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Background: Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) targeted at SARS‐CoV‐2 have remarkably affected the circulation of other respiratory pathogens, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). This study aimed to assess the changes in epidemiological and clinical characteristics of RSV infections in hospitalized children before and during the pandemic in Suzhou, China. Methods: We prospectively enrolled children aged < 18 years who were hospitalized in Soochow University Affiliated Children's Hospital with acute lower respiratory infection (ALRIs) from January 2018 to July 2022. Changes in epidemiological and clinical characteristics of RSV infections were analyzed. Results: Compared with the same period in 2018–2019, the difference in the overall positive rate of RSV was not statistically significant in 2020, while it increased significantly in 2021 (11.8% [662/5621] vs. 20.8% [356/1711], p < 0.001) and 2022 (9.0% [308/3406] vs. 18.9% [129/684], p < 0.001). Specifically, the positive rates declined considerably from October to December 2020 but sharply increased during the summer of 2021. Compared to prepandemic period, RSV infections were more frequently observed in older children during the pandemic. RSV‐positive children exhibited milder clinical characteristics during the COVID‐19 pandemic, including decreased proportion of patients with hospital stay ≥ 11 days (10.3% vs. 6.7%, p < 0.05), less requirement for oxygen therapy (13.7% vs. 6.9%, p < 0.001), and fewer cases of polypnea (12.2% vs. 9.7%, p < 0.05) and wheeze (50.1% vs. 42.9%, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The implementation of multilayered NPIs targeted at COVID‐19 has affected the activity of RSV. Ongoing monitoring of RSV is warranted as the changing RSV epidemiology can provide valuable insights for future healthcare system planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approval of nirsevimab brings light to reducing the heavy disease burden caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Considering the seasonality of RSV, the timing of administrating monoclonal antibody (mAb) is critical to maximize health utility. This study aimed to model and seek the optimal seasonal mAb administration strategy for preventing RSV-associated hospitalization. Age-season specific hospitalization rates for RSV-associated acute lower respiratory infection (RSV-ALRI) were estimated from a hospital-based birth cohort. Using these rates, we simulated and evaluated the effect of diverse mAb administration strategies on preventing RSV-ALRI hospitalization. Optimal strategies were selected based on their effectiveness and relative cost-effectiveness. Compared with the year-round strategy of administration mAb at birth for all children, 291 out of the 854 candidate strategies, featuring diverse administration timing and age thresholds, demonstrated a greater number of averted RSV-ALRI hospitalizations and a lower number needed to treat (NNT). The NNT represents the number of mAb doses needed to prevent one case of RSV-ALRI hospitalization. Among the 291 strategies, administration mAb to children born in July-January or August-January at birth and administrating to the remaining <12 months old children in September, exhibited the highest increase in averted RSV-ALRI hospitalizations than the year-round strategy, with a magnitude of 23 %, while also achieve an 18 % reduction in NNT. Administrating monoclonal antibodies to children born in July to January at birth, and administrating to the remaining <1-year-old children in September or October would be the optimal seasonal mAb administration strategy for children in Suzhou, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a symbol cyclic shift-based discrete Fourier transform (SCS-DFT) precoding for orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in the visible light communication (VLC) system. The proposed scheme effectively mitigates the channel fading effect of edge subcarriers caused by inter-symbol interference (ISI) when there is no cyclic prefix (CP) in OTFS. In addition, only a training sequence (TS) symbol can realize channel estimation and equalization, and it can reduce the implementation complexity. The experimental results demonstrated that, compared with the conventional OTFS modulation, the proposed SCS-DFT OTFS can enhance the transmission performance while maintaining the high spectral efficiency of the VLC system. • We proposed a symbol cyclic shift-based DFT precoding scheme for OTFS-VLC systems. • This scheme can equalize the SNR and mitigate fading of edge subcarriers caused by ISI. • This scheme enhances performance while maintaining high spectral efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We have experimentally achieved 3-Tbit/s net rate PS-PAM8 signal transmission over 20-m MMF by combing 4 modes MDM with 8 carriers WDM. • NN equalizer obtains 1.6-dB receiver sensitivity gain at the 0.9-NGMI SD-FEC threshold. • The result shows the superiority of the proposed MISO NN equalizer in eliminating both the modal crosstalk and nonlinear distortions in the MDM system. We experimentally demonstrate 8-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) signal transmission in 4 modes over 20-m multimode fiber (MMF) in an intensity modulation and direct-detection (IM/DD) system. By combining the probabilistic shaping (PS) technique with high order pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) format, 40-GBaud PS-PAM8 signal transmission in the WDM + MDM IM/DD system achieves a total net bit rate of 3-Tbit/s. With the aid of a multiple input single output (MISO) neural network (NN) equalizer, we obtain a 1.6-dB receiver sensitivity gain compared with traditional digital signal processing (DSP), including multiple input multiple outputs (MIMO) time domain equalizer (TDE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We proposed and experimentally demonstrated an ensemble learning scheme