Search

With the advantages of lower capacitance, faster operation and smaller size, the amorphous silicon antifuse is very promising for high-speed and high-density FPGA. However, the leakage current of the conventional amorphous silicon antifuse in the off-state is high, which decreases its performance and reliability. Although the leakage current of the SiNX or SiOX antifuse is small, the proper thickness of the dielectric layer is not easily controlled by PECVD processes. In addition, the highly undesirable switch-off behavior is common to almost all metal-to-metal antifuse structures. Focusing on the study of amorphous silicon multilayer dielectric structures, a novel antifuse with the structure of Al/α-Si:H,N/α-Si:H/Al was proposed, which was manufactured by nitrogen plasma treatment for an α-Si:H film surface. Through surface plasma treatment, the hydrogen content of the dielectric layer is stable, the film surface is smoother, the leakage current is reduced, the switch-off behavior is eliminated, the programming voltage is more concentrated and the on-state resistance distribution is more compact. The results demonstrated that surface plasma treatment with proper time for the dielectric layer could significantly improve the performance and reliability of the Al/α-Si:H,N/α-Si:H/Al antifuse. Furthermore, the fabrication process of the α-Si:H,N/α-Si:H structure has excellent compatibility, controllability and simplicity.

Due to inherent errors in the chemical transport models, inaccuracies in the input data, and simplified chemical mechanisms, ozone (O

TiFe0.5Ni0.5Sb-based half-Heusler compounds have the intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivity and the adjustable band structure. Inspired by the previously reports to achieve both p- and n-type components by tuning the ratio of Fe and Ni based on the same parent TiFe0.5Ni0.5Sb, we selected Co as the amphoteric dopants to prepare both n-type and p-type pseudo-ternary Ti(Fe, Co, Ni)Sb-based half-Heusler alloys. The carrier concentration, as well as the density of states effective mass was significantly increased by Co doping, contributing to the enhanced power factor of 1.80 mW m−1 K−2 for n-type TiFe0.3Co0.2Ni0.5Sb and 2.21 mW m−1 K−2 for p-type TiFe0.5Co0.15Ni0.35Sb at 973 K. Combined with the further decreased lattice thermal conductivity due to the strain field and mass fluctuation scattering induced by alloying Hf on the Ti site, peak ZTs of 0.65 in n-type Ti0.8Hf0.2Fe0.3Co0.2Ni0.5Sb and 0.85 in p-type Ti0.8Hf0.2Fe0.5Co0.15Ni0.35Sb were achieved at 973 K, which is of great significance for the thermoelectric power generation applications.

Annexin, a calcium-dependent phospholipid-binding protein, can affect tumor cell adhesion, proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis, as well as tumor neovascularization in different ways. Recent studies have shown that annexin exists not only as an intracellular protein in tumor cells, but also in different ways to be secret outside the cell as a “cross-talk” tool for tumor cells and tumor microenvironment, thus playing an important role in the development of tumors, such as participating in epithelial-mesenchymal transition, regulating immune cell behavior, promoting neovascularization and so on. The mechanism of annexin secretion in the form of extracellular vesicles and its specific role is still unclear. This paper summarizes the main role of annexin secreted into the extracellular space in the form of extracellular vesicles in tumorigenesis and drug resistance and analyzes its possible mechanism.

Bone loss severely threatens the heath of astronauts in long-term spaceflight and the effects of the developed countermeasures are limited. Emerging studies have revealed the positive role of osthole (OST) in induction of osteogenic differentiation and bone formation. In this study, the effects of OST on bone metabolism were investigated in osteoblasts and rats treated with random positioning machine and hindlimb unloading, respectively. The results showed that OST treatment promoted the cellular proliferation and elevated the expression levels of RUNX2 and BMP2 in osteoblasts under simulated microgravity. In addition, hindlimb unloading rats administered with OST (5 mg kg/d, i.g.) exhibited improved bone mass, bone strength, expression of bone formation markers (BALP and OCN), and decreased expression of bone resorption markers (CTX-1 and TRACP-5b) in serum compared with rats treated with placebo (0.9% saline). Notably, we found that miR-34c-5p expression level was significantly up-regulated when exposed to simulated microgravity both in vitro and in vivo, and suppression of miR-34c-5p by antagomiR in rats obviously rescued the damages of BMD and trabecular bone microstructures caused by simulated microgravity. Importantly, OST treatment reversed miR-34c-5p expression level in hindlimb unloading rats, and ectopic expression of miR-34c-5p by transfection of agomiR in osteoblasts treated with OST decreased the expression levels of bone formation genes COL1α1, RUNX2, and BMP2. Overall, these data suggest an undisclosed role for OST in regulating microgravity-induced bone loss via control of miR-34c-5p expression, which may help to countermeasure development to overcome bone loss in spaceflight.

