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Objective: To investigate the risk factors of kidney calculi in its high prevalence areas of western Guangdong, and provide the proper prevention measures. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among individuals in Maoming, western Guangdong. Univariate and Poisson regression analyses were applied to investigate the influence of the epidemiology, lifestyle, and environmental factors on renal calculi. Risk ratios with 95% confidence interval were used to estimate the association between the investigated factors and the prevalence of renal calculi. Results: 500 questionnaires were sent out and 481 valid questionnaires were recycled. Among 481 respondents, 84 had renal calculi with a prevalence rate of 17.46%. Univariate regression analysis showed statistically significant differences in the prevalence of renal calculi among different groups of sex, ages, family history of kidney calculi, diet and drinking habit. Poisson regression analysis showed that daily water intake and drinking boiled water were protective factors, while male, family history of kidney calculi, diet high in protein, sugar, vitamin C and calcium were risk factors. Additionally, high sugar diet was not statistically significantly associated with the occurrence of renal calculi. Conclusion: The occurrence of kidney calculi in western Guangdong is closely related to demographic characteristics of individuals, living and dietary habits of the resident populations.

Long-term unsolved health problems from pre-/intra-/postoperative complications and thermal ablation complications pose threats to liver-cancer patients. To reduce the threats, we propose a multimodal-imaging guided surgical navigation system and photothermal therapy strategy to improve specific labeling, real-time monitoring and effective treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Using a bioengineering approach, G-Nvs@IR820, a kind of human-cell-membrane nano-vesicle, was generated with growth arrest-specific 6 (Gas6) expressed on the membrane and with near-infrared absorbing dye (IR820) loaded into it, which is proven to be an effective nanoparticle-drug-delivery system for Axl-overexpressing hepatocellular carcinoma. G-Nvs@IR820 shows excellent features

Two new TOCs functionalized with 2-picolinate were synthesized. Their photocatalytic H2 evolution activities were very different. In situ formation of PtNPs supra-nanoparticle assemblies was observed, which could be the photocatalytic active species.

The material flow in the welds is obvious different in the thickness direction for thick plates jointed by friction stir welding (FSW), which results in the non-uniform plastic strain and residual stress in the welds. The non-uniform residual stress in the weld is difficult to be predicted efficiently and accurately by using exist experimental and numerical methods. In this paper, an analytical method by using the material flow in the welding process is proposed to solve the non-uniform residual stress of thick plates. The streamline model for the material flow is established in terms of the relationship between stream function and velocity fields in the weld. The cumulative plastic strain is computed by integrating the strain rate along each streamline. The residual stress field is obtained based on characteristic strain theories. Experiments of FSW are conducted for thick plates of aluminum alloys 2024-T3. The residual stresses in the welded region are measured by both X-ray diffraction and the contour method and the accuracy of the analytical model is verified. The analytical and experimental results show that residual stresses present as an asymmetric distribution with a conventional “M” shape. The flow mechanism of material and residual stress in different regions of thick plates by FSW are revealed. The proposed model may be used for the prediction and analysis of the non-uniform distribution of residual stress in thick plates jointed by FSW.

Eckstrom-Adcock iron carbide (Fe7C3) is considered to be the main constituent of the Earth’s inner core, owing to its low shear wave velocity. However, the crystal structure of Fe7C3 remains controversial and its thermoelastic properties are not well constrained at high temperature and pressure conditions. Based on the first-principles simulation method, we calculated the relative phase stability, equation of state, and sound velocity of Fe7C3 at core conditions. The results indicate that the orthorhombic phase of Fe7C3 is stable at core conditions. While Fe7C3 does reproduce the low shear wave velocity and high Poisson’s ratio of the inner core, its compressional wave velocity and density are 12% higher and 6% lower than those observed in seismic data, respectively. Therefore, we argue that carbon alone cannot completely explain the thermal properties of the inner core and the inclusion of other light elements may be required.

We investigated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary motor cortex (M1) with neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT) on the improvement of motor development and reduction of spasticity in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Twenty-four children with CP were allocated to two groups: the tDCS + NDT group and the only NDT group, done 3 times per week for 5 weeks. The Gross Motor Function Measurement (GMFM-88) and Box and Block Test (BBT) were used to assess changes in motor development, and the Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) was used to evaluate changes in spasticity. All measurements were carried out at 3 time points: baseline, post-intervention, and 1 month follow-up. We found improvements in the GMFM-88 total scores and in each individual GMFM-88 dimension scores, favoring the tDCS + NDT group over the only NDT group. The BBT scores improved only in the tDCS + NDT group. In addition, the MAS scores reduced in the hemibody with significant motor impairment only in the tDCS + NDT group. The present findings suggest that tDCS combined with NDT can be considered a promising intervention for children with CP, as it can enhance motor development and reduce spasticity in this population.

