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Abstract Background Surgical approach in the treatment of thymoma is varied. This retrospective study aimed to evaluate the outcomes of different surgical approaches in the treatment of thymoma. Methods From January 2020 to December 2023, a total of 208 patients underwent thoracoscopic surgical treatment and were diagnosed with thymoma by postoperative pathological result in our institution. We collected and then analysed potential factors including general conditions, surgical approaches, preoperative clinical symptoms, surgical procedures, postoperative hospital stay, postoperative drainge, postoperative pain score, postoperative complications and postoperative follow-up. Results Of the 208 patients, 98 patients underwent surgery via subxiphoid approach (47.1%) and 110 patients via lateral intercostal approach (52.8%). The duration of the surgical procedure (P = 0.02), intraoperative blood loss (P = 0.045), total postoperative drainage (P = 0.021), postoperative drainage per day (P = 0.004) and Postoperative pain score (Day1 P = 0.010 and Day2 P = 0.002)showed a significant difference between these two groups. 31 patients (14.9%) received postoperative radiotherapy. One patient died due to postoperative radiotherapy. No recurrence occurred in one-year follow-up. Conclusions The present study not only showed that subxiphoid approach was a safe and feasible technique for thymoma, with a potentially faster postoperative recovery and less postoperative pain.

High-strength seismic-resistant rebar is essential in construction engineering, yet balancing its strength, plasticity, seismic resistance, and surface quality poses challenges. This research explores niobium-vanadium-nitrogen composite reinforced steel, examining how cooling bed temperature affects its microstructure, mechanical properties, and surface quality using advanced microscopy techniques. The research reveals that the steel's microstructure primarily consists of ferrite and pearlite. As cooling bed temperatures decrease, both the proportion and colony size of pearlite, along with ferrite size, show a declining trend. Specifically, reducing the cooling bed temperature from 1100 °C to 900 °C results in a decrease in yield strength, tensile strength, and tensile-to-yield strength ratio by 6 MPa, 27 MPa, and 0.03, respectively. Meanwhile, elongation after fracture, total elongation at maximum force, and strength-ductility balance improve by 3.8%, 1.5%, and 1.93%, respectively. At a cooling bed temperature of 1100 °C, significant blistering occurs on the steel surface. Significant blistering at 1100 °C vanishes at 1000 °C and 900 °C, with diminished silicon enrichment in the surface oxide scale. A cooling bed temperature of 1000 °C ± 20 °C is recommended for optimal performance. This study provides a temperature control strategy for the properties of high-strength seismic-resistant rebar rated at 650 MPa and above, contributing valuable insights to the field of advanced construction materials.

A case of bullous pilomatricoma is reported. A 22-year-old female had brown blue nodule on the right shoulder for 3 months and blisters for over 2 months. Dermatological examination revealed a demarcated 1.6 cm×1.0 cm×0.7 cm light purple semitranslucent bulla with loose wall and movable base on the right shoulder. A movable hard mass sized 0.4 cm×0.3 cm could be palpated. Histopathological examination of the lesion showed a mass with clear boundaries, and filtrates of basophils, transitional cells and shadow cells, along with proliferation and dilation of lymphatic vessels. The diagnosis was bullous pilomatricoma. Following surgical removal of the tumor, no recurrence was observed during 6 months of follow-up.

ABSTRACT Gene duplication events happen prevalently during evolution, and the mechanisms governing the loss or retention of duplicated genes are mostly elusive. Our genome scanning analysis revealed that trigger factor (TF), the one and only bacterial ribosome-associated molecular chaperone, is singly copied in virtually every bacterium except for a very few that possess two or more copies. However, even in these exceptions, only one complete TF copy exists, while other homologs lack the N-terminal domain that contains the conserved ribosome binding site (RBS) motif. Consistently, we demonstrated that the overproduction of the N-terminal complete TF proteins is detrimental to the cell, which can be rescued by removing the N-terminal domain. Our findings also indicated that TF overproduction leads to a decrease in protein productivity and profile changes in proteome due to its characteristic ribosome binding and holdase activities. Additionally, these N-terminal deficient TF homologs in bacteria with multiple TF homologs partition the function of TF via subfunctionalization. Our results revealed that TF is subjected to a dosage constraint that originates from its own intrinsic functions, which may drive the evolution and fates of duplicated TFs in bacteria.IMPORTANCEGene duplication events presumably occur in tig, which encodes the ribosome-associated molecular chaperone trigger factor (TF). However, TF is singly copied in virtually every bacterium, and these exceptions with multiple TF homologs always retain only one complete copy while other homologs lack the N-terminal domain. Here, we reveal the manner and mechanism underlying the evolution and fates of TF duplicates in bacteria. We discovered that the mutation-to-loss or retention-to-sub/neofunctionalization of TF duplicates is associated with the dosage constraint of N-terminal complete TF. The dosage constraint of TF is attributed to its characteristic ribosome binding and substrate-holding activities, causing a decrease in protein productivity and profile changes in cellular proteome.

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Smart contracts play an essential role in the handling and management of digital assets, where vulnerabilities can lead to severe security issues and financial losses. Current detection techniques are largely limited to identifying single vulnerabilities and lack comprehensive identification capabilities for multiple vulnerabilities that may coexist in smart contracts. To address this challenge, we propose a novel multi-label vulnerability detection model that integrates extractive summarization methods with deep learning, referred to as Ext-ttg. The model begins by preprocessing the data using an extractive summarization approach, followed by the deployment of a custom-built deep learning model to detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves commendable performance across various metrics, establishing the effectiveness of the proposed approach in the multi-vulnerability detection tasks within smart contracts.

The recent years have witnessed a great leap for near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy technology in multifunctional application fields. In this study, a double-perovskite structured Cr3+-doped Cs2KScF6 fluoride NIR phosphor with peak location at 778 nm and full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of 95 nm was synthesized by a co-precipitation method. The integral emission intensity at 423 K retains 70 % of that at room temperature (RT), showing good luminescent thermal stability. Combining the obtained phosphor in an NIR phosphor converted light-emitting diode (NIR pc-LED) device, the output power and photoelectric conversion efficiency can reach 72.28 mW and 6.83 % at 320 mA. By virtue of the good optical performance, clear structural images of different fruits were visualized by using the NIR pc-LED as light source, suggesting the potential of Cs2KScF6:Cr3+ phosphor to be used in high-power LED devices.

