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Summary The paper designs a novel efficient three‐phase voltage source inverter with performance optimization. When auxiliary circuits connected in parallel with every bridge arm are involved in working process of the designed inverter, main switches will realize zero‐voltage switching in the wide load range, which is beneficial for further decline of the loss of main switches. Furthermore, the optimized duty cycle of the gate drive signal of auxiliary switches is used to restrict circuiting current loss. Besides, when the designed inverter works in a dead zone, the resonance will occur in the auxiliary circuits to cause the output phase voltage to vary from zero or the DC supply voltage to the DC supply voltage or zero as soon as possible, which is beneficial for further decline of the output phase voltage error and the suppression of dead effect. The paper provides relevant analysis on each working status within a switching period along with design requirements. By analyzing test waveforms, it affirms that main switches realize zero‐voltage switching. The efficiency of the designed inverter reaches 98.8% at rating condition. The experiment affirms that the designed inverter has an edge over another two inverters for comparison in performance optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The paper designs an efficient three‐phase soft‐switching inverter with asymmetric auxiliary circuits, which is beneficial for further miniaturization and efficiency optimization. Only two auxiliary switches, one resonant inductor, and three resonant capacitors make up simple asymmetric auxiliary circuits of each phase, contributing to the reduction of power loss and hardware cost. As soon as the simple auxiliary circuits get involved in the operation of the designed inverter, main switches can realize zero‐voltage switching within the entire load range. The reduction of power loss of auxiliary circuits and main switches is conducive to further efficiency optimization. The paper expounds every operating status during one switching period. The relevant experimental waveforms make known that switching devices can realize soft‐switching. The efficiency reaches 99% at rated operation status of the designed inverter, confirming that the designed inverter has superiority over comparison objects in the experiment with regard to the efficiency. Thus, the structural simplification of auxiliary circuits is an effective method for further miniaturization and efficiency optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protein folding is a prominent area of research in the life sciences. Exendin-4, a 39-amino acid peptide hormone, is of particular interest due to its potential therapeutic applications. In this study, we employed a steered molecular dynamics method to investigate the folding of Exendin-4. Our simulations reveal an intermediate state during the folding process, suggesting a more complex three-state mode of folding. Structural analysis indicates that Exendin-4 folds through two distinct pathways: pathway 1 involves gradual growth of a helical structure after the collapse of the hydrophobic core in the Trp-cage, while pathway 2 involves initial formation of local microdomains (helical structure and Trp-cage) which then combine with each other to form a stable native structure. We found that the folding along these pathways follows the hydrophobic collapse mechanism and the diffusion-collision mechanism, respectively. We believe that these two mechanisms together govern the folding of Exendin-4. These results significantly differ from those observed in most small protein folding. Our study on the folding of Exendin-4 will advance our understanding of the protein folding mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dynamic PET/CT combined with a dual‐input three‐compartment model can be applied to assess the kinetic parameters of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The nonlinear least squares (NLLS) method is the most common method for fitting model parameters; however, some limitations remain. Purpose: A novel Bayesian‐based method was compared with the NLLS method to estimate the kinetic parameters for differentiating HCCs from background liver tissue. Methods: The proposed Bayesian method combined a priori knowledge of the physiological range and likelihood functions of HCC lesions to obtain HCC PET/CT measurements. Metropolis‐Hastings sampling was used to numerically estimate the posterior distribution. This study used 5‐minute dynamic PET imaging and 1‐minute static PET imaging acquired 60 min post‐injection from 19 HCC lesions and 17 background liver regions. Results: The NLLS method indicated that k3 (p = 0.001) and fa (p < 0.001) were higher in HCCs than in background liver tissue, while K1 (p = 0.603), k2 (p = 0.405), k4 (p = 0.492), Vb (p = 0.112), and Ki (p = 0.091) were not significantly different. The Bayesian method showed that k3 (p < 0.001), fa (p < 0.001), and Ki (p = 0.002) were higher in HCCs than in background liver tissue, while K1 (p = 0.195), k2 (p = 0.028), k4 (p = 0.723), and Vb (p = 0.018) were not significantly different. For k3 and fa, the Bayesian method showed a higher AUC value for diagnostic performance in differentiating HCCs from background liver tissue than the NLLS method (0.853 vs. 0.745 and 0.928 vs. 0.886). Additionally, the Bayesian method had smaller Akaike information criteria and residual sum of squares values, as well as fewer parameter estimation outliers, than the NLLS method. Conclusions: The proposed Bayesian method can accurately and robustly estimate liver kinetic parameters, effectively distinguish between lesions and background liver tissue, and provide accurate information about the uncertainty in parameter estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sufficient conditions ensuring that the subdirect sum of p-norm strictly diagonally dominant [or, for short, SDD(p)] matrices is in the class of SDD(p) matrices, are given. In particular, it is shown that the subdirect sum of overlapping principal submatrices of an SDD(p) matrix is also an SDD(p) matrix. Some examples are also given that illustrate the conditions presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic Inpainting on Segmentation Map (SISM) aims to manipulate segmentation maps by semantics. Recent works show SISM provides semantic-aware auxiliary information for better style or structure manipulations. Providing structural assistance, segmentation maps have been broadly used as an intermediate interface to achieve better image manipulation. Mainstream solutions of image manipulation use Generative Adversarial Net (GAN) globally, locally or jointly. It is also applicable to SISM. However, the discriminator of global GAN is easier fooled, because the majority of its input is the same as the ground-truth, which is hard to fully mitigate the inconsistency between inpainted areas and the context. The inconsistency is more difficult for local GAN to address, due to the lack of context in its input. To mitigate the inconsistency, we propose a novel Multi-Expansion (MEx) loss. It is implemented by the adversarial loss on MEx areas. Each MEx area has the inpainted area as dominance and keeps knowledge of the scene context, so the consistency of the SISM results can be boosted. We propose an approximation of MEx loss, i.e., A-MEx loss, to further enhance the stability and usability. Besides performing well on SISM tasks, MEx loss also performs impressively on natural image inpainting. Extensive experiments on the two tasks demonstrate the advantages of our model over existing methods on four challenging datasets, such as a 2.59% increase in Hamm on SISM in Cityscape and a decrease of 5.00% FID on natural image inpainting in CMP Facade. The code of our work is available at: https://github.com/he159ok/AMEx-MEx-Loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data distribution is often associated with a priori-known probability, and the occurrence probability of interest events is small, so a large amount of imbalanced data appears in sociology, economics, engineering, and various other fields. The existing over- and under-sampling methods are widely used in imbalanced data classification problems, but over-sampling leads to overfitting, and under-sampling ignores the effective information. We propose a new sampling design algorithm called the neighbor grid of boundary mixed-sampling (NGBM), which focuses on the boundary information. This paper obtains the classification boundary information through grid boundary domain identification, thereby determining the importance of the samples. Based on this premise, the synthetic minority oversampling technique is applied to the boundary grid, and random under-sampling is applied to the other grids. With the help of this mixed sampling strategy, more important classification boundary information, especially for positive sample information identification is extracted. Numerical simulations and real data analysis are used to discuss the parameter-setting strategy of the NGBM and illustrate the advantages of the proposed NGBM in the imbalanced data, as well as practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to truthfully and accurately reflects the spatial variation of complex