Background Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are transcripts longer than 200bp with low or no protein-coding ability, which play essential roles in various biological processes in plants. Tobacco is an ideal model plant for studying nicotine biosynthesis and metabolism, and there is little research on lncRNAs in this field. Therefore, how to take advantage of the mature tobacco system to profoundly investigate the lncRNAs involved in the nicotine pathway is intriguing. Results By exploiting 549 public RNA-Seq datasets of tobacco, 30,212 lncRNA candidates were identified, including 24,084 large intervening noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) and 5,778 natural antisense transcripts (NATs), and 350 intronic noncoding RNAs (incRNAs). Compared with protein-coding genes, lncRNAs have distinct properties in terms of exon number, sequence length, A/U content, and tissue-specific expression pattern. incRNAs showed an asymmetric evolutionary pattern, with a higher proportion (68.71%) expressed from N.sylvestris (S) subgenome. We predicted the potential cis/trans-regulatory effects on protein-coding genes. One hundred four lncRNAs were detected as precursors of 30 known miRNA family members, and 110 lncRNAs were expected to be the potential endogenous target mimic for 39 miRNAs. By combining the results of weighted gene co-expression network analysis with the differential expressed gene analysis of topping RNA-seq data, we constructed a sub-network containing eight lncRNAs and 25 nicotine-related coding genes. We confirmed that seven lncRNAs could be affected by MeJA treatment and transcription factor NtMYC2 using a quantitative PCR assay. Conclusions Nicotine pathway-related lncRNA candidates were predicted and investigated in our study. We verified that seven lncRNAs could be affected by MeJA treatment and the transcription factor NtMYC2. Results suggested that they are involved in the nicotine pathway. Our findings further deepened the understanding of the features and functions of lncRNAs and provided new candidates for regulating nicotine biosynthesis in tobacco.

The objective of this study is to investigate the clinical manifestations, computed tomography (CT) findings, and prognosis of primary pulmonary mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma (MALToma) with the improved health awareness nowadays.Clinical data and CT images of patients with pathologically confirmed MALToma from October 2012 to October 2021 were retrospectively analyzed.Eighteen MALToma patients were included in the study (8 men and 10 women; mean age, 56.17 years; range, 33-73 years). Six men had a long-term history of smoking (20 years). One patient had an autoimmune disease (Sjögren syndrome). Eight patients (44.44%) were asymptomatic, and 10 (55.56%) had mild chest or systemic symptoms. Most lesions (88.89%) were subpleural or located along the bronchovascular tree. According to the CT characteristics, the lesions were divided into 4 groups: nodular type (n = 8; 44.44%, including 5 solid nodules and 3 ground-glass nodules), mass type (n = 4, 22.22%), patch or consolidate type (n = 5, 27.78%), and mixed type (n = 1, 5.56%). Air bronchogram (11/18, 61.11%) and angiogram sign (8/16, 50%) were the most frequent CT findings and may help differential diagnosis. The patients were misdiagnosed with lung cancer (n = 11, 61.11%), inflammatory or chronic inflammatory disease (n = 4, 22.22%), bronchiectasis accompanied by infection (n = 1, 5.56%), diffuse interstitial lung disease (n = 1, 5.56%), and granuloma or tuberculosis (n = 1, 5.56%). The prognosis of all patients was favorable; 1 patient was lost to follow-up.Nowadays, patients with MALToma are usually asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic. Nodular lesions, including ground-glass nodules, are the most common presentation. Mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma is most likely misdiagnosed as lung cancer. Lesions located in the subpleural areas or along the bronchovascular tree and presenting with an air bronchogram or angiogram sign could indicate a MALToma diagnosis.