Objective To analyze the clinical manifestations and histopathological features of cutaneous Mycobacterium marinum infections in order to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of this disease. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical manifestations, histopathological features, treatment and outcome of 12 cases of cutaneous Mycobacterium marinum infections diagnosed at the Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University from 2020 to 2023. Results The average age was 47.3 years. Seafood-induced trauma was a risk factor. Clinical presentations often included unilateral distribution of multiple chronic nodules and plaques on the upper limb, resembling sporotrichosis. Pathological findings included epidermal acanthosis, dermal non-specific inflammatory infiltration, and sometimes with tuberculosis-like granulomas. However, the positive rate of acid-fast staining was low. Nine patients received anti-infective therapy consisting of clarithromycin combined with rifampicin or moxifloxacin. The treatment regimen for other three patients was unknown. All patients experienced resolution of their skin lesions without serious adverse drug reactions, and there were no recurrences during 1-year follow-up. Conclusions Mycobacterium marinum infection should be suspected in patients, especially middle-aged and elderly individuals with a history of trauma or handling seafood, presenting with chronic nodules and plaques, along with pathological findings of tuberculosis-like granuloma or non-specific inflammatory infiltration. These patients can be treated with clarithromycin and rifampicin.

Abstract Introduction Ixekizumab, a monoclonal antibody against interleukin-17A, demonstrated effectiveness in the treatment of psoriasis in a Chinese real-world study that was consistent with previous randomized controlled trials. Here, we report further analyses from this study to explore the effectiveness of ixekizumab for treating patients with psoriasis and the involvement of special body areas (scalp, nail, joint, palmoplantar, or genital areas). Methods A multicenter, prospective, observational, single-arm, post-marketing surveillance study was conducted in patients aged ≥ 18 years with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis and prescribed with ixekizumab in 26 Chinese hospitals. Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) and Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) scores were compared between patients with versus without psoriasis in special body areas in the overall study population and across subgroups by body area. Results In total, 612 patients were included. At baseline, most patients (93.6%) had psoriasis involvement in at least one special body area. Overall, patients with psoriasis in special body areas reported a worse quality of life (QoL) than those without. Patients with versus without psoriasis in special body areas achieved a comparable mean reduction from baseline in PASI score (10.9 vs. 9.2 at week 2, and 16.9 vs. 14.7 at week 12, respectively) and DLQI score (6.0 vs. 4.4 at week 2, and 9.9 vs. 7.5 at week 12, respectively); a similar proportion of patients also achieved PASI 50 at week 2, and PASI 75 and PASI 90 at week 12, and a DLQI (0/1) at weeks 2 and 12. Several significantly different results were reported between subgroups, the majority of which favored patients with special body area involvement. Conclusion Most patients had psoriasis involvement in a special body area which was associated with worse QoL. Ixekizumab is similarly effective in reducing disease severity and improving QoL in patients with plaque psoriasis across different special body areas.

With a growing global population and intensifying regional conflicts, the need for food is more urgent than ever. Rice, as one of the world's major staple crops especially in Asia, sustains over 50 percent of the global population. Accurate rice mapping is fundamental to ensuring global food security and sustainable agricultural development. Remote sensing has become an essential tool for mapping rice cultivation due to its ability to cover large areas and provide timely observation. Existing reviews mainly focus on the paddy rice mapping methods. However, it lacks a comprehensive understanding on the quality of different paddy rice maps from regional to global scales. This paper provides a comprehensive review of existing satellite-based rice mapping methods and products. Firstly, we categorized all previous methods into four classes: 1) spatial statistical method; 2) traditional machine learning method; 3) phenology-based method; and 4) deep learning method. Secondly, we summarized 25 products, including 3 global products and 22 regional products. Furthermore, we examined the consistency and discrepancy among different products in China, Heilongjiang China and Vietnam respectively and explored the underlying reasons. We found that 1) rice fields with simple cropping patterns and intensive cultivation can be correctly recognized using various algorithms; 2) different products share low consistency in fragmented rice fields 3) the prevalence of clouds and complicated rice cropping patterns or diverse growing environments in subtropical and tropical regions poses challenges to accurate rice mapping. Due to these challenges, currently it still lacks paddy rice maps with both large spatial coverage, high spatial resolution, and long time series. Moreover, deficiency of ground-truth samples impedes product development and validation. For improved paddy rice mapping at large scale, we suggest to apply sample-free rice mapping techniques and remote sensing foundation models to leverage the strengths of phenology-based methods and deep learning methods.

Snow albedo is a key geophysical parameter that controls the energy exchanges between the atmosphere and Earth's surfaces and has been widely utilized in climatic and environmental change studies. However, recent studies have demonstrated that current albedo satellite products still have large uncertainties in snow-covered areas. In this study, we estimated the blue-sky shortwave albedo of snow surfaces using the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance values, ERA-5 land reanalysis snow parameters (e.g., snow cover, snow density and snow depth water equivalent) and in situ measurements. In the XGBoost model, the MODIS MCD43 albedo values were input as prior knowledge, and the random sample validation results showed that the R2 and root mean square error (RMSE) values of this model were approximately 0.953 and 0.044, respectively. The typical sites for independent validation were subjected to in situ measurements at the UPE_L, AWS5, and CA_ARB sites. Finally, the retrieved XGBoost albedo values were compared with the official NASA MODIS (MCD43, collection 6), the Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) SURFALB albedo products. The validation results indicated that the proposed approach achieved much greater accuracy (RMSE = 0.052, bias = 0.002) than did the corresponding official MODIS (RMSE = 0.087, bias = −0.033), GLASS (RMSE = 0.089, bias = −0.031) and VIIRS SURFALB albedo (RMSE = 0.100, bias = −0.032) products. The improved shortwave albedo captured the rapid temporal changes in surface snow conditions.

For many applications, raw satellite observations need to be converted to high-level products of various essential environmental variables. While numerous products are available at kilometer spatial resolutions, there are few global products at high spatial resolutions (10–30 m), which are also referred to fine or medium resolutions in the literature. To facilitate the development of more high spatial resolution products, this paper systematically reviews the state-of-the-art progress on inversion algorithms and publicly available regional and global products. We begin with an inventory of available high-resolution satellite data, and then present different algorithms for determining cloud masks, estimating aerosol optical depth, and performing atmospheric correction and topographic correction for land surface reflectance retrieval. The majority of this paper reviews the inversion algorithms and existing regional to global products of 18 variables in four major categories: 1) Land surface radiation, including broadband albedo, land surface temperature, and all-wave net radiation; 2) Terrestrial ecosystem variables, including leaf area index, fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation, fractional vegetation cover, fractional forest cover, tree height, forest above-ground biomass gross primary production, net primary production, and agricultural crop yield; 3) Water cycle and cryosphere, including soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and snow cover; and 4) Land surface types, such as global land cover, impervious surface, inland water, crop type, and fire. Since the existing products over large regions are usually spatially discontinuous due to cloud contamination, different data fusion and data assimilation algorithms and some products for producing spatially seamless and temporally continuous products are presented. In the end, we discuss a variety of challenges in generating global high spatial resolution satellite products.