GATA transcription factors have been reported to function in plant growth and development and during various biotic/abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis and rice. However, the functions of wheat GATAs, particularly in the regulation of seed dormancy and germination, remain unclear. Here, we identified 78 TaGATAs in wheat and divided them into five subfamilies. Sixty-four paralogous pairs and 52 orthologous pairs were obtained, and Ka/Ks ratios showed that the TaGATAs had undergone strong purifying election during the evolutionary process. Triplet analysis indicated that a high homologue retention rate could explain the large number of TaGATAs in wheat. Gene structure analysis revealed that most members of the same subfamily had similar structures, and subcellular localization prediction indicated that most TaGATAs were located in the nucleus. Gene ontology annotation results showed that most TaGATAs had molecular functions in DNA and zinc binding, and promoter analysis suggested that they may play important roles in growth, development, and biotic/abiotic stress response. We combined three microarray datasets with qRT-PCR expression data from wheat varieties of contrasting dormancy and pre-harvest sprouting resistance levels during imbibition in order to identify ten candidate genes (TaGATA17/-25/-34/-37/-40/-46/-48/-51/-72/-73) that may be involved in the regulation of seed dormancy and germination in wheat. These findings provide valuable information for further dissection of TaGATA functions in the regulation of seed dormancy and germination, thereby enabling the improvement of wheat pre-harvest sprouting resistance by gene pyramiding.

For target echoes, some structure information can be introduced by the signal processing techniques, such as matched filtering and coherent integration, and are usually omitted in traditional target detection (TTD) methods. The detection performance is supposed to be improved with consideration of these information. To deal with the randomness in the signal structure information (SSI) induced by the sampling and uncertain distribution of scatters, we resort to the data-driven method and propose a novel detection scheme. To make use of the SSI, a fully convolutional network (FCN) is designed to hierarchically learn the SSI. Simulation results show that the better detection performance can be obtained with the proposed SSI-based target detection method comparing to the TTD method. The justifications of using the SSI and the FCN are respectively investigated by considering the oversampling strategy and a post hoc visual explanation technique. Besides, the computational complexity is partially analyzed both in theory and in experiment.

[2]Catenane, [2]rotaxane, and [2]pseudorotaxane based on a cyclic titanium oxide cluster, [Ti8O8(SO4)16]16- (Ti8), and cyclic/linear alkylammonium cations are reported. Their syntheses, structures, spectroscopy, and stability in water were studied. These molecules were synthesized from and remained intact upon redissolution in acidic water. Hence, the cluster Ti8 is a promising metal oxide ring that can be used as an inorganic analogue of crown ether to assemble inorganic-organic hybrid mechanical interlocked supramolecular assemblies in water.

The development of actinide materials has provided new strategies for the utilization of nuclear waste, such as depleted uranium, a mildly radioactive waste in the nuclear power industry, which could be a precious resource for many fields, especially water splitting. The catalytic performance of water splitting is limited by the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and it is extremely challenging to design efficient OER catalysts that are highly stable and inexpensive. Here, we design and describe a series of U

The mitochondria are the energy and biosynthesis factory and the majority source of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The mitochondria play a vital role in carcinogenesis, so the mitochondria targeting drugs have been the focus of new drug discovery in cancer therapy. In this study, target mitochondrial stilbene compounds A1-A6 are synthesized by introducing lipophilic cationic triphenylphosphonium into the pharmacophore. Intriguingly, the strategy significantly improved the anticancer potential of parent resveratrol. Especially A4 ((E)-Triphenyl(4-(4-(3,4 dimethylstyryl)phenoxy)butyl)phosphoniumiodide) exerted the excellent anticancer activity in HeLa cells. The mechanism study showed that A4 could effectively decrease cyclin D1/cyclin E1 level to arrest the cell cycle in G0/G1, and target the mitochondria to induce apoptosis referring the cross-talk of the decreased ATPase activity, elevated ROS and increased cytosolic Ca2+ to inhibit tumor cell proliferation. Overall, this study is evidence that the target mitochondria drug discovery is an excellent strategy for exploiting the drug potential in cancer therapy.

