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To explore the association between gestational weight gain (GWG) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) -positive women using a retrospective cohort study to provide advice on the management of GWG.Our study included 39 539 pregnant women who gave birth at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China. Patients were divided into two groups: the HBsAg-negative and HBsAg-positive groups, comprising 36 500 and 3039 participants, respectively. We used univariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses to explore the association between GWG and GDM in maternal hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier women.Being HBsAg positive and excessive GWG were independent risk factors for GDM. Excessive GWG was associated with a higher risk of GDM in HBsAg-positive women. Among pre-pregnancy women of normal weight, HBsAg-positive women with adequate GWG had a higher risk of GDM than HBsAg-negative women, whereas HBsAg-positive women with inadequate GWG had a lower risk of GDM.The optimal GWG ranges for pre-pregnancy normal-weight HBsAg-positive pregnancies might be lower than the US Institute of Medicine recommendations. HBsAg-positive women should strictly control GWG to reduce the risk of GDM.

Objective To investigate whether different grades of subchorionic hematoma (SCH) are involved in the timing of birth and the development of adverse pregnancy outcomes in singleton pregnant women. Methods A total of 171 women with singleton pregnancies, 72 of whom had SCH before 20 weeks and between 12 and 20 weeks of gestational age (GA), were included in this study conducted between January 2018 and December 2021. These patients were divided into three subgroups based on the size of the subchorionic hematoma on ultrasound imaging. Baseline demographic data, obstetric outcomes, and risk factors for subchorionic hematoma were compared for the two groups. Results A higher number of pregnancies from the SCH group resulted in miscarriage (30.56% versus 2.02%, p p = 0.0035), premature rupture of membranes (15.28% versus 4.04%, p = 0.0103), fetal growth restriction (9.72% versus 0%, p = 0.0015), and delivery 13.18 days earlier (274.34 ± 11.25 versus 261.16 ± 29.80, p = 0.0013) than those from the control group. Compared with SCH detected before 12 weeks of GA, the rate of miscarriage increased, and the live birth rate decreased significantly in patients with SCH caught between 12 and 20 weeks of GA. With the increase in hematoma size, the likelihood of miscarriage increased significantly. Further analysis found that delivery occurred earlier in the medium/large SCH group (271.49 ± 23.61 versus 253.28 ± 40.68/261.77 ± 22.11, p = 0.0004/0.0073) but not in the small SCH group (274.34 ± 11.25 versus 267.85 ± 21.01, p = 0.2681) compared to the control group. Our results also showed that the anterior placenta (52.04% versus 33.33%, p = 0.0005, OR = 0.3137, 95% CI [0.1585, 0.601]) is a protective factor for subchorionic hematoma. Conclusion Our study shows that women with SCH are at a higher risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and are independently associated with miscarriage, early preterm birth, premature rupture of membranes, and fetal growth restriction. A subchorionic hematoma, especially detected between 12 and 20 weeks of GA, is very likely to cause miscarriage or preterm birth in women with a medium or large subchorionic hematoma.

Multicarrier differential chaos shift keying (MC-DCSK) systems transmit the reference chaotic signal for information recovery to remove the complex synchronization circuit. However, transmission errors in the reference chaotic signal would induce the error propagations when directly used for demodulations. In order to address this issue, we propose a low-rank approximation of matrices (LRAM) detection method to improve the reliability performances. In our design, we exploit the low-rank characteristic of MC-DCSK signals sharing the reference chaotic signal. Instead of directly using the received reference chaotic signal for correlated demodulation, we propose to apply the LRAM method to jointly estimate the reference signal and the information-bearing signal. We use the singular value decomposition and generalized LRAM methods to minimize the distances between the estimates and transmitted data. Thus, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved to achieve lower bit error rate (BER). Moreover, theoretical BER expression is derived and LRAM-aided system is proved to be capable of proving the maximum-likelihood detection for received signals. Simulation results demonstrate the BER performances of our design outperform counterparts over additive white Gaussian noise and fading channels.