based on cascaded residual neural network (CRNN) to enhance the robustness of machine learning (ML) based visible light positioning (VLP) systems under model-shake. The training complexity of the CRNN is low. Experimental results reveal that with an acceptable complexity cost, the positioning accuracy under model-shake can be optimized from 8.31 cm to 2.04 cm and 1.56 cm with the proposed 2nd CRNN and 3rd CRNN, respectively. • Proposed and experimentally demonstrated a scheme based on CRNN to enhance the robustness of ML-based VLP systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an enhanced two-dimension (2-D) color space diversity technique using red, green, and blue light emitting diode (RGB LED) overlapping is proposed and investigated experimentally to improve the system reliability for optical camera communication (OCC). The transmitter adopts an 8-color shift keying (8-CSK) modulation scheme with two RGB LED overlapping. The receiver uses a camera to form a multi-input single-output system to improve capacity. Different mapping methods are proposed and compared in 2-D YCbCr and CIElab color space to avoid the influence of brightness in conventional 3-D RGB space. Besides, clustering-based demapping is applied in the OCC system to transfer the color information into a data stream. The experimental results show that the mapping scheme with the maximum Euclidean distance in 2-D YCbCr color space has the best bit error rate (BER) performance. Compared with the conventional 3-D RGB color space, the proposed enhanced 2-D YCbCr color space diversity has a higher resolution to signal, which can realize 1.46 dB Q-factor improvement at an illumination of 660 lux. In addition, it can achieve a net data rate of 11.52 kb/s and maintain a 7% forward error correction (FEC) requirement even under low illumination. It is verified that the proposed scheme is a potential application for capacity and performance improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, to overcome the fading effect of the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-based visible light communication (OFDM-VLC) system, a joint preprocessing scheme based on orthogonal circulant matrix transform (OCT) pre-coding and pre-emphasis is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Also, the experimental results show that compared with single OCT pre-coding or pre-emphasis method, the joint preprocessing scheme can efficiently improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the OFDM-VLC system. To the best of our knowledge, the effectiveness of the joint pre-coding and pre-emphasis scheme is verified for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By controlling the on–off state of light emitting diode (LED), data can be modulated onto the visible light. By exploiting the rolling shutter effect (RSE) of camera image sensor, the data can be demodulated from the light correspondingly. Based on the principle, a kind of camera-based visible light communication (CVLC) system can be realized by using LED as transmitter and using mobile-phone camera as receiver. In this paper, to enhance the transmission performance and reduce the implementation complexity, a spaced color shift keying (SCSK) modulation scheme is proposed for RSE-based CVLC system. Meanwhile, a demodulation scheme based on HSB color space is proposed correspondingly. By using a commercial RGB-LED and a common smartphone, a CVLC system based on the SCSK scheme is experimentally demonstrated. The experiment results show that under the bit-error rate (BER) of 3.8e−3, the SCSK based VLC system can achieve a data capacity of up to 1.28 kbits per photo, although there are no clock recovery and blooming mitigation processes in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate power load prediction is an important guide for power system planning and operation. High‐ or low‐load prediction results will affect the operation of the power system. In recent years, deep learning technology represented by convolution neural network (CNN) and transformer has been proved to be suitable for power load prediction. This paper proposes a new short‐term power load hybrid forecasting model, called channel enhanced attention (CEA) and temporal convolutional network (TCN)‐based transformer comprehensive forecasting model. This method combines the short‐term feature extraction ability of TCN with the long‐term dependent capture ability of transformer for short‐term load forecasting. And the CEA designed in this study is added to improve the prediction accuracy. On the same dataset, the designed model predicts power load mean square errors of 0.056 and 0.146 for the next 24 h and the next week, respectively, which is 0.002 to 0.073 and 0.012 to 0.024 lower than the baseline model. The experimental results show that the hybrid short‐term power load prediction model proposed in this paper is significantly better than the existing methods. The predicted curve is in agreement with the actual charge change, which provides a good guidance for short‐term power load prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex interactions between cellulose molecules and small molecules in Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES) systems can lead to dramatic changes in the structure of the hydrogen bond network in cellulose. However, the mechanism of interaction between cellulose and solvent molecules and the mechanism of evolution of hydrogen bond network are still unclear. In this study, cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) were treated with DESs based on oxalic acid as hydrogen bond donors (HBD), and choline chloride, betaine, and N -methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) as hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA). The changes in the properties and microstructure of CNFs during treatment with the three types of solvents were investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results showed that the crystal structures of CNFs were not