China, source plasma is in severe shortage while plasma recovered from WB is in surplus. Thus, the government is considering transferring the recovered plasma (RP) to produce plasma derivatives. HAV and B19V are two pathogens threatening the safety of plasma-based derivatives. However, there is no data about if transferring of the RP to produce plasma derivatives will increase the risk of HAV and B19V infection. Thus, we compared the prevalence of HAV and B19V between SP donors and WB donors in this study. Methods A total of 5030 samples from SP donors and 5040 samples from WB donors were collected. All the samples were tested for HAV RNA and B19V DNA and tested for HAV IgM by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results The prevalence of B19V DNA was 0·06% (95% confidence interval (CI), 0–0·09%) in WB donors and 0·079% (95%CI, 0–0·12%) in SP donors, respectively. No significant difference was found in the prevalence of B19V DNA between SP donors and WB donors. The prevalence of anti-HAV IgM in SP donors was 0·079% whereas no WB donor sample was found anti-HAV IgM reactive. Conclusions The transfer of RP to producing plasma derivatives will not increase the risk of transmission of HAV and B19 through plasma products.

The Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK/STAT) signaling pathway is pivotal in immune responses for a variety of pathogens in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Domeless (Dome), as a unique cytokine receptor, involves in the upstream JAK/STAT pathway in invertebrates. In this study, the full-length cDNA sequence of a cytokine receptor Dome was identified from red claw crayfish Cherax quadricarinatus (named as CqDome), which contained an open reading frame of 4251 bp, encoding 1416 amino acids. The CqDome contained extracellular conservative domains of a signal peptide, two cytokine binding modules (CBM), three fibronectin-type-III-like (FN3) domains and a transmembrane region. Tissue distribution analysis showed that CqDome generally expressed in all the tissues selected with a high expression in hemocyte. The gene expression of both the viral immediately early gene (IE1) and a late gene envelope protein VP28 of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) were significantly decreased after gene silencing of CqDome in crayfish haematopoietic tissue (Hpt) cells, indicating a key role of CqDome in promoting WSSV infection. Furthermore, the phosphorylation level of CqSTAT was significantly inhibited by gene silencing of CqDome in Hpt cells, indicating that CqDome participated in signal transduction of JAK/STAT pathway in red claw crayfish. These data together suggest that CqDome is likely to promote WSSV infection via JAK/STAT pathway, which sheds new light on further elucidation of the pathogenesis of WSSV.

In contrast to that hypoacetylation of histones is associated with condensed chromatin and gene silencing, the hyperacetylation of histones can promote an “open chromatin” conformation and transcriptional activation, which is recruited by some viruses to enhance the viral genome replication in host cells. However, the function of histone acetylation modification in the infection of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), one of the most virulent pathogens for crustaceans like shrimp and crayfish at present, is still unknown. Previously, we found that the transcript of a histone K-Lysine acetyltransferase CqKAT2A-like gene was down-regulated in a differentially expressed transcriptome library of the haematopietic tissue (Hpt) cells from red claw crayfish Cherax quadricarinatus upon WSSV infection at 12 hpi. To further reveal its possible role in anti-WSSV response, CqKAT2A-like gene was then identified with an open reading frame (ORF) of 2523 bp encoding 840 amino acids, which contained a conserved PCAF-N domain, acetyltransf1 domain and bromo domain. Gene expression analysis showed that CqKAT2A-like was distributed in all tissues examined with high presence in haemocyte and muscle, and the transcript was significantly down-regulated after WSSV infection in Hpt cells. Furthermore, the level of histone H3 acetylation (H3ac) was strongly reduced by gene silencing of CqKAT2A-like, which was accompanied with the significantly decreased gene expression of WSSV in Hpt cells, suggesting that CqKAT2A-like gene can promote the activity H3ac and the replication of WSSV. When the H3ac was induced by histone deacetyltransferase inhibitor TSA, the transcription of WSSV genes including both IE1 and VP28 genes was significantly increased, indicating that H3ac participated in WSSV infection in Hpt cells. Taken together, these data suggest that CqKAT2A-like gene might promote the replication of WSSV by regulating H3ac, which sheds new light on the pathogenesis of WSSV in crustaceans.

Molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation in Candida tropicalis and current methods for biofilm analyses in this fungal pathogen are limited. (2) Methods: Biofilm biomass and crystal violet staining of the wild-type and each gene mutant strain of C. tropicalis were evaluated on silicone under synthetic urine culture conditions. (3) Results: Seven media were tested to compare the effects on biofilm growth with or without silicone. Results showed that biofilm cells of C. tropicalis were unable to form firm biofilms on the bottom of 12-well polystyrene plates. However, on a silicone-based platform, Roswell Park Memorial Institute 1640 (RPMI 1640), yeast nitrogen base (YNB) + 1% glucose, and synthetic urine media were able to induce strong biofilm growth. In particular, replacement of Spider medium with synthetic urine in the adherence step and the developmental stage is necessary to gain remarkably increased biofilms. Interestingly, unlike Candida albicans, the C. tropicalis ROB1 deletion strain but not the other five biofilm-associated mutants did not cause a significant reduction in biofilm formation, suggesting that the biofilm regulatory circuits of the two species are divergent. (4) Conclusions: This system for C. tropicalis biofilm analyses will become a useful tool to unveil the biofilm regulatory network in C. tropicalis.

Influenza A virus non-structural-1A binding protein (named as Ns1abp) was originally identified as a host protein from human that bound to the viral NS-1 protein. In our previous study, the expression of an Ns1abp-like gene (denoted as CqNs1abp-like gene) was found to be up-regulated in a transcriptome library from the haematopoietic tissue (Hpt) cells of red claw crayfish Cherax quadricarinatus post white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) infection. To elucidate the role of CqNs1abp-like gene involved in WSSV infection, we cloned the CqNs1abp-like gene in which the open reading frame was 2232 bp, encoding 743 amino acids with two typical domains of one BTB (Broad-Complex, Tramtrack and Bric a brac) domain at N-terminal and six Kelch domains at C-terminal. The gene expression profile showed that the mRNA transcript of CqNs1abp-like gene was widely expressed in all the tested tissues with highest expression in nerve, relatively high expression in Hpt and lowest expression in eyestalk. Importantly, both the WSSV entry and the viral replication were significantly reduced in Hpt cells after gene silencing of CqNs1abp-like gene. By using protein pull-down assay, we found that the recombinant BTB domain, six Kelch domains and CqNs1abp-like intact protein were all bound to the WSSV envelope protein VP28, respectively, in which the BTB domain showed slightly less binding affinity than that of the six Kelch domains or the recombinant intact protein. Besides, the WSSV entry into Hpt cells was clearly decreased when the virus was pre-incubated with the recombinant BTB domain, six Kelch domains, or the recombinant CqNs1abp-like intact protein, respectively, suggesting that the CqNs1abp-like gene was likely to function as a putative recognition molecular towards WSSV infection in a crustacean C. quadricarinatus. Taken together, these data shed new light on the mechanism of WSSV infection and a putatively novel target on anti-WSSV infection in crustacean farming.

In this paper, two aspects in the wet glass etching, the pre-annealing of the glass and the mask process, are taken into consideration to achieve the deep and defect-free wet etching of Pyrex glass. Compared with the conventional strategies, i.e.,HFsolution component and mask kinds, our experiment results prove the pre-annealing is another key role to obtain theoretical isotropy character in wet etching. Besides, the high temperature pre-annealing dramatically improves the structure profiles and reduces the notching defects. Additionally, a novel multilayer mask process is proposed. With 1.5μmPR/ 100nmAu/ 100 nmAu/ 20 nmCrmask and > 450 °C pre-annealing, > 150 μm deep and non-pin-holes Pyrex glass structures are achieved and the roughness of etched surface is lower than 1 nm.

In this paper, the reaction mechanism of inorganic carbon and titanium dioxide synthesis of titanium carbide thermodynamic were explored, and a thermodynamic basis date for the microwave heating was provided. Through analyzing the experimental results for the thermal stability of titanium carbide, we could obtain the theoretical parameters for the actual synthesis process.

The humidity controlling materials using diatomite as the major raw material were prepared by dry pressing molding process. Effects of various diatomite contents and sintering temperatures on the final products were investigated. The samples were also characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electronic microscope (SEM), and then tested adsorption-desorption performances by temperature and humidity chamber. The results indicate that the equilibrium moisture adsorption reaches to 338 g/m2 when diatomite content is fixed at ~70% and sintering temperature is holding at 1050°C, respectively.