geological bodies is a huge challenge. Most modeling software has made some progress in system functionality and diversity. However, there are still deficiencies in the external appearance and internal quality optimization. In order to improve the quality and effectiveness of geological model mesh, the parameterization method of digital geometric mesh is introduced into the process of geological modeling in this paper. The basic representation method of geological body mesh is studied, and different parameterization methods are designed for different types of meshes. The common geological surface, high curvature geological surface and tunnel surface were verified as examples. The results show that the optimization and quality improvement of three-dimensional (3D) geological models can be realized by using the method presented in this paper, the geometric features of the original mesh are maintained and the degree of distortion is reduced in the process of texture mapping, grid editing, surface reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To establish robust semantic correspondence between images covering different objects belonging to the same category, there are three important types of information including inter-image relationship, intra-image relationship and cycle consistency. Most existing methods only exploit one or two types of the above information and cannot make them enhance and complement each other. Different from existing methods, we propose a novel end-to-end Consistency Graph Modeling Network (CGMNet) for semantic correspondence by modeling inter-image relationship, intra-image relationship and cycle consistency jointly in a unified deep model. The proposed CGMNet enjoys several merits. First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to jointly model the three kinds of information in a deep model for semantic correspondence. Second, our model has designed three effective modules including cross-graph module, intra-graph module and cycle consistency module, which can jointly learn more discriminative feature representations robust to local ambiguities and background clutter for semantic correspondence. Extensive experimental results show that our algorithm performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods on four challenging datasets including PF-PASCAL, PF-WILLOW, Caltech-101 and TSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Picoeukaryotes constitute an important component of the living biomass of oceanic communities and play major roles in biogeochemical cycles. There are very few studies on picoeukaryotes found in the Chukchi Sea. This work shows the relationship between community distribution and composition of picoeukaryotes residing in water masses and physicochemical factors in the southern Chukchi Sea studied in both midsummer (July) and early autumn (September), 2012. Illumina 18S V4 rDNA metabarcoding were used as the main tool. In July, Mamiellophyceae, Dinophyceae, and Trebouxiophyceae were the main microbial classes, with Micromonas, Prasinoderma, Telonema, Amoebophrya, Bathycoccus, Picomonas, and Bolidomonas representing the main genera. In September, Trebouxiophyceae surpassed Dinophyceae and was the second main microbial class, with Micromonas, Prasinoderma, Bathycoccus, Bolidomonas, Telonema, Choricystis, and Diaphanoeca representing the main genera. Water mass was the primary factor determining the community composition and diversity of picoeukaryotes. Abundance of Bathycoccus was found to be highly correlated with Alaskan Coastal Water and that of Prasinoderma, Bolidomonas, and Diaphanoeca with Bering Seawater. Nitrate and phosphate content of water in midsummer and dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature in early autumn were the main factors that shaped the abundance of the picoeukaryote community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This study investigates the potential of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) as vehicles for delivering therapeutic agents, with a focus on the p53 tumor suppressor gene. Fusion with CD63 or ARRDC1 was found to facilitate the overexpression and proper localization of p53 and significantly increase the yield and loading efficiency of sEVs with p53 mRNA and proteins. Moreover, the functional assessment of these engineered sEVs on H1299 cells demonstrated an enhanced anti-tumor effect, particularly with ARP-sEVs, suggesting a superior inhibition of cell proliferation and promotion of apoptosis. These results are expected to be informative in the application of EV therapy. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) have emerged as promising therapeutic agents and drug delivery vehicles. Targeted modification of sEVs and their contents using genetic modification strategies is one of the most popular methods. This study investigated the effects of p53 fusion with arrestin domain-containing protein 1 (ARRDC1) and CD63 on the generation of sEVs, p53 loading efficiency, and therapeutic efficacy. Overexpression of either ARRDC1–p53 (ARP) or CD63–p53 (CDP) significantly elevated p53 mRNA and protein levels. The incorporation of ARRDC1 and CD63 significantly enhanced HEK293T-sEV biogenesis, evidenced by significant increases in sEV-associated proteins TSG101 and LAMP1, resulting in a boost in sEV production. Importantly, fusion with ARRDC1 or CD63 substantially increased the efficiency of loading both p53 fusion proteins and its mRNA into sEVs. sEVs equipped with ARP or CDP significantly enhanced the enrichment of p53 fusion proteins and mRNA in p53-null H1299 cells, resulting in a marked increase in apoptosis and a reduction in cell proliferation, with ARP-sEVs demonstrating greater effectiveness than CDP-sEVs. These findings underscore the enhanced functionality of ARRDC1- and CD63-modified sEVs, emphasizing the potential of genetic modifications in sEV-based therapies for targeted cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We assessed qHPV vaccine immunogenicity/safety in Chinese females aged 9–26 years (83/85). • The qHPV vaccine elicited robust anti-HPV6/11/16/18 responses in Chinese females (82/85). • Non-inferior immunogenicity was observed in younger versus older Chinese females (82/85). • The qHPV vaccine was generally well tolerated in Chinese females aged 9–26 years (82/85). The quadrivalent human papillomavirus (qHPV; HPV6/11/16/18) vaccine was approved for use in Chinese women aged 20–45 years in 2017. This Phase 3, open-label study (NCT03493542) aimed to assess immunogenicity and safety of the qHPV vaccine in Chinese girls aged 9–19 years versus Chinese young women aged 20–26 years; we report results from Day 1 through Month 7. The study will continue through Month 60 to assess antibody persistence in Chinese girls aged 9–19 years. Participants aged 9–26 years received three doses of the qHPV vaccine (Day 1, Month 2, Month 6). Geometric mean titers (GMTs) and seroconversion percentages for anti-HPV6/11/16/18 antibodies were determined by competitive Luminex immunoassay (cLIA) in serum samples obtained on Day 1 and at Month 7. Injection-site adverse events (AEs) and systemic AEs within 30 days post-vaccination, and serious AEs (SAEs) occurring at any time during the study, were recorded. In total, 766 participants (383 aged 9–19 years; 383 aged 20–26 years) were enrolled and received ≥1 vaccine dose. All participants in the per-protocol immunogenicity population of both age groups seroconverted to each of the vaccine HPV types at Month 7. Anti-HPV6/11/16/18 antibody GMTs at Month 7 in participants aged 9–19 years were non-inferior to those in participants aged 20–26 years. Injection-site AEs and systemic AEs were reported by 36.6% and 49.3% of 9–19-year-olds, and 40.7% and 54.8% of 20–26-year-olds, respectively. There were no vaccine-related SAEs. No participants discontinued the vaccine due to an AE and no deaths were reported. Antibody responses induced by the 3-dose qHPV vaccination regimen in Chinese girls aged 9–19 years were non-inferior to those in Chinese young women aged 20–26 years. The vaccine was generally well tolerated in the study population. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03493542. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new environmentally friendly liquid dielectric material, vegetable insulating oil has been widely used in oil-filled power equipment. In oil-filled power equipment, ageing, faults of overheating and discharge cause the decomposition of insulating oil and insulating paper, resulting in dissolved gases in oils. The diffusion behavior of dissolved gases in oils is helpful for evaluation of health state of oil-filled power equipment. In this study, the molecular dynamics simulation based on polymer consistent force field (PCFF) is adopted to analyze diffusion processes of dissolved gases in camellia insulating oils. The diffusion coefficients and free volume of dissolved gases including hydrocarbons, carbon oxides and hydrogen are calculated. The diffusion trajectory of dissolved gases in oils are also given. In addition, impacts of gas species and temperature on molecular diffusion coefficients of oils were also studied. Results quantitatively describe the diffusion behavior of gases with different molecular weight in the oils under various temperatures. The research provides theoretic support for further application of vegetable insulating oils in power equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The helix-loop-helix (i.e., EF-hand) is the most common motif in the superfamily of Ca2+-binding proteins. Parvalbumins, as the classical EF-hand proteins, are associated with the muscle relaxation/contration, the calcium buffering etc. The previous researches focus more of interest on the ion coupled/decoupled mechanism using molecular dynamics (MD) computations. We developed the novel approach instead of MD, in which the Landau free energy was introduced to describe the protein in term of the skeletal Cα chain. The unfolding and folding processes were simulated by the Glauber algorithm under the repeated heating and cooling cycles. The high-quality crystal structure (2PVB) was as the trigger of non-equilibrium dynamics simulation for parvalbumin-β (Parv). The evolution of three dimensional structure during the folding was displayed for the residues 8-64 fragment in Parv. The phenomenon of helix nucleation was observed, that was, the 310 helix at residues 35-37 and the front of α-helix at residues 40-50 were firstly formed in the folding process. We also found two potential misfoldings which were caused by the distortion of the local structures at residues 35-37, 45-50. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Sol-gel synthesis of Y 2 O 3 :Yb3+, Er3+ nanophosphors. • The 1.534 μm emission of Y 2 O 3 :Yb3+, Er3+ enhanced greatly with Ce3+ doping. • The green and red upconversion emission of the phosphors was restrained. • The effective energy transfer between Er3+ and Ce3+ enhanced 1.534 μm emission. Abstract Nano-sized Y 2 O 3 :Yb3+, Er3+ phosphors were synthesized by sol-gel method and characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, near-infrared and upconversion fluorescence spectroscopy. The phosphors calcined at 1100 °C for 2 h were confirmed to be cubic Y 2 O 3 phase with well-crystallized particles. With the introduction of Ce3+ ions at proper doping concentration, the 1.534 μm emission of Er3+ was found to be greatly enhanced, while the green and red upconversion emission intensity obviously decreased. The enhancement of 1.534 μm emission could be attributed to the phonon-assisted energy transfer process between Ce3+ and Er3+ ions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parvalbumin (Parv) is a typical protein with EF-hand motifs that play an important role in many physiological processes. We present a novel free energy to model the skeletal Cα chain of the protein from the basic principle of mathematics and physics. Starting from the crystal structure of Parv (PDB code 2PVB), we first analyze the profile of the Cα bond and torsion angles over the segment that contains the secondary structures. Then the parameters in the energy function are evaluated for the helix ABCD fragment that contains two EF-hand domains in Parv. Meanwhile an eight-soliton configuration at the energy minimum is constructed to model the conformation of ABCD fragment. The deviation of the conformation constructed from the model away from the crystal structure is as small as 1.28 Å. The structural modeling stems from the physical energy, which is a benefit relative to the statistics-based or knowledge-based technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Y 2 O 3 :Yb3+, Er3+, Eu3+ phosphors with different Yb3+, Er3+ and Eu3+ doping concentrations were prepared by sol-gel method using glycine as a chelating agent. The effect of Yb3+/Er3+/Eu3+ doping concentrations on the upconversion and near-infrared spectral performances of the synthesized phosphors were investigated. The XRD analysis shows that the samples calcined at 1000 °C for 2 h are well-crystallized and show a pure cubic Y 2 O 3 phase. Upon excitation of 980 nm excitation source, the emission intensity of green/red upconversion and 1.54 μm near-infrared emission of the samples can be adjusted with the variation of Eu3+ doping concentrations. The samples also display a color-tunable upconversion emission with the variation of Eu3+ doping concentration and the excitation power of 980 nm laser diode. In addition, the energy transfer mechanism among Yb3+, Er3+ and Eu3+ in upconversion and 1.54 μm emission processes are also discussed. • Sol-gel synthesis of Y 2 O 3 :Yb3+, Er3+, Eu3+ phosphors. • 980 nm LD excited color-tunable upconversion luminescence. • Eu3+ doping can apparently enhance the 1.54 μm NIR emission intensity of the samples. • Applications in optical communications, eye-safe laser, display devices, solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel method named Multi-label Double-layer Learning (MDLL) for multi-label cross-modal retrieval task. MDLL includes two stages (layers): L2C (Label to Common) and C2L (Common to Label). In the L2C stage, considering that labels can provide semantic information, we take label information as an auxiliary modality and apply a covariance matrix to represent label similarity in multi-label situation. Thus we can maximize the correlation of different modalities and reduce their semantic gap in the L2C stage. In addition, we find that samples with the same semantic labels may have different contents from users’ view. According to this problem, in the C2L stage, labels are projected to a latent space learned from features of image and text. By this way, the label latent space are more related to the sample’s contents. Then, it is noticed that the samples have same labels but various contents can be decreased. In MDLL, iterative learning of the L2C and C2L stages will improve the discriminative ability greatly and decline the discrepancy between the labels and the contents. To show the effectiveness of MDLL, some experiments are conducted on three multi-label cross-modal retrieval tasks (Pascal Voc 2007, Nus-wide, and LabelMe), on which competitive results are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We evaluated the effects of three-dimensional virtual planning and the use of a plate-embedded surgical guide in mandibular reconstruction with microvascular fibula flaps.Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 35 patients who underwent primary mandibular reconstruction with a free fibula flap. They were divided into three groups according to the therapy they received. In group A, 12 patients underwent reconstruction using the modified surgical guide system, including virtual surgeries, pre-bent titanium plates, screw-predesignated cutting guides for mandibular and fibular osteotomies, and plate-embedded shaping guides. In group B, 14 patients underwent reconstruction using the common surgical guide system, including virtual surgeries, cutting guides and pre-bent plates. In group C, 9 patients underwent reconstruction based on the surgeon's experience. All cases were reviewed for the total operative time, ischemia time of the fibula flaps, accuracy of surgery, and postoperative complications.Results: All of the fibula flaps survived. In group A, the ischemia time was shorter than that of groups B and C (P < .05). The average gonion and condyle shift was lower in group A than in groups B and C (P < .01).Conclusions: Application of the screw-predesignated and plate-embedded surgical guide system can reduce the ischemia time and operation time in mandibular reconstruction with a fibula flap, and can increase reconstruction accuracy. This method is a precise and highly reliable technique for improving the clinical outcome of mandibular reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam element theory, a nonlinear finite element method is proposed to solve the mechanical response of functionally graded shape memory alloys (FG-SMAs) three-point bending beam considering the tension–compression asymmetry under the loading process. The Auricchio's shape memory alloy (SMA) constitutive model was used to describe the phase transformation relationship of SMA. The constitutive model of the power exponent distribution law of FG-SMA was developed by using the theory of composite mechanics. Using the virtual work principle, the bending beam equilibrium equation of FG-SMA was developed. The finite element method and Newton–Raphson method were used to solve the equilibrium equation of the three-point bending beam of FG-SMA. The accuracy of the proposed method was verified by comparing the present results obtained by the nonlinear finite element method with the existing literature. Then three-point bending beam analysis of FG-SMA was carried out. The results show that the increase in the graded index and tensile asymmetry coefficient increases the stiffness of the beam. When the SMA enters phase transformation, the increase in temperature will reduce the deflection of the beam. In addition, the strain variation in the mid-span section near pure shape memory alloy layer is more obvious than that near pure ceramic layer due to temperature. The compressive axial load is more likely to cause beam bending than tensile axial load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enantiomeric pairs of triticonazole have been successfully separated by supercritical fluid chromatography coupled with a tris(3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamoyl) cellulose-coated chiral stationary phase in this work. The effects of co-solvent, dissolution