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Abstract Background The anti-aging protein Klotho has diverse functions in antioxidative stress and energy metabolism through several pathways. While it has been reported that α-Klotho is downregulated in patients with insulin resistance (IR), the association between Klotho and IR is complex and controversial. The triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index has provided a practical method for assessing IR. With this in mind, our study aimed to investigate the relationship between the TyG index and soluble α-Klotho protein levels in US populations, both with and without diabetes mellitus. Methods This cross-sectional study analyzed data from middle-aged and older participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted between 2007 and 2016. The participants were divided into two groups based on their diabetes mellitus status: those with diabetes and those without diabetes. To evaluate the relationship between the TyG index and the concentration of the α-Klotho protein in each group, a series of survey-weighted multivariable linear regression models were employed. Furthermore, to examine the association between these two variables, multivariable-adjusted restricted cubic spline curves and subgroup analysis were generated. Results The study involved 6,439 adults aged 40 years or older, with a mean age of 57.8 ± 10.9 years. Among them, 1577 (24.5%) had diabetes mellitus. A subgroup analysis indicated that the presence of diabetes significantly affected the relationship between the TyG index and the α-Klotho level. After considering all covariables, regression analysis of the participants without diabetes revealed that the α-Klotho concentration decreased by 32.35 pg/ml (95% CI: -50.07, -14.64) with each one unit increase in TyG (p

Abstract Background Emerging evidence emphasized the role of oral microbiome in oral lichen planus (OLP). To date, no dominant pathogenic bacteria have been identified consistently. It is noteworthy that a decreased abundance of Streptococcus, a member of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in OLP patients has been commonly reported, indicating its possible effect on OLP. This study aims to investigate the composition of LAB genera in OLP patients by high-throughput sequencing, and to explore the possible relationship between them. Methods We collected saliva samples from patients with OLP (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 22) and performed 16 S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing. In addition, the abundance of LAB genera was comprehensively analyzed and compared between OLP and HC group. To verify the expression of Lactococcus lactis, real time PCR was conducted in buccal mucosa swab from another 14 patients with OLP and 10 HC. Furthermore, the correlation was conducted between clinical severity of OLP and LAB. Results OLP and HC groups showed similar community richness and diversity. The members of LAB, Lactococcus and Lactococcus lactis significantly decreased in saliva of OLP cases and negatively associated with OLP severity. In addition, Lactococcus and Lactococcus lactis showed negative relationship with Fusobacterium and Aggregatibacter, which were considered as potential pathogens of OLP. Similarly, compared with healthy controls, the amount of Lactococcus lactis in mucosa lesion of OLP patients was significantly decreased. Conclusions A lower amount of Lactococcus at genus level, Lactococcus lactis at species level was observed in OLP cases and associated with disease severity. Further studies to verify the relationship between LAB and OLP, as well as to explore the precise mechanism is needed.

ObjectiveThe study aimed to compare the differences in the performance of seven session-rating of perceived exertion (RPE)-derived metrics (coupled and uncoupled acute: chronic workload ratio (ACWR), weekly ratio of workload change, monotony, standard deviation of weekly workload change, exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), and robust exponential decreasing index (REDI)) in classifying the performance of an injury prediction model after taking into account the time series (no latency, 5-day latency, and 10-day latency).DesignThe study documented the RPE of eight curlers in their daily training routine for 211 days prior to the Olympic Games.MethodsSeven Session-RPE (sRPE)-derived metrics were used to build models at three time series nodes using logistic regression and multilayer perceptron. Receiver operating characteristic plots were plotted to evaluate the model’s performance.ResultsAmong the seven sRPE-derived metrics multilayer perceptron models, the model without time delay (same-day load corresponding to same-day injury) exhibited the highest average classification performance (86.5%, AUC = 0.773). EMWA and REDI demonstrated the best classification performance (84.4%, p

Accurate localization of objects of interest in remote sensing images (RSIs) is of great significance for object identification, resource management, decision-making and disaster relief response. However, many difficulties, like complex backgrounds, dense target quantities, large-scale variations, and small-scale objects, which make the detection accuracy unsatisfactory. To improve the detection accuracy, we propose an Adaptive Adjacent Context Negotiation Network (A2CN-Net). Firstly, the composite fast Fourier convolution (CFFC) module is given to reduce the information loss of small objects, which is inserted into the backbone network to obtain spectral global context information. Then, the Global Context Information Enhancement (GCIE) module is given to capture and aggregate global spatial features, which is beneficial for locating objects of different scales. Furthermore, to alleviate the aliasing effect caused by the fusion of adjacent feature layers, a novel Adaptive Adjacent Context Negotiation network (A2CN) is given to adaptive integration of multi-level features, which consists of local and adjacent branches, with the local branch adaptively highlighting feature information and the adjacent branch introducing global information at the adjacent level to enhance feature representation. In the meantime, considering the variability in the focus of feature layers in different dimensions, learnable weights are applied to the local and adjacent branches for adaptive feature fusion. Finally, extensive experiments are performed in several available public datasets, including DIOR and DOTA-v1.0. Experimental studies show that A2CN-Net can significantly boost detection performance, with mAP increasing to 74.2% and 79.2%, respectively.

Abstract Outstanding charge transport in molecular crystals is of great importance in modern electronics and optoelectronics. The widely adopted strategies to enhance charge transport, such as restraining intermolecular vibration, are mostly limited to organic molecules, which are nearly inoperative in 2D inorganic molecular crystals currently. In this contribution, charge transport in 2D inorganic molecular crystals is improved by integrating charge‐delocalized Se8 rings as building blocks, where the delocalized electrons on Se8 rings lift the intermolecular orbitals overlap, offering efficient charge transfer channels. Besides, α‐Se flakes composed of charge‐delocalized Se8 rings possess small exciton binding energy. Benefitting from these, α‐Se flake exhibits excellent photodetection performance with an ultrafast response rate (~5 μs) and a high detectivity of 1.08 × 1011 Jones. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the charge transport of 2D inorganic molecular crystals composed of electron‐delocalized inorganic molecules and pave the way for their potential application in optoelectronics.

Abstract Steel defect detection is important for industry production as it is tied to the product quality and production efficiency. However, previous steel defect detection methods based on deep convolutional neural networks heavily rely on large‐scale data for training and tend to have poor generalization ability for a novel defect category. In this paper, a novel few‐shot steel defect detection model based on multi‐scale semantic enhancement representation and mask category information mapping is introduced, where only a few annotated samples are acquired for the novel defect category. More concretely, three main components are built: an information‐guidance enhanced multi‐head detector is proposed to improve the representation of information in meta‐feature maps, a mask category representation module is designed to enhance the category feature representation of the mask region in the support set, and a novel multi‐scale category edge loss function is designed to assist the generation of category reweighting vector. Extensive experiments on the North‐east University few‐shot steel defect data set demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art methods and verify its effectiveness through ablation studies.

