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Objective The aim of this study was to compare the hospital and long-term clinical effects of different treatment methods for Standford A type aortic intramural hematoma(IMH), as to provide reference for clinical treatment.Methods This is a single center cohort study. We retrospectively selected 73 patients with Type A IMH who were treated in our center from August 1, 2018 to August 1, 2021, including 26 patients treated conservatively and 47 patients treated surgically, and compared them with 154 patients with aortic dissection (AD) who were treated surgically at the same time.Results Compared with IMH patients treated with surgery, the diameter of CTA ascending aorta of IMH patients treated with surgery was higher than that of IMH patients treated with conservative therapy (44.92 ± 7.58 vs 51.22 ± 11.85, P Conclusions Compared with conservative treatment, surgical treatment of IMH significantly improves the survival rate of patients. If the patient's physical condition and surgical conditions permit, surgical intervention is the first choice. Compared with the effect of AD surgery, IMH surgery is safe.

The contradiction between the porous structure and density of graphene materials makes it unable to meet the dual requirements of the next generation supercapacitors for gravimetric capacitance and volumetric capacitance. Herein, we successfully synthesized high-density oxygen-enriched graphene hydrogels (HOGHs) by a one-step hydrothermal method using high concentration graphene oxide (GO) solution and trometamol as precursors. The as-prepared HOGHs samples present a dense 3D network structure and moderate specific surface areas, which leads to a high packing density. In addition, the HOGHs samples also contain abundant oxygen-containing functional groups and some nitrogen-containing functional groups. These heteroatomic functional groups can provide pseudocapacitance for the electrode materials. Therefore, the HOGH-140 based symmetric supercapacitor shows ultrahigh gravimetric and volumetric specific capacitance (325.7 F g−1, 377.8 F cm−3), excellent rate performance and cycling stability. Simultaneously, the symmetric binder-free supercapacitor exhibits high gravimetric specific energy density (11.3 Wh kg−1) and volumetric specific energy density (13.1 Wh L−1) in 6 M KOH, respectively. These outstanding properties make the material have a good application prospect in the field of compact energy storage devices.

In this work, 2-Aminopyridine functionalized partially reduced graphene oxide hydrogels (APGHs) have been prepared via a simple hydrothermal method. During the reaction process, graphene oxide was used as the reactant and 2-Aminopyridine was used as both reductant and N dopant. Furthermore, pyridine ring can not only act as a spacer to prevent the restacking of graphene sheets, but also enhance the pseudocapacitance of the material through its redox activity. The characterization results showed that APGHs possessed high content of heteroatom functional groups (N, O), high surface area and 3D interconnected structure, respectively. Thus, the assembled APGH-40-based symmetric supercapacitor delivers a high-specific capacitance of 266.7 F g−1 at 0.3 A g−1, even at 10 A g−1, this value can still maintain at f 215.9 F g−1. In addition, the device also possesses a high energy density (9.3 Wh kg−1 at 75.0 W kg−1) and outstanding capacitance retention of 102.9% after 10,000 cycles at 10 A g−1. Therefore, the synthesized APGHs display a promising prospect in supercapacitor application.

Objective Acute type A aortic dissection (ATAAD) accompanied with lower limb malperfusion (LLM) is considered to be a catastrophic event, and remains a great challenge for cardiac surgeons. Here we introduce our experience in treating ATAAD patients accompanied with LLM. Methods 61 patients diagnosed with ATAAD accompanied by LLM enrolled in this study. All patients received aortic repair (Total-arch replacement or Hemi-arch replacement) as soon as possible on admission. Patients who still suffered LLM were performed extra-anatomic bypass using artificial vessels. All the discharged patients underwent the standard follow-up protocol. Results 38 patients (38/61, 62.3%) got satisfied reperfusion of the lower limbs after aortic repair while the others did not. Five patients had femorofemoral bypass, 16 received aortofemoral bypass, and two underwent aortofemoral bypass plus femorofemoral bypass. The ICU stay time was 5.4 ± 3.6 days. Fifty-five patients were discharged home successfully, while six patients died postoperatively with hospital mortality of 9.8%. Major postoperative complications included acute kidney injury requiring hemodialysis in seven patients, delayed wake-up (>3 days) in 5, prolonged ventilation (>4 days) in 8, and lower limb ischaemia in 1. Follow-up was successfully conducted in 50 patients with a mean follow-up time 4.9 ± 2.6 years. Five patients died during the follow-up. The estimated 5-year survival rate was 87.5 ± 6.1%. CTA images showed 100% patency of the extra-anatomic bypass. Conclusion Aortic repair plus concomitant extra-anatomic bypass grafting in one operative setting could be a simple, safe and effective treatment on ATAAD patients with LLM.

N