changed during the process, but the hydrogen bond network evolved, increasing the crystallinity and crystallite size. Further analysis of the fitted peaks of FTIR and generalized two-dimensional correlation spectra (2DCOS) revealed that all three hydrogen bonds were disrupted to different degrees, the relative content changed, and evolved strictly in a certain order. These findings indicate that the evolution of hydrogen bond networks in nanocellulose has certain regularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The factors for the formation and scales of microstructures were investigated. • The rebound coefficient of droplet on the achieved surface reached 82.85%. • The sample prepared by LACE has excellent drag reduction performance. Superhydrophobic surface gives prominence to its application potential in the field of anti-adhesion and drag reduction in the microchannels, because of its low adhesion and high repulsion to water. In the paper, nanosecond pulse laser ablation-chemical etching (LACE) process is proposed to prepare patterned superhydrophobic surface with the microstructures which are orientation-controllable, period-adjustable and height-manageable on the 316L stainless steel. It is found that the laser scanning speed is the prerequisite for the formation of microstructures, the average laser power and laser scanning interval are important factors affecting the period and height of microstructures. The rebound coefficient of water droplets can reach 82.85% on the superhydrophobic surface with a contact angle of 154.7°(±0.6°), which indicates that the achieved surface has exceptional repellency to water. The drag reduction test experiments demonstrate that it can effectively reduce the flow resistance in the microchannels without drag reducing agents, and the maximum drag reduction rate can reach 29.83%. The work demonstrates that the LACE process, preparing superhydrophobic surfaces with the microstructures and manipulating its structural parameters with multi-dimension, can be reliably applied to drag reduction and water repellency fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Developed a bidirectional ABMIL-GCN framework to capture contextual information of WSI to predict the labels efficiently and accurately. • Embeds the spatial location of neighboring instances for each patch can reduce the false negative and false positive rate of instances through inter-patch message passing mechanism. • Flooding regularization is applied in the framework to prevent further optimization of the training loss when it reaches flood level • The high-precision interpretable heat map of WSI can be obtained by using the gradient of highly correlated node groups in the graph. Whole slide image (WSI) classification and lesion localization within giga-pixel slide are challenging tasks in computational pathology that requires context-aware representations of histological features to adequately infer nidus. The existing weakly supervised learning methods mainly treat different locations in the slide as independent regions and cannot learn potential nonlinear interactions between instances based on i.i.d assumption, resulting in the model unable to effectively utilize context-ware information to predict the labels of WSIs and locate the region of interest (ROI). Here, we propose an interpretable classification model named bidirectional Attention-based Multiple Instance Learning Graph Convolutional Network (ABMIL-GCN), which hierarchically aggregates context-aware features of instances into a global representation in a topology fashion to predict the slide labels and localize the region of lymph node metastasis in WSIs. We verified the superiority of this method on the Camelyon16 dataset, and the results show that the average predicted ACC and AUC of the proposed model after flooding optimization can reach 90.89% and 0.9149, respectively. The average accuracy and ACC score are improved by more than 7% and 4% compared with the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. The results demonstrate that context-aware GCN outperforms existing weakly supervised learning methods by introducing spatial correlations between the neighbor image patches, which also addresses the 'accuracy-interpretability trade-off' problem. The framework provides a novel paradigm for the clinical application of computer-aided diagnosis and intelligent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a new absorbent cotton hydrophilic interaction chromatographic column (HILIC) for N- and O-glycans and their derivatives' purification. • The new method is suitable for chemically or enzymatically released glycans. • The method allows for a better recovery of N-glycans than solid phase extraction (SPE) columns. • The method can be used for the purification of O-glycans released by β -elimination. • The method can successfully detect glycans in complex biological samples. Mass spectrum (MS) is one of the most commonly used tools for qualitative and quantitative analysis of glycans. However, due to the complexity of biological samples and the low ionization efficiency of glycans, these need to be purified and derivatized prior to MS analysis. Existing purification strategies require a combination of multiple methods and are cumbersome to operate. Here, we propose a new method for the purification of glycoprotein N/O-glycans and their derivatives using a hand-packed absorbent cotton hydrophilic interaction chromatography column (HILIC). The method's reliability and applicability were verified by purifying N/O-glycans and the derivatives of standard glycoproteins, such as chicken albumin and porcine stomach mucin. Stable isotope labelling was used to compare the glycans' recovery following different purification methods. Absorbent cotton HILIC was also successfully applied for the analysis of human serum and fetal bovine serum glycoprotein N-glycans. Finally, testing revealed high binding capacity (9 mg/g−1 maltohexaose/absorbent cotton) and good recovery (average