Radial long cracks at bolt holes have been observed on steel brake discs used in high-speed rail systems. The crack propagation process is obviously different from traditional thermal fatigue propagation. Because the causes of the cracks and corresponding propagation mode are not well known, further study is warranted. In the present study, the microstructure evolution near the sliding surface of a cast steel brake disc was characterized. The variation in the mechanical properties of the disc material under the influence of microstructure evolution and temperature was analysed. Combining the establishment of the extended finite element model (XFEM) with changes in mechanical properties, the propagation mechanism of the radial long crack at the bolt hole on the brake disc sliding surface was analysed. The microanalysis and tensile test results showed that the grain size and the strength of material gradient increased from the sliding surface to the core of the disc. The simulation results showed that the interaction of strength decline and high-level stress concentration in the vicinity of the bolt hole led to rapid crack propagation along the radial direction of the disc. In addition, the formation of the radial long cracks was equivalent to the introduction of the fatigue crack source on the sliding surface, and the crack was very likely to continue to propagate to the core of the disc through fatigue propagation, which ultimately led to the failure of the brake disc. Based on the results of this study, recommendations regarding the presence of radial long cracks on the sliding surface and maintenance procedures for the cast steel brake disc are proposed.

Numerous nucleic acid nanostructures of unique addressability and programmability have been fabricated for emerging applications. Structural characterization with atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy can provide information on the structural morphology and precision of these nanostructures. However, either structural information of native nucleic acid nanostructures in hydrated environment or the availability of addressable sites on these nanostructures could not be determined. Alternatively, DNA points accumulation for imaging in nanoscale topography (DNA-PAINT) enables direct optical visualization of nucleic acid nanostructures in native forms, as well as evaluation of the accessibility of addressable sites on them. In this Review, the working principle of DNA-PAINT is introduced, followed by the summary on advances of DNA-PAINT characterization of various nucleic acid nanostructures. Finally, the current challenges and prospects for DNA-PAINT characterization are presented. We envision DNA-PAINT to be a potent characterization tool for functional nanomaterials.

Nitrate (NO3−) has been the dominant and the least reduced chemical component of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) since the stringent emission controls implemented in China in 2013. The formation pathways of NO3− vary seasonally and differ substantially in daytime vs. nighttime. They are affected by precursor emissions, atmospheric oxidation capacity, and meteorological conditions. Understanding NO3− formation pathways provides insights for the design of effective emission control strategies to mitigate NO3− pollution. In this study, the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model was applied to investigate the impact of regional transport, predominant physical processes, and different formation pathways to NO3− and total nitrate (TNO3, i.e., HNO3+ NO3−) production in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region during the four seasons of 2017. NO3-/PM2.5 and NO3-/TNO3 are the highest in the winter, reaching 21 % and 94 %, respectively. The adjusted gas ratio (adjGR = ([NH3]+ [NO3−])/([HNO3]+ [NO3−])) in the YRD is generally greater than 2 in the four seasons across most areas in the YRD, indicating that YRD is mostly in the NH3-rich regime and that NO3− is limited by HNO3 formation. Local emissions and regional transportation contribute to NO3− concentrations throughout the YRD region by 50 %–62 % and 38 %–50 %, respectively. The majority of the regional transport of NO3− concentrations is contributed by indirect transport (i.e., NO3− formed by transported precursors reacting with local precursors). Aerosol (AERO, including condensation, coagulation, new particle formation, and aerosol growth) processes are the dominant source of NO3− formation. In summer, NO3− formation is dominated by AERO and total transport (TRAN, sum of horizontal and vertical transport) processes. The OH + NO2 pathway contributes to 60 %–83 % of the TNO3 production, and the N2O5 heterogeneous (HET N2O5) pathway contributes to 10 %–36 % in the YRD region. HET N2O5 contribution becomes more important in cold seasons than warm seasons. Within the planetary boundary layer in Shanghai, the TNO3 production is dominated by the OH + NO2 pathway during the day (98 %) in the summer and spring and by the HET N2O5 pathway during the night (61 %) in the winter. Local contributions dominate the OH + NO2 pathway for TNO3 production during the day, while indirect transport dominates the HET N2O5 pathway at night.