ABSTRACTContinuous emergence of new variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), enhanced transmissibility, significant immune escape, and waning immunity call for booster vaccination. We evaluated the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of heterologous booster with a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine SYS6006 versus an active control vaccine in a randomized, open-label, active-controlled phase 3 trial in healthy adults aged 18 years or more who had received two or three doses of SARS-CoV-2 inactivated vaccine in China. The trial started in December 2022 and lasted for 6 months. The participants were randomized (overall ratio: 3:1) to receive one dose of SYS6006 (N = 2999) or an ancestral receptor binding region-based, alum-adjuvanted recombinant protein SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (N = 1000), including 520 participants in an immunogenicity subgroup. SYS6006 boosting showed good safety profiles with most AEs being grade 1 or 2, and induced robust wild-type and Omicron BA.5 neutralizing antibody response on Days 14 and 28, demonstrating immunogenicity superiority versus the control vaccine and meeting the primary objective. The relative vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 of any severity was 51.6% (95% CI, 35.5–63.7) for any variant, 66.8% (48.6–78.5) for BA.5, and 37.7% (2.4–60.3) for XBB, from Day 7 through Month 6. In the vaccinated and infected hybrid immune participants, the relative vaccine efficacy was 68.4% (31.1–85.5) against COVID-19 of any severity caused by a second infection. All COVID-19 cases were mild. SYS6006 heterologous boosting demonstrated good safety, superior immunogenicity and high efficacy against BA.5-associated COVID-19, and protected against XBB-associated COVID-19, particularly in the hybrid immune population.Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: ChiCTR2200066941

PurposeThis study examined the effects of 8-week complex training (CT) with blood flow restriction (BFR) on power output and bar velocity.MethodsTwenty-six healthy male university athletes (age: 19.40 ± 0.88 years) completed three sessions of CT with BFR (CT_BFRT, n = 13) or CT-only (i.e., control) (n = 13) per week (i.e., 24 sessions in total). Before and immediately after intervention, participants completed power measurement as assessed by one-repetition maximum (1RM) squat, squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), and mean power (MP), peak power (PP), mean bar velocity (Bar-MV), and peak bar velocity (Bar-PV) during the half-squat jump.ResultsTwo-way ANOVA models showed significant main effect of time (p < 0.001) but not group (p > 0.89) or interaction (p > 0.37) between group and time on 1RM of the squat, SJ, or CMJ; however, significant interactions were observed in MP (p = 0.03, Cohen’s d = 1.39), PP (p = 0.03, Cohen’s d = 1.14), Bar-MV (p = 0.049, Cohen’s d = 1.26), and Bar-PV (p = 0.01, Cohen’s d = 1.56). The post hoc analyses revealed that MP, PP, Bar-MV, and Bar-PV after CT with BFRT were significantly greater compared to all the other three conditions (i.e., pre-CT_BFRT, pre- and post-CT-only).ConclusionCT with BFR may induce significantly greater improvements in power output and bar velocity during half-squat jump and induce comparable improvements in 1RM of the squat, SJ, and CMJ of males as compared to CT only, suggesting this novel CT with BFR would be a promising strategy to enhance power performance in healthy male university athletes.

Abstract Background Home visits are an important part of home care. With increasing demand and the rapid development of information technology, an increasing number of regions are experimenting with the use of information technology in home visits, hoping to meet the needs of more patients through technological interventions. However, most of the current studies have focused on patient health improvement through home visits, neglecting to consider the actual experience of nurses as service providers in participating in Internet-based programs. Thus, the purpose of this research is to explore what is holding nurses back from participating after the Internet has been added to traditional home visiting programs. Methods This research was designed with an exploratory-descriptive qualitative analysis method. Semistructured interviews were used to collect information on barriers to nurses’ participation in the Internet-based home visiting program. Participants included 16 clinical nurses working in various hospitals in Nanjing, China. The thematic analysis method was used to analyze the information. Results This research identified three themes and twelve subthemes that hinder clinical nurse engagement in the Internet-based home visiting program. The three themes included multiple barriers to individuals, different service modes, and emerging organizational problems. Conclusions As a new form of traditional home visiting program in information society, Internet-based home visiting has many shortcomings in the overall program design and service management specifications. For more patients living at home to receive quality care services, it is necessary to take more effective measures to encourage nurses’ participation at three levels: nurse demand, service process, and organizational management.

Abstract Weakly supervised object detection (WSOD) is becoming increasingly important for computer vision tasks, as it alleviates the burden of manual annotation. Most WSOD techniques rely on multiple instance learning (MIL), which tends to localise the discriminative parts of salient objects instead of the whole object. In addition, network training is often supervised using simple image‐level annotations, without including object quantities or location information. However, this can lead to ambiguous differentiation of object instances, both in terms of location and semantics. To address these issues, propose an end‐to‐end triple critical feature capture network (TCFCNet) for WSOD is proposed. Specifically, a multi‐task branch, which can perform fully supervised classification and regression task, was integrated with a PCL in an end‐to‐end network for refining object locations in an online method. A cyclic parametric dropblock module (CPDM) was then designed to help the detector focus on the contextual information by using cyclic masking techniques to maximise the removal of the discriminative components of an object instance to alleviate the part domination problem. Finally, a feature decoupling module (FDM) is proposed to further reduce the ambiguous distinction of object instances by adaptively constructing robust critical features that adapt to multi‐task branch for classification and regression tasks, which contains a feature enhancement module and task‐specific polarisation functions. Comprehensive experiments are carried out on the challenging Pascal VOC 2007 and VOC 2012 datasets. The proposed method achieves a 54.6% mAP and a 44.3% mAP on the Pascal VOC 2007 and VOC 2012 datasets respectively, showed that our method outperformed existing mainstream techniques by a considerable margin.

Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly heterogeneous cancer, and more effective prognostic markers are needed. Lactic acid has been proved to be an important metabolite involved in cancer development, metastasis, and the tumor microenvironment, affecting the prognosis of patients. The role of lactic acid metabolism regulators (LAMRs) in HCC is still unclear. In this study, we analyzed the status of LAMRs, a gene list containing lactate from Molecular Signatures database, in HCC and consensus clustering was performed based on these LAMRs. Cluster B showed higher infiltrations of immune cells, higher TME scores, and a poorer prognosis. We further constructed a risk score based on DEGs using LASSO and COX regression analysis between two clusters, which could effectively predict the prognosis of TCGA-LIHC patients. The GSE14520 cohort confirmed the result. We also examined the correlation of risk scores with clinical characteristics, genetic mutations, drug sensitivity, immune checkpoint inhibitors(ICIs), and immunotherapy. In conclusion, our findings will facilitate a further understanding of the role of partial lactate metabolism related genes in HCC and suggest a new risk score to predict prognosis.