ABSTRACTForest dynamics provide important information on the ecological environment. The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP) is one of the world’s largest reforestation/afforestation programs, however the actual changes in forest cover in the Three-North Regions (TNR) of China resulting from this program are highly uncertain. This study quantified changes in fractional forest cover (FFC) at 30 m using Landsat data from 1996 to 2020. Using the Google Earth Engine platform, more than 40,000 images from Landsat-5, Landsat 7 and Landsat-8 were integrated, and the annual surface reflectance was normalized based on the multi-band least squares regression and maximum normalized difference vegetation index composite method. An ensemble learning model trained using high-resolution Gao-Fen 2 satellite imagery was used to generate the FFC long time-series product. FFC showed an increasing trend with average rates of 0.022/10a in the last 25 years, and 0.03/10a after 2010 largely corresponding to the fourth and fifth phases of the TNSFP. There are significant regional differences in the relationship between FFC and air temperature ([Formula: see text] = 0.37) and precipitation ([Formula: see text] = 0.49). The increased air temperature in arid and less rainy areas inhibit the FFC increase, whereas the increase in precipitation had a promoting effect. FFC appeared more sensitive to changes in solar radiation and heat conditions in humid and rainy areas. The attribution analysis revealed that 34% of FFC changes were caused by climatic variables and 66% were caused by non-climatic factors. Among them, afforestation associated with the TNSFP significantly increased FFC, and forest fire is a key factor of forest change in the Greater Khingan Ranges and Lesser Khingan Ranges regions. Planting single tree species caused biological disasters in forests of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Further analysis of the increased FFC using high-level satellite products demonstrated an improvement in environmental conditions with cooler land surface temperature and higher vegetation gross primary production over the TNR.

Introduction: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease all over the world, and no drug is approved for the treatment of NAFLD. Bavachinin (BVC) is proven to possess liver-protecting effect against NAFLD, but its mechanism is still blurry. Objectives: With the use of Click Chemistry-Activity‐Based Protein Profiling (CC-ABPP) technology, this study aims to identify the target of BVC, and investigate the mechanism by which BVC exerts its liver-protecting effect. Methods: The high fat diet induced hamster NAFLD model is introduced to investigate BVC’s lipid-lowering and liver-protecting effects. Then, a small molecular probe of BVC is designed and synthesized based on the CC-ABPP technology, and BVC’s target is fished out. A series of experiments are performed to identify the target, including competitive inhibition assay, surface-plasmon resonance (SPR), cellular thermal shift assay (CETSA), drug affinity responsive target stability (DARTS) assay, and co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP). Afterward, the pro-regeneration effects of BVC are validated in vitro and in vivo through flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, and the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL). Result: In the hamster NAFLD model, BVC shows lipid-lowing effect and improvement on the histology. PCNA is identified as the target of BVC with the method mentioned above, and BVC facilitates the interaction between PCNA and DNA polymerase delta. BVC promotes HepG2 cells proliferation which is inhibited by T2AA, an inhibitor suppresses the interaction between PCNA and DNA polymerase delta. In NAFLD hamsters, BVC enhances PCNA expression and liver regeneration, reduces hepatocyte apoptosis. Conclusion: This study suggests that, besides the anti-lipemic effect, BVC binds to the pocket of PCNA facilitating its interaction with DNA polymerase delta and pro-regeneration effect, thereby exerts the protective effect against HFD induced liver injury.

Earth surface longwave radiation (SLR), including downward (DLR), upward (ULR), and net longwave radiation (NLR), significantly impacts the surface radiation budget and global climate evolution. However, the spatiotemporal variation in SLR remains poorly understood. In this study, three satellite products (GLASS-MODIS V40, GLASS-AVHRR, and CERES-SYN) and three reanalysis datasets (ERA5, MERRA-2, and GLDAS) were validated using ground measurements from 288 sites at seven observation networks. The mean biases and root mean square errors of the monthly DLR (ULR, NLR) estimates from the six products were −6.36 (−3.56, −2.86) Wm-2 and 16.63 (14.33, 13.38) Wm-2, respectively. Large differences in the spatial distribution of the SLR were mainly observed at high-latitude, high-altitude and desert/barren-covered regions. Large interannual variability was detected at high latitudes. GLASS-AVHRR and ERA5 better captured the long-term variability in DLR and ULR, whereas GLASS-AVHRR and MERRA-2 better detected trends in NLR. An increasing trend in DLR and ULR was observed between 1982 and 2015, followed by a decreasing trend from 2016 to 2021; the NLR flux did not exhibit a significant trend. Overall, the GLASS-AVHRR and ERA5 SLR estimates were more accurate and stable than those of the other products in accuracy, spatiotemporal distribution, and trend analysis.

IntroductionThis study assessed the relationship between the progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD) with cognitive impairment and changes in serum uric acid (UA) and homocysteine (Hcy) concentrations and explored the factors influencing PD with cognitive impairment.MethodsThe study randomly selected 74 patients with PD and evaluated their cognitive function using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale (MoCA). Patients with PD were divided into two subgroups: those with and without cognitive impairment. PD severity was evaluated and graded using the Hoehn and Yahr (H–Y) scale. Another 60 middle-aged and older individuals without PD during the same period were selected as a control group. Blood UA and Hcy concentrations in each group were measured to assess the relationship between PD, cognitive impairment, and changes in UA and Hcy concentrations.ResultsThe PD group with cognitive impairment had a lower UA concentration and higher Hcy concentration. The UA concentration was significantly higher in the early PD stages than in the middle and late stages (P

Abstract Satellite vegetation index (VI) products, such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI), have been widely used. However, they are severely contaminated by clouds and other factors and provide false signals of the surface vegetation conditions. In this study, the new global seamless 250 m, eight-day NDVI and EVI products from 2000–2021 were developed from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface reflectance data using a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network method. High-quality globally representative time series VI samples were constructed to train the model using a combination of the Savitzky-Golay filter (SG), Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) leaf area index (LAI) fitting and upper envelope methods. To evaluate the proposed method and the 250 m VI products, the MODIS VI product (MOD13Q1) was used for the inter-comparisons using four widely used VI reconstruction methods. Assuming that the MODIS VI data of high quality represents the true values, the root mean square error (RMSE) for NDVI and EVI generated by the LSTM model are 0.0734 and 0.0509, respectively.

