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Background Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are both common clinical diseases with the increasing prevalence year by year. There is still controversy as to whether continuous airway positive pressure ventilation (CPAP) can improve both OSA and GERD at the same time. Objective To investigate the efficacy of CPAP on OSA complicated with GERD. Methods A total of 169 patients diagnosed with OSA complicated with GERD in the geriatric and respiratory departments of Peking University People's Hospital from September 2020 to January 2023 were selected as research subjects, their general data were collected. The included patients were followed up regularly with the endpoint of GERD remission or 8 weeks of treatment, excluding those with no treatment compliance. The included patients were divided into the patients without proton pump inhibitor (PPI) and patients with PPI according to whether they received PPI. The patients without PPI were further divided into the CPAP group (n=43) and non-treatment group (n=53), the patients with PPI were divided into the CPAP+PPI group (n=32) and PPI group (n=41) according to whether they received CPAP treatment. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to plot the survival curves of GERD remission rates in the CPAP group and non-treatment group, and the differences were compared by Log-rank test. Multivariate Cox proportional risk regression model was used to explore the effects of CPAP on GERD remission in patients with OSA complicated with GERD. Results The median remission time to remission was 6 weeks in the CPAP group and 7.5 weeks in the non-treatment group; the cumulative GERD remission rate in the CPAP group was higher than the non-treatment group and the difference was statistically significant (χ2=4.182, P=0.041). The median remission time to remission was 3.9 weeks in the CPAP+PPI group and 6.1 weeks in the PPI group; the cumulative GERD remission rate in the CPAP+PPI group was higher than the PPI group and the difference was statistically significant (χ2=14.333, P

Background and purpose: Human motor planning and control depend highly on optimal feedback control systems, such as the neocortex–cerebellum circuit. Here, diffusion tensor imaging was used to verify the disruption of the neocortex–cerebellum circuit in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), and the circuit's disruption correlation with SCA3 motor dysfunction was investigated. Methods: This study included 45 patients with familial SCA3, aged 17–67 years, and 49 age‐ and sex‐matched healthy controls, aged 21–64 years. Tract‐based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography was conducted using magnetic resonance images of the patients and controls. The correlation between the local probability of probabilistic tractography traced from the cerebellum and clinical symptoms measured using specified symptom scales was also calculated. Results: The cerebellum‐originated probabilistic tractography analysis showed that structural connectivity, mainly in the subcortical cerebellar–thalamo–cortical tract, was significantly reduced and the cortico–ponto–cerebellar tract was significantly stronger in the SCA3 group than in the control group. The enhanced tract was extended to the right lateral parietal region and the right primary motor cortex. The enhanced neocortex–cerebellum connections were highly associated with disease progression, including duration and symptomatic deterioration. Tractography probabilities from the cerebellar to parietal and sensorimotor areas were significantly negatively correlated with motor abilities in patients with SCA3. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this study is the first to reveal that disrupting the neocortex–cerebellum loop can cause SCA3‐induced motor dysfunctions. The specific interaction between the cerebellar–thalamo–cortical and cortico–ponto–cerebellar pathways in patients with SCA3 and its relationship with ataxia symptoms provides a new direction for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 3 (SCA3) is a rare genetic ataxia that impacts the entire brain and is characterized as a neurodegenerative disorder affecting the neural network. This study explores how alterations in the functional hierarchy, connectivity, and structural changes within specific brain regions significantly contribute to the heterogeneity of symptom manifestations in patients with SCA3. Methods: We prospectively recruited 51 patients with SCA3 and 59 age‐and sex‐matched healthy controls. All participants underwent comprehensive multimodal neuroimaging and clinical assessments. In SCA3 patients, an innovative approach utilizing gradients in resting‐state functional connectivity (FC) was employed to examine atypical patterns of hierarchical processing topology from sensorimotor to supramodal regions in the cerebellum and cerebrum. Coupling analyses of abnormal FC and structural connectivity among regions of interest (ROIs) in the brain were also performed to characterize connectivity alterations. Additionally, relationships between quantitative ROI values and clinical variables were explored. Results: Patients with SCA3 exhibited either compression or expansion within the primary