In the field of motor imagery (MI) recognition, poor generalization and low recognition performance are major challenges. An MI recognition method based on semi-supervised learning and multi-source transfer learning is proposed. In this approach, samples are transferred from some source domains to the target domain using the multi-source transfer learning method. The source domains selection method based on distribution similarity is designed to select source domains with similar distribution to the target domain, and samples with high information entropy are selected from these source domains for transfer. In this regard, we propose a semi-supervised learning labeling method for labeling the unlabeled samples of the target domain, which utilizes the labeling information from a few labeled samples without increasing the labeling cost. The sample confidence measurement method and the dynamic adjustment mechanism are proposed to ensure labeling accuracy and minimize the influence of mislabeled samples. A fusion classification model can identify the new sample in the target domain. As a measure of the effectiveness of the proposed method, four types of MI from the BCI Competition IV dataset 2A were used to evaluate the recognition ability, and the outcomes confirmed an excellent recognition performance as well as a superior training efficiency when compared with the currently used methods.

PURPOSE To develop an accelerated k-space shift calibration method for free-breathing 3D stack-of-radial MRI quantification of liver proton-density fat fraction (PDFF) and R2∗ . METHODS Accelerated k-space shift calibration was developed to partially skip acquisition of k-space shift data in the through-plane direction then interpolate in processing, as well as to reduce the in-plane averages. A multi-echo stack-of-radial sequence with the baseline calibration was evaluated on a phantom versus vendor-provided reference-standard PDFF and R2∗ values at 1.5T, and in 13 healthy subjects and 5 clinical subjects at 3T with respect to reference-standard breath-hold Cartesian acquisitions. PDFF and R2∗ maps were calculated with different calibration acceleration factors offline and compared to reference-standard values using Bland-Altman analysis. Bias and uncertainty were evaluated using normal distribution and Bayesian probability of difference (P < .05 considered significant). RESULTS Bland-Altman plots of phantom and in vivo data showed that substantial acceleration was highly feasible in both through-plane and in-plane directions. Compared to the baseline calibration without acceleration, Bayesian analysis revealed no significant differences on biases and uncertainties of PDFF and R2∗ measurements with all acceleration methods in this study, except the method with through-plane acceleration equaling slices and averages equaling 20 for PDFF and R2∗ (both P < .001) for the phantom. A six-fold reduction in equivalent calibration acquisition time (time saving ≥25 s and ≥80.7%) was achieved using recommended acceleration factors for the in vivo protocols in this study. CONCLUSION This proposed method may allow accelerated calibration for free-breathing stack-of-radial MRI PDFF and R2∗ mapping.

Thick-walled cylindrical parts with external grooves are common components in the automobile and aviation fields. Such components can be produced by pressing the outer surface of a spinning thick-walled aluminum alloy tube by the dieless radial spinning process. The forming characteristics in the spinning process and the effects of various process parameters on forming were studied by using orthogonal tests and finite element simulations. During the forming process, bulge and thickness reductions occur because of material flow. The results of an investigation of process parameter effects show that the stress yield ratio (ξ) had no significant effect on forming. However, the feed thickness ratio (η) and initial wall thickness of the tube (t0) crucially affected the forming quality (e.g., the heights of bulges and thickness reduction in the groove area). Thick-walled tubes presented different phenomena compared to the thin-walled.

Verticillium wilt is a major disease of cotton that considerably decreases yield and crop quality. Soil microbial communities play an important role in plant health. Therefore, biocontrol bacteria that regulate microbial communities in rhizosphere soil can improve plant resistance to pathogens. Previously, the antagonistic strain Bacillus axarquiensis TUBP1 was screened and found to act against Verticillium dahliae with 43% biocontrol effect in cotton fields. We studied the effect of Bacillus axarquiensis TUBP1 with a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene marker on the microbial community structure of cotton rhizosphere soil and cotton yield and quality. Cotton Verticillium wilt incidence, soil biochemical properties, and soil bacterial and fungal communities were analyzed. Results showed that bacterial and fungal abundance in cotton rhizosphere soil was temporarily changed after applying B. axarquiensis TUBP-315GFP. However, Bacillus significantly increased, whereas V. dahliae significantly decreased. The incidence of cotton Verticillium wilt after treatment with B. axarquiensis TUBP-315GFP was significantly lower and cotton production increased by 40.6%. Our findings indicated that the application of B. axarquiensis TUBP-315GFP can change microbial community structure of cotton rhizosphere soil, leading to a reduction in the incidence of cotton Verticillium wilt and increasing cotton yield.