Objective To investigate the efficacy of artificial dermis for wound repair after resection of cutaneous malignant tumors. Methods Twenty-five inpatients with cutaneous malignant tumors, including basal cell carcinoma (16 cases), squamous cell carcinoma (7 cases), and dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (2 cases), were enrolled from our hospital. Among these patients, either their wound could not be repaired with traditional skin flaps or they had underlying medical conditions. Tumors were removed by Mohs microsurgery, followed by placement of artificial dermis on the wound. Results Complete wound repair was observed in all patients. Of the 25 patients, 23 cases (92.00%) showed complete wound healing with mild hypertrophic scar within 1-2 months post-surgery. All wounds were healed within 3 months after the surgery. Only mild hypertrophic scars were observed during six-month follow-up. Conclusions Artificial dermis is effective for wound repair after resection of cutaneous malignant tumors, with mild hypertrophic scar, and is easy to use.

In this paper, the passivation behavior and corrosion resistance of a novel Cr-alloyed steel rebar in carbonized concrete environments were systematically studied, and its passivation mechanism was also revealed in view of the intrinsic relationship between the concrete alkalinity and the microstructure characteristic of the passive film. The electrochemical test results show that the alloyed rebar has excellent passivation performance under all carbonization conditions. Meanwhile, its passivation performance shows a trend of first strengthening and then slightly decreasing with the gradual intensification of carbonization, presenting better passivation performance in the mildly carbonized concrete (pH = 11) than in the non-carbonization (pH = 12.6) situation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Mott–Schottky tests indicate that the alloyed steel rebar has formed an n-p type semiconductor structure composite passive film, which was composed of Cr and Fe oxides/hydroxides under all conditions. The high passivation performance of the alloyed rebar is dominated by the excellent corrosion resistance of Cr oxide/hydroxide, which does not depend on the concrete alkalinity. On the contrary, the high alkalinity will inhibit the formation of Cr oxide to some extent and weaken the passivation performance of the rebar.

Sampling-based planning algorithm is a powerful tool for solving planning problems in high-dimensional state spaces. In this article, we present a novel approach to sampling in the most promising regions, which significantly reduces planning time-consumption. The RRT# algorithm defines the Relevant Region based on the cost-to-come provided by the optimal forward-searching tree. However, it uses the cumulative cost of a direct connection between the current state and the goal state as the cost-to-go. To improve the path planning efficiency, we propose a batch sampling method that samples in a refined Relevant Region with a direct sampling strategy, which is defined according to the optimal cost-to-come and the adaptive cost-to-go, taking advantage of various sources of heuristic information. The proposed sampling approach allows the algorithm to build the search tree in the direction of the most promising area, resulting in a superior initial solution quality and reducing the overall computation time compared to related work. To validate the effectiveness of our method, we conducted several simulations in both SE(2)and SE(3)state spaces. And the simulation results demonstrate the superiorities of proposed algorithm.

Objective To investigate the effect of G12R mutation in Cx26 on the expression of TLR2 and its downstream inflammatory factors in human keratinocytes. Methods Human keratinocytes (HaCaT) without (WT-Cx26) or with G12R-mutation (G12R-Cx26) were co-cultured with Trichophyton rubrum. Expression levels of TLR2 mRNA and its downstream effector molecules were detected by real-time PCR. The expression levels of TLR2 protein were detected by western blot. Cytokine levels in the culture medium were measured by ELISA. Immunofluorescence was used to determine distribution of Cx26 and TLR2 in G12R-Cx26 HaCaT cells. Results Expression levels of TLR2 mRNA were comparable between WT-Cx26 and G12R-Cx26 cells (t=1.92, P=0.190). However, G12R mutation in Cx26 decreased expression levels of TLR2 protein in cell membrane and cytoplasm (both P

This study investigates corrosion resistance and corrosion interface characteristics of novel Cr-alloyed steel rebar in mortar using electrochemical measurements, X-ray computed tomography (X-CT) scanning, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscope (XPS) analysis. Impressed constant current corrosion (ICCC) test was performed on alloyed steel rebar-mortar (ASRM) sample and carbon-steel rebar-mortar (CSRM) sample in a chloride-contaminated environment. After 5 days of ICCC test, alloyed steel rebar suffered a certain degree of localized corrosion with limited corrosion product, while the carbon-steel rebar presented severe general corrosion. Electrochemical tests demonstrated that the ASRM sample exhibited more than ten times in Rct value of the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy test and only about 0.46% in corrosion current density of the potentiodynamic polarization test compared to the CSRM sample. The above results revealed the excellent passivation performance and corrosion resistance of the ASRM sample, which is attributed to the formation of the stable composite passive film containing Cr/Fe oxides and hydroxides.

Study region: The Fuhe River Basin in Jiangxi Province, China. Study focus: Global climate change and intensified human activities are making the hydrological processes at Fuhe River Basin experiencing dramatic changes. Although some studies have investigated their individual impacts on basin-scale water resources, their combined effects on hydrology have received little attention. In this study, future scenarios were constructed for three future periods, based on five global climate model outputs (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and a dataset of future land use projections under three shared socioeconomic pathways and representative concentration pathways (SSP-RCPs). Then, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to assess the relative changes in water balance components and extreme flow frequency under these developed scenarios. Furthermore, the hydrological response assessment methodology was improved from the original multiscenario ensemble flow forecast (MESF) framework, which not only strengthens the connection between climate and land use input changes but also adds more assessment items. New hydrological insights for the region: The flow at the outlet of Fuhe River Basin is expected to increase by approximately 27.1%− 30.2%, 24.7–39.0% and 35.5%− 43.5% in the 2030 s, 2060 s and 2090 s, respectively. Water availability will increase significantly in February, August and October and decrease in November and December. To the end of 21st century, surface runoff will have more than 100% increase. Future floods and droughts will be more frequent and severe under SSP5–8.5.