The harmful substances in tobacco are widely recognized to exert a significant detrimental impact on human health, constituting one of the most substantial global public health threats to date. Tobacco usage also ranks among the principal contributors to cardiovascular ailments, with tobacco being attributed to up to 30% of cardiovascular disease-related deaths in various countries. Cardiovascular disease is influenced by many kinds of pathogenic factors, among them, tobacco usage has led to an increased year by year incidence of cardiovascular disease. Exploring the influencing factors of harmful substances in tobacco and achieving early prevention are important means to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular diseases and maintain health. This article provides a comprehensive review of the effects of smoking on health and cardiovascular diseases.

Abstract The combination of machine vision and grinding robots can be visualized as a collaboration between human eyes and limbs to achieve a deep integration between external perception and execution actions. This combination will give the grinding robot more operability and flexibility, which will enable it to better realize the purpose of replacing humans with machines. In response to the demand for flexible grinding of titanium surface edges proposed by a titanium manufacturer, this paper conducts an in-depth study on the prototype system of vision-guided grinding robots and related applications. Firstly, this study analyzes the shortcomings of the existing robotic regrinding process and achieves the improvement of the regrinding process by introducing machine vision technology. Subsequently, this study further utilizes machine vision and image processing algorithms to achieve high-quality recognition and high-precision positioning of metal surface edges. Then, the D–H parameter model of the regrinding robot is established, and the planning and simulation of the regrinding trajectory is carried out using the position information of the identified regrinding edges. Finally, the simulation-validated grinding trajectory is introduced into the grinding robot, and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by actual grinding experiments.

Since the introduction of the Kolmogorov complexity of binary sequences in the 1960s, there have been significant advancements on the topic of complexity measures for randomness assessment, which are of fundamental importance in theoretical computer science and of practical interest in cryptography. This survey reviews notable research from the past four decades on the linear, quadratic and maximum-order complexities of pseudo-random sequences, and their relations with Lempel–Ziv complexity, expansion complexity, 2-adic complexity and correlation measures.

Objective: To compare the effects of oral intake and nasogastric tube (NG) feeding on nutritional status, complications and survival during neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients. Methods: A total of 61 ​ESCC cases treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy from December 2018 to March 2020 were enrolled, including (38 in oral intake group, and 22 in NG feeding group. Disease characteristics and baseline nutritional markers were collected in both groups. Nutritional status, complication and completion rate of chemoradiotherapy in both groups were evaluated. Results: Compared with the oral intake group, patients in the NG feeding group had a later T stage (P ​= ​0.027) and clinical stage (P ​= ​0.014). The levels of energy intake (P ​= ​0.033), serum prealbumin (P ​ ​0.05). Conclusions: As a safe and effective enteral nutrition approach to improving nutrition, nasogastric tube feeding could increase treatment completion rate and reduce the incidence of ≥ grade 2 esophagitis reaction during neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

Abstract The maintenance of intestinal renewal and repair mainly depends on intestinal stem cells (ISCs), which can also contribute to the growth of intestinal tumours. Hormones, which are vital signalling agents in the body, have various effects on the growth and replacement of intestinal stem cells. This review summarises recent progress in the identification of hormones associated with intestinal stem cells. Several hormones, including thyroid hormone, glucagon-like peptide-2, androgens, insulin, leptin, growth hormone, corticotropin-releasing hormone and progastrin, promote the development of intestinal stem cells. However, somatostatin and melatonin are two hormones that prevent the proliferation of intestinal stem cells. Therefore, new therapeutic targets for the diagnosis and treatment of intestinal illnesses can be identified by examining the impact of hormones on intestinal stem cells.

As a common bulking agent and stabilizer for residents, aluminum-containing food additives have a comprehensive application scenario. However, it is noteworthy that the abuse of aluminum-containing food additives may cause a potential health risk to the public. Taking aluminum-containing food additives as the research object, the paper systematically discusses the basic characteristics of aluminum-containing food additives, detection technology of aluminum-containing food additives, and monitoring of food aluminum content, and summarizes the current problems for each part.

Abstract Objective Gut mycobiota plays a crucial role in benign liver diseases; however, its correlation with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains elusive. This study aimed to elucidate fungal differences in patients with HCC-associated cirrhosis compared to cirrhotic patients without HCC and healthy controls. Methods The 72 fecal samples from 34 HCC patients, 20 cirrhotic patients, and 18 healthy controls were collected and analyzed using ITS2 rDNA sequencing. Results Our results revealed the presence of intestinal fungal dysbiosis with significant enrichment of opportunistic pathogenic fungi such as Malassezia, Malassezia sp., Candida, and C. albicans in HCC patients compared with healthy controls and cirrhosis patients. Alpha-diversity analysis demonstrated that patients with HCC and cirrhosis showed decreased fungal diversity compared to healthy controls. Beta diversity analysis indicated that the three groups exhibited significant segregated clustering. Besides, C. albicans was found to be significantly more abundant in the HCC patients with TNM stage III-IV than those with stage I-II, in contrast to the commensal organism S. cerevisiae. We also confirmed that the HCC patients were successfully classified with an area under the curve value of 0.906 based on the fecal fungal signature. Finally, our animal experiments confirm that aberrant colonization of the intestine by C. albicans and M. furfur can promote the development of HCC. Conclusions This study indicates that dysbiosis of the gut mycobiome might be involved in HCC development. Trial registration: ChiCTR, ChiCTR2100054537. Registered 19 December 2021, http://www.chictr.org.cn/edit.aspx?pid=144550&htm=4

China’s large-scale hog farmers are playing an increasingly important role in promoting the stable development of the hog industry. Taking large-scale hog enterprises as samples, based on hog sales data from January 2019 to July 2022, this paper adopts a two-way fixed-effects model to test the impact, mechanism, and heterogeneity of hog futures on the production stability of large-scale hog farmers. The study found that hog futures help promote stable production of large-scale farmers. This finding still holds after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism analysis found that, first, hog futures help large-scale farmers expand their risk management factor inputs. Second, hog futures help reduce the impact of hog price risk on production. Finally, hog futures help stabilize farmers’ production expectations. The moderating effects analysis found that the stabilizing effect of hog futures will enhance as farmers’ share of hog farming operations increases. Heterogeneity analysis found that when hog prices fluctuate negatively, hog futures help promote the stable production of large-scale farmers. When hog prices fluctuate positively, the production stabilization effect of hog futures is not obvious. Therefore, hog enterprises should be encouraged to participate in hog futures hedging transactions to promote stable hog production.