recovery was 91.7%) of glycans. Compared with traditional procedures, the proposed purification method offers considerable advantages, such as simplicity, high efficiency, economy, universality, and broad applicability for the pretreatment of glycans and their derivatives in biological samples prior to MS analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, multi-band constant amplitude zero autocorrelation sequence (MB-CAZAC) precoding combined with the 128/64/32/16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-based visible light communication (OFDM-VLC) system. By using the MB-CAZAC precoding, it can equalize the uneven signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reduce the PAPR compared with the traditional OFDM system. The experimental results show that the 128/64/32/16-QAM MB-CAZAC precoding outperforms the traditional scheme at different data rates for OFDM-VLC system. The spectral efficiency (SE) of the proposed scheme is up to 5.28 b/s/Hz. Meanwhile, it can be successfully transmitted 50-cm free-space at the bit error rate (BER) of 3 . 82 × 1 0 − 4 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an adaptive orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme with 128/64/32/16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and orthogonal circulant matrix transform (OCT) precoding is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for a visible laser light communication (VLLC) system with a cost-effective 450-nm blue-light laser diode (LD). The performance of OCT precoding is compared with conventional the adaptive Discrete Fourier Transform-spread (DFT-spread) OFDM scheme, 32 QAM OCT precoding OFDM scheme, 64 QAM OCT precoding OFDM scheme and adaptive OCT precoding OFDM scheme. The experimental results show that OCT precoding can achieve a relatively flat signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) curve, and it can provide performance improvement in bit error rate (BER). Furthermore, the BER of the proposed OFDM signal with a raw bit rate 5.04 Gb/s after 5-m free space transmission is less than 20% of soft-decision forward error correlation (SD-FEC) threshold of 2.4 × 10 −2 , and the spectral efficiency (SE) of 4.2 bit/s/Hz can be successfully achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an effective bit-loading combined with adaptive LDPC code rate algorithm is proposed and investigated in software reconfigurable multiband UWB over fiber system. To compensate the power fading and chromatic dispersion for the high frequency of multiband OFDM UWB signal transmission over standard single mode fiber (SSMF), a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) with negative chirp parameter is utilized. In addition, the negative power penalty of −1 dB for 128 QAM multiband OFDM UWB signal are measured at the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limitation of 3.8 × 10 −3 after 50 km SSMF transmission. The experimental results show that, compared to the fixed coding scheme with the code rate of 75%, the signal-to-noise (SNR) is improved by 2.79 dB for 128 QAM multiband OFDM UWB system after 100 km SSMF transmission using ALCR algorithm. Moreover, by employing bit-loading combined with ALCR algorithm, the bit error rate (BER) performance of system can be further promoted effectively. The simulation results present that, at the HD-FEC limitation, the value of Q factor is improved by 3.93 dB at the SNR of 19.5 dB over 100 km SSMF transmission, compared to the fixed modulation with uncoded scheme at the same spectrum efficiency (SE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, dual-mode index modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DMIM-OFDM) enabled by orthogonal circulant matrix transform (OCT) precoding is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in visible light communication (VLC) systems. Since all available subcarriers are active to convey information bits, DMIM-OFDM can achieve higher spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) than index modulation OFDM (IM-OFDM). In addition, to mitigate the uneven frequency-selective fading between different subblocks, channel-independent OCT precoding is applied to all subblocks to equalize the overall signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The experimental results show that the DMIM-OFDM with OCT precoding outperforms the traditional IM-OFDM, DMIM-OFDM without precoding, and with DFT precoding at different SEs. For DMIM-OFDM VLC system with SE of 4.5 bit/s/Hz, by using OCT precoding, the receiver sensitivity improvement of 3 dB can be achieved at the bit error rate (BER) of 3.8e−3 after 3.5-m free-space transmission. • This paper proposes a novel DMIM-OFDM scheme enabled by OCT precoding and experimentally demonstrated in practical VLC systems. • Moreover, the OCT precoding is utilized to equalize the uneven SNR between different subcarriers, and further improve the BER performance of DMIM-OFDM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an end-to-end ECG signal classification algorithm based on a novel segmentation strategy and 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to aid the classification of ECG signals and alleviate the workload of physicians. The ECG segmentation strategy named R-R-R strategy (i.e., retaining ECG data between the R peaks just before and after the current R peak) is used for segmenting the original ECG data into segments to train and test the 1D CNN models. The novel strategy mimics physicians in scanning ECG to a greater extent, and maximizes the inherent information of ECG segments for diagnosis. The performance of the proposed end to end ECG signal classification algorithm was verified with the ECG signals from 48 records in the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. When the heartbeat types were divided into the five classes recommended by clinicians, i.e., normal beat, left bundle branch block beat, right bundle branch block beat, premature ventricular contraction, and paced beat, the