The basal levels of salicylic acid (SA), an important plant hormone, vary dramatically among plant species. In the shoot, for example, the monocot plant rice contains almost 100 times higher SA levels than the dicot model plant Arabidopsis. Despite its high basal levels, neither the biosynthetic pathway nor the biological functions of SA is well understood in rice. Here, we report that the synthesis of basal SA in rice shoot is not altered in the mutant for the ISOCHORISMATE SYNTHASE (ICS) gene, but drastically reduced in the mutant for OsAIM1, which encodes a beta-oxidation enzyme in the phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) pathway. Analogous to its role in thermogenesis, compromised SA accumulation in the Osaim1 mutant led to a lower shoot temperature than wild-type plants. However, this shoot temperature defect was resulted from increased transpiration due to elevated steady-state stomatal aperture in the mutant. Furthermore, the high basal shoot SA level is required for sustained expression of WRKY45 to modulate the steady-state stomatal aperture and shoot temperature in rice. Taken together, these results provide the direct genetic evidence for the critical role of the PAL pathway in the biosynthesis of high levels of basal SA, which play an important role in the regulation of steady-state stomatal aperture to promote fitness under both normal and stress conditions.

Treating blood blister-like aneurysms (BBA) is a major neurosurgical challenge. Whether endovascular repair serves as a better strategy than microsurgery remains controversial. We aim to perform a propensity score-matched (PSM) retrospective study to analyze the short-term outcome in BBA patients who received microsurgery and endovascular treatment. One hundred fifty-five eligible patients with internal carotid artery BBA were retrospectively collected with demographic and angiographic baseline in a single center. Three-month outcome and adverse events were set as outcome endpoints. PSM was used to match the microsurgery and endovascular group. Matching effect was evaluated by distribution variation analysis and love plot. The outcome of neurosurgery and endovascular treatment was then compared before and after PSM. Better WFNS levels (p = .017) and modified Fisher grade (p = .027) were noted in endovascular group before matching. Other baseline including angiographic features were comparable between two groups. Before matching, the 3-month outcome of endovascular repair surgery was more favorable than microsurgery (p .0001). The occurrence of adverse events was also higher in the microsurgery group (p = .0079). In PSM-adjusted groups, the superior outcome effect of endovascular treatment still existed but with a reduced significance (p = .004). Similar trend was also observed in the adverse event rate (p = .038). Fatality rate was comparable between two adjusted groups regardless of PSM adjustment. Endovascular surgery of BBAs exhibits overall more favorable short-term outcome regardless of PSM matching. Microsurgery does not cause a higher fatality rate, hence it could be considered a salvage plan for those high-grade BBA patients.

The interaction between two model organisms, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is widely perceived as mutually beneficial. The bridge of this biological connection is the volatile compounds from yeast fermentation, which can be attractive to the flies. The generation of volatile molecules derives from complex metabolism and different yeast will generate different combinations of volatiles. The attractiveness to fruit flies can therefore be considered a complex trait. In this study, six strains from SGRP were selected for fermenting commercial grape juice. The attractiveness of these ferments to a wild fruit fly line was then tested. Flies prefer the ferments of the Wine European (WE) strain over the North America (NA) strain. The preference assay was then applied to ferments of genotyped F1 progeny of WE crossed to NA for QTL mapping of genetic variation in attractiveness. GC-MS profiling of all ferments demonstrated that NA could be easily distinguished from other strains. 15 compounds were further quantified and the concentrations in F1 progeny ferments were correlated with genotypes using our r/QTL pipeline. Candidate genes from QTL mapping were tested by reciprocal hemizygosity analysis, validating the impact of two genes, PTC6 and YFL040W. The alleles of these validated genes from NA has better effect on the preference assay than the allele from WE, which is can be considered as antagonistic QTLs. The identification variation in these two genes underpinning metabolic differences, demonstrates how WE and NA have different attraction to one wild fruit fly line.