The Hapke model has been widely used in the field of soil remote sensing. However, the latest development of the Hapke model (i.e., Hapke-HSR model) adopted a simple hypothesis to consider the influence of the soil moisture content (SMC), which brought great difficulties to SMC parameter inversion. This paper presents a method to improve the Hapke model using the improved multilayer radiative transfer model of soil reflectance (MARMIT-2), which can effectively improve the ability of the Hapke-HSR model to characterize the variation in the SMC. Finally, we used the soil database to comprehensively verify the ability of the improved Hapke model. The results show that the improved Hapke can effectively characterize the spectral characteristics of soil and show a higher fitting accuracy (RMSE = 0.009) compared with the Hapke-HSR model (RMSE = 0.031), especially at a high SMC (≥30%). Therefore, the improved Hapke model can better understand soil physical properties and improve the inversion accuracy of soil–vegetation physical parameters, which can be used to enhance agricultural water use efficiency.

As the most commonly used attack strategy by Botnets, the Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) has strong invisibility and variability. Using deep learning models to detect different families of DGA domain names can improve the network defense ability against hackers. However, this task faces an extremely imbalanced sample size among different DGA categories, which leads to low classification accuracy for small sample categories and even classification failure for some categories. To address this issue, we introduce the long-tailed concept and augment the data of small sample categories by transferring pre-trained knowledge. Firstly, we propose the Data Balanced Review Method (DBRM) to reduce the sample size difference between the categories, thus a relatively balanced dataset for transfer learning is generated. Secondly, we propose the Knowledge Transfer Model (KTM) to enhance the knowledge of the small sample categories. KTM uses a multi-stage transfer to transfer weights from the big sample categories to the small sample categories. Furthermore, we propose the Knowledge Distillation Transfer Model (KDTM) to relieve the catastrophic forgetting problem caused by transfer learning, which adds knowledge distillation loss based on the KTM. The experimental results show that KDTM can significantly improve the classification performance of all categories, especially the small sample categories. It can achieve a state-of-the-art macro average F1 score of 84.5%. The robustness of the KDTM model is verified using three DGA datasets that follow the Pareto distributions.

Training large-scale models needs big data. However, the few-shot problem is difficult to resolve due to inadequate training data. It is valuable to use only a few training samples to perform the task, such as using big data for application scenarios due to cost and resource problems. So, to tackle this problem, we present a simple and efficient method, contrastive label generation with knowledge for few-shot learning (CLG). Specifically, we: (1) Propose contrastive label generation to align the label with data input and enhance feature representations; (2) Propose a label knowledge filter to avoid noise during injection of the explicit knowledge into the data and label; (3) Employ label logits mask to simplify the task; (4) Employ multi-task fusion loss to learn different perspectives from the training set. The experiments demonstrate that CLG achieves an accuracy of 59.237%, which is more than about 3% in comparison with the best baseline. It shows that CLG obtains better features and gives the model more information about the input sentences to improve the classification ability.

With the growth of data in the real world, datasets often encounter the problem of long-tailed distribution of class sample sizes. In long-tailed image recognition, existing solutions usually adopt a class rebalancing strategy, such as reweighting based on the effective sample size of each class, which leans towards common classes in terms of higher accuracy. However, increasing the accuracy of rare classes while maintaining the accuracy of common classes is the key to solving the problem of long-tailed image recognition. This research explores a direction that balances the accuracy of both common and rare classes simultaneously. Firstly, a two-stage training is adopted, motivated by the use of transfer learning to balance features of common and rare classes. Secondly, a balanced weight function called Balanced Focal Softmax (BFS) loss is proposed, which combines balanced softmax loss focusing on common classes with balanced focal loss focusing on rare classes to achieve dual balance in long-tailed image recognition. Subsequently, a Balanced Weight Learning Mechanism (BWLM) to further utilize the feature of weight decay is proposed, where the weight decay as the weight balancing technique for the BFS loss tends to make the model learn smaller balanced weights by punishing the larger weights. Through extensive experiments on five long-tailed image datasets, it proves that transferring the weights from the first stage to the second stage can alleviate the bias of the naive models toward common classes. The proposed BWLM not only balances the weights of common and rare classes, but also greatly improves the accuracy of long-tailed image recognition and outperforms many state-of-the-art algorithms.

Complex tasks in the real world involve different modal models, such as visual question answering (VQA). However, traditional multimodal learning requires a large amount of aligned data, such as image text pairs, and constructing a large amount of training data is a challenge for multimodal learning. Therefore, we propose VL-Few, which is a simple and effective method to solve the multimodal few-shot problem. VL-Few (1) proposes the modal alignment, which aligns visual features into language space through a lightweight model network and improves the multimodal understanding ability of the model; (2) adopts few-shot meta learning in the multimodal problem, which constructs a few-shot meta task pool to improve the generalization ability of the model; (3) proposes semantic alignment to enhance the semantic understanding ability of the model for the task, context, and demonstration; (4) proposes task alignment that constructs training data into the target task form and improves the task understanding ability of the model; (5) proposes generation alignment, which adopts the token-level training and multitask fusion loss to improve the generation ability of the model. Our experimental results show the effectiveness of VL-Few for multimodal few-shot problems.

Multimodal learning is a promising area in artificial intelligence (AI) that can make the model understand different kinds of data. Existing works are trying to re-train a new model based on pre-trained models that requires much data, computation power, and time. However, it is difficult to achieve in low-resource or small-sample situations. Therefore, we propose VL-Meta, Vision Language Models for Multimodal Meta Learning. It (1) presents the vision-language mapper and multimodal fusion mapper, which are light model structures, to use the existing pre-trained models to make models understand images to language feature space and save training data, computation power, and time; (2) constructs the meta-task pool that can only use a small amount of data to construct enough training data and improve the generalization of the model to learn the data knowledge and task knowledge; (3) proposes the token-level training that can align inputs with the outputs during training to improve the model performance; and (4) adopts the multi-task fusion loss to learn the different abilities for the models. It achieves a good performance on the Visual Question Answering (VQA) task, which shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the model. This solution can help blind or visually impaired individuals obtain visual information.

Many emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications deployed on cloud platforms have strict latency requirements or deadline constraints, and thus meeting the deadlines is crucial to ensure the quality of service for users and the revenue for service providers in these delay-stringent IoT applications. Efficient flow scheduling in data center networks (DCNs) plays a major role in reducing the execution time of jobs and has garnered significant attention in recent years. However, only few studies have attempted to combine job-level flow scheduling and routing to guarantee meeting the deadlines of multi-stage jobs. In this paper, an efficient heuristic joint flow scheduling and routing (JFSR) scheme is proposed. First, targeting maximizing the number of jobs for which the deadlines have been met, we formulate the joint flow scheduling and routing optimization problem for multiple multi-stage jobs. Second, due to its mathematical intractability, this problem is decomposed into two sub-problems: inter-coflow scheduling and intra-coflow scheduling. In the first sub-problem, coflows from different jobs are scheduled according to their relative remaining times; in the second sub-problem, an iterative coflow scheduling and routing (ICSR) algorithm is designed to alternately optimize the routing path and bandwidth allocation for each scheduled coflow. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed JFSR scheme can significantly increase the number of jobs for which the deadlines have been met in DCNs.