classification accuracy, the area under the curve (AUC), the sensitivity, and the F1-score achieved by the proposed model were 0.9924, 0.9994, 0.99 and 0.99, respectively. When the heartbeat types were divided into six classes recommended by clinicians, i.e., normal beat, left bundle branch block beat, right bundle branch block beat, premature ventricular contraction, paced beat and other beats, the beat classification accuracy, the AUC, the sensitivity, and the F1-score achieved by the model reached 0.9702, 0.9966, 0.97, and 0.97, respectively. When the heartbeat types were divided into five classes recommended by the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), i.e., normal beat, supraventricular ectopic beat, ventricular ectopic beat, fusion beat, and unknown beat, the beat classification accuracy, the sensitivity, and the F1-score were 0.9745, 0.97, and 0.97, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is a limited amount of data in China on the disease burden of respiratory syncytial virus‐ (RSV) associated acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among young children. This study aimed to estimate the hospitalization rate of RSV‐associated ALRI (RSV‐ALRI) among children aged 0–59 months in Suzhou, China. Methods: All cases from children hospitalized with ALRI who were aged 0–59 months in Suzhou University Affiliated Children's Hospital during January 2010 to December 2014 were retrospectively identified. Detailed diagnosis and treatment data were collected by reviewing each individual's medical chart. In accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) influenza disease burden estimation, the hospitalization rate of RSV‐ALRI among children aged 0–59 months in Suzhou, China, was then estimated. Results: Out of the 28,209 ALRI cases, 19,317 (68.5%) were tested for RSV, of which the RSV positive proportion was 21.3% (4107/19,317). The average hospitalization rate of RSV‐ALRI for children aged 0–59 months was 14 (95% confidence interval [CI]:14–14)/1000 children years, and that for children aged 0–5, 6–11, 12–23, and 24–59 months were 70 (95% CI: 67–73), 31 (95% CI: 29–33), 11 (95% CI: 10–12), and 3 (95% CI: 3–3)/1000 children years, respectively. Conclusion: A considerable degree of RSV‐ALRI hospitalization exists among children aged 0–59 months, particularly in those under 1 year of age. Therefore, an effective monoclonal antibody or vaccine is urgently needed to address the substantial hospitalization burden of RSV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sampling frequency offset (SFO) between digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) will severely degrade the transmission performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based visible light communication (VLC) system. In this paper, a novel SFO mitigation scheme based on rotated K-means clustering is proposed, which differs from traditional SFO compensation based on phase estimation and feedback. When SFO causes the constellation points to deviate from their original positions, this scheme can adaptively update the clustering centroids to achieve the correct symbol demapping without phase estimation and compensation. Experimental results indicate that after 3.5 m free-space transmission, the SFO tolerance of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) can reach ± 130 and ± 65 ppm with a bit error rate (BER) less than the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold of 3.8e−3, respectively. • A novel scheme for SFO mitigation is proposed with clustering algorithm of machine learning. • Phase estimation and compensation is not required compared to conventional SFO mitigation schemes. • The proposed scheme is relatively robust to imperfect channel estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estuary wetland in the coastal zone faces the risk of ecological integrity loss because of global environmental change and human activities. The evaluation of the estuary ecological integrity and its variation provides the basis for the environmental management of estuary wetland and coastal zone. In this study, we generalised the previous studies, extended the concept of estuary wetland ecological integrity and developed a multi-scale evaluation index system including environmental quality, biology and ecology, landscape pattern and ecosystem management (EBLE) based on dissipation theory. We applied the method to evaluate the ecological integrity in Jiulongjiang estuary in 2004 and 2009. The result indicated that the IEBLE scores in Jiulongjiang estuary were 0.64 in 2004 and 0.58 in 2009, and the IEQ, IBE, ILP and IEM scores were 0.72, 0.64, 0.57 and 0.60 in 2004 and 0.56, 0.62, 0.60 and 0.51 in 2009, respectively. The comprehensive scores had decreased in the past five years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Based on the characteristics of hierarchical query and radial traversal using breadth first search algorithm, a virtual real mapping scheme for intelligent substation fiber optic circuit is proposed. The breadth first search algorithm is used to traverse and visualize the fiber optic circuit. The fault area is divided according to the mapping relationship between the virtual and real circuits, and D-S evidence theory is used for accurate fault location. The fault type is identified using multi-source information such as device port status and virtual circuit fault characteristics through the evidence table method. • This article utilizes the advantage of intelligent substations providing massive information to enhance the control ability of operation and maintenance personnel over secondary equipment and fiber optic circuits, promoting the development of intelligent substation secondary equipment operation and maintenance. • This scheme promotes the healthy development of intelligent substations and meets the emerging application demands in secondary equipment operation and maintenance. • The fiber optic loop virtual real mapping scheme will provide rich data resources