Introduction Given that many pregnant women have chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and that gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is linked to poor maternal and neonatal outcomes, we looked into the relationship between the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and GDM to see if a high HBV DNA load is linked to a higher risk of GDM in chronic maternal HBsAg carriers. Materials and methods Our study included 39,539 pregnant women who gave birth at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University in Guangzhou, China, between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2019. The patients were divided into two groups: HBsAg negative (36,500) and positive (3039). The viral load levels of 1250 HBsAg-positive women who had tested their HBV DNA load during pregnancy were separated into three groups. We utilized univariate and multivariable logistical regression analysis to determine the relationship between maternal chronic HBsAg carrier and GDM. Results Being HBsAg positive was discovered to be an independent risk factor for GDM.Pre-pregnancy Obesity and advanced age were linked to an increased incidence of GDM. Those with a high HBV DNA load (> 106 IU/mL) had a higher risk of GDM than HBsAg-positive women with a low viral load (3 IU/mL). Pre-eclampsia and intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) appeared to be more common in HBsAg-positive women than in uninfected women. Conclusions Being HBsAg positive, advanced age, and pre-pregnancy obesity were all revealed to be independent risk factors for GDM in our study. In HBsAg carrier, pregnant women, a high HBV DNA burden was linked to a greater risk of GDM. Furthermore, being an HBsAg carrier during pregnancy raised the risk of ICP and pre-eclampsia.

The measurement of the dynamic liquid level is of great importance during the oil-producing process of rod pumping wells. It may affect the production of oil fields and motor efficiency. However, the dynamic liquid level is difficult to detect because of the circumstances in the downhole of rod pump wells. In this paper. Firstly, according to the working principles of the sucker rod pump, the mechanical models of the pumping motor and four-bar linkage mechanism are respectively built. Secondly, for the underground frictions, a mechanical model based on the energy conservation equation is built and then the mechanism model is built between the dynamic liquid level and power of the motor. To improve the accuracy of the mechanism model, a novel method based on an artificial fish swarm algorithm optimization Gaborc-kernel extreme learning machine is used to establish a soft sensor dynamic liquid level error compensation model. The mechanism model is paralleled with the soft sensor model to establish a hybrid model of dynamic liquid level. Eventually, the AFSA-Gaborc-KELM soft sensor hybrid model is verified by using the oil dataset collected from the electrical parameter acquisition equipment. This hybrid model is compared with some other models. In the comparison, the proposed hybrid model has better performance and prediction accuracy for the dynamic liquid level than the BP hybrid model, GA-ELM hybrid model, and LSSVM hybrid model.

Traction current can to impose conductive interference on the railway signalling system, which is also known as unbalanced traction current interference. In the station turnout section, the traction current may cause obvious interference on both receiving apparatus of track circuit and cab signalling apparatus due to the installation of multi-jumpers, wing rails, and insulated joints inside the turnout. This paper analyzes the above structural characteristics of turnouts in depth. By establishing a comprehensive simulation model of one-transmitter and two-receiver track circuit in turnout section and simulating the complete return current path along with traction network–locomotive–rails, the mechanism of traction current conductive interference in the turnout section is then illustrated, using Multisim and MATLAB/Simulink simulation platform. Finally, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), an optimization method of switch jumper setting is studied. The simulation results show that the conductive interference in the turnout section mainly involves two factors: The inherent turnout structure definitely results in different impedance of two rails, and the inductive cab signal is partly bypassed in the turnout center (nose rail). Especially, conductive interference magnitude depends on the jumper location. Therefore, in engineering practice, it is feasible to reduce the interference to a certain degree by reasonable settings of the switch jumper.

In this paper, we present a general iterative receiver for multi-carrier differential chaos shift keying (MC-DCSK) systems. The imperfect channels conditions may induce transmission errors which will degrade the reliability performances. In order to address this issue, we propose an iterative demodulation structure to improve bit error rate (BER) performances by improving the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of reference chaotic signals. At the presented iterative receiver, we propose to evaluate correlation coefficients between the reference chaotic signals and each information-bearing chaotic modulated signal. Then they are used to update and feedback the reference chaotic signal for the next iteration. With the aid of the renewed reference signals, a similar procedure is carried out until the iteration stopping criteria is reached and the threshold decisions are provided. The presented general iterative receiver can be applied to any MC-DCSK systems without introducing any additional modules at transmitters. Theoretical analysis is provided to prove the iteration convergence and to derive the BER performances. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis, which demonstrates that better reliability performances can be achieved over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channels compared with counterpart systems.