Landmark building models typically exhibit intricate structures, posing challenges for retrieval using generic descriptors. To address this challenge, this paper abstracts and simplifies the model into simple topological structures grounded in topological perceptual theory and introduces a novel categorization of landmark building models. Furthermore, based on view, the quotient distance–angle histogram algorithm is proposed for extracting model topological features. This approach facilitates the identification of intricate landmark building models and enhances retrieval performance. In addition, a new projection method is also proposed. Based on the fact that most landmark building models have correct upright direction and the significant topological features predominantly emerge in the top or side views of these models, this method can accelerate the subsequent extraction and matching of shape descriptors by reducing the extraction of model views. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed projection method is more consistent with human visual perception, and the experimental results verify that the proposed method can improve the retrieval performance when classifying the topological structure of 3D landmark building models.

A novel acidic homogeneous polysaccharide (AIPW50-1) with a molecular weight of 214.5 kDa was isolated by hot water extraction and several column chromatographic purification methods from Arca inflata Reeve. The repeating structural units of AIPW50-1 were elucidated by the combined chemical and instrumental analyses. AIPW50-1 is composed of glucose, glucuronic acid and galactose with molar ratio of 18.06: 1.00: 1.56. The backbone of AIPW50-1 consisted of →4)-α-D-GlcpA-(1→, →4)-α-D-Glcp-(1→ and →4,6)-α-D-Glcp-(1→ with two branches of α-D-Glcp-(1→ and →6)-β-D-Galp-(1→ terminated with α-D-Glcp-(1→, respectively. The antioxidant assay demonstrated that AIPW50-1 possessed strong ABTS free radical scavenging activity and prominently stimulated the secretion of a cytotoxic molecule (NO), cytokines (TNF-α and IL-6) by murine RAW 264.7 macrophages. The in vivo antioxidative effect of AIPW50-1 was further evaluated using Caenorhabdiyis elegans oxidative stress model. AIPW50-1 could prolong the lifespan, improve locomotory behavior and reproductive ability, and significantly enhance intracellular activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) of C. elegans by 19.80 %, 17.05 % and 17.22 % at 4 mg/mL. These results suggested that AIPW50-1 has the potential to be used as a functional additive with antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects.

Summary: The formation of a compact and stable cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) film is a promising way to improve the high voltage resistance of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, challenges arise due to the corrosion of hydrogen fluoride (HF) and the dissolution of transition metal ions (TMs) in harsh conditions. To address this issue, researchers have constructed an anion-derived CEI film enriched with LiF and LiPO2F2 soluble product on the surface of LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 (LNMO) cathode in highly concentrated electrolytes (HCEs). The strong binding of LiF and LiPO2F2 generated an inert LiPO2F2 soluble product interface, which inhibited HF corrosion and maintained the spinel structure of LNMO, contributing to a capacity retention of 92% after 200 cycles at 55°C in the resulting cell with a soluble LiPO2F2-containing CEI film. This new approach sheds light on improving the electrode/electrolyte interface for high-energy LIBs.

Abstract Background A new technique for analgesia called pectoral nerve block is widely used in surgeries of breast cancer. Pectoral nerve block type II (Pecs II) block has less influence on immunity when compared with general anesthesia method. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate whether Pecs II block has influence on the recurrence of breast cancer after surgical operation. Methods 526 breast cancer patients were recruited in this research and randomized into general anesthesia group and general anesthesia with Pecs II block group. Recurrence-free survival (RFS), distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS), and overall survival (OS) were evaluated for the two groups. Results Based on the statistical data, only the consumption of remifentanil was dramatically reduced by the performance of Pecs II block when compared with general anesthesia method. The performance of Pecs II block had no significant influence on OS, RFS, and DRFS of breast cancer patients after surgery. ASA physical status III, TNM stage 2 + 3, and mastectomy were proved to have association with lower recurrence-free survival. Conclusion In conclusion, the performance of Pecs II block declined the remifentanil consumption during surgery of breast cancer. Meanwhile, the performance of Pecs II block had no significant influence on the OS, RFS, and DRFS of breast cancer patients after surgical resection.

ObjectivesBoth burdens of tuberculosis (TB) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in China are ranked as top three in the world. SLE patients are at high risk for TB, but so far, there are no guidelines for TB prevention and management targeting this population in China. This study aims to investigate the incidence of active tuberculosis (ATB) and to explore the risk factors for developing ATB in SLE patients, and to provide evidence for TB prevention and management for SLE patients in China.MethodsA multi-center prospective cohort study was conducted. SLE patients were enrolled from clinics and wards of 13 tertiary hospitals in Eastern, Middle, and Western China from September 2014 to March 2016. Baseline demographic features, TB infection status, clinical information, and laboratory data were collected. ATB development was examined during follow-up visits. Kaplan-Meier method was applied to plot survival curves, and Log-rank test was used to evaluate differences. Cox proportional-hazards model was used to explore the risk factors for ATB development.ResultsWith a median follow-up time of 58 months [interquartile range (IQR): 55-62], 16 out of 1361 SLE patients developed ATB. The 1-year incidence of ATB was 368 [95% confidence interval (CI): 46-691] per 100,000. Over a 5-year period, the cumulative incidence of ATB was 1141 [95% CI: 564-1718] per 100,000, and the incidence density was 245 per 100,000 person-years. Cox regression models were constructed with maximum daily dose of glucocorticoids (GCs) as a continuous variable and a categorical variable, respectively. In model 1, maximum daily dose of GCs (pills per day) [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR)=1.16, 95%CI: 1.04-1.30, p=0.010] and TB infection (aHR=8.52, 95%CI: 3.17-22.92, p

Fabric defect detection plays a critical role for measuring quality control in the textile manufacturing industry. Deep learning-based saliency models can quickly spot the most interesting regions that attract human attention from the complex background, which have been successfully applied in fabric defect detection. However, most of the previous methods mainly adopted multi-level feature aggregation yet ignored the complementary relationship among different features, and thus resulted in poor representation capability for the tiny and slender defects. To remedy these issues, we propose a novel saliency-based fabric defect detection network, which can exploit the complementary information between different layers to enhance the representation features ability and discrimination of defects. Specifically, a multi-scale feature aggregation unit (MFAU) is proposed to effectively characterize the multi-scale contextual features. Besides, a feature fusion refinement module (FFR) composed of an attention fusion unit (AFU) and an auxiliary refinement unit (ARU) is designed to exploit complementary important information and further refine the input features for enhancing the discriminative ability of defect features. Finally, a multi-level deep supervision (MDS) is adopted to guide the model to generate more accurate saliency maps. Under different evaluation metrics, our proposed method outperforms most state-of-the-art methods on our developed fabric datasets.