for intelligent substations. Most communication in smart substations uses fiber optic connections to connect secondary equipment now. Due to the lack of intuitive connection between devices, it leads to difficulties in monitoring and relay protection. In order to solve the problems of visualizing, monitoring, and diagnosing secondary virtual circuits in the operation and maintenance of intelligent substations, a comprehensive monitoring technology system for secondary virtual circuits in intelligent substations is constructed. Firstly, a breadth first search algorithm is proposed to sort out the physical connection relationships between secondary devices, which achieves visual display of secondary virtual circuits. Then, based on deep search fault inference algorithms, it can diagnose and locate the fault area. Through the massive data source of intelligent substations, multiple information fusion can be achieved. By applying the D-S evidence theory, precise fault localization can be achieved. Finally, the proof table method is used to determine the type of fault and to meet the practical application requirements for the operation and maintenance of secondary equipment in intelligent substations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting labels of gigapixel whole-slide images (WSIs) and localizing regions of interest (ROIs) with high precision are of great interest in computational pathology. The existing methods are mainly based on multi-instance learning (MIL) approach and its variants. However, such algorithms primarily treat the instances of slides as independent samples, which cannot effectively describe the relationship between instances in WSI. This would cause only a subset of high-score instances can be located, which is not applicable in clinical scenarios. Context-aware attention fusion adaptive hypergraph convolution network (CAF-AHGCN) is proposed to adaptively establish the local and global topology of cropped image patches spatially arranged in the slides. The framework combines hypergraph embedding representation with attention-based MIL pooling aggregation in a hierarchical feature fusion manner, which fully preserves high-order spatial structural correlations of the patches to make a slide-level prediction. Here, an adaptive hypergraph convolutional network is designed to dynamically adjust the correlation strength between the hypergraph nodes as the model goes deeper. Poly-1 loss and residual connection are also applied to prevent over-smoothing and improve the generalization ability of deep CAF-AHGCN model. We verified the superiority of CAF-AHGCN on two datasets, CAMELYON16 and TCGA-NSCLC. The results showed that the ACC, AUC and F1 score predicted by our model outperform other state-of-the-art algorithms on both datasets. The heat maps obtained by CAF-AHGCN are highly consistent with the pixel-wise annotated label of the WSI. The results show that CAF-AHGCN not only achieves high-accuracy label prediction for WSI, but also provides patch-wise human-interpretable features in ROI localization heatmaps. The outstanding performance of CAF-AHGCN framework provides a new perspective for future clinical applications of computer-aided diagnosis and intelligent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sampling frequency offset (SFO) will result in phase rotation, inter-channel interference, and inter-symbol interference, which can seriously degrade the transmission performance of the asynchronous direct-detection optical OFDM (DDO-OFDM). In this paper, we study a simple and overhead-free SFO blind estimation technique in a DDO-OFDM system. The key parameters in this technique are optimized by theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and experiments. A simplified method of the SFO blind estimation is also proposed to further reduce the hardware implementation complexity. The accuracy and stability of the SFO estimation are experimentally investigated in the real-time asynchronous DDO-OFDM transmission system. The results indicate that the SFO estimation accuracy can be within ± 1.5 ppm and shows high stability even at an SFO of up to 200 ppm after 20-km standard single-mode fiber transmission. • A simple and overhead-free SFO blind estimation technique is proposed. • The FPGA-based real-time SFO estimation system is designed and implemented. • The SFO estimation accuracy of the proposed scheme can be within ±1.5 ppm. • The FPGA-based real-time system shows high stability even under SFO up to 200 ppm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) has been available since 2017, but only via the private market with low uptake rate. We assessed the direct effectiveness of PCV13 against community acquired pneumonia (CAP) associated with PCV13 serotype carriage (VT-CAP). We conducted an observational cohort study of children born during 12-Dec-2016 to 30-Nov-2018 identified in the Suzhou Centers for Disease Control vaccine registry database, and who had at least one inpatient or outpatient record at the Suzhou University Affiliated Children's hospital (SCH) health-information-system (HIS) database. The vaccine registry cohort was followed through the HIS database through 30-Jun-2019 to identify hospitalized VT-CAP. Pneumococci were isolated from deep upper respiratory aspirates and serotyped with Quellung reactions. We included 139,127 children of whom 9024 (6.5%) received 1 + PCV13 doses (95.8% received 2 + doses). Within the total cohort, we identified 548 children hospitalized at SCH for VT-CAP, of whom 10 had received 2 + PCV13 doses. Adjusted for demographics, receipt of other childhood vaccines, and underlying medical conditions, the first visit vaccine effectiveness among children who had received 2 + PCV13 doses was 60.9% (95% CI: 25.8% to 79.4%) for VT-CAP and 17.9% (95% CI: 5.5% to 28.6%) for clinical CAP. Incidence rate reductions per 100,000 child-years of observation for all visits were 208 (95% CI: 118 to 298) for VT-CAP and 720 (95% CI: 304 to 1135) for clinical CAP. PCV13 was