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Objective The aim of this study was to examine serum leukocyte cell-derived chemotaxin 2 (LECT2) levels in osteoporosis subjects to confirm its association with osteoporosis. Methods A total of 204 adult subjects were recruited. Bone mineral densities (BMD) were assessed and blood samples were collected for measurements of biomedical parameters and the bone turnover markers. Serum LECT2 levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The relationships between serum LECT2 levels and other parameters were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient. Results Serum LECT2 levels were significantly increased in osteoporosis subjects over controls. We found a significantly negative correlation of serum LECT2 with BMD, 25-hydroxy-vitamin D, and creatinine and a significantly positive correlation with C-terminal telopeptide of type 1 collagen and total cholesterol. Conclusion Serum LECT2 levels were significantly upregulated in osteoporosis subjects and correlated with the severity of bone loss. Serum LECT2 could be a potential biomarker to assess the risk of bone loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple object tracking (MOT) is one of the most important research areas in visual surveillance. However, some practical challenges remain to be overcome for implementing this technology, such as occlusion, missed detection, false detection, and abrupt camera motion. In this paper, to the visual multi-object tracking, a novel fuzzy data association algorithm is proposed. In order to incorporate expert experience into the proposed algorithm, a fuzzy inference system based on knowledge is designed, and the fuzzy membership degrees are used to substitute the association probabilities between the objects and observations. The experiment results on several public data sets show that the proposed algorithm has advantages over other state-of-the-art tracking algorithms in terms of efficiency.

In this article, Richardson extrapolation technique is employed to investigate the local ultraconvergence properties of Lagrange finite element method using piecewise polynomials of degrees k (k≥2) for the second order elliptic problem with inhomogeneous boundary. A sequence of special graded partition TNs are proposed and a new interpolation operator is introduced to achieve 2k order local ultraconvergence for the displacement and derivative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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During an investigation of fungal diversity from freshwater environments in different regions in Jiangxi Province, China, four interesting species were collected. Morphology coupled with combined gene analysis of an ITS, LSU, SSU, and rpb2 DNA sequence data showed that they belong to the family Pleurotheciaceae . Four new species, Pleurotheciella ganzhouensis , Pla. irregularis , Pla. verrucosa , and Pleurothecium jiangxiense are herein described. Pleurotheciella ganzhouensis is characterized by its capsule-shaped conidia and short conidiophores, while Pla. irregularis has amorphous conidiophores and 3-septate conidia. Pleurotheciella verrucosa has cylindrical or verrucolose conidiogenous cells, 1-septate, narrowly fusiform, meniscus or subclavate conidia. Pleurothecium jiangxiense characterized in having conidiogenous cells with dense cylindrical denticles and short conidiophores. Pleurothecium obovoideum was transferred to Neomonodictys based on phylogenetic evidence. All species are compared with other similar species and comprehensive descriptions, micrographs, and phylogenetic data are provided., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 He, Zhang, Zhai, Tennakoon, Cui, Zhou, Chen, Hu, Yin, Gao, Hu and Song.)