This study fristly investigated the taste quality formation and leaf conducting tissue changes in six types of Chinese tea (green, black, oolong, yellow, white, and dark) made from Mingke No.1 variety. Non-targeted metabolomics showed the vital manufacturing processes (green tea-de-enzyming, black tea-fermenting, oolong tea-turning-over, yellow tea-yellowing, white tea-withering, and dark tea-pile-fermenting) were highly related to their unique taste formation, due to different fermentation degree in these processes. After drying, the retained phenolics, theanine, caffeine, and other substances significantly impacted each tea taste quality formation. Meanwhile, the tea leaf conducting tissue structure was significantly influenced by high processing temperature, and the change of its inner diameter was related to moisture loss during tea processing, as indicated by its significant different Raman characteristic peaks (mainly cellulose and lignin) in each key process. This study provides a reference for process optimization to improve tea quality.

To improve the accuracy of color image completion with missing entries, we present a recovery method based on generalized higher-order scalars. We extend the traditional second-order matrix model to a more comprehensive higher-order matrix equivalent, called the “t-matrix” model, which incorporates a pixel neighborhood expansion strategy to characterize the local pixel constraints. This “t-matrix” model is then used to extend some commonly used matrix and tensor completion algorithms to their higher-order versions. We perform extensive experiments on various algorithms using simulated data and publicly available images. The results show that our generalized matrix completion model and the corresponding algorithm compare favorably with their lower-order tensor and conventional matrix counterparts.

Introduction: Penehyclidine hydrochloride (PHC) is an anticholinergic with anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidation activities. PHC displayed protectivity against renal ischemia reperfusion (RIR) injury. Nevertheless, the precise protectivity of PHC on RIR-induced lung injury remains unknown. Methods: We examined the effects of PHC on RIR-induced lung injury and investigated the underlying mechanism. We induced RIR in mice and administrated PHC to RIR mice. Kidney function was monitored by measuring the blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine level in serum. We evaluated the lung injury, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in lung, pro-inflammatory cytokine level, and oxidative markers in serum and lung tissues. We tested the expression level of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf-2) and heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) in lung of RIR mice after PHC treatment. Finally, we evaluated the effects of PHC in RIR Nrf2-/- mice. Results: PHC greatly downregulated the serum levels of BUN, creatinine, IL-6, NO, malondialdehyde (MDA), and matrix metalloproteinase-2. PHC also ameliorated the lung injury, decreased the MPO activity, and suppressed production of IL-6, TNF-α, IFN-γ, MDA, and O2-, while it promoted production of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) in lung. PHC improved the production of Nrf2 and HO-1. Conclusion: The protectivity of PHC was absent in Nrf2-/- mice. PHC ameliorated RIR-induced lung injury through Nrf2 pathway.

Abstract Background Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is one of the most common adverse consequence of premature delivery and the most common chronic lung disease in infants. BPD is associated with long-term lung diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders that can persist into the adulthood. The adverse consequences caused by severe BPD are more serious. However, there were few studies on the risk factors for severe BPD. Methods This is a retrospective study of preterm infants born less than 32-week gestational age (GA) and diagnosed with BPD. Results A total of 250 preterm infants with a diagnosis of BPD and GA

Shale oil is of interest for unconventional oil and gas exploration and development and has abundant geological reserves. Shale reservoirs contain numerous nanopores. Understanding the adsorption state of shale oil in the nanopores of shale is beneficial to improve the recovery of shale oil. In this study, the adsorption properties of shale oil in kaolinite slit pores were investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. In order to study the adsorption characteristics of shale oil with different components, a single-component model from n-C8 to n-C15 was established, and a mixed model of n-C8 and n-C15 with different mass ratios represented different crude oil components. The results show that the adsorption capacity per unit area increases with the increase of the alkane carbon number. The adsorption capacity of alkanes on the surface of silicon-oxygen tetrahedron is greater than that on the surface of aluminium-oxygen octahedron. The interaction force between kaolinite and alkane surface increases with the increase of alkane carbon number. The alkane adsorption capacity of silicon-oxygen tetrahedron is stronger than that of aluminium-oxygen octahedron. Competitive adsorption also exists between alkane molecules. Alkanes with higher carbon numbers are more easily adsorbed on the surface of kaolinite. Light alkanes are more likely to exist in free form than heavy alkanes. Based on molecular simulations, we studied the adsorption capacity of alkanes with different carbon numbers and calculated the adsorption capacity per unit area in the pores. It provides a theoretical basis for the calculation of shale oil geological reserves.

Prestress loss caused by broken wires can lead to a decline in the carrying capacity of prestressed concrete cylinder pipes (PCCPs). The strengthening of PCCPs using a post-tensioning method is becoming more and more widely utilized to restore strengthened pipes to the needed design capacity and to withstand combined loads. There is no need to drain the pipe during strengthening construction, and this strengthening actively replenishes the prestress loss caused by wire breakage at a cost-effective price. To verify the strengthening effect of this method, a full-scale test and its corresponding three-dimensional finite-element model were established. A three-dimensional numerical model of three continuous prototype pipes was established and accounted for the particularity of the bell and spigot. The numerical model of prestressing wires was optimized in two aspects, which was more in line with the actual situation. The spiral winding method instead of single winding was adopted to apply prestress, and the prestressing wires with a broken point were partitioned into two separate areas due to the bond quality between the mortar coating and the wires. The simulation and the full-scale test both contain the five processes of strengthening with external prestressed strands as follows: pressurized to working pressure→breaking the prestressing wires until visible cracks propagate→gradual depressurization to artesian pressure→the tensioning operation of strands→and pressurized to design pressure. A sensitivity analysis of the related factors of strengthening was performed through finite-element simulation to provide a better understanding of the design. The simulation results were consistent with the data on the full-scale test and indicated the rationality of this process. The strengthening of PCCP with a post-tensioning method can meet the design demand and is a feasible strengthening method. The working pressure and control coefficient of tensioning have the most significant impact on the strengthening effect. Technical recommendations and a better understanding of the application of the post-tensioning method on PCCP are provided in this study.