Researchers have established a classification model based on tear Raman spectroscopy combined with machine learning classification algorithms, which realizes rapid noninvasive classification of cerebral infarction and cerebral ischemia, which is of great significance for clinical medical diagnosis. Through spectral data analysis, it is found that there are differences in the content of tyrosine, phenylalanine, and carotenoids in the tears of patients with cerebral ischemia and patients with cerebral infarction. We try to establish a classification model for rapid noninvasive screening of cerebral infarction and cerebral ischemia through these differences. The experiment has four parts, including normalization, data enhancement, feature extraction, and data classification. The researchers combined three feature extraction methods with four machine classification models to build a total of 12 classification models. Integrating 8 classification criteria, the classification accuracy of all models is above 85%, especially PLS-PNN has achieved 100% accuracy and better running time. The experimental results show that tear Raman spectroscopy combined with machine learning classification model has a good effect on the screening of cerebral ischemia and cerebral infarction, which is conducive to the noninvasive and rapid clinical diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases in the future.

Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) in the wild has a wide range of applications in surveillance retrieval and autonomous driving. Tracking-by-Detection has become a mainstream solution in MOT, which is composed of feature extraction and data association. Most of the existing methods focus on extracting targets’ individual features and optimizing the association by hand-crafted algorithms. In this paper, we specially consider the interrelation cue between targets and we propose Human-Interaction Model (HIM) to extract interaction features between the tracked target and its surrounding. The interaction model has more discriminative features to distinguish objects, especially in crowded (dense) scene. Meanwhile we propose an efficient end-to-end model, Deep Association Network (DAN), to optimize the association with graph-based learning mechanism. Both HIM and DAN are constructed by three kinds of deep networks, which include Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Graph Neural Network (GNN). The CNNs extract appearance features from bounding box images, the RNNs encoder motion features from historical positions of trajectory. And then the GNNs aim to extract interaction features and optimize graph structure to associate the objects in different frames. In addition, we present a novel end-to-end training strategy for Deep Association Network and Human-Interaction Model. Our experimental results demonstrate performance of our method reaches the state-of-the-art on MOT15, MOT16 and DukeMTMCT datasets.

Each type of cancer has its own specific metastatic route developed by disseminating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and related extracellular vesicles to the target organ, i.e., metastasis organotropism. Tumor-derived small extracellular vesicles (herein exosomes, EXO) play an important role in determining cancer organotropic metastases to pre-metastasis niches. We therefore hypothesized that drug-loaded EXO may mix well with their companion small extracellular vesicles to specifically target the aimed metastatic organ via organotropism. Here, we demonstrate that the circulating breast-cancer-derived EXO loaded with doxorubicin (EXO-DOX) can mingled with their original companion EXO and inhibit breast cancer metastasis to lungs. The CD47 on the EXO-DOX prevented EXO-DOX from immune attack and prolonged their circulation in blood. The tissue distribution ratio of EXO-DOX is identical to the ratio of their companion EXO due to the specific affinity of EXO to integrins in targeted tissues. Quantitative accumulation of EXO-DOX in the mouse lungs is proportional to the organotropism of the circulating breast cancer cells that disseminate from subcutaneously-implanted human breast cancer cells in mice. EXO-DOX inhibited angiogenesis and cancer cell proliferation, resulting in prevention of breast cancer metastasis to the lungs. This study opens a novel path to use Trojan small extracellular vesicles for specifically controlled release of active components by small extracellular vesicles organotropism mechanism to the targeted organ for disease chemoprevention.