sensorimotor‐to‐supramodal gradient through four distinct calculation methods, along with disruptions in FC and structural connectivity coupling. A comprehensive correlation was identified between the altered gradients and the clinical manifestations observed in patients. Notably, altered fractional anisotropy values were not significantly correlated with clinical variables. Conclusion: Abnormal gradients and connectivity in the cerebellar and cerebral cortices in SCA3 patients may contribute to disrupted motor‐to‐supramodal functions. Moreover, these findings support the potential utility of FCG analysis as a biomarker for diagnosing SCA3 and assessing treatment efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Versatile Video Coding (VVC) achieves impressive coding gain improvement (about 40%+) over the preceding High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) technology at the cost of extremely high computational complexity. Such an extremely high complexity increase is a great challenge for power-constrained applications, such as Internet of video things. In the case of intra coding, VVC utilizes the brute-force recursive search for both the partition structure of the coding unit (CU), which is based on the quadtree with nested multi-type tree (QTMT), and 67 intra prediction modes, compared to 35 in HEVC. As a result, we offer optimization strategies for CU partition decision and intra coding modes to lessen the computational overhead. Regarding the high complexity of the CU partition process, first, CUs are categorized as simple, fuzzy, and complex based on their texture characteristics. Then, we train two random forest classifiers to speed up the RDO-based brute-force recursive search process. One of the classifiers directly predicts the optimal partition modes for simple and complex CUs, while another classifier determines the early termination of the partition process for fuzzy CUs. Meanwhile, to reduce the complexity of intra mode prediction, a fast hierarchical intra mode search method is designed based on the texture features of CUs, including texture complexity, texture direction, and texture context information. Extensive experimental findings demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces complexity by up to 77% compared to the latest VVC reference software (VTM-23.1). Additionally, an average coding time saving of 70% is achieved with only a 1.65% increase in BDBR. Furthermore, when compared to state-of-the-art methods, the proposed method also achieves the largest time saving with comparable BDBR loss. These findings indicate that our method is superior to other up-to-date methods in terms of lowering VVC intra coding complexity, which provides an elective solution for power-constrained applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weeds and insect pests are two important biotic stresses resulting in yield loss in rice, and wide compatibility is the essential characteristic of breeding inter-subspecific hybrid rice. This study focused on glyphosate resistance, lepidopteran resistance and wide compatibility as well as identification of molecular and some agronomic characteristics of transgenic male sterile line E1C4008S. The results indicated that glyphosate resistance gene Epsps# and lepidopteran resistance gene Cry1ca# were transferred into japonica wide compatibility male sterile line 4008S by Agrobacterium-mediated method, and four independent transformation events named E1C4008S-1, E1C4008S-2, E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 were obtained, in which E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 were of single copy insertion. The EPSPS protein contents of E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 in different organs were significantly different both in descending order of leaf > stem > root, and ranged from 300.58 to 1410.69 μg/g at the tillering stage. The glyphosate tolerable concentration (dosage) of E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 reached at least 16 g/L (54.42 kg/hm2), and the seeds of E1C4008S-4 can germinate normally on the medium containing 1 g/L glyphosate. The CRY1C protein contents of E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 in different organs were significantly different both in descending order of leaf > stem > root, and ranged from 0.62 to 2.43 μg/g at the tillering stage. The larvae mortalities of rice leaf rollers fed on leaves of E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 for 5 d were 95.35% and 97.77%, respectively, while the average mortalities of silkworms fed with protein extracts from leaves of E1C4008S-3 and E1C4008S-4 reached 94.55% and 83.64%, respectively. The results suggested that wide compatibility and evaluated agronomic traits of E1C4008S-4 were not significantly changed by insertion of the exogenous genes. Overall, a novel male sterile germplasm with glyphosate resistance, lepidopteran resistance and wide compatibility was verified to be developed in rice. Keywords: rice, glyphosate resistance, lepidopteran resistance, wide compatibility, male sterile line, bioengineered crop