Abstract With the performance increase of convolutional neural network (CNN), the disadvantages of CNN's high storage and high power consumption are followed. Among the methods mentioned in various literature, filter pruning is a crucial method for constructing lightweight networks. However, the current filter pruning method is still challenged by complicated processes and training inefficiency. This paper proposes an effective filter pruning method, which uses the saliency of the feature map (SFM), i.e. information entropy, as a theoretical guide for whether the filter is essential. The pruning principle use here is that the filter with a weak saliency feature map in the early stage will not significantly improve the final accuracy. Thus, one can efficiently prune the non‐salient feature map with a smaller information entropy and the corresponding filter. Besides, an over‐parameterized convolution method is employed to improve the pruned model's accuracy without increasing parameter at inference time. Experimental results show that without introducing any additional constraints, the effectiveness of this method in FLOPs and parameters reduction with similar accuracy has advanced the state‐of‐the‐art. For example, on CIFAR‐10, the pruned VGG‐16 achieves only a small loss of 0.39% in Top‐1 accuracy with a factor of 83.3% parameters, and 66.7% FLOPs reductions. On ImageNet‐100, the pruned ResNet‐50 achieves only a small accuracy degradation of 0.76% in Top‐1 accuracy with a factor of 61.19% parameters, and 62.98% FLOPs reductions.

A statistical damage model (SDM) of fully-graded concrete was created using statistical damage theory, based on the mechanical properties of axial tension and axial compression of the material. The SDM considers two damage modes, fracture and yield, and explains the intrinsic connection between the mesoscopic damage evolution mechanism and the macroscopic nonlinear mechanical behavior of fully-graded concrete. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm was used to obtain the optimal parameter combination through an intelligent search of parameters εa, εh, εb and H in the constitutive model by taking the test data as the target value, and the sum of the squares of the differences between the target value and the predicted value as the objective function. The SDM numerical simulation model of fully-graded concrete is proposed by compiling subroutines in FORTRAN by constructing two modules of data model and damage analysis. The numerical results under uniaxial and biaxial forces are in agreement with the experimental results, which verifies the accuracy of the program. The model also analyzes the characteristics of mesoscopic damage evolution and predicts the mechanical properties under triaxial forces. The results show that the proposed numerical simulation model can reflect the salient features for fully-graded concrete under uniaxial, biaxial and triaxial loading conditions, and the evolution law of mesoscopic parameters. Therefore, the proposed model serves as a basis for the refined finite element analysis of hydraulic fully-graded concrete structures and reveals the mesoscopic damage mechanism of concrete under different load environments.

The decreasing-width, increasing-aspect-ratio RDL presents significant challenges to the design for reliability (DFR) of an advanced package. Therefore, this paper proposes an ML-based RDL modeling and simulation method. In the method, RDL was divided into blocks and subdivided into pixels of metal percentage, and the RDL was digitalized as tensors. Then, an ANN-based surrogate model was built and trained using a subset of tensors to predict the equivalent material properties of each block. Lastly, all blocks were transformed into elements for simulations. For validation, line bending simulations were conducted on an RDL, with the reaction force as an accuracy indicator. The results show that neglecting layout impact caused critical errors as the substrate thinned. According to the method, the reaction force error was 2.81% and the layout impact could be accurately considered with 200 × 200 elements. For application, the TCT maximum temperature state simulation was conducted on a CPU chip. The simulation indicated that for an advanced package, the maximum stress was more likely to occur in RDL rather than in bumps; both RDL and bumps were critically impacted by layouts, and RDL stress was also impacted by vias/bumps. The proposed method precisely concerned layout impacts with few resources, presenting an opportunity for efficient improvement.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is a 30-amino acid hormone secreted by L cells in the distal ileum, colon, and pancreatic α cells, which participates in blood sugar regulation by promoting insulin release, reducing glucagon levels, delaying gastric emptying, increasing satiety, and reducing appetite. GLP-1 specifically binds to the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) in the body, directly stimulating the secretion of insulin by pancreatic β-cells, promoting proliferation and differentiation, and inhibiting cell apoptosis, thereby exerting a glycemic lowering effect. The glycemic regulating effect of GLP-1 and its analogues has been well studied in human and murine models in the circumstance of many diseases. Recent studies found that GLP-1 is able to modulate innate immune response in a number of inflammatory diseases. In the present review, we summarize the research progression of GLP-1 and its analogues in immunomodulation and related signal pathways.

Objective: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have recently demonstrated promising performance in improving the prognosis of urological cancer patients. The goal of this meta-analysis was to determine the impact of PPI use on the clinical outcomes of urological cancer patients receiving ICI therapy.Methods: Before 6 May 2022, the eligible literature was searched using PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. The clinical outcomes were overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and objective response rate (ORR).Results: A total of six articles met the inclusion criteria, and of the 1980 patients with advanced or metastatic urothelial cancers (UC) included. The meta-analysis displayed that PPI use could increase the risk of progression by 50.7% (HR: 1.507, 95% CI: 1.327–1.711, p < 0.001) and death by 58.7% (HR: 1.587, 95% CI: 1.367–1.842, p < 0.001), and reduce the ORR (OR: 0.503, 95% CI: 0.360–0.703, p < 0.001) in UC patients receiving ICIs. No significant heterogeneity and publication bias existed. Sensitivity analysis proved that the results were stable and reliable.Conclusion: The meta-analysis indicated that concomitant PPI use was significantly associated with low clinical benefit in UC patients.

ObjectiveRecently, immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment has shown encouraging performance in improving the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. The gut microbiome plays a vital role in altering the efficacy of ICIs, which may be impacted by antibiotics. The aim of the meta-analysis is to estimate the influence of antibiotic use on the survival of HCC patients treated with ICIs.MethodsThe literature review was conducted using databases like PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CNKI, WANFANG DATA, VIP, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov before May 15, 2022. The primary endpoints were overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and disease control rate (DCR).ResultsA total of six retrospective studies met the inclusion criteria. 1056 patients were included in the study, of which 352 (33.33%) received antibiotic treatment. The meta-analysis results revealed antibiotic use did not affect the OS (HR: 1.41, 95% CI: 0.96-2.08, P = 0.088) and PFS (HR: 1.21, 95% CI: 0.73-2.00, P = 0.459) in HCC patients treated with ICIs. Besides, the use of antibiotics did not reduce the ORR (OR: 1.06, 95% CI: 0.69-1.64, P = 0.784) and DCR (OR: 0.42, 95% CI: 0.09-2.06, P = 0.286) in HCC patients treated with ICIs.ConclusionCurrent evidence reveals that antibiotic use does alter the therapeutic efficacy of ICIs in HCC patients.Systematic Review Registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/, identifier CRD42022311948.