Shot peening is a surface-strengthening process that is widely used in various industries, such as aerospace, automotive, and biomedical engineering. The process involves the impact of small, spherical media, called shots, onto the surface of a material, resulting in residual compressive stress and improved surface properties. This review aims to provide an overview of the state of the art and perspectives on surface strengthening by shot peening. The review covers various aspects of shot peening, including process parameters, shot materials, and quality control techniques. The advantages and limitations of shot peening in comparison to other surface-strengthening techniques are also discussed. The findings of this review indicate that shot peening is a versatile and effective surface-strengthening technique with numerous applications, and further research is needed to fully realize its potential. In conclusion, this review provides insights into the current status and future perspectives on surface strengthening by shot peening, and it is expected to be useful for researchers, engineers, and practitioners in the field of material science and engineering.

Acyl migration of fatty acid at sn-2 is often observed alongside enzymatic interesterification (EIE), causing the loss of lipase selectivity toward the acyl group at sn-1,3. In this study, an oil blend consisting of palm stearin (PST) and palm olein (POL) was interesterified via a chemical interesterification (CIE) and enzymatic method using a packed bed reactor. Characterization in terms of the triacylglycerol (TAG) compositions, sn-2 fatty acid distributions, and solid fat content profiles was performed. In comparison to that of CIE fats, EIE fats showed different modification effects on the solid fat content. Under similar reaction conditions, different interesterification degrees (IDs) were obtained according to the various blend ratios. Using the same mass ratio of substrates (POL/PST of 9:1), the EIE reaction time and temperature affected the ID and the change in the fatty acyl group at the sn-2 position. Under the reaction time of 46 min, an ID of 94.41% was acquired, while at 80 °C, the degree of acyl migration at sn-2 was 92.87%. EIE with high acyl migration exhibited a lower crystallization rate than that of EIE with low acyl migration. However, the effect of acyl migration on crystal polymorphism and oxidative stability was insignificant. Outcomes from this study are meaningful for the establishment of a theoretical basis for a controlled positional-specific EIE that is catalyzed by sn-1,3-specific lipase.

A fact often overlooked is that large-scale wildfires, although occurring infrequently, are responsible for the overwhelming majority of fire-related suppression costs, economic losses, and natural resources damages. Fortunately, the increasingly severe problems of large-scale wildfires worldwide have been receiving ever-growing academic attention. The high-intensity burning behaviors in wildfires stem from the significant interaction of combustion with heat transfer and atmospheric flow under complicated fuel, meteorology, and topography conditions. Therefore, mitigating measures against large-scale wildfire disasters have grown into a challenging research focus for combustion scientists. Research over the past century has resulted in incrementally enhanced insights into the mechanisms of combustion dynamics underlying the various erratic behaviors in large-scale wildfires, with theories and models of fire accelerations developed and validated. These advances are expected to improve the efficacy of large-scale wildfire predictions significantly. Nevertheless, the physical interpretation of the acceleration of large-scale wildfires is far from adequate and complete. This paper intends not to make a comprehensive review of the entire wildfire research field, but to depict an overall pattern of the essential factors that lead an initial small-scale spreading flame to a large-scale wildfire beyond control. It is outlined that the complicated transformation of fuel preheating mechanisms determines the growth of surface fire spread, while varied large-size flame fronts and unique spread modes induced in specific fire environments play an essential role in fire spread acceleration. Additionally, multiple fires burning and merging often act as crucial steps for accelerating surface fire spread, generating large-size flames, and triggering unique spread modes. These major potential factors strike the energy balance of a low-intensity wildfire and push it to a high-intensity state. Several issues regarding intensely burning behaviors in large-scale wildfires are selected for in-depth discussions, for which an overview of the progress and challenges in research is presented. It is concluded that the fundamental exploration targeted at developing application tools capable of dealing with large-scale wildfires remains at its early stages. Opportunities for innovation are abundant, yet systematic and long-term research programs are required.

Ground deformation and additional stress on the segments of the firstly constructed tunnel may change significantly due to the construction of another tunnel, which is closely spaced with the existing one. A poor geotechnical condition possibly leads to the interaction between such closely spaced tunnels even making it harder to build such tunnels. A practical project located in Guangzhou City, China, consists of such two parallel tunnels with the smallest distance of 2.6 m, which sat on an upper-soft and lower-hard stratum. A 3D finite element model has been proposed to numerically investigate the behavior of these two parallel tunnels. The numerical results predicted by the FE model are in close agreement with that obtained from the field monitoring system, indicating the accuracy of the proposed FE model. The FE model was then used to further analyze the effect of reinforcing piles in eliminating the detrimental effect on both ground deformation and additional stress of the segments of the existing tunnel as a result of the construction of the new parallel tunnel. The research results obtained from the present paper can provide technical support and guidance for urban subway construction.