solvent, flow rate, backpressure, and column temperature have been studied in detail with respect to retention, selectivity, and resolution of triticonazole. As indicated, the co-solvents mostly affected the retention factors and resolution, due to the different molecular structure and polarity. In addition, the dissolution solvents, namely, chloromethanes and alcohols, have been also important for enantioseparation because of the different interaction with stationary phase. Higher flow rate and backpressure led to faster elution of the triticonazole molecules, and the change of column temperature showed slight effect on the resolution of triticonazole racemate. Moreover, a comparative separation experiment between supercritical fluid chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography revealed that chiral supercritical fluid chromatography gave the 3.5 times value of Rs/ tR2 than high performance liquid chromatography, which demonstrated that supercritical fluid chromatography had much higher separation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerolysin is the paradigmatic member of a large family of toxins that convert from a water-soluble monomer/dimer into a membrane-spanning oligomeric pore. While there is x-ray crystallographic data of its water-soluble conformation, the most recent structural model of the membrane-inserted pore is based primarily on data of water-soluble tetradecamers of mutant protein, together with computational modeling ultimately performed in vacuum. Here we examine this pore model with atomic force microscopy (AFM) of membrane-associated wild-type complexes and all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in water. In striking contrast to a disc-shaped cap region predicted by the present model, the AFM images reveal a star-shaped complex, with a central ring surrounded by seven radial projections. Further, the MD simulations suggest that the locations of the receptor-binding (D1) domains in the present model are not correct. However, a modified model in which the D1 domains, rather than localized at fixed positions, adopt a wide range of configurations through fluctuations of an intervening linker is compatible with existing data. Thus our work not only demonstrates the importance of directly resolving such complexes in their native environment but also points to a dynamic receptor binding region, which may be critical for toxin assembly on the cell surface. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest species of birds in Antarctica, penguins are called "biological indicators". Changes in the environment will cause population fluctuations. Therefore, developing a penguin census regularly will not only help carry out conservation activities but also provides a basis for studying climate change. Traditionally, scholars often use indirect methods, e.g., identifying penguin guano and establishing regression relationships to estimate the size of penguin colonies. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of automatic object detection algorithms based on aerial images, which locate each penguin directly. We build a dataset consisting of images taken at 400 m altitude over the island populated by Adelie penguins, which are cropped with a resolution of 640 × 640. To address the challenges of detecting minuscule penguins (often 10 pixels extent) amidst complex backgrounds in our dataset, we propose a new object detection network, named YoloPd (Yolo for penguin detection). Specifically, a multiple frequency features fusion module and a Bottleneck aggregation layer are proposed to strengthen feature representations for smaller penguins. Furthermore, the Transformer aggregation layer and efficient attention module are designed to capture global features with the aim of filtering out background interference. With respect to the latency/accuracy trade-off, YoloPd surpasses the classical detector Faster R-CNN by 8.5% in mean precision (mAP). It also beats the latest detector Yolov7 by 2.3% in F1 score with fewer parameters. Under YoloPd, the average counting accuracy reaches 94.6%, which is quite promising. The results demonstrate the potential of automatic detectors and provide a new direction for penguin counting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myocardial infarction is one of the primary causes of mortality in patients with coronary heart disease worldwide. Early treatment of acute myocardial infarction restores blood supply of ischemic myocardium and decreases the mortality risk. However, when the interrupted myocardial blood supply is recovered within a certain period of time, it causes more serious damage to the original ischemic myocardium; this is known as myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (MIRI). The pathophysiological mechanisms leading to MIRI are associated with oxidative stress, intracellular calcium overload, energy metabolism disorder, apoptosis, endoplasmic reticulum stress, autophagy, pyroptosis, necroptosis and ferroptosis. These interplay with one another and directly or indirectly lead to aggravation of the effect. In the past, apoptosis and autophagy have attracted more attention but necroptosis and ferroptosis also serve key roles. However, the mechanism of MIRI has not been fully elucidated. The present study reviews the mechanisms underlying MIRI. Based on current understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms of MIRI, the association between cell death-associated signaling pathways were elaborated, providing direction for investigation of novel targets in clinical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L7849 --> 944.4 --> Background: Patients with diabetes are more vulnerable to myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury (MIRI). Abnormal increases of cardiac Connexin43 (Cx43) were shown to be associated with a variety of pathological conditions including myocardial ischemia and diabetic cardiomyopathy, concomitant with various degrees of changes in autophagy. However, the role of Cx43 in MIRI in diabetic conditions and in particular its potential interplay with cardiac autophagy in this pathology is unknown. Thus, the present study was aimed to explore the role and mechanism of Cx43 in diabetic MIRI. Methods and Results: Streptozotocin (STZ)‐induced diabetic and age‐matched control rats were subjected to MIRI by occluding the left coronary artery for 30 minutes followed by 2 hours of reperfusion at 5 weeks of diabetes induction. In vitro, rat origin H9C2 cardiomyocytes (H9C2) were exposed to 35mmol/L high glucose(HG)for 48 hours(h) in the absence or presence of Cx43 gene knockdown with siRNA, followed by hypoxia for 6h and reoxygenation for 12h. Myocardial infarct size was assessed by TTC staining. Cell viability was detected by the CCK‐8 assay, apoptosis by TUNEL assay. Cardiac Cx43 protein, apoptosis‐related proteins and autophagy‐related LC3, p62 and mTOR proteins were assessed by Western blotting. Post‐ischemic myocardial infarct size and cardiac CX43 protein expression were significantly increased in diabetic rats as compared with that in the control (p<0.05), concomitant with increases in the ratio of LC3 II/I and in the protein expression of P62 and mTOR (all p<0.05). In vitro, exposure of H9C2 cells to HG significantly increased cell injury evidenced by increased LDH release and reduced cell viability, and significantly enhanced cell apoptosis and reactive oxygen species(ROS) production that was accompanied by increased cardiomyocyte CX43 overexpression and enhanced autophagy but paradoxically also enhanced mTOR activation, similar to that seen in vivo. All these changes were further exacerbated following H/R under HG. Cx43 Knockdown in H9C2 results in decreased ROS production and decreased apoptosis after H/R under HG leading to increased cell viability (all p<0.05), while Cx43 knockdown attenuated autophagy. Application of the selective mTOR inhibitor rapamycin abolished the abovementioned beneficial effects of Cx43 Knockdown. Conclusion: Overexpressed CX43 in the diabetic heart exacerbates MIRI in diabetes through enhanced cardiac autophagy under hyperglycemic condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Picophytoplankton are the main primary producers in oligotrophic oceans. They account for more than 90 % of the phototrophic biomass. Investigations of picophytoplankton in the central Arctic Ocean region are rare because these waters used to be completely covered with sea ice. Large, newly exposed water areas, however, appeared in the sea ice zone during the summer of 2010. This provided the first opportunity to study the Arctic picophytoplankton community in these newly open surface waters. This study focuses on the picophytoplankton in the areas near the Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge and Makarov Basin. Here, HPLC pigment analysis with CHEMTAX was used to study community populations, and 454 pyrosequencing with bioinformatics analysis was used to identify the dominant genera (species). Both Pearson correlation analysis and canonical correlation analysis were used to study the relationships between the community and environmental factors. We found chlorophyll a concentrations were low (0.05-0.39 μg l), and picophytoplankton dominated these areas. The abundances of picophytoplankton were 1.58 × 10-9.47 × 10 cells l and made up 44-80 % of the total chlorophyll a. Prasinophytes made up 0-88 % of the picoplanktonic chlorophyll a with the following distributions: diatoms (2-80 %), cyanobacteria (0-20 %), haptophytes (4-14 %), and dinoflagellates (2-11 %). The dominant genera (species) in the picoeukaryotes were Pyramimonas ( Pyramimonas gelidicola), Micromonas ( Micromonas pusilla), and Phaeocystis. Salinity and latitude were the primary factors controlling the community structure of the picophytoplankton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To provide an increased understanding of avian influenza A(H7N9) activity in live-poultry market in space and time and hence improve H7N9 epidemic control, an ongoing environmental sampling program in multiple live-poultry markets across Guangdong, China was conducted during March 2013–June 2014. Methods: A total of 625 live-poultry markets throughout 21 prefecture areas took part in the study. A total of 10 environmental sites in markets for sampling were identified to represent 4 different poultry-related activity areas. At least 10 environmental samples were collected from each market every month. The real time RT-PCR was performed to detect the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus. Field survey was conducted to investigate the sanitation status of live-poultry markets. Results: There were 109 human infections with H7N9 avian influenza in Guangdong, of which 37 (34%) died. A total of 18741 environmental swabs were collected and subjected to real-time RT-PCR test, of which 905(4.83%) were found positive for H7N9 virus. There were 201 (32.16%) markets affected by H7N9 in 16 prefecture areas. The detection of H7N9 virus in markets spiked in winter months. 63.33% markets (38/60) had no physical segregation for poultry holding, slaughter or sale zones. Closing live-poultry market significantly decreased the H7N9 detection rate from 14.83% (112/755) to 1.67% (5/300). Conclusions: This study indicates the importance of live-poultry market surveillance based on environmental sampling for H7N9 Avian Influenza control. Improving live-poultry market management and sanitation and changing consumer practices are critical to reduce the risk of H7N9 infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geochemical observations of continental outcrops and marine sediments provide insights into the nature of bedrock and erosion in Antarctica. The accelerated melt of ice shelves has increased the flux of terrigenous materials to the marginal seas and has changed the sedimentological environment. We characterized the provenance of the surficial fine-grained detrital sediments in the front ends of major ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea, Ross Sea, and Prydz Bay sections through comparisons to proximal rocks using the elemental compositions, as well as the Sr and Nd isotopic compositions, of the clay-size (<2 μm) fraction, rock samples, and bulk sediments and some residual fractions. The results show that the 87Sr/86Sr ratios of clay-size sediments range from 0.70962 to 0.71662, 0.70936 to 0.71960, and 0.72569 to 0.73492, and that the εNd values range from −2.1 to +0.8, −10.9 to −1.43, and −22.3 to −17. 3 in the Amundsen Sea, Ross Sea, and Prydz Bay, respectively, while those of rocks range from 0.70350 to 0.77080 and from 5.1 to −22.4 in all three areas. Elemental compositions of both bulk sediments and the clay-size fraction in the Western Ross Sea have similar patterns to those in Prydz Bay, showing that most major elements (e.g., Mg, Ca, and Fe) are lower than in the upper continental crust (UCC). Chondrite-normalized rare earth elements (REEs) are highest in the bulk sediments of the Amundsen Sea and lowest in the clay-size fraction of all three sections. We concluded that clay-size sediments in the Western Amundsen Sea shelf are largely from the Eastern Amundsen Sea coastal area, while some sediments reflect contributions from the Hobbs Coast due to gravitational currents. The Western Ross Sea can receive sediments from both East Antarctica and West Antarctica, while the clay-size fractions of western sites in Transect R (a latitudinal transect near Inexpressible Island, East Antarctica) in this study are mainly from southeastern Victoria Land, transported northward by bottom currents. The contribution from coarse ice-rafted debris (IRD) is minor, possibly because of blocking by the Drygalski Ice Tongue. The clay-size sediments of Eastern Prydz Bay are largely contributed by Princess Elisabeth Land and western Wilhelm II Land, while those in Western Prydz Bay are possibly derived from the Lambert-Amery Ice Shelf system and the western coast. These very fine-grained sediments are generally affected by oceanic currents (e.g., Antarctic Coastal Currents and Antarctic Bottom Currents). Most residual fraction show very similar εNd values to the bulk of clay-size sediments. It indicates that authigenic phases are generally sourced from similar regions to the silicate component of clay-size sediments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During the R/V Xuelong Arctic cruise in summer 2008, we investigated bacterioplankton and picophytoplankton abundance, biomass, spatial distribution, and these variables'' relationship with environmental variables in the Western Canada Basin. The bacterioplankton and picophytoplankton abundances in the upper 200m of the water column were 0.17–8.38×105 cellsml−1 and 0.01–17.71×106 cellsL−1, respectively. The average integrated bacterioplankton and picophytoplankton biomasses in the upper 100m of the water column were 413.3 and 118.8mgCm−2, respectively. Microbial biomass was comparable with previous reports and distributed mainly in the upper 50m of the water column. The bacterioplankton and picophytoplankton biomasses decreased with increasing latitude. Compared with eastern transects, which were strongly influenced by an influx of Pacific water, the western transects had relatively low temperature, high salinity, high nutrients, and high biomass. No significant relationships were detected between assemblages and water temperature or salinity, expect for one between bacterioplankton and salinity in the latitudinal transects. However, a significant negative correlation between picophytoplankton and nutrients and a significant positive correlation between bacterioplankton and picophytoplankton were observed. We suggest that this was mainly caused by the relatively low picophytoplankton biomass, occurrence of heavy stratification (nutricline), and the subsurface chlorophyll maxima (SCM) in study area. Heavy melting of sea ice in summer increases the stratification, which obstructs nutrient supplementation from deep waters, and this might increase the role of microbial assemblages in the upper water column in the Arctic basin area. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Based on the analysis on the transmission paths of interior vibration and noise, vehicles with new tires, moderately worn tires and completely worn tires are driven by chassis dynamometer in anechoic chamber. The vibration signals at the center point of the roof and the noise signals at driver head position under three operation conditions (cruises at constant speeds of 60km/h and 120km/h and coasting with the speed falling from 140km/h to 20km/h) are measured. The results reveal the law of the effects of the different extents of tire wear on the interior vibration and noise of vehicle under different driving conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study was conducted to identify epidemiological characteristics of the first documented CHIK fever outbreak in China and evaluate the effect of the preventive measures taken. Methodology/Principal Findings: From September 1 to October 29, 2010, China's first documented outbreak of CHIK fever occurred in the Xincun community of Wanjiang District of Dongguan city, Guangdong province; 253 case-patients were recorded, of which 129 were laboratory confirmed, with an attack rate of 1%. Before September 18th the number of CHIK fever cases remained relatively low in the Xincun community; from September 19th onwards, the number of cases increased drastically, with an outbreak peak on October 4th. Cases were distributed across nine small village groups in the Xincun community, with an attack rate of 0-12% at the village level. The household attack rates ranged between 20% and 100%. No significant difference was found in the attack rate between males and females. There was a significant difference in the attack rate in different age groups (chi-square = 18.35, p = 0.005); highest in patients aged 60 years or older and the lowest in patients aged under 10. The major clinical characteristics of patients are fever (100%), joint pain (79%) and rash (54%). Phylogenetic analysis of the E1 gene on the five earliest confirmed cases showed that the strains of CHIKV isolated from their sera were highly homologous (up to 99%) with isogeneic strains isolated in Thailand in 2009. After control measures were taken, including killing adult mosquitoes and cleaning breeding habitats of Aedes mosquitoes, the Breteau index and Mosq-ovitrap index decreased rapidly, and the outbreak ended on October 29. Conclusion/Significance: The infection source of the outbreak was imported. Cases showed obvious