A refined one-slit-ring method is presented to characterize residual hoop stress distribution in pipe ring specimens of inhomogeneous cross section. Although the original one-slit-ring method enables determination of residual hoop stress distribution through slitting single ring specimen in the axial direction, its use is limited to specimens of uniform material properties. This work is to extend applicability of the method to ring specimens with a cross section of core–shell structure. Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC) pipe is used in the study, and core–shell structure in its ring specimens is introduced through immersion in primer for 30 min. Analytical expression for the residual hoop stress distribution in these specimens is derived, and verified using finite element (FE) simulation which uses a temperature gradient field to generate stress so that diametrical change by the slitting is same as that measured experimentally. Results from the analytical expression agree well with those from the FE simulation, showing decrease of the residual hoop stress by the exposure to primer, and the extent of decrease depends on the drying time after the immersion in primer, to about half of its original value after 30 days of drying, and then remains relatively constant afterwards.

The neutron capture reaction cross sections of 238U were measured at the neutron energies of 14.1, 14.5 and 14.8 MeV using the activation method and off-line γ-ray spectrometric technique. The induced gamma-ray activities were measured using a low background gamma ray spectrometer equipped with a high resolution HPGe detector. The excitation functions of the 238U(n,γ)239U reaction were also calculated theoretically using the TALYS-1.8 program and are in general agreement with experimental data. The experimentally determined cross sections were compared with the data in the literature, and the evaluated data of ENDF/B-VIII.0, JENDL-4.0, and CENDL-3.1, as well as calculated results from TALYS-1.8.

As Beryllium is an important element in primary nucleosynthesis, its nuclear reaction cross-sections induced by charged projectiles need to be measured precisely. The astrophysical S ( E i ) factors were measured in the ultra-low energy range from E lab = 18 to 100 keV in 2-keV increments (42 points). Both the astrophysical S ( E ) curve ( S bare ( 0 ) = 16.2 ± 1.8 MeV b ) and the screening energy ( U s = 545 ± 98 eV ) were deduced. In regard to astrophysical applications of the S bare ( E ) curve, the present results are consistent with Zahnow's direct measurement. For the long-standing problem of ‘abnormal’ screening effect, our screening energy result also agrees with that obtained using the Trojan-horse method ( U s = 676 ± 86 eV ) but smaller than Zahnow's value ( 900 ± 50 eV ), although all results are much larger than that obtained in the adiabatic limit (∼264 eV).

The cross-sections for 14MeV neutron interaction with 175Lu were precisely measured by the neutron activation and off-line gamma ray technique. The neutron fluence was monitored by the accompanying α-particle of the T(d,n)α reaction, and the neutron energies were determined by using the cross-section ratio method of 90Zr(n,2n)89Zr to 93Nb(n,2n)92mNb reactions. As a result, the cross-sections of 175Lu(n,2n)174mLu, 175Lu(n,2n)174gLu, 175Lu(n,p)175m+gYb and 175Lu(n,α)172Tm reactions have been deduced at En = 14.1 ± 0.3MeV, 14.5 ± 0.3MeV and 14.7 ± 0.3MeV, respectively. Meanwhile, the comparisons between this work and the date reported by other groups previously were also given. For the comparison, it was found that there were nonnegligible discrepancies among these experimental data, as well as for several databases. As a conclusion, present data seem to be more consistent with the database of ENDF/B-VII.1, but trend to be lower than those of JEFF-3.2 and FENDL-3.1b, except the 175Lu(n,2n)174m+gLu reaction which are all in agreement.

Preeclampsia (PE) is a placenta disease, featured by hypertension, proteinuria, and other multiorgan dysfunctions, and its etiology is unclear. We and others have shown that intensive endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and unfolded protein response (UPR) occur in the PE placenta. In this study, we isolated detergent-insoluble proteins (DIPs) from human placenta tissues, which were enriched with protein aggregates, to characterize the placenta UPR in PE. With data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry, we identified 2066 DIPs across all normal (n = 10) and PE (n = 10) placenta samples, among which 110 and 108 DIPs were significantly up- and down-regulated in PE, respectively. Per clustering analysis, differential DIPs could generally distinguish PE from normal placentas. We verified the MS quantitation of endoglin and vimentin by immunoblotting. In addition, we observed that PE placenta tissues have remarkably more endoglin in the cytoplasm. Furthermore, we found that DIPs were evenly distributed across different chromosomes and could be enriched in diversified gene ontology terms, while differential DIPs avoided to distribute on X-chromosome. Significantly up-regulated DIPs in PE were focused on the top functions of lipid metabolism, while 23 of these DIPs could form the top network regulating cellular movement, development, growth, and proliferation. Our results implicate that human PE placentas have disease-relevant differential DIPs, which reflect aberrantly aggregated proteins of placental tissues. The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to ProteomeXchange consortium with the data set identifier PXD006654, and iProX database (accession number: IPX0000948000).

Cross-sections of the (n,2n) reactions for neodymium (Nd) isotopes induced by 14 MeV neutrons were measured in this work by using the activation and relative methods. The measured cross-sections of the 150Nd(n,2n)149Nd, 148Nd(n,2n)147Nd, and 142Nd(n,2n)141Nd reactions were 1854 ± 81, 1789 ± 119, and 1559 ± 98 mb, respectively, at a neutron energy of 14.2 ± 0.2 MeV, and 1485 ± 74, 1726 ± 85, and 1670 ± 119 mb, respectively, at 14.9 ± 0.2 MeV. The results were compared with the experimental values from the reported literature, with the evaluated data from the ENDF/B-VII.1, CENDL-3.1, and JENDL-4.0 libraries, and with the curves calculated by the Talys-1.8 code.

The thick-target yield of the 9Be(d, α 0)7Li and 9Be(d, α 1)7Li* reactions has been first directly measured over deuteron energies from 66 to 94 keV. The obtained S(E i) of α 0 and α 1 have similar trends calculated by the thin-target yield, consistent with Yan’s report within the errors. Furthermore, the parametric expression of S(E) was obtained to calculate the theoretical thick target yield, and it roughly agrees with the experimental thick target yield.

Rare earth doped optical fibers have important applications in fiber lasers, amplifiers and sensors. The Tm-doped fiber laser made with Tm-doped fiber as gain medium can be used in optical communication system. Because the fiber itself has a cylindrical waveguide structure and the core diameter of the fiber is very small, it is easy to achieve high energy density pumping in the fiber. Fiber laser has low laser threshold and good heat dissipation performance, and its core diameter matches well with the communication fiber, forming the integration of transmission fiber and active fiber, which can be an important basis for all-optical communication. However, due to the dispersion of Tm-doped fiber laser, it will lead to the broadening of laser pulse and the degradation of laser quality, which seriously affects the quality of laser communication. In this paper, the causes of dispersion are analyzed, and a dispersion adaptive control system is designed. The experimental results show that the proposed dispersion compensation system can compensate the dispersion produced in the optical fiber laser to a certain extent, so that the laser pulse can return to normal state.This is of great significance for optical communication systems.

In recent years, with the continuous progress of laser technology, fiber laser has been developed rapidly. Compared with the traditional laser, fiber laser has the advantages of good beam quality, small volume, easy integration, high luminous efficiency, strong anti-interference ability and good heat dissipation. As a kind of fiber laser, thulium doped fiber laser not only inherits the above advantages, but also has the rich energy level structure and spectral characteristics of thulium ion, which determines that thulium doped fiber laser plays an important role in the research field of long wavelength fiber laser. This paper discusses the influence of the length and concentration of doped fiber on the output of high power laser system. For a given laser system, all parameters have an optimal value. In order to make the high power thulium doped fiber laser work in the best state, we need to carefully select these parameters. Based on the rate equation, the relationship between the dopant concentration and the length of the optical fiber is given in theory. The experimental results show that the optimal fiber length is different for different pump power. The higher the pump power, the larger the optimal fiber length. The experimental results have guiding significance for the manufacturing technology of high power fiber lasers.

With the development of global informatization, information has penetrated into every corner of human society. With the popularization of Internet, the transmission bandwidth of information becomes more and more important. Nowadays, people’s demand and dependence on information are becoming stronger and stronger. It is urgent to expand the capacity of wide area backbone communication network, and the optical network composed of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) can just take this role. In WDM network, it can transmit multiple optical signals of different wavelengths in one fiber at the same time. WDM has the advantages of large transmission capacity, strong technical adaptability, simple implementation and easy expansion. In addition, WDM optical network can also make full use of the huge bandwidth of optical fiber itself to carry out high-speed transmission. Now, the optical network using WDM technology has become the backbone network of long-distance transmission. This paper studies the optical fiber communication system and analyzes the structure of the optical fiber network. For the optical network, how to find the appropriate routing is a very important technology. After analyzing all kinds of basic routing technologies, this paper proposes a new policy based routing technology, and carries out relevant experiments. The experimental results show that the new routing technology has some advantages compared with the old routing technology.

Optical fiber has huge bandwidth, as a physical medium, it has good anti electromagnetic interference characteristics and excellent security performance, which is very suitable for the establishment of backbone transmission network. Wavelength division multiplexing(WDM) network based on optical fiber has been widely used. Using optical fiber for information transmission can give full play to the nearly unlimited transmission capacity of optical fiber. With the advent of the information age, data service has become the mainstream business, replacing the original telephone voice service. The great development of data transmission service further promotes the continuous development of WDM network technology. Among all kinds of services in optical network, IP service accounts for the largest proportion. In optical networks, switching is an important technology. Network performance is directly related to switching technology. With the development of optical communication technology, a variety of optical switching devices are introduced into WDM optical network, such as optical packet switching, optical burst switching and so on. This makes WDM layer have the ability of dynamic path establishment and removal similar to IP layer. In order to improve the performance of the optical network and reduce the blocking rate of the network, in WDM optical network, the services are designed in different levels. For some very important services, the highest priority is given, and the optical path channel with better survivability and higher fault tolerance is selected. For general services, it can be designed as a lower level service, and choose the appropriate optical path channel for transmission. The experimental results show that this hierarchical service design method can make more effective use of network resources, reduce the network blocking rate, and improve the overall performance of the network.

The p-Be-9 reactions play a key role in accurate prediction of the primordial abundance of beryllium, and its abundance can be used to exquisitely probe the nucleosynthesis and mixing mechanism of stars. In the present work, astrophysical S(E) factors of the Be-9(p, d)Be-8 and Be-9(p, alpha)Li-6 reactions have been obtained from the thick-target yield Yield(E-i) for proton energies from 18 to 100 keV. A full R-matrix analysis was performed to fit both the Be-9(p, alpha)Li-6 and Be-9(p, d)Be-8 reactions simultaneously. The resulting astrophysical S(E) factors agree well with direct measurements, leading to S(0) = 17.3 2.1 and 13.9 1.8 MeVb for the Be-9(p, alpha)Li-6 and Be-9(p, d)Be-8 reactions, respectively. However, the obtained screening potential (U-s = 512 77 eV) is lower than results of previous work (900 50 and 806 eV), and all of them are larger than the adiabatic limit of 264 eV. The reaction rates were also calculated in the temperature range (0.01-1) 10(9) K, which improves on the precision of the standard database NACRE and NACRE II.

Neutron induced reaction cross sections of Cerium isotopes (136Ce, 138Ce, 140Ce, 142Ce) were investigated for the (n, 2n), (n, α), (n, p) and (n, γ) reactions in the neutron energy around 14 MeV. Experimental cross sections have been obtained for 136Ce(n, 2n)135m+gCe, 138Ce(n, 2n)137mCe, 140Ce(n, 2n)139m+gCe, 142Ce(n, 2n)141gCe, 140Ce(n, p)140gLa, 142Ce(n, p)142gLa, 140Ce(n, α)137mBa, 142Ce(n, α)139Ba and 142Ce(n, γ)143Ce reactions. The measured values were compared with the literature data as well as the evaluated nuclear data from ENDF/B-VII.1, CENDL-3.1, JENDL-4.0 and the calculated results by Talys-1.8 code.

The cross-sections for 14MeV neutron interaction with

Aims A large neck circumference may be an indicator of metabolic syndrome and its components, and for certain patients is more practical as an index than waist circumference. The demarcation value for neck circumference that suggests metabolic syndrome appears to vary by ethnic group. Gestational diabetes mellitus is considered a component of metabolic syndrome in pregnant women. We investigated whether neck circumference in Han Chinese women is associated with gestational diabetes mellitus in early pregnancy, and determined a predictive demarcation value. Materials and Methods A nested case-control study was conducted with 255 women aged 18-35 years. Gestational diabetes mellitus was diagnosed according to the criteria of the American Diabetes Association via a 2-h, 75-g oral glucose tolerance test. Results Of the total population, 41 (16%) women developed gestational diabetes mellitus by 24-28 weeks gestation. Neck circumference at gestational week 16 positively correlated with pre-pregnancy waist circumference, body weight, and body mass index, and maternal age (P = 0.029) and hemoglobin A1c at gestational week 24 (P ≤ 0.001). By binary logistic regression, neck circumference was an independent predictor of gestational diabetes mellitus (OR 1.840, 95% CI 1.040-3.254; P = 0.036). According to the receiver operating characteristic curve, for predicting gestational diabetes mellitus the optimal demarcation for neck circumference at gestational week 16 was 35.15 cm. Conclusions Neck circumference is a viable tool to screen for gestational diabetes mellitus. In this population of pregnant Han Chinese women, a neck circumference of ≥35.15 cm was a predictor of gestational diabetes mellitus. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This paper studies the vehicle-bridge coupled vibration problems using the modal synthesis method. The independent vibration equation of the vehicle system and bridge system are established based on D'Alembert principle. Using the coupling condition, considering the impact of the deck roughness, the unified coupled vibration equation is given out and solved using the Newmark-β numerical method. A real bridge is analyzed using the method proposed in this paper. Several sensitive parameters such as deck roughness and vehicle speed are studied to get the influence law of the bridge dynamic response. The dynamic amplification factor of the different structural members is calculated based on the dynamic response. The results show that the current existing design code still has considerable improvements on provision of the impact factor and some recommendations for improvement are given out.

This study aims to develop estimation formulas of fundamental frequencies of single-pylon self-anchored suspension bridges based on the Rayleigh method. The basic equations of vertical free vibrations are established using the energy principle. Trigonometric shape function is applied to solve the equations. Configurations of self-anchored suspension bridges are also concerned and some small terms in magnitude analyses are ignored in order to simplify the derivation. Finally, an example of estimating fundamental frequencies of a self-anchored suspension bridge is also performed. In this example the formulas have only a 4.4% deviation at most, which illustrates that the formulas can be utilized in the design phase of single-pylon self-anchored suspension bridges.

An competitive indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was developed for measurement of okadaic acid (OA), a marine biotoxin associated with red tide. OA was coupled to BSA and OVA by carbodiimide reaction. OA-BSA as immunogen were injected in BALB/c mice. Titres of the antisera against OA were determinated using OA-OVA as coating ligand by ELISA method. The spleen cells of immunized mice were fused with Sp2/O cells. After cloning, four hybridoma cell strains stably produced anti-OA monoclonal antibody were obtained. The monoclonal antibody were produced by the mouse ascites method. The competitive indirect ELISA for okadaic acid in shellfish was established. Under optimal condition, the detection limit of OA was 31.2 ng/ml and the recovery was 87%-112%, with a mean coefficient of variation of 8.1.

cell-free system mimicking the phagolysosomes of ceUs as well as in human lung epithelial type II A549 cells. Levels of BAI in the US Geological Survey (USGS) database of coal quality were calculated using a model taking into account chemical interactions of pyrite, sulfuric acid, calcite, and total iron. Results: The CWP prevalence in the three c0almine regions ofPA, WV, and UT correlated positively with the content of BAI released in the cell-free system (correlation coefficient r=0.94). The UT coals had very little BAI due to the presence of calcite (CaCO3). Two coal samples with different BAI contents were then selected for cell treatment. The coal from the PA coalmine with a high BAI induced activator protein-I, a transcription factor responsive to oxidative stress. In contrast, the coai from the UT coalmine without BAI had no effect. Intedeukin-6 (IL-6), a pro-inflammatory cytokine, was significantly increased and persisted in cells treated with the PA coal. The IL-6 level in cells treated with UT coal was increased but reverted to the control level shortly. Using the linear fit of CWP prevalence and the calculated BAI in the USGS coal database, we have derived and mapped seven thousands coal samples' pneumoconiotic potencies. Conclusions: Our results suggest that a sustainable level of oxidative stress induced by BAI in the PA and WV coals may be responsible for cellular damage, thus leading to the observed high prevalence of lung disease in the PA and WV coal miners. Levels of BAI in the coals may be used for the prediction of coal's toxicity, even before large-scale mining.