Chinese blood centers use Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) rapid test (RT) in pre-donation and two rounds of screening with different enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays in post-donation. Nucleic acid testing (NAT) on screening non-reactive (SC-) donations has been gradually implemented since 2010. Yet RT+ and SC-/NAT+ donors are seldom included in hepatitis B virus (HBV) positive rate estimates in Chinese blood donors.We performed HBsAg neutralization test (NT) on whole blood (WB) with pre-donation RT+ results and post-donation screening reactive (SC+) samples from Mianyang and Chongqing in 2015. The annual totals of pre- and post-donation NT+ donors were combined with the annual totals of SC-/NAT+ donors to derive the estimated HBV positive rates.In Mianyang and Chongqing, 59.4% and 68.2% of RT+ donors in Jan-Aug 2015 contributed for NT, 95.5% and 97.2% of which were NT+ respectively. In 2015, 422 and 667 donors from Mianyang and Chongqing respectively were HBsAg RT+, yielding estimated 403 and 648 pre-donation RT+/NT+ deferrals. 411 and 668 post-donation SC+ samples were NT tested from Mianyang and Chongqing, of which 249 and 323 were NT+ respectively. An estimated 63 donors in Mianyang and 88 donors in Chongqing were SC-/NAT+. The estimated HBV confirmed positive rate in blood donors are 1.59% in Mianyang and 1.01% in Chongqing.Pre-donation HBsAg RT effectively intercepts donations from HBV infected donors. Using NT confirmatory results from RT+, SC+ and SC-/NAT+ donors, this study provides a model for more accurate estimation for HBV positive rates in China.

TiN coatings were prepared by using multi-arc ion plating technique at different N2 partial pressures. The surface morphology of the coatings was characterized by using a tabletop scanning electron microscope. The cross-sectional microstructure was investigated by using a field emission scanning electron microscope. The phase composition was evaluated by using an X-Ray diffractometer. The hardness and cohesion were measured by using a nanoindentation tester and a scratch instrument, respectively. The results show that the number and size of macro-particles decrease and the compactness of TiN coating increases with the increase of the N2 partial pressure. The hardness and cohesion of the coating increase gradually with increasing N2 partial pressures and reach a peak at 0.6 Pa; then the hardness and cohesion are significantly lower at higher N2 partial pressures.

Studies show that the stiffness of the first floor column about concrete frame with general specially shaped column is insufficient, the column bottom will be compression damaged easily, the author advice using wide flange specially shaped column in the first floor to enhance the stiffness, so this paper designed a 1/3 scale RC frame with specially shaped columns used wide flange in the first floor and general on the above, furthermore the height of the first floor was higher than other floors. Then low frequency cyclic loading was experimented to the concrete frame, the seismic behavior of this kind frame such as damage characteristic, failure mechanism, bearing capacity, deformation capacity, hysteresis curve and storey drift were researched. It was shown that the seismic behavior of this structure was generally good, the method that changed the first floor to wide flange specially shaped column for concrete frame with specially shaped columns could enhance the stiffness of the first floor clearly, meanwhile the seismic behavior of the frame were improved.

Nanogetters, based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated Ti films, do have higher pumping speed and possibly larger sorbed quantity compared with traditional getters, such as St175 of SAES [1]. Although the nanogetter is with the outstanding performance, it is still hard to be integrated into micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) packaging and devices due to high growth temperature of CNTs (>700°C) [2], poor adhesion with substrate [3, 4], vulnerability to pollute the wafers and difficulty to pattern. Therefore, this paper proposes a promotion of nanogetter based on transferring out vertically aligned CNTs (VA-CNTs) utilizing the glass frit. Compared with the conventional nanogetters, the promotion processes have advantages of (1) compatibility to the MEMS materials with controllable melting temperature and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), (2) Enhancement of the adhesion between CNTs and substrate, (3) Avoiding polluting the package wafer during CNTs growth. The results indicate that the promotion processes can be fulfilled by the silicon wafers and have wide applications such as nanogetters, field emission display, etc.

This paper presents an analysis about the variation of quality factor (Q-factor) aiming at the complex micro resonator to explore the mechanism of the energy loss under different pressures. To demonstrate the work, a series of resonators are designed, which mainly differs in the squeeze-damping and scale of the beam. According to corresponding structure, the Q-factor is measured at different pressures while the theoretical air damping model combined with Christians model is also proposed. The air damping models of three types are proved to have 10%~30% relative error compared to experimental results in low vacuum, respectively. And, for the high vacuum, the structural energy loss plays an important role on the Q-factor, which increases with the decrement of comb quantity and the beam width.