temporal, spatial, and population aggregation during the outbreak. Comprehensive control measures based on reducing the density of Aedes mosquitoes were effective in controlling the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: SnO2–Ta2O5 based varistors doped with 0–2.0mol% of ZnO were prepared by sintering the samples at 1450°C for 2h with conventional ceramic processing method. The doping effect of ZnO on the microstructural and electrical properties of the as-prepared SnO2–Ta2O5 based varistor ceramics was investigated. The change in SnO2 lattice parameter and EDX analysis both confirmed the doping of Zn ions into SnO2 grains, although the identified phase was only SnO2 (cassiterite) by X-ray diffraction in detection limit. The microstructure observation indicated that the doped ZnO can facilitate the sintering of the varistor ceramics. The measured electric-field/current-density characteristics of the samples revealed that the nonlinear exponents and varistor voltage increased with increasing doping amount of ZnO when the ZnO content was no more than 0.5mol%; and more addition of ZnO would cause a decrease in nonlinear exponent and varistor voltage of the ceramic varistors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The features of different tread pattern in same type of tires are analyzed, and the interior noise signals tires produce at several points in the car are measured in a semi-anechoic chamber. Some objective evaluation parameters of noise sound quality, including loudness, sharpness, roughness and articulation index are studied with their computation models given. The objective evaluation parameters of sound quality of tires with different tread patterns are calculated and compared. The results show that all evaluation parameters are improved with the reduction in vehicle speed; and among six tires tested, the No. IV tire is relatively good in all sound quality parameters with its tread pattern mainly characterized by narrow lateral grooves and small tread block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Amyloid β peptide plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer''s disease (AD). Transition metals, such as Cu(II), Zn(II), and Fe(III) are found in Aβ plaques, and they have been shown to affect Aβ aggregation. Here we investigated the interactions between metal ions and Aβ1–16 by a flow-injection surface plasmon resonance spectrometry (SPR). Our study revealed that both Zn(II) and Cu(II) promoted human Aβ1–16 conformation change but the Zn(II)-induced conformation change is greater. However, rat Aβ1–16 binds Zn(II) less avidly and hardly any conformation change, this may due to three point substitutions, R5G, Y10F, and H13R in rat Aβ1–16 which appear to alter the physicochemical properties of the peptide. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Pigment absorption property of two arctic microalgae species (Skeletonema marinoi and Chlorella sp.) cultured at three temperatures (0, 4 and 8°C) was analyzed. Carotenoids and chlorophyll (Chl) c were positive factors to the high cell activities and primary productivities of S. marinoi at 4°C and 0°C, respectively; whereas Chl a had a positive effect on Chlorella sp. at all three temperatures, and carotenoids had a relatively high effect at 0°C. The absorption locations of photopigments were analyzed in detail using both fourth derivative and Symlet-6 wavelet analysis. Both methods precisely detected pigments with a relative large content; the fourth derivative analysis specifically detected the existence of a Chl a peak at about 410nm and showed better differentiation of diatoxanthin, whereas the wavelet analysis distinctively indicated the existence of chlorophyllide a, β-carotene, and Chl c. The separation limit to pigment peaks of the fourth derivative spectra (4nm) was 1nm higher than that of the wavelet high-frequency spectra (3nm). The wavelet high-frequency spectra were more stable in detecting pigment locations and were more effective in discriminating microalgae. Small algebraic difference of 10−16 between the reconstructed absorption spectra obtained by the inverse wavelet transform and their corresponding original spectra also showed the validity of Symlet-6 wavelet in the detection of pigments. Another specific discovery of this research is the existence of a Chl a allomer in Chlorella sp., which was detected by both methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A quasiclassical trajectory study with the fourth-order explicit symplectic algorithm for the atmospheric reaction has been performed by employing a new analytical fit of ab initio electronic structure calculations for the ground potential energy surface reported by Sayós et al. The effect of the relative translational energy, the vibrational energy and rotational energy of O2 molecule on the reaction probability and the reaction cross-section has been analyzed in details. The microscopic rate constant and the thermal rate constant have also been evaluated at the low translational temperature, and results have been compared with the experimental data and previous theoretical values. It is concluded that the thermal rate constants at the low temperature considered in this work agree well with the recommended experimental data and are very close to the variational transition state theory values carried out by Sayós et al. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We inquire to what extent can the geometry of protein peptide plane and side chain atoms be reconstructed from the knowledge of Cα time evolution. Due to the lack of experimental data, we analyze all atom molecular dynamics trajectories from the Anton supercomputer, and for clarity, we limit our attention to the peptide plane O atoms and side chain Cβ atoms. We reconstruct their positions using four different approaches. Three of these are the publicly available reconstruction programs Pulchra, Remo, and Scwrl4. The fourth, Statistical Method, builds entirely on the statistical analysis of Protein Data Bank structures. All four methods place the O and Cβ atoms accurately along the Anton trajectories; the Statistical Method gives results that are closest to the Anton data. The results suggest that when a protein moves under physiological conditions, its all atom structures can be reconstructed with high accuracy from the knowledge of the Cα atom positions. This can help to better understand and improve all atom force fields, and advance reconstruction and refinement methods for reduced protein structures. The results provide impetus for the development of effective coarse grained force fields in terms of reduced coordinates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of identity authentication for online medical services has been one of the key focuses of the healthcare industry in recent years. Most healthcare organizations use centralized identity management systems (IDMs), which not only limit the interoperability of patient identities between institutions of healthcare, but also create isolation between data islands. The more important matter is that centralized IDMs may lead to privacy disclosure. Therefore, we propose Health-zkIDM, a decentralized identity authentication system based on zero-knowledge proof and blockchain technology, which allows patients to identify and verify their identities transparently and safely in different health fields and promotes the interaction between IDM providers and patients. The users in Health-zkIDM are uniquely identified by one ID registered. The zero-knowledge proof technology is deployed on the client, which provides the user with a proof of identity information and automatically verifies the user's identity after registration. We implemented chaincodes on the Fabric, including the upload of proof of identity information, identification, and verification functions. The experiences show that the performance of the Health-zkIDM system can achieve throughputs higher than 400 TPS in Caliper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gut microbiome is related to many major human diseases, and it is of great significance to study the differences in the structure of gut microbiome under different conditions. Due to the phenomenon of zero expansion of the flora data, geometric mean of pairwise ratios (GMPR) was firstly used to normalize the gut microbiome data. This study proposes an improved Spectrum algorithm using the type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) dataset being taken as example. Firstly, a similarity matrix based on feature weighting was used, which can avoid ignoring the weights occupied by the different eigenvalue sizes corresponding to each sample/feature in that sample; secondly, the Laplacian matrix was replaced by the Hessian matrix, which can avoid the sensitivity problem of traditional spectral clustering; the original K-means algorithm was replaced by the ISODATA clustering algorithm, the number of clustering centers K can be effectively adjusted. The experimental results showed that normalized mutual information (NMI) is 0.423, Davies-Boulding index (DBI) is 4.751, the Calinski-Harabasz index (CH) is 25.541, Rand index (RI) is 0.835 and the adjusted Rand index (ARI) is 0.019, which was improved compared with the effect before the improvement, and the algorithm could