Objective: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have recently demonstrated promising results in improving the prognosis of cancer patients. The goal of this meta-analysis was to determine the impact of probiotic use on the survival of cancer patients treated with ICIs.Methods: Before 3 March 2022, the eligible literature was searched using PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and Clinical trials.gov databases. Overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and disease control rate (DCR) were the primary endpoints.Results: A total of 6 studies met the inclusion criteria, and 1,123 patients were included. Meta-analysis showed a trend for probiotic use to prolong PFS (HR: 0.585, 95% CI: 0.328–1.045, p = 0.070) and increase DCR (HR: 1.868, 95% CI: 0.890–3.922, p = 0.099), although it was of borderline statistical significance. We also found that probiotics significantly improved OS (HR: 0.526, 95% CI: 0.341–0.812, p = 0.004) and ORR (OR: 2.831, 95% CI: 1.578–5.076, p < 0.001) in ICI-treated cancer patients. Besides, subgroup analysis showed that non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with ICIs in combination with probiotics would achieve significantly longer PFS (HR: 0.532, 95% CI: 0.354–0.798, p = 0.002) and OS (HR: 0.528, 95% CI: 0.306–0.912, p = 0.022), as well as higher ORR (OR: 2.552, 95% CI: 1.279–5.091, p = 0.008) and DCR (OR: 2.439, 95% CI: 1.534–3.878, p < 0.001). Sensitivity analysis showed that the above results are stable and reliable. The publication bias test confirmed that there was no publication bias in these results.Conclusion: Current evidence reveals that probiotics can improve the efficacy of ICI treatment in NSCLC patients.Systematic Review Registeration:https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42022316104.

Introduction: About one-third of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) patients do not exhibit complete response to ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA). Some of these patients were reported to benefit from the combination therapy of fibrates and UDCA, but more clinical evidence is required. In this study, we conducted a randomized, controlled trial on the safety and efficacy of fenofibrate in the treatment of patients with PBC. Methods: Forty-eight PBC patients with incomplete response to UDCA were enrolled and randomly assigned to two groups (24 in the experiment group and 24 in the control group). For the experimental group, the patients were administered 13–15 mg/kg/day UDCA in combination with 200 mg/day fenofibrate. For the control group, the patients continued to receive UDCA at 13–15 mg/kg/day. The patients were followed up for at least 12 months. The serum levels of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), gamma-glutamyl transferase (γ-GT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and other biochemical parameters were measured at 3, 6, and 12 months during the trial to assess patient conditions. Results: At 12 months, 20.8% of the patients in the experimental group had all three indexes of serum ALP, γ-GT, and total bilirubin normalized, while 0% of patients in the control group reached the primary outcome (difference, 20.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 4.6–37.0). 54.2% of the patients had normal ALP levels in the experimental group and 4.2% in the control group (difference, 50 percentage points; 95% CI, 28.5–71.5). The experimental group had greater improvement of ALP ( p

Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of gut bacteria in the development of malignancy, while relatively little research has been done on gut mycobiota. As a part of the gut microbiome, the percentage of gut mycobiota is negligible compared to gut bacteria. However, the effect of gut fungi on human health and disease is significant. This review systematically summarizes the research progress on mycobiota, especially gut fungi, in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), esophageal cancer (EC), gastric cancer (GC), colorectal cancer (CRC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), pancreatic cancer, melanoma, breast cancer, and lung carcinoma-induced cachexia. Moreover, we also describe, for the first time in detail, the role of the fungal recognition receptors, C-type lectin receptors (CLRs) (Dectin-1, Dectin-2, Dectin-3, and Mincle) and their downstream effector caspase recruitment domain-containing protein 9 (CARD9), in tumors to provide a reference for further research on intestinal fungi in the diagnosis and treatment of malignant tumors.

In order to realize the high efficiency and precision clamping of large workpieces with several processes and multiple species processing, the distribution number and position of the zero point clamping unit in the flexible quick-change process system for big thin-walled cylindrical structural parts are presented. The error model of the flexible quick-change process system is established by the Monte Carlo method, which is used to optimize the system structure design. The error variation of the flexible quick-change process system under the action of transposition and extreme working conditions such as cutting force is revealed, and further analysis on the sensitivity of the workpiece’s global displacement error and global attitude error to each error source is carried out. After the optimization, a high-quality, cost-effective, flexible quick-change clamping system is created. The three-coordinate measurement experiment is used to test the functionality and accuracy of the flexible quick-change process system. A significantly improved level of the system’s repetitive positioning accuracy (less than 0.01 mm) is detected. Importantly, the flexible quick-change system obtained by the combinatorial optimal design method has been successfully applied to the production of aerospace components with improved quality and efficiency.

The design of Pt-based electrocatalysts with high efficiency towards acid oxygen reduction reactions is the priority to promote the development and application of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Considering that the Pt atoms on the surfaces of the electrocatalysts face the problems of interference of non-active species (such as OHad, OOHad, CO, etc.), high resistance of mass transfer at the liquid–solid interfaces, and easy corrosion when working in harsh acid. Researchers have modified the surfaces’ local environment of the electrocatalysts by introducing surface modifiers such as silicon or carbon layers, amine molecules, and ionic liquids on the surfaces of electrocatalysts, which show significant performance improvement. In this review, we summarized the research progress of surface modified Pt-based electrocatalysts, focusing on the surface modification strategies and their mechanisms. In addition, the development prospects of surface modification strategies of Pt-based electrocatalysts and the limitations of current research are pointed out.

Realizing organic p–n junctions based on ordered crystalline materials with dimensions comparable to the exciton diffusion length of most organic semiconductors remains a challenge. Here, the authors report a strategy to form molecular monolayer crystal-based p–n junctions with thickness below 5 nm.

Objective: Several metabolites from the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism play a critical role in vascular function and vascular wall remodeling. This study aimed to test whether metabolite kynurenic acid (KYNA) from the kynurenine pathway relaxes blood vessels. Approach and results: We employed histological staining, in vitro cell culture, Western blotting, real-time PCR, and nitric oxide detection to validate kynurenine aminotransferase (KAT) localization in the vasculature as well as KYNA action on endothelial cells. We also detected vascular reactivity by organ chamber and monitored blood pressure by telemetry to investigate the regulation effect of KYNA on vascular tone. The results presented that perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) from mice thoracic aorta had robust staining of anti-KAT1 and KYNA than PVAT from the abdominal aorta and mesenteric artery, which is consistent with the expression profile of brown adipocyte marker uncoupling protein 1. KYNA, metabolized from kynurenine by KAT, relaxed pre-contracted both aortic ring and mesenteric artery. In addition, KYNA derived from KAT in PVAT participates in the cross-talk between PVAT and vessel by mediating PVAT inhibition on agonist-induced thoracic aorta contraction. Furthermore, intraperitoneal injection of KYNA in mice reduced blood pressure. The vessel relaxation effect of KYNA was through the endothelium-dependent PI3K-Akt-eNOS pathway. Finally, the high-fat diet decreased KAT1 expression in perithoracic aortic fat and led to KYNA reduction in blood. Conclusions: Our research identified KYNA generated by KAT as a novel perivascular brown adipocyte-derived vascular relaxation factor and suggests that KYNA reduction is a critical event in vascular dysfunction under obese condition.