PurposeWe have reported the efficacy and safety of 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser cystectomy of non-muscle invasive bladder tumor (NMIBC) (J Urol. 2009;182:66–9). In this study, we evaluated the long-term outcomes of patients with NMIBC who underwent transurethral partial cystectomy with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser, and explored the risk factors for tumor recurrence.MethodsThis was a retrospective study of patients with NMIBC planned to undergo transurethral partial cystectomy with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser at the Fourth Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital between January 2012 and December 2014. The primary outcome was bladder cancer recurrence.ResultsA total of 75 patients were enrolled. Sixty-two (82.7%) were male. The patients were 59.8 ± 12.9 years of age. The mean operation time was 38.7 ± 20.4 min. No Clavien grade >2 complications occurred. The duration of catheter indwelling was 3.6 ± 1.8 days. The hospital stay was 6.0 ± 2.3 days. The median follow-up was 80 months. A total of 17 patients had a recurrence during follow-up, and the recurrence-free survival (RFS) rate was 77.3%. In the multivariable analysis, the tumor risk group were independently associated with the recurrence of NMIBC (p = 0.026).ConclusionsAfter TURBT with a 2-micrometer continuous-wave laser, RFS was 77.3% at the median follow-up of 80 months. All complications were mild. Only tumor risk group was independently associated with the recurrence of NMIBC.

Impacts of Mn alloying on lattice stabilities, magnetic properties, electronic structures of the bcc and fcc phases and the fcc→bcc phase transition in Fe16−xMnx (x = 0, 1 and 2) alloys are studied by first-principles calculations. Results show that the doped Mn atom prefers ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interaction with the host Fe atoms in the bcc and fcc phases, respectively. In these two phases, the magnetic moment of Mn is smaller and larger than Fe, respectively. The local moment of Fe is decided by the Fe-Mn distance in the bcc phase, whereas in the fcc phase, it is determined by spatial orientation with Mn. In the different phases, Mn prefers different site occupations, which can be understood from the electronic density of states near Fermi energy, implying a possibility of element redistribution during phase transition. The driving force of phase transition decreases with Mn alloying. Both destabilized bcc phase and stabilized fcc phase contribute to the inhibited phase transition, but the latter plays a dominant role. Antiferromagnetism is recognized as the key reason for the enhanced stability of the fcc phase by Mn alloying.

We present the Wilsonian effective action as a solution of the exact RG equation for the critical $O(N)$ vector model in the large $N$ limit. Below four dimensions, the exact effective action can be expressed in a closed form as a transcendental function of two leading scaling operators with infinitely many derivatives. From the exact solution that describes the RG flow from a UV theory to the fixed point theory in the IR, we obtain the mapping between UV operators and IR scaling operators. It is shown that IR scaling operators are given by sums of infinitely many UV operators with infinitely many derivatives.

The morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular diseases are exceedingly high worldwide. Pathological heart remodeling, which is developed as a result of mitochondrial dysfunction, could ultimately drive heart failure. More recent research target exercise modulation of mitochondrial dysfunction to improve heart failure. Therefore, finding practical treatment goals and exercise programs to improve cardiovascular disease is instrumental. Better treatment options are available with the recent development of exercise and drug therapy. This paper summarizes pathological states of abnormal mitochondrial function and intervention strategies for exercise therapy.

Abstract The influence of direct current interference on the corrosion behavior of HRB400 and HRB400M steel bars in simulated concrete solution was studied using methods such as weight loss experiment, electrochemical experiment, surface technology and product analysis. The research results showed that with the increase of DC interference voltage, the corrosion rates of HRB400 and HRB400M steel bars would increase. The corrosion resistance of HRB400M steel bars was better than HRB400 steel bars under the experimental conditions. In addition, direct current interference could cause damage to the corrosion product layer on the surface of HRB400 steel bars and HRB400M steel bars. And the corrosion form and corrosion product types of HRB400 and HRB400M steel bars would be affected by direct current interference. The main corrosion products of HRB400 steel bars included γ-FeOOH and Fe2O3 when it was not interfered by DC. When DC interference was applied, the main corrosion products included Fe3O4 and Fe2O3. The corrosion products on the surface of HRB400M steel bars were mainly Fe3O4 and Fe2O3, and the types of products increased to form Cr2O3 and MnFe2O4.

Abstract A fundamental task in robotics is to plan collision‐free motions among a set of obstacles. Recently, learning‐based motion‐planning methods have shown significant advantages in solving different planning problems in high‐dimensional spaces and complex environments. This article serves as a survey of various different learning‐based methods that have been applied to robot motion‐planning problems, including supervised, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. These learning‐based methods either rely on a human‐crafted reward function for specific tasks or learn from successful planning experiences. The classical definition and learning‐related definition of motion‐planning problem are provided in this article. Different learning‐based motion‐planning algorithms are introduced, and the combination of classical motion‐planning and learning techniques is discussed in detail.