Purpose: Deep learning (DL) is widely used in dose prediction for radiation oncology, multiple DL techniques comparison is often lacking in the literature. To compare the performance of 4 state-of-the-art DL models in predicting the voxel-level dose distribution for cervical cancer volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Methods and Materials: A total of 261 patients' plans for cervical cancer were retrieved in this retrospective study. A three-channel feature map, consisting of a planning target volume (PTV) mask, organs at risk (OARs) mask, and CT image was fed into the three-dimensional (3D) U-Net and its 3 variants models. The data set was randomly divided into 80% as training-validation and 20% as testing set, respectively. The model performance was evaluated on the 52 testing patients by comparing the generated dose distributions against the clinical approved ground truth (GT) using mean absolute error (MAE), dose map difference (GT-predicted), clinical dosimetric indices, and dice similarity coefficients (DSC). Results: The 3D U-Net and its 3 variants DL models exhibited promising performance with a maximum MAE within the PTV 0.83% ± 0.67% in the UNETR model. The maximum MAE among the OARs is the left femoral head, which reached 6.95% ± 6.55%. For the body, the maximum MAE was observed in UNETR, which is 1.19 ± 0.86%, and the minimum MAE was 0.94 ± 0.85% for 3D U-Net. The average error of the Dmean difference for different OARs is within 2.5 Gy. The average error of V40 difference for the bladder and rectum is about 5%. The mean DSC under different isodose volumes was above 90%. Conclusions: DL models can predict the voxel-level dose distribution accurately for cervical cancer VMAT treatment plans. All models demonstrated almost analogous performance for voxel-wise dose prediction maps. Considering all voxels within the body, 3D U-Net showed the best performance. The state-of-the-art DL models are of great significance for further clinical applications of cervical cancer VMAT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The commercialized Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) crops accumulate Bt protein within cells, but the intracellular interactions of foreign protein with endogenous protein inevitably result in large or small unintended effects. In this study, the Bt gene Cry1Ca was linked with the sequences of extracellular secretion signal peptide and carbohydrate binding module 11 to constitute a fusion gene SP‐Cry1Ca‐CBM11, and the fusion gene driven by constitutive promoters was used for secreting and anchoring onto the cell wall to minimize unintended effects. RESULTS: The transient expression in tobacco leaves demonstrated that the fusion protein was anchored on cell walls. The Cry1Ca contents of five homozygous rice transformants of single‐copy insertion were different and descended in the order leaf > root > stem. The maximum content of Cry1Ca was 17.55 μg g−1 in leaves of transformant 21H037. The bioassay results revealed that the transformants exhibited high resistance to lepidopteran pests. The corrected mortality of pink stem borer (Sesamia inferens) and striped stem borer (Chilo suppressalis) ranged from 96.33% to 100%, and from 83.32% to 100%, respectively, and the corrected mortality of rice leaf roller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis) was 92.53%. Besides, the agronomic traits of the five transformants were normal and similar to that of the recipient, and the transformants were highly resistant to glyphosate at the germination and seedling stages. CONCLUSION: The fusion Bt protein was accumulated on cell walls and endowed the rice with high resistance to lepidopteran pests without unintended effects in agronomic traits. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to assess the effects of bladder filling during cervical cancer radiotherapy on target volume and organs at risk (OARs) dose based on daily computed tomography (daily‐CT) images and provide bladder‐volume‐based dose prediction models. Methods: Nineteen patients (475 daily‐CTs) comprised the study group, and five patients comprised the validation set (25 daily‐CTs). Target volumes and OARs were delineated on daily‐CT images and the treatment plan was recalculated accordingly. The deviation from the planning bladder volume (DVB), the correlation between DVB and clinical (CTV)/planning (PTV) target volume in terms of prescribed dose coverage, and the relationship of small bowel volume and bladder dose with the ratio of bladder volume (RVB) were analyzed. Results: In all cases, the prescribed dose coverage in the CTV was >95% when DVB was <200 cm3, whereas that in the PTV was >95% when RVB was <160%. The ratio of bladder V45 Gy to the planning bladder V45 Gy (RBV45) exhibited a negative linear relationship with RVB (RBV45 = −0.18*RVB + 120.8; R2 = 0.80). Moreover, the ratio of small bowel volume to planning small bowel volume (RVS) exhibited a negative linear relationship with RVB (RVS = −1.06*RVB +217.59; R2 = 0.41). The validation set results showed that the linear model predicted well the effects of bladder volume changes on target volume coverage and bladder dose. Conclusions: This study assessed dosimetry and volume effects of bladder filling on target and OARs based on daily‐CT images. We established a quantitative relationship between these parameters, providing dose prediction models for cervical cancer radiotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]