Abstract High‐performance solar‐blind photodetectors are widely studied due to their unique significance in military and industrial applications. Yet the rational molecular design for materials to possess strong absorption in solar‐blind region is rarely addressed. Here, an organic solar‐blind photodetector is reported by designing a novel asymmetric molecule integrated strong solar‐blind absorption with high charge transport property. Such alkyl substituted [1]benzothieno[3,2‐b][1]‐benzothiophene (BTBT) derivatives Cn‐BTBTN (n = 6, 8, and 10) can be easily assembled into 2D molecular crystals and perform high mobility up to 3.28 cm2 V−1s−1, which is two orders of magnitude higher than the non‐substituted core BTBTN. Cn‐BTBTNs also exhibit dramatically higher thermal stability than the symmetric alkyl substituted C8‐BTBT. Moreover, C10‐BTBTN films with the highest mobility and strongest solar‐blind absorption among the Cn‐BTBTNs are applied for solar‐blind photodetectors, which reveal record‐high photosensitivity and detectivity up to 1.60 × 107 and 7.70 × 1014 Jones. Photodetector arrays and flexible devices are also successfully fabricated. The design strategy can provide guidelines for developing materials featuring high thermal stability and stimulating such materials in solar‐blind photodetector application.

Advancements in deep neural networks have made remarkable leap-forwards in crop detection. However, the detection of wheat ears is an important yet challenging task due to the complex background, dense targets, and overlaps between wheat ears. Currently, many detectors have made significant progress in improving detection accuracy. However, some of them are not able to make a good balance between computational cost and precision to meet the needs of deployment in real world. To address these issues, a lightweight and efficient wheat ear detector with Shuffle Polarized Self-Attention (SPSA) is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we first utilize a lightweight backbone network with asymmetric convolution for effective feature extraction. Next, SPSA attention is given to adaptively select focused positions and produce a more discriminative representation of the features. This strategy introduces polarized self-attention to spatial dimension and channel dimension and adopts Shuffle Units to combine those two types of attention mechanisms effectively. Finally, the TanhExp activation function is adopted to accelerate the inference speed and reduce the training time, and CIOU loss is used as the border regression loss function to enhance the detection ability of occlusion and overlaps between targets. Experimental results on the Global Wheat Head Detection dataset show that our method achieves superior detection performance compared with other state-of-the-art approaches.

Based on weather radar data, precipitation data from densified rainfall stations, hydrological data at Wucha hydrological station in Qijiang Catchment and ERA5 reanalysis data, we have conducted the analysis of a record-breaking flood event occurred in Qijiang Catchment from June 19 to 22 in 2020 including the spatial-temporal distribution of precipitation, the circulation background, the water vapor sources and the evolutional characteristics of mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). The results indicate that (1) this event is a persistent severe precipitation event with concentrated range and characterized by obvious periodic and diurnal variation. It can be divided into three stages. Severe precipitation mainly occurs at night. (2) Persistent heavy rainfall occurs under the circulation pattern of cold air guided by east-moving cold low pressure in the Ural Mountains moving southward to the northeast of Sichuan Basin, low trough in the mid-latitude maintaining for a long time in the eastern Sichuan-Chongqing-Guizhou area and the Western Pacific subtropical high being stable. (3) Low-level warm and moist southwest jet further increases the atmospheric stratification instability between northern Guizhou and southern Chongqing, and it conveys water vapor from South China Sea and Bengal Bay to Qijiang River Basin, providing abundant water vapor for the generation and persistence of heavy rainfall. (4) The occurrence and development of MCSs at the three severe precipitation stages show different features. At the first stage, MCSs in coherence with the strong radar echoes are situated in roughly north-south direction, moving eastward to affect the Qijiang Catchment, and the duration of heavy rainfall is therefore relatively short. Next, the MCSs present southwest-northeast direction, affecting Qijiang Catchment for a longer time, but the echo intensity is weak. At last stage, the MCSs present massive. And they are linearly distributed in the northwest-southeast direction when they mature, exhibiting "train effect", which affects Qijiang Catchment longest and cause the greater precipitation intensity.

Objectives: We reported the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) targets of a biosimilar generic product of amphotericin B colloidal dispersion (G-ABCD) againstCandida albicans (MIC 1–2 μg/mL) in a rat model of invasive candidiasis (IC) to facilitate its precision administration. Methods: Single-dose plasma PKs of G-ABCD was studied in a rat IC model following intravenous administration at doses of 0.0625–10 mg/kg. Amphotericin B concentrations were determined and PK parameters were calculated based on the concentrations in plasma. The efficacy of G-ABCD was evaluated after single administration by the log reduction of CFU counts in kidney, liver, spleen and lung. The relationship between G-ABCD PK/PD index and log CFU reduction in kidney was calculated. Results: Following intravenous administration of G-ABCD at doses of 0.0625–10 mg/kg to rats, the maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) was 0.05–0.82 mg/L and the area under the concentration–time curve from 0 to 24 h (AUC0–24) was 0.50–5.29 mg h/L. G-ABCD showed potent antifungal activity against C. albicans C-13 with a maximum log CFU reduction of 2.1 in kidney. The mean AUC0–24/MIC target of G-ABCD against C. albicans was 0.97 for stasis, 1.40 for 1-log kill and 3.34 for 2-log kill, and the mean Cmax/MIC target was 0.063 for stasis, 0.097 for 1-log kill and 0.348 for 2-log kill. Conclusions: The antifungal effect of G-ABCD was potent and correlated with AUC0–24/MIC and Cmax/MIC in this rat model of IC. The results of this study provide data for optimising G-ABCD dosing regimens and breakpoints for antifungals.

Lung cancer is a malignant tumor with high incidence and mortality in the world, which seriously threatens people’s safety and health. Early diagnosis of lung cancer is the key part in the process of prevention and treatment of lung cancer. It can improve the survival of patients with lung cancer. Exosomes are closely related to the invasion and metastasis process of tumor, it plays an important role in the development of lung cancer. Biomarkers based on exosomes have become a powerful diagnostic tool of lung cancer. Exosomes are lipid bilayer vesicles with uniform size and diameter of 30 nm-200 nm secreted by cells. Exosomes contain different types of nucleic acids and proteins. These nucleic acids and proteins are derived from their parent cells (including parent cancer cells), which have a wide range of physiological functions, including immune regulation, intercellular communication and other physiological activities. Biomacromolecules in exosomes, such as single-stranded RNA, long noncoding RNA, microRNA, protein and lipids, which can provide valuable genetic information for early clinical diagnosis of lung cancer. This review described the origin, structural characteristics, extraction methods, biological characteristics of exosomes and the relationships of exosomes in the early diagnosis of lung cancer.