In many remote sensing (RS) applications, haze greatly affects the quality of optical RS images, but we do not always have the conditions to acquire multiple images in the same area for haze removal tasks. Therefore, the research on haze removal from a single RS image is necessary. Previous haze-removal methods introduce various prior knowledge to solve this problem, and thus, the quality of these methods largely depends on the reliability and validity of prior knowledge, which brings various limitations. We propose and validate a deep-learning-based model for haze removal, named haze removal fully convolutional network, to estimate transmission maps and generate corresponding haze-removed images via an atmospheric scattering model. Moreover, we propose an approximate method to produce hazy-and-clear image pairs as a dataset for training and validation. Experiments using this dataset demonstrated that the proposed model achieved the desired results in both visual effect and quantitative measurement.

Background: Preventing transfusion-transmitted HIV infection requires a sensitive and specific donor screening strategy. Currently, there is no public data to compare the performance of the two-different-EIAs strategy, the single-EIA and single-CLIA strategies for HIV donor screening in China. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of the three strategies. Methods: HIV Ag/Ab chemiluminescence microparticle immunoassay (ARCHITECT CMIA, Abbott Diagnostics, a version of CLIA) was performed on 2,138 samples. Western blot (WB) was used to confirm all samples with one or both EIA reactive or grey zone results and all samples with reactive Abbott CMIA results. The performance of the three strategies was evaluated by comparing testing results to HIV infection status as defined by WB positive results. Results: The positive and the negative coincidence rates of CMIA HIV Ag/Ab tests with confirmed HIV infection status were 98.41% (95% CI: 91.47–99.59%) and 99.32% (95% CI: 98.87–99.63%) respectively, equal or higher than EIAs. CMIA results yield the strongest correlation with HIV infection status. Conclusions: This is the first study to compare the performance of recently allowed single-EIA, single-CLIA donor screening strategy to the currently used two-different-EIAs strategy for HIV donor screening in China. Our results indicate that CMIA performed better than EIAs with a strong correlation with WB confirmed infection status. Implementation of one-CMIA strategy can further reduce the risk of transfusion transmitted HIV infection while decrease unnecessary waste of blood and permanent deferral of donor caused by false positive results.

Red blood cell (RBC) particle detection and counting with characteristics in blood cell systems has been done by computer simulation. A simulation region, including plasma, red blood cells (RBCs) and platelets, was modeled by an assembly of discrete particles. The proposed method has detected the red particle from blood cell systems through different simulations of MATLAB and GAMBIT & FLUENT. After the detection, the number of red particles in a sampled cell has been counted and the characteristics about the red particles for analyzing the Birth-Death growth of each red particle have been found.

Heavy metals accumulation in river sediments can reflect the environmental quality of river waters. Its of practical significance to study the accumulation level of heavy metals in river sediments and its environmental risk. this thesis study on the heavy metals accumulation in river sediments of three typical river of Xiao qinling gold mine area, and the results showed that the mercury, lead , zine, cadmium and copper elements are characteristic contaminations, respectively. In Shuangqiao river, the average values of mercury, lead , copper and zine were 94·72, 25.34, 3388.67, 376.77 and 675.90 mg·kg-1, the five elements show the larger variety in tong river and Shuangqiao river than the oher five rivers. respectively. The environmental risk assessment by using geoaccumulation index (Igeo) indicated that these seven rivers a high-very high rank environmental risk of heavy metals accumulation in river sediments, the environmental risk probability orders of seven river sediments is Tong river > Shuangqiao river> Xijian river > Yiluo river> Sha river > Zaoxiang river> Yangping river . and there was highest environmental risk in Eolian loess area. So There are the probability of achieving higher risk than now if local government wouldnt Adopt effectively manage measure river to rivers.

In the last decade, The government and scientific researchers have payed a lot of attention to waste slag of aluminum factory . Many scholars have done a great deal of research and put forward many valuable resource recycling methods,Especially in ceramics field. This paper has reviewed the aluminum slag application ways that researched by our team and some other related scholars,and mainly overviews the application in ceramic filed.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is one of the Automatic Identification technology, its application has been involved in all aspects of daily life. A new micro manufacturing technology called Aerosol Jet® printing is described to fabricate the RFID tag in this paper. The fabrication method of Aerosol Jet printing RFID tag is that print the line using sliver ink as the seed first, and then electroplate copper to increase the line width and thickness to reduce the resistance, thus it would get the higher quality factor Q. The width of seed lines printed is 60 μm with the tip of 250 μm in diameter. The inductance value of RFID tag printed is in the range of 2.87 μH to 2.97 μH, it meets the required value of 2 μH to 6 μH.