The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) is an essential biophysical variable for monitoring vegetation growth and quantitatively describing the efficiency of light absorption by vegetation. Several long-term global satellite FAPAR products, such as MODIS, GLASS, GEOV2, and GIMMS3g-FAPAR, have been produced at coarse spatial resolutions, however, they are inclined to criticism over spatial heterogeneous landscapes due to mixed pixel effects. As the successor of GLASS FAPAR products, the high spatial resolution GLASS (Hi-GLASS) FAPAR product suite has been generated in this study. We developed a hybrid algorithm through integration of physically-based radiative transfer models and machine learning to estimate the black-sky, white-sky and blue-sky Hi-GLASS FAPAR products at 30 m resolution from Landsat imagery globally. The coupled soil-leaf-canopy (SLC) radiative transfer model was applied to depict the physical relationship between FAPAR and Landsat surface reflectance data, and its simulations were executed with uniform distributions of input parameters. Separate random forest models were trained with these simulation samples and applied to Landsat data to generate the Hi-GLASS FAPAR products. Extensive validation of the FAPAR products was performed for different sensors and biomes using in situ measurements from the VAlidation of Land European Remote sensing Instruments (VALERI), ImagineS, and Copernicus Ground Based Observations for Validation (GBOV) projects.Results demonstrated that our FAPAR products were highly accurate for blue-sky (R2 = 0.91, RMSE = 0.09, bias = −0.03), black-sky (R2 = 0.94, RMSE = 0.11, bias = −0.02), and white-sky (R2 = 0.88, RMSE = 0.10, bias = −0.02). R2 and RMSE values for different Landsat sensors were slightly different in the order of TM (0.84, 0.13), ETM+ (0.92, 0.12), and OLI (0.95, 0.11), while the corresponding statistics for biomes were ranked from the best to the worst: shrubs (0.78, 0.08), crops (0.93, 0.09), grasslands (0.88, 0.11), and forests (0.85, 0.13). Additionally, Hi-GLASS products displayed reasonable spatial distribution and seasonal variation of vegetation dynamics. The developed method performed better than those for producing the decametric-resolution and coarse resolution FAPAR products, enabling us to generate long-term 30 m FAPAR records from the 1980s.

We consider a vaccination control into a age-structured susceptible-infective-recovered-susceptible (SIRS) model and study the global stability of the endemic equilibrium by the iterative method. The basic reproduction number $ R_0 $ is obtained. It is shown that if $ R_0 < 1 $, then the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, if $ R_0 > 1 $, then the disease-free and endemic equilibrium coexist simultaneously, and the global asymptotic stability of endemic equilibrium is also shown. Additionally, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation is given by employing the Bellman's principle of optimality. Through proving the existence of viscosity solution for HJB equation, we obtain the optimal vaccination control strategy. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the corresponding analytical results.

Binders play an important role in the safety of plastic bonded explosives (PBX). For the performance improvement of HMX-based explosive, the impact safety for the explosive using thermoplastic polyurethane (Estane5703) as binder, was investigated by comparing with that using fluorine rubber (F2604). By experiments performed with a self-designed impact test device to measure critical ignition velocity, it was found that the critical ignition velocity (277.36 m/s) of Estane5703-containing explosive was 9.3% higher than that of F2604-containing explosive. By analyzing the particle size distribution and morphological characteristics of the impacted powder, it could also be inferred that Estane5703 binder had better bond behavior than F2604. Beside, combustion characteristics of impacted powder were compared in a closed combustion vessel. The results indicated that the maximum combustion pressure (Pmax) of the Estane5703-containing impacted explosive powder was 56.5% lower than that of F2604-containing impacted explosive powder. The combustion duration of the Estane5703-containing impacted powder was 24.1% longer than that of F2604-containing powder, suggesting that the combustion of the former was milder. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Estane5703-containing explosive has better impact safety than the F2604-containing explosive due to the higher bond strength of Estane5703.

Cord steel is used for making tire frames and wire saws for cutting silicon wafers. The diameter of mainstream cutting wire has been developed to be lower than 100 μm. The size and deformation ability of inclusions are very important to the wire breaking rate of cord steel during the drawing process. In order to improve the deformation ability of the inclusions in cord steel, alkali metal oxide was added into the molten steel to improve the inclusions in the steel so as to obtain good, plastic, low-melting-point inclusions. Mass fractions of 0.3%, 0.5% and 1.0% K2CO3, Na2CO3 and B2O3 were added into cord steel, which were melted in 10 furnaces (including 0% alkali metal oxides, mass fractions of 0.3%/0.5%/1.0% K2CO3, Na2CO3 and B2O3). The morphology and composition of inclusions were observed by SEM-EDS. Factsage phase diagram calculations and experimental results show that, with the increase in Na2CO3 content in cord steel, the aluminum content in the inclusions gradually decreased. When the mass fraction of Na2CO3 was 0.5% per ton, most of the inclusions in the steel fell in the low melting point region (less than 1300 °C). With the increase in K2CO3 content in cord steel, the silicon content in the inclusions decreased gradually. When the mass fraction of K2CO3 was 0.5% per ton, most of the inclusions in the steel fell in the low melting point region. The deformation ability of the inclusions added with 0.5% Na2CO3 in the steel during forging was better than that of the inclusions added with 0.5% K2CO3. After adding B2O3, the inclusions in the steel were SiO2-MnO-Al2O3 inclusions or inclusions with SiO2-MnO-Al2O3 as the core and BN wrapped around. Boron could not be dissolved into the inclusions for plastic modification.

Background: Follicular dendritic cell (FDC) sarcoma is an uncommon mesenchymal origin neoplasm derived from the abnormal proliferation and differentiation of FDCs. Epstein‒Barr virus-positive inflammatory follicular dendritic cell sarcoma (EBV+ iFDCS), which used to be known as the inflammatory pseudotumour (IPT)-like variant, occurs exclusively in the liver and spleen and has rarely been reported in the gastrointestinal tract. Case study: Here, we report a case of a 52-year-old woman with a special family history undergoing a routine physical examination. The colonoscope revealed an approximately 18 mm transverse colonic polyp, and the endoscopic polypectomy was performed. Microscopically, the excised polypoid mass was composed predominantly of inflammatory cells scattered with atypical ovoid to spindle tumor cells. Interestingly, there was a remarkable infiltration of IgG4+ cells. Immunohistochemistry showed that the tumor cells were positive for CD21, CD23 and CD35. EBV-encoded mRNA (EBER) in situ hybridization also gave positive signals. These histopathology features supported the diagnosis of EBV+ iFDCS. The patient was free of disease over 1-year follow-up. Conclusion: Identification of the potential pathogenesis sites of EBV+ iFDCS in extra-hepatosplenic regions is necessary for correct and timely diagnosis, and we consider it very meaningful to share our experience of diagnosing this tumor type. Furthermore, we summarize the clinicopathological features of EBV+ iFDCS presenting as a colon polyp after a thorough review of the literature.