Although many scientists are studying the association between genetic polymorphism of ABCB1 and CR in patients, the molecular mechanism has not been further studied in patients with CHD. This study investigated the relationship between SNP of the ABCB1 gene in patients with CHD and CR, and whether the polymorphism of the ABCB1 gene affects the AS of the gene. 741 patients were enrolled in the study, 316 CR cases and 425 NCR cases. The correlation between CR risk and clinical-pathological characteristics were studied. Additionally, the five SNPs were analysed by PCR and Mass Array genotyping methods. Furthermore, silicon analysis was used to predict whether the polymorphism affects the process of AS. Results showed that there was a significant correlation between rs1045642 polymorphism and CR in genotyping and allele analysis. The rs1045642 polymorphism of the ABCB1 gene of CHD patients carrying the A allele are more likely to develop CR. Silicon analysis showed that rs1045642 generated a new ESE sequence which might affect AS of ABCB1 gene. We hypothesize that the mechanism of CR might be caused by a change in the AS caused by the polymorphism of the gene. Thus, this work provides guidance for the clinical use of clopidogrel.

Black carbon (BC) aerosol is a significant and short-lived climate forcing factor. Here, the direct effects of BC emissions from India (IDBC) and China (CNBC) are investigated in East Asia during summer using the state-of-the-art regional climate model RegCM4. In summer, IDBC and CNBC account for approximately 30% and 46% of the total BC emissions in Asia, respectively. The total BC column burden from the two countries and corresponding TOA effective radiative forcing are 1.58 mg m−2and +1.87 W m−2in East Asia, respectively. The regional air temperature increases over 0.3 K at maximum and precipitation decreases 0.028 mm day−1on average. Individually, IDBC and CNBC each can bring about rather different effects on regional climate. IDBC can result in a cooling perturbation accompanied by a substantially increased cloud amount and scattering aerosol loading, resulting in a complex response in the regional precipitation, while CNBC can lead to regional warming, and further induce a local flood in northern China or drought in southern China depending on the opposite but significant circulation anomalies. CNBC plays a dominant role in modulating the regional climate over East Asia due to its higher magnitude, wider coverage, and stronger climate feedback. The direct effect of the total BC from both countries is not a linear combination of that of IDBC and CNBC individually, suggesting that the regional climate responses are highly nonlinear to the emission intensity or aerosol loading, which may be greatly related to the influences of the perturbed atmospheric circulations and climate feedback.

Chemotherapy-induced neutropenia (CIN) is a potentially fatal and common complication in myelosuppressive chemotherapy. The timing and grade of CIN may play prognostic and predictive roles in cancer therapy. CIN is associated with older age, poor functional and nutritional status, the presence of significant comorbidities, the type of cancer, previous chemotherapy cycles, the stage of the disease, specific chemotherapy regimens, and combined therapies. There are many key points and new challenges in the management of CIN in adults including: (1) Genetic risk factors to evaluate the patient's risk for CIN remain unclear. However, these risk factors urgently need to be identified. (2) Febrile neutropenia (FN) remains one of the most common reasons for oncological emergency. No consensus nomogram for FN risk assessment has been established. (3) Different assessment tools [e.g., Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC), the Clinical Index of Stable Febrile Neutropenia (CISNE) score model, and other tools] have been suggested to help stratify the risk of complications in patients with FN. However, current tools have limitations. The CISNE score model is useful to support decision-making, especially for patients with stable FN. (4) There are still some challenges, including the benefits of granulocyte colony stimulating factor treatment and the optimal antibiotic regimen in emergency management of FN. In view of the current reports, our group discusses the key points, new challenges, and management of CIN.