To promote the development and application of ultra-thin heat dissipation devices, Cu/grapheme (GR) composite foils with hierarchical microscale structure were prepared by ultrasonic-assisted composite electrodeposition, and chemical etching and plasma oxidation treatment were applied to obtain superhydrophilic. The study found that the hierarchical multi-scale structure on the mold electrode surface can be replicated on the foil surface. Ultrasonic refines the grains and reduces the internal defects, while an increase in the GR content not only further refines the grains but also makes the microstructure multi-directional. The combined effect of ultrasonic and GR significantly improves the microhardness of the foils up to 125 HV0.01. Without any surface treatment, the contact angle (CA) of foil gradually increased with the introduction of ultrasonic and GR, the wettability developed towards hydrophobic, and the highest CA reached 98.43°. Chemical etching can change the submicron-scale structure of the foil surface, and then make the wettability towards to hydrophilic, but not enough to reach the superhydrophilic state. After plasma oxidation treatment, a large number of nanoscale CuO and Cu2O particles are generated on the surface of the chemical etching foils, which not only further enriches the multi-scale structure, but also improves the surface energy. As a result, the wettability of foil surface is further improved, showing a superhydrophilic state, and the CA is less than 5°. Moreover, with the introduction of ultrasonic and the increase of GR content, the hydrophily of the foil surface also tends to improve, and the minimum CA can reach 1.89°.

We report here the first example of the use of an organic “polyurea” polymer as a SEI-forming additive for the lithium metal anode for lithium oxygen batteries. The presence of a suitable polyurea can significantly increase the coulombic efficiency and cycling of the anode in the presence of oxygen in the liquid electrolyte. The findings demonstrate proof of concept for the application of polyureas and other organic polymers for next-generation type batteries with metal anode.

On-site and sensitive analysis of phytoavailable heavy metals is the key to fast evaluate the pollution incidents, while the development of convenient and efficient sample introduction approaches against matrix interference is crucial to improve the performances of field-deployable instruments. Herein, trace phytoavailable heavy metals in soil are first extracted by 0.1 M NaNO

Stack-of-radial MRI allows free-breathing abdominal scans, however, it requires relatively long acquisition time. Undersampling reduces scan time but can cause streaking artifacts and degrade image quality. This study developed deep learning networks with adversarial loss and evaluated the performance of reducing streaking artifacts and preserving perceptual image sharpness.A 3D generative adversarial network (GAN) was developed for reducing streaking artifacts in stack-of-radial abdominal scans. Training and validation datasets were self-gated to 5 respiratory states to reduce motion artifacts and to effectively augment the data. The network used a combination of three loss functions to constrain the anatomy and preserve image quality: adversarial loss, mean-squared-error loss and structural similarity index loss. The performance of the network was investigated for 3-5 times undersampled data from 2 institutions. The performance of the GAN for 5 times accelerated images was compared with a 3D U-Net and evaluated using quantitative NMSE, SSIM and region of interest (ROI) measurements as well as qualitative scores of radiologists.The 3D GAN showed similar NMSE (0.0657 vs. 0.0559, p = 0.5217) and significantly higher SSIM (0.841 vs. 0.798, p 0.0001) compared to U-Net. ROI analysis showed GAN removed streaks in both the background air and the tissue and was not significantly different from the reference mean and variations. Radiologists' scores showed GAN had a significant improvement of 1.6 point (p = 0.004) on a 4-point scale in streaking score while no significant difference in sharpness score compared to the input.3D GAN removes streaking artifacts and preserves perceptual image details.

The present study investigated the temporal and spatial distributions, partition behaviors, sources, and risks of 14 perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in the aquatic environment of a fluorine industry-impacted region. The total concentrations of 14 PFAAs (ΣPFAAs) were 118.10-2235.4 ng/L, 40.00-2316.1 ng/g dw, and 6.90-180.5 ng/g dw in dissolved, suspended particle matter (SPM), and sedimentary phases, respectively. The predominant pollutants in the dissolved and SPM phases were perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) with carbon chain lengths9, whereas C13 and C14 PFCAs accounted for a large proportion in the sedimentary phase. The dry season exhibited the highest concentration of ΣPFAAs in the dissolved phase (500.9 ± 350.2 ng/L), while the wet season showed the highest concentrations of ΣPFAAs in the SPM and sedimentary phases (591.6 ± 469.1 ng/g dw and 59.7 ± 35.5 ng/g dw, respectively). Significantly higher concentrations of PFAAs have been found in sewage plant and industrial areas. The concentration of PFAAs in the Xupu water source area (XPS) was slightly higher than that in other water source areas of the Yangtze River, which were either not affected or were less affected by the fluorine industry. The log K