The inversion framework Land continuous Variable Estimator for Landsat data (LoVE)-Landsat has been recently developed, but the estimation accuracy has not been well determined. LoVE-Landsat is a data-assimilation-based inversion framework capable of estimating a series of daily 30-m spatiotemporal continuous land surface variables from Landsat top-of-atmosphere (TOA) data. This paper presents the comprehensive validation results of a land surface variables estimation conducted through LoVE-Landsat, including the leaf area index (LAI), fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR), surface broadband albedo, incident photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and incident shortwave radiation (ISR). This validation involved a direct validation using extensive ground measurements and an inter-comparison with existing satellite products. In situ measurements came from a total of 196 sites covering different biome types from seven networks distributed around the world. Among these sites, more than 2000 LAI and FAPAR plot measurements representing the Landsat pixel size were collected from 40 sites of the Bigfoot, VALERI, and ImagineS networks, about 100 LAI and FAPAR reference values at 3-km scale were provided by 52 sites of DIRECT datasets, and nearly 70,000 albedo and ISR and 40,000 PAR tower-based measurements were gathered from 143 sites of Ameriflux, Euroflux, Ozflux, and SURFRAD networks. Results showed that the LoVE-Landsat 30 m LAI estimates were accurate, with R2 = 0.76 and root-mean-square-error (RMSE) = 0.89, and were slightly more accurate than the coarse resolution Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) LAI product at the kilometer scale (RMSE = 0.75 vs. 0.79). Validation at the 143 flux network sites showed that the daily snow-free LoVE-Landsat 30 m shortwave albedo had an accuracy comparable to the MODIS daily albedo product (RMSE around 0.037) and higher accuracy (RMSE = 0.031) when Landsat had clear-sky observations. Direct validation of ISR and PAR estimation showed high accuracy, with RMSE values of 102.8 and 48.7 W/m2, respectively. Spatial and temporal evaluation at six typical sites also showed that LoVE-Landsat could produce consistent spatially and temporally continuous estimation. Although a more comprehensive validation of all retrievals still needs to be conducted, both the direct validation and product comparison results of the key variables indicate that LoVE-Landsat can estimate a group of spatially and temporally continuous variables from Landsat observations accurately, which demonstrates the strong potential of LoVE-Landsat to generate global 30-m continuous land products.

We study the critical bosonic O(N) vector model with quenched random mass disorder in the large N limit. Due to the replicated action which is sometimes not bounded from below, we avoid the replica trick and adopt a traditional approach to directly compute the disorder averaged physical observables. At $N=\infty$, we can exactly solve the disordered model. The resulting low energy behavior can be described by two scale invariant theories, one of which has an intrinsic scale. At finite $N$, we find that the previously proposed attractive disordered fixed point at $d=2$ continues to exist at $d=2+\epsilon$ spatial dimensions. We also studied the system in the $3

Objective: To investigate the clinical significance of interleukin-33(IL-33) and soluble ST2 (sST2) in patients with vitiligo. Methods: The serum concentrations of IL-33 and sST2 were determined by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) respectively in 62 patients with vitiligo and 30 healthy controls. The levels of IL-33 and sST2 in patients in different disease stage, clinical course and lesion area were assessed. Results: The expression levels of serum IL-33 and sST2 were higher in peripheral blood of patients in progressive stage and stable stage of vitiligo than those in the normal controls (IL-33: t=4.67, 2.34, P0.05). Serum IL-33 or sST2 did not significantly correlate with age or disease duration in patients with vitiligo (all P>0.05). Conclusions: IL-33 and sST2 may play an important role in the pathogenesis of vitiligo.

Utilizing a comprehensive database spanning 110 exchanges in five geographic regions, we examine trends in trade activity and contract innovation of exchange-traded futures and options over the period 2002–2021. We find that global volume has experienced a ten-fold increase driven by significant increases at Asian and North American exchanges, and primarily in the equity, interest rate and currency asset classes. New contract innovation has been greatest in North America and in the energy and equity asset classes. Further, volume and open interest attributable to new contract innovation have now surpassed those of legacy contracts. Turnover showed a significant increase driven largely by trade activity in Asian markets. Finally, new contract failure rates have been highest at North American exchanges as well as in the interest rate and energy asset classes.

This study reports a detailed investigation of the deformation behavior and microstructural evolution of a novel ultra-low carbon Cr-Mo alloyed dual-phase steel rebar aimed for marine applications. The rebar matrix consists of the lamellar ferrite/bainite dual phases with the lamellar interfaces along the rolling direction. The soft ferrite phase is composed of larger grains with a low dislocation density, while the hard bainite phase is composed of finer grains with a much higher dislocation density. By comparing the strain hardening behavior from different sites at the rebar with varying ferrite and bainite volume fractions, it shows that the hetero-deformation induced (HDI) hardening is strong and dominates the overall work hardening behavior in the early stage of plastic deformation by prevailing over the conventional sum-up of contribution of each phase alone. In this stage, the plastic deformation of ferrite was constrained by the disproportionally-strained, neighboring bainite, creating the accumulation of geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs) at the phase interface and the long-range HDI stress. The results also reinforce the understanding of deformation behavior of dual-phase steels, especially around the role of HDI stress and hardening.

Abstract ADMSCs were isolated from subcutaneous adipose tissue, characterized and cultured in vitro. GFP-labeled ADMSCs can grow and proliferate well on the Atelocollagen scaffolds, and induced by 5-aza the cells can differentiate into cardio-like cells. 3D cultured ADMSCs on Atelocollagen scaffolds were transplanted into mice ischemia myocardium, and have good biocompatibility with host cardio tissue.

Abstract Purpose The retroperitoneal robotic assisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN) is suitable for tumors locating on the posterior side of the kidney. However, the posterior hilar tumor poses an additional surgical challenge due to the special location and poor tumor exposure. We developed a novel kidney ventrally rotation technique to overcome this difficulty during retroperitoneal RAPN and evaluated its efficacy in a retrospective case-control comparative study. Methods From March 2016 to April 2019, a total of 39 patients with posterior renal hilar tumor underwent retroperitoneal RAPN. The kidney ventrally rotation technique, which improved the tumor exposure by opening the peritoneum and rotating the kidney ventrally, was applied in 24 cases, and the conventional RAPN was performed in the other 15 cases (control group). Perioperative data was analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of the kidney ventrally rotation technique. Results In kidney rotation group, the 24 patients underwent RAPN successfully without converting to open surgery or radical nephrectomy. The warm ischemia time was 17.4 ± 6.6 min, which was significantly shorter than 24.5 ± 8.3 min in control group. The mean operation time (80 ± 24 min) and estimated blood loss (104 ± 65 ml) were not different from the control group. No sever complications occurred, and no positive surgical margin was found in all the malignant cases. After 14 months follow-up, no recurrence or metastasis occurred in all cases. Conclusion Kidney ventrally rotation technique is safe and feasible for improving the exposure of posterior renal hilar tumor during retroperitoneal RAPN. It could be regarded as an efficient option for the management of posterior hilar tumor.