In this work, a series of experiments across a porous fuel bed of pine excelsior with two sidewalls were conducted under different slope and fuel bed width conditions. It was observed that the fire line stayed straight during fire spread after the initial line ignition for all tests. Flame length and rate of spread (ROS) increased with increasing slope angle or fuel bed width. A dimensionless correlation of ROS was developed that integrated the effects of slope and fuel bed width. For a lower slope angle (≤ 20° in this work), the reverse airflow that denoted natural convective cooling for unburnt fuel was identified from the measured flow velocity data, for which flame radiation was the dominant preheating mechanism. For a higher slope angle (30° in this work), it was identified that the forward airflow from the burning area induced convective heating ahead of the flame front, and thus the fuel preheating was controlled by both flame radiation and convective heating. The effect of convective heating was more significant under larger fuel bed widths.

As an important vegetable crop of the legume family, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) is grown widely for tender pod with good taste and nutrition. The purple cowpea pods attract more attention mainly...

Computed tomography (CT) is a widely used screening and diagnostic tool that allows clinicians to obtain a high-resolution, volumetric image of internal structures in a non-invasive manner. Increasingly, efforts have been made to improve the image quality of low-dose CT (LDCT) to reduce the cumulative radiation exposure of patients undergoing routine screening exams. The resurgence of deep learning has yielded a new approach for noise reduction by training a deep multi-layer convolutional neural networks (CNN) to map the low-dose to normal-dose CT images. However, CNN-based methods heavily rely on convolutional kernels, which use fixed-size filters to process one local neighborhood within the receptive field at a time. As a result, they are not efficient at retrieving structural information across large regions. In this paper, we propose a novel 3D self-attention convolutional neural network for the LDCT denoising problem. Our 3D self-attention module leverages the 3D volume of CT images to capture a wide range of spatial information both within CT slices and between CT slices. With the help of the 3D self-attention module, CNNs are able to leverage pixels with stronger relationships regardless of their distance and achieve better denoising results. In addition, we propose a self-supervised learning scheme to train a domain-specific autoencoder as the perceptual loss function. We combine these two methods and demonstrate their effectiveness on both CNN-based neural networks and WGAN-based neural networks with comprehensive experiments. Tested on the AAPM-Mayo Clinic Low Dose CT Grand Challenge data set, our experiments demonstrate that self-attention (SA) module and autoencoder (AE) perceptual loss function can efficiently enhance traditional CNNs and can achieve comparable or better results than the state-of-the-art methods.

For the physical model of wildland fire spread, errors or discrepancies in the prediction of spread rate may arise from uncertain, imprecise or improper determinations of the model parameters due to unreasonable assumptions, rough approximations, or inaccurate measurements. In this study, a parametric uncertainty analysis is made on a typical model of upslope fire spread that is consistent with many other models in the framework of the heat transfer theory and the major equations of sub-models. The variation ranges of the model parameters are determined based on the experimental data and assumptions, thereby the rate of fire spread (ROS) is used as a target variable of model calculation to evaluate the response of the model to parametric uncertainties. It is found that the values of ignition temperatures and averaged flame temperatures have significant impacts on the predicted values of ROS under lower slopes. Although the impacts decrease with the increase of slope, they are still non-negligible under higher slopes. Especially under lower slopes, the assumed values of both temperatures have significant effects on model prediction. The error in estimating the flame length has a remarkable influence on model prediction, and especially, the flame length variation of the same magnitude results in consistent relative errors under different slopes. A larger fluctuation range around a fixed average flame length results in a greater deviation from the predicted results, while for the same fluctuation range of flame length, the relative errors under higher slope angles are distinctly greater than those under lower slopes. In contrast, the errors for evaluation of the flame tilt angle have negligible effects on model predictions. The flame emissivity has a remarkable effect on model prediction and thus should be adjusted to better characterize the variation of flame intensity under different slopes. Besides, the prediction of ROS is very sensitive to the evaluation of fuel consumption efficiency, especially for higher slope angles. Simulation results indicate that larger heat convection coefficients are required for achieving better prediction results for higher slope angles, which agrees well with the previous experimental finding that with the increase of slope angle, a kind of flame-induced convection plays a more and more important role in fire spread.