The non-uniform thermal field for thick plates jointed by friction stir welding (FSW) easily causes the complex stress state and affects the mechanical behaviour of welded components. The transient non-uniform temperature field for thick plates by FSW is analytically studied based on the heat conduction problem solved by three-dimensional Green’s function. The asymmetric volumetric heat source model is developed by considering the flux distributions in the thickness direction, which is used to obtain the semi-analytical temperature field for welded plates with nonhomogeneous boundary conditions. Then, the analytical model for welding stress is proposed for thick plates by FSW according to the non-uniform temperature field in the weld. The elastic-plastic boundary and the variations of welding stress in the thickness direction are discussed based on the temperature gradient in the welding process. The non-uniform stress distribution in the weld may be analytically predicted in the welding process. The residual stress in the weld is numerically calculated in the cooling process and compared with experiment data to verify the models for the non-uniform temperature field and stress distribution of thick plates. The results show that the three-dimensional temperature field may be used effectively to provide insights into the mechanical response by FSW.

Purpose: This study was designed to compare the clinical efficacy of “8” and “0” wire fixation systems combined with double-head cannulated compression screws or Kirschner wires for the treatment of transverse patellar fractures. Methods: From September 2011 to September 2018, patients with closed transverse patellar fractures treated with a double-head compression screw or Kirschner wire were included and analyzed retrospectively. Patients with patellar fractures combined with distal femoral fractures, tibial plateau fracture or preoperative lower limb dysfunction were excluded. The patients treated with the “8” tension band wire fixation system and Kirschner wire were taken as Group A; those treated with the “0” fixation system and Kirschner wire were taken as Group B; those treated with the “8” fixation system and double-head cannulated compression screw were taken as group C; and those treated with the “0” fixation system and double-head cannulated compression screw were taken as group D. Six weeks and one year after the operation and every month from the third month after the operation until the fractures healed, an X-ray examination was performed to identify fracture healing. The time of fracture healing and postoperative complications of the four groups were compared. One year after the operation, knee function was evaluated by Bostman’s score. Results: During the study period, 168 patients with patellar fractures were treated by operations, and 88 patients were excluded because the fracture type did not meet the requirements or because there were combined fractures of the distal femur or tibial plateau. As a result, 80 patients were included in this study, 20 in each group. All the patients were followed up for an average period of 12.2 months. Compared with Group A, patients in Group D presented less postoperative discomfort in the prepatellar region, quicker fracture healing, less fixation failure and better postoperative knee function scores (all p < 0.05). The incidence of internal fixation failure in Group (B+D) was lower than that in Group (A+C) (p > 0.05). Conclusion: The “0” wire fixation system combined with a double-head cannulated compression screw seems to be more beneficial than the other three fixation systems for the treatment of transverse patellar fractures.

In our previous study, we constructed Schwann cells (SCs) that stably express Simian virus 40 T antigen (SV40T-SCs). SV40T-SCs functions and markers are similar to those of neural crest cells. There we used bone morphogenetic protein 9 (BMP9) to induce SV40T-SCs differentiation in vitro and in vivo and study possible related mechanism. SV40T-SCs differentiation was induced by BMP9 conditioned medium. The lipogenic differentiation of SV40T-SCs was assessed by Oil Red O staining. Alizarin red and Alcian blue staining, and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) assays were used to evaluate the SV40T-SCs osteogenic differentiation. The expression of adipocyte differentiation (c/EBPα and c/EBPβ) and osteoblast differentiation markers (OSX and RUNX2) were detected by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). To study possible mechanism related to SV40T-SCs differentiation, the P53 and E2F1 activity were assessed by luciferase reporter plasmid, and Slug and E-cadherin expression by qPCR. In vivo, SV40T-SCs infected by Ad-BMP9 or Ad-GFP were injected under the skin of nude mice. After 4-6 W, the mice were euthanized and subcutaneously mass formed at injecting sites was collected for pathological analysis. After SV40T-SCs were cultured in BMP9 conditioned medium, lipid droplets were formed in the cytoplasm of these cells. Alizarin red and Alcian blue staining were positive, and ALP activity of SV40T-SCs increased significantly. The expression of adipocyte differentiation (c/EBPα and c/EBPβ) and osteoblast differentiation markers (OSX and RUNX2) in SV40T-SCs was upregulated by BMP9. SV40T significantly increased Slug expression and decreased E-cadherin expression. SV40T-SCs infected with Ad-BMP9 were able to differentiate into adipose tissue and form a small bone matrix under the nude mice skin. SV40T-SCs have the ability to differentiate into adipocytes and osteoblasts in vivo and in vitro. SV40T can upregulate the Slug expression and downregulate the E-cadherin expression to produce endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The multidirectional differentiation ability of SV40T-SCs may be related to EMT.