First-principles calculations within generalized gradient approximation have been performed to investigate ideal strengths of anti-fluorite structured Mg2 X( X¼ Si, Ge, Sn and Pb) compounds. The present calculations showed that the ideal tensile strengths of Mg2X occur in the [111] directions while the ideal shear strengths appear in the (111) [11-2] systems. Both ideal tensile strength and shear strength of Mg2X (X ¼ Si, Ge, Sn and Pb) decreased gradually with the increase of atomic number of X. The microscopic process and inherent mechanisms of mechanical properties were discussed from the evolution of electronic structures during strain. Copyright 2013, National Engineering Research Center for Magnesium Alloys of China, Chongqing University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Identification of protein-coding regions is a hot research area at present. After using mapping methods to turn symbolic genomic sequences into numeric sequences, we need to do the transform to show the period-3 component of protein-coding regions. In this paper, we find twofast algorithms relying on discrete Fourier transform and the extension of Signal Noise Ratio to compute the period-3 component of protein-coding regions.

Objective To evaluate the outcome of off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (OPCABG) using a bilateral internal mammary artery (BIMA) Y configuration graft to achieve total arterial myocardial revascularization. Methods From October 2002 to December 2008, 208 patients (196 males and 12 females) underwent OPCABG using a BIMA Y configuration graft. The average age of the patients was 56.5 ± 11.3 years, with an age range of 33-78 years. A total of 167 (80.2%) cases had triple-vessel disease. Left main stem disease was found in 33 (15.9%) cases, and double-vessel disease was found in 8 (3.9%) cases. The semi-skeletonization technique was used to harvest the two internal mammary arteries (IMAs), and then the free right internal mammary artery was connected end-to-side to the left internal mammary artery (LIMA) in situ to complete the Y configuration graft. Off-pump and sequential anastomosis methods were used to perform coronary artery bypass surgery in all patients. Graft patency was assessed intra-operatively with the HT311 transit time flowmeter. Results A total of 728 distal anastomoses were performed in 208 patients, with the average being 3.5 ± 1.3 per person. No one died or experienced recurrent angina within 30 days after the operation. Conclusions OPCABG using the BIMA Y graft was safe and effective to achieve total arterial revascularization. This method avoids surgical operation on the ascending aorta and other incisions.

With the great development of sequencing technologies and systematic methods, our understanding of evolutionary relationships at deeper levels within the tree of life has greatly improved over the last decade. However, the current taxonomic methodology is insufficient to describe the growing levels of diversity in both a standardised and general way due to the limitations of using only morphological traits to describe clades. Herein, we propose the idea of a molecular classification based on hierarchical and discrete amino acid characters. Clades are classified based on the results of phylogenetic analyses and described using amino acids with group specificity in phylograms. Practices based on the recently published phylogenomic datasets of insects together with 15 de novo sequenced transcriptomes in this study demonstrate that such a methodology can accommodate various higher ranks of taxonomy. Such an approach has the advantage of describing organisms in a standard and discrete way within a phylogenetic framework, thereby facilitating the recognition of clades from the view of the whole lineage, as indicated by PhyloCode. By combining identification keys and phylogenies, the molecular classification based on hierarchical and discrete characters may greatly boost the progress of integrative taxonomy.

Calculation and simulation of the interior ballistic precedes the design of gun and charge construction. Modular charge system is the major development direction of large caliber howitzer, and will be as a replacement of current bag charge. It is necessary to develop a common program used to simulate interior ballistic environment of modular charge, which is a complex composite propellant charge. The characteristics of modular charge construction and the difference compared with traditional charge style were introduced at first. A simulation program of was developed based on lumped-parameters interior ballistic model using Matlab/Simulink development environment, which is relative simple, but, very suitable first stage design of interior ballistic of modular charge system. The program includes four modules, input parameters, core simulation code, calculation of form equations and data processing. The simulation results are agreeable with the experimental values according to the parameters of a certain 155mm gun. Furthermore, the program could be used in the numerical calculation of single charge or bag charge by adjusting some items.

the sediments is the second pollution source to the water quality of river in mining area, in order to assess the pollution extent of the Shuangqiao River by anthropogenic activity, and establish the geochemical background values and the possible geochemical anomaly range, The authors use Lognormal distribution plots to study the Mercury, Chromium, Cadmium, Lead, Copper, Arsenic, Zinc and Iron dispersion in the fine sediments of the Shuangqiao River. The Lognormal distribution plots are applied to discriminate the geochemical background levels of eight heavy metals from the geochemical anomalies. The result shows that Mercury, Lead are the most heavily pollution which is related to anthropogenic activities, and the concluded geochemical background value is more reasonable than before.