identify the structural differences in the intestinal flora of different types of patients, unearth the key bacteria of the gut microbiome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Southern Ocean represents a critical component of the global oceanic carbon budget. Previous assessments of air‐sea carbon flux variations and long‐term trends in polar regions during winter have faced limitations due to scarce field data and the lack of ocean color satellite imagery, causing uncertainties in estimating CO2 flux estimation. This study utilized the Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellite to construct a continuous 16‐year (2006–2021) time series of sea surface partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in the Southern Ocean. Our findings revealed that the polar region in South Ocean acts as a carbon sink in winter, with CO2 flux of ∼30 TgC in high‐latitude areas (South of 50°S). This work highlights the efficacy of active remote sensing for monitoring sea surface pCO2 and contributes insights into the dynamic carbonate systems of the Southern Ocean. Plain Language Summary: Climate change data from recent decades have consistently shown an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The Southern Ocean, a major carbon sink, is critical in this regard. However, limitations in ocean color remote sensing and infrequent sampling hinder a complete understanding of carbon uptake in high‐latitude regions during winter. Previous reconstructions inadequately considered the biological effect on the air‐sea CO2 exchange process in winter. This study used observations from an active remote sensing satellite to represent the biological effects of CO2 and construct a long‐term time series of sea surface CO2 level for the Southern Ocean. Additionally, the study reassessed the CO2 uptake capacity of the Southern Ocean in winter. These findings suggest that previous estimates may underestimate the CO2 uptake capacity in the high‐latitude regions during winter, potentially due to underestimations of biological effects. This research underscores the value of active remote sensing for obtaining critical biogeochemical parameters in high‐latitude oceans, providing an essential tool for monitoring carbonate systems. Key Points: A new method was proposed to reconstruct pressure of CO2 (pCO2) using CALIPSO‐derived bbp dataA 16‐year Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation observation‐based pCO2 product was constructedThe CO2 uptake capacity in the Southern Ocean during winter was estimated [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim Methods Results Conclusions Patients with acute ischaemic stroke are more likely to develop refeeding syndrome due to increased need for nutritional support when suffering alterations of consciousness and impairment of swallowing. This study aimed to evaluate the incidence, risk factors and outcomes of refeeding syndrome in stroke patients.This was a retrospective observational study, using the prospective stroke database from hospital, included all consecutive acute ischaemic stroke patients who received enteral nutrition for more than 72 h from 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2022. Refeeding syndrome was defined as occurrence of new‐onset hypophosphataemia within 72 h after enteral feeding. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to evaluate risk factors and relationships between refeeding syndrome and stroke outcomes.338 patients were included in the study. 50 patients (14.8%) developed refeeding syndrome. Higher scores on National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale and Nutritional Risk Screening 2002, albumin <30 g/L and BMI <18.5 kg/m2 were risk factors for refeeding syndrome. Moreover, refeeding syndrome was independently associated with a 3‐month modified Rankin Scale score of >2 and 6‐month mortality.Refeeding syndrome was common in stroke patients and higher baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, higher Nutritional Risk Screening 2002, albumin <30 g/L and BMI <18.5 kg/m2 were independent risk factors of refeeding syndrome. Occurrence of refeeding syndrome was significantly associated with higher 3‐month modified Rankin Scale and 6‐month mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kong, Q. and He, J., 2020. Controlling methods of driving factors in the economic development of coastal areas. In: Yang, Y.; Mi, C.; Zhao, L., and Lam, S. (eds.), Global Topics and New Trends in Coastal Research: Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 103, pp. 129–133. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The traditional method for controlling economic development factors has a large deviation when measuring the growth rate of comprehensive factors of economic growth. Therefore, a method for controlling the driving factors of economic development and evolution in coastal areas is proposed. This method extracts the characteristics of the economic development and evolution of the coastal areas, calculates the overall difference in the quality of development, and finds that there are significant high-value clusters in the spatial quality of economic development in the coastal areas. Establish an economic driving factor indicator system, analyze the main driving factors, and study the dynamic changes in the production and consumption levels in coastal areas. Establish a control model to regulate and control the economic systems in coastal areas. This completes the control method of the driving factors for the economic development and evolution of the coastal areas. The experimental results show that the comprehensive factor growth rate calculated by this method is closer to the real value than the traditional method, which verifies the effectiveness of the design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: After the adjustment of COVID-19 epidemic policy, mainland China experienced two consecutive waves of Omicron variants within a seven-month period. In Guangzhou city, as one of the most populous regions, the viral infection characteristics, molecular epidemiology, and the dynamic of population immunity are still elusive. Methods: We launched a prospective cohort study in the Guangdong Provincial CDC from December 2022 to July 2023. Fifty participants who received the same vaccination regimen and had no previous infection were recruited. Results: 90% of individuals were infected with Omicron BA.5* variants within three weeks in the first wave. Thirteen cases (28.26%) experienced infection with XBB.1* variants, occurring from 14 weeks to 21 weeks after the first wave. BA.5* infections exhibited higher viral loads in nasopharyngeal sites compared to oropharyngeal sites. Compared to BA.5* infections, the XBB.1* infections had significantly milder clinical symptoms, lower viral loads, and shorter durations of virus positivity. The infection with the BA.5* variant elicited varying levels of neutralizing antibodies against XBB.1* among different individuals, even with similar levels of BA.5* antibodies. The level of neutralizing antibodies specific to XBB.1* determined the risk of reinfection. Conclusions: The rapid large-scale infections of the Omicron variants have quickly established herd immunity among the population in mainland China. In the future of the COVID-19 epidemic, a lower infection rate but a longer duration can be expected. Given the large population size and ongoing diversified herd immunity, it remains crucial to closely monitor the molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 for the emergence of new variants of concern in this region. Additionally, the timely evaluation of the immune status across different age groups is essential for informing future vaccination strategies and intervention policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electroencephalogram (EEG) has recently emerged as a pivotal tool in brain imaging analysis, playing a crucial role in accurately interpreting brain functions and states. To address the problem that the presence of ocular artifacts in the EEG signals of patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) severely affects the accuracy of sleep staging recognition, we propose a method that integrates a support vector machine (SVM) with genetic algorithm (GA)-optimized variational mode decomposition (VMD) and second-order blind identification (SOBI) for the removal of ocular artifacts from single-channel EEG signals. The SVM is utilized to identify artifact-contaminated segments within preprocessed single-channel EEG signals. Subsequently, these signals are decomposed into variational modal components across different frequency bands using the GA-optimized VMD algorithm. These components undergo further decomposition via the SOBI algorithm, followed by the computation of their approximate entropy. An approximate entropy threshold is set to identify and remove components laden with ocular artifacts. Finally, the signal is reconstructed using the inverse SOBI and VMD algorithms. To validate the efficacy of our proposed method, we conducted experiments utilizing both simulated data and real OSAS sleep EEG data. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm not only effectively mitigates the presence of ocular artifacts but also minimizes EEG signal distortion, thereby enhancing the precision of sleep staging recognition based on the EEG signals of OSAS patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The endoplasmic reticulum plays an important role in glucose metabolism and has not been explored in the kinetic estimation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) via 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose PET/CT. Methods: A dual-input four-compartment (4C) model, regarding endoplasmic reticulum was preliminarily used for kinetic estimation to differentiate 28 tumours from background liver tissue from 24 patients with HCC. Moreover, parameter images of the 4C model were generated from one patient with negative findings on conventional metabolic PET/CT. Results: Compared to the dual-input three-compartment (3C) model, the 4C model has better fitting quality, a close transport rate constant (K1) and a dephosphorylation rate constant (k6/k4), and a different removal rate constant (k2) and phosphorylation rate constant (k3) in HCC and background liver tissue. The K1, k2, k3, and hepatic arterial perfusion index (HPI) from the 4C model and k3, HPI, and volume fraction of blood (Vb) from the 3C model were significantly different between HCC and background liver tissues (all P < 0.05). Meanwhile, the 4C model yielded additional kinetic parameters for differentiating HCC. The diagnostic performance of the top ten genes from the most to least common was HPI(4C), Vb(3C), HPI(3C), SUVmax, k5(4C), k3(3C), k2(4C), v(4C), K1(4C) and Vb(4C). Moreover, a patient who showed negative findings on conventional metabolic PET/CT had positive parameter images in the 4C model. Conclusions: The 4C model with the endoplasmic reticulum performed better than the 3C model and produced additional useful parameters in kinetic estimation for differentiating HCC from background liver tissue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, many cloning selection algorithms have been studied, and improvements have been made to the cloning, mutation and selection steps. However, there is a lack of research on the optimization of the updating operation steps. The clonal selection algorithm is traditionally updated through a random complement of antibodies, which is a blind and uncertain process. The added antibodies may gather near a local optimal solution, resulting in the need for more iterations to obtain the global optimal solution. To solve this problem, our improved algorithm introduces a crowding degree factor in the antibody updating stage to determine whether there is crowding between antibodies. By eliminating antibodies with high crowding potential and poor affinity, the improved algorithm guides the antibodies to update in the direction of the global optimal solution and ensures stable convergence with fewer iterations. Experimental results show that the overall performance of the improved algorithm is 1% higher than that of the clonal selection algorithm and 2.2% higher than that of the genetic algorithm, indicating that the improved algorithm is effective. The improved algorithm is also transplanted to other improved clonal selection algorithms, and the overall performance is improved by 0.97%, indicating that the improved algorithm can be a beneficial supplement to other improved clonal selection algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To ascertain the saying "Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects", it was imperative to find out the main factor influencing bacterioplankton composition at genus level of Kongsfjorden where was influenced both by glacier melting water and Atlantic water. Thus, bacterioplankton diversity was investigated using pyrosequencing. In addition, nutrients, chlorophyll a, in situ temperature and salinity were measured. There were seventeen of 33 identified genera with relative abundance > 0.1%. Redundancy analysis showed that 73.02% of bacterioplankton community variance could be explained by environmental parameters. Furthermore, most of the abundant genera demonstrated significant correlation with environment parameters revealed by correlation analysis. Moreover, phosphate, nitrate and Chl a concentration, and the abundance of top nine identified genera varied with water mass significantly as shown by analysis of variance. Our results supported the notion that environmental factors, especially water mass had significant effect on bacterioplankton distribution at genus level. Considering the high sensitivity to environmental change and low error rate in identification, bacterioplankton at genus level could be potential bio-markers for monitoring environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate prediction of solar irradiance holds significant value for renewable energy usage and power grid management. However, traditional forecasting methods often overlook the time dependence of solar irradiance sequences and the varying importance of different influencing factors. To address this issue, this study proposes a dual-path information fusion and twin attention-driven solar irradiance forecasting model. The proposed framework comprises three components: a residual attention temporal convolution block (RACB), a dual-path information fusion module (DIFM), and a twin self-attention module (TSAM). These components collectively enhance the performance of multi-step solar irradiance forecasting. First, the RACB is designed to enable the network to adaptively learn important features while suppressing irrelevant ones. Second, the DIFM is implemented to reinforce the model's robustness against input data variations and integrate multi-scale features. Lastly, the TSAM is introduced to extract long-term temporal dependencies from the sequence and facilitate multi-step prediction. In the solar irradiance forecasting experiments, the proposed model is compared with six benchmark models across four datasets. In the one-step predictions, the average performance metrics RMSE, MAE, and MAPE of the four datasets decreased within the ranges of 0.463–2.390 W / m 2 , 0.439–2.005 W / m 2 , and 1.3–9.2%, respectively. Additionally, the average R 2 value across the four datasets increased by 0.008 to 0.059. The experimental results indicate that the model proposed in this study exhibits enhanced accuracy and robustness in predictive performance, making it a reliable alternative for solar irradiance forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qinling orogen records the prolonged amalgamation history between the North China Block (NCB) and the South China Block (SCB) accompanied by major granitoid intrusions during the Triassic. However, the petrogenesis of these granitoids, especially that of the peraluminous granites, remains a matter of debate. Detailed study of these peraluminous granites, which are the products of crustal melting, will give insights into the melting process and petrogenesis of peraluminous magmas and will further constrain the regional geological evolution. In this study, Xiahe (XH) tourmaline-bearing two-mica granite and Baijiazhuang (BJZ) two-mica granite were selected for systematic analysis of their mineralogy, petrology, zircon U-Pb geochronology, and geochemistry. The zircon U-Pb dating showed that the XH and BJZ granites were emplaced at approximately 242 Ma and approximately 214 Ma, respectively. The presence of muscovite and tourmaline, high peraluminosity at >1.1, low oxygen fugacity (ƒO 2) conditions below the fayalite–magnetite–quartz (FMQ) buffer, and low zircon saturation temperatures indicate sedimentary protolith (S-type) granitic affinity. The low CaO/Na 2 O ratios <0.4 suggest that the granites formed by partial melting of a pelitic source. The low heavy rare earth element (HREE) concentration and weak negative Eu anomaly in the XH granite implies garnet residue in the magma source, whereas an obvious Eu anomaly in the BJZ granite indicates no residual garnet. The Rb/Sr ratios remained constant in the XH granite with decreasing Sr and Ba concentrations; however, these ratios increased in the BJZ granite. This observation reflects that the XH (BJZ) granite was the product of fluid-present (fluid-absent) muscovite melting. This finding is in accord with the different geochemical features and the estimates of zircon and monazite saturation temperature between the XH and BJZ granites. In western Qinling, low-Sr/high-REE (group A) and high-Sr/low-REE (group B) peraluminous granites have been identified. We propose that the former were generated during fluid-absent muscovite melting, whereas the latter were derived from fluid-present muscovite melting. This hypothesis was further confirmed by higher zircon and monazite saturation temperature estimates in addition to higher REE, Th, Nb, and Ta concentrations in the group A granitoids. From regional geological considerations, it can be concluded that the Middle Triassic granitoids in western Qinling formed during subduction of the A'nimaqing–Mianlue oceanic crust, whereas the Late Triassic granitoids are related to syn - or post-collisional processes. • Τwo types of peraluminous Early Mesozoic granite recognized in western Qinling. • Generation of low–Sr/high–REE from water–absent muscovite partial melting. • Generation of high–Sr/low–REE from water–present muscovite partial melting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]