protective against hospitalized VT-CAP and clinical CAP with large associated incidence rate reductions among children living in Suzhou, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further investigate the feasibility of the digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms (e.g., symbol timing synchronization, channel estimation and equalization, and sampling clock frequency offset (SCFO) estimation and compensation) for real-time optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system, 2.97-Gb/s real-time high-definition video signal parallel transmission is experimentally demonstrated in OFDM-based short-reach intensity-modulated direct-detection (IM-DD) systems. The experimental results show that, in the presence of ∼12 ppm SCFO between transmitter and receiver, the adaptively modulated OFDM signal transmission over 20 km standard single-mode fiber with an error bit rate less than 1 × 10 −9 can be achieved by using only DSP-based small SCFO estimation and compensation method without utilizing forward error correction technique. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, we successfully demonstrate that the video signal at a bit rate in excess of 1-Gb/s transmission in a simple real-valued inverse fast Fourier transform and fast Fourier transform based IM-DD optical OFDM system employing a directly modulated laser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R5923 --> 893.7 --> Salt‐sensitive hypertension is characterized by marked activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Previous studies have consistently demonstrated that increased excitability or activity of pre‐sympathetic neurons in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) contribute to the increased blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) in salt‐sensitive hypertension; however, the underlying mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. Small conductance calcium‐activated potassium (SK) channels act as negative feedback regulators of neuronal excitability in PVN neurons, and inhibition of SK channel function in the PVN is known to augment SNA and arterial blood pressure. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that reduced SK channel function in the PVN contributes to sympathoexcitation in Dahl salt‐sensitive rats fed a high salt (HS, 4%) diet compared to a normal salt (NS, 0.4%) diet. Sympathoexcitatory responses to bilateral microinjection of the SK channel blocker apamin into the PVN were assessed in anesthetized 12–14‐week‐old male Dahl salt‐sensitive rats fed a high salt (n=7) or a normal salt (n=6) diet for 4 weeks. Baseline mean arterial pressure (MAP) was significantly elevated in rats fed a HS diet compared to NS (HS 129±4 vs. NS 114±4 mmHg, p<0.05), however baseline heart rate (HR) was not different between groups (HS 411±10 vs. NS 385±13 beats/min, p=0.07). Bilateral microinjection of apamin (12.5pmol, 50nL) into the PVN significantly increased splanchnic SNA in both HS and NS rats compared to baseline, however responses were significantly attenuated in HS rats compared to NS (HS 97±22% vs. NS 249±57%, p<0.01). In contrast, increases in MAP in response to PVN microinjection of apamin were similar between HS and NS rats (HS 24±4 vs. NS 29±4 mmHg, p=0.25), whereas HR responses were variable but not significantly different between groups (HS ‐8.5±9 vs. NS 7.5±7 beats/min, p=0.11). Next, we utilized qPCR to assess mRNA expression of SK1, SK2, and SK3 channels in PVN tissue from HS (n=5) and NS (n=6) rats. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in mRNA levels of either SK1, SK2, or SK3 channels between HS and NS fed rats. In summary, increases in splanchnic SNA due to PVN SK channel blockade with apamin were significantly attenuated in Dahl salt‐sensitive rats fed a HS diet, whereas there was no difference in SK channel expression between rats fed a HS vs. NS diet. These results suggest that dysfunction of SK channels in the PVN, but not decreased expression, contributes to sympathoexcitation Dahl salt‐sensitive rats fed a HS diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R2722 --> 561.2 --> Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex psychiatric disorder triggered by a terrifying event, causing severe anxiety and nightmares. Studies showed that patients with PTSD have increased risk of cardiovascular disease. However, the effect of PTSD on blood pressure remains unraveled. In this study, we test the hypothesis that PTSD alters expression of arginine vasopressin (AVP) and orexin system components and therefore increases blood pressure. Single prolonged stress (SPS) protocol including 2 hours of restraint, a 20‐min forced swimming and exposure to diethyl ether until loss of consciousness was used to create a PTSD model. Eight‐week‐old male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were divided into two groups and treated with or without SPS, then all rats were single‐housed and remained undisturbed for 7 days. Their blood pressure (BP) and heart rates (HR) were recorded by radio telemetry transmitter system (Data Science International) prior to the treatment as baseline, and 1‐ day, and 7‐day post the treatment. The data showed that SPS significantly increased BP (ΔBP: 8.384 ± 1.187 mmHg, N=6 P<0.05) and HR (ΔHR: 32.88 ± 9.149 beats/min, N=6 P<0.05) compared to control rats (ΔBP: 2.346 ± 0.9324 mmHg, ΔHR: ‐1.503 ± 5.960 beats/min, N=8) on day 1 post treatment, but no significance difference was observed in BP and HR on day 7 compared to their own baseline and between SPS and control groups. To investigate whether AVP and orexin systems participate in PTSD development, we examined paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and adrenal gland AVP‐ and orexin receptor 1 (OX1R) and orexin receptor 2 (OX2R) expression in both SD male and female rats with or without SPS at day 7. Our data showed that PVN AVP mRNA levels were increased by 2‐fold in the SPS group compared to control in male rats (P<0.05) but this change was not observed in female rats. No changes were observed in PVN OX1R and OX2R mRNA levels between SPS and control rats in both males and females. Peripheral orexin receptors' protein levels were altered but showed inconsistency in male and female rats: western blot data showed that adrenal gland OX1R protein levels were increased in the SPS group (control: 1.000 ± 0.07424 N=5 vs SPS: 1.531 ± 0.2016 N=5; P<0.05) in male rats, while OX2R protein levels were decreased in female rats in female rats (control: 1.000 ± 0.01025 N=5 vs SPS: 0.8840 ± 0.04533 N=6; P<0.05). Renal OX1R was also increased (control: 1.000 ± 0.02794 N=3 vs SPS: 1.374 ± 0.1385 N=3; P<0.06) in female rats under SPS. ELISA assay showed that plasma orexin A levels were increased in female rats under SPS (control: 1.000 ± 0.1600 pg/mL N=3 vs SPS: 1.561 ± 0.1262 pg/mL; N=3 P<0.05) but not in male rats. These results suggested that the central AVP system and peripheral orexin system may play a role in PTSD‐related high blood pressure development, and the peripheral orexin system may mediate stress response of female rats more than male rats. These molecular differences between SD male and female rats may also help to answer why females and males showed different responses to trauma. Further study will continue to find the PTSD‐sensitized hypertensive model and investigate specific functions of AVP and orexin system in PTSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing-based passive optical network (OFDM-PON) with low-cost direct detection is the current research focuses of access networks. It can realize multi-dimensional bandwidth allocation based on subcarriers and time slots. In general, the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) with Hermitian symmetric (HS) mapped symbols is applied to generate the real-valued baseband signal for intensity modulation. However, only half of the subcarriers can be employed to carry user data, while the other half are modulated by the corresponding conjugate data. Therefore, both IFFT and FFT are not fully utilized in HS-OFDM systems. Under the same bandwidth granularity (data subcarriers) and data transmission rate, the non-HS OFDM (NHS-OFDM) can reduce IFFT/FFT size by half. The hardware implementation and power consumption will be significantly reduced compared to the HS-OFDM. In this paper, we design and implement the baseband HS/NHS-OFDM transceivers based on field programmable gate array chips and data converters. On-chip resource usage and power consumption are analyzed and compared. It shows that the NHS-OFDM transmitter (receiver) can save up to 58% (58%) multipliers, 46.8% (41.7%) registers, and 48% (42.9%) look-up tables. About 11.9% (19.6%) of on-chip power consumption is reduced for the transmitter (receiver). In addition, the two real-time baseband transceivers are comparatively investigated in a directly-modulated laser-based direct detection transmission system. The bit error rate (BER) performance after 20 km standard single-mode fiber transmission is measured with both offline and real-time digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms. It exhibits that the NHS-OFDM system's power penalty is negligible at the BER of 3.8e−3, compared to the HS-OFDM. Moreover, the real-time receivers have a similar BER performance to corresponding offline ones. • We designed and implemented low-complexity real-time NHS-OFDM transceivers based FPGA for the low-cost PON. • A modified C2R/R2C conversion method is proposed for the NHS-OFDM transceivers. • A low-complexity timing synchronization method is employed in real-time NHS-OFDM systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Body fluid hyperosmolality has long been known to elicit homeostatic responses that range from drinking to inhibition of salt appetite to release of neurohypohyseal hormones (i.e. vasopressin and oxytocin). More recently, it has been recognized that hyperosmolality is capable of also provoking a significant increase of sympathetic nerve activity (SNA). It has been reported that neurones in the forebrain organum vasculosum laminae terminalis (OVLT) and hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) each contribute significantly to this response. Here we sought to determine if sympathoexcitatory levels of hyperosmolality activate specifically those OVLT neurones that form a monosynaptic pathway to the PVN. First, we established in anaesthetized rats that graded concentrations of hypertonic NaCl (1.5 and 3.0 osmol kg−1) elicit graded increases of renal SNA (RSNA) when infused at a rate of 0.1 ml min−1 through an internal carotid artery (ICA) – the major vascular supply of the forebrain. Next, infusions were performed in conscious rats in which OVLT neurones projecting to the PVN (OVLT-PVN) were retrogradely labelled with cholera toxin subunit B (CTB). Immunostaining of the immediate early gene product Fos and CTB was performed to quantify osmotic activation of OVLT-PVN neurones. ICA infusions of hypertonic NaCl and mannitol each significantly ( P < 0.01–0.001) increased the number of Fos immunoreactive (Fos-ir) neuronal nuclei in the dorsal cap (DC) and lateral margins (LM) of OVLT. In the LM, infusions of 1.5 and 3.0 osmol kg−1 NaCl produced similar increases in the number of Fos-ir neurones. In the DC, these infusions produced graded increases in Fos expression. Among OVLT neurones with axons projecting directly to the PVN (i.e. CTB-ir), graded hypertonic NaCl infusions again produced graded increases in Fos expression and this was observed in both the DC and LM. Although the DC and LM contained a similar number of OVLT-PVN neurones, the proportion of such neurones that expressed Fos-ir in responses to ICA hypertonic NaCl infusions was greater in the DC ( P < 0.001). These findings support the conclusion that PVN-projecting neurones in the DC and LM of OVLT could participate in behavioural, neuroendocrine, and sympathetic nervous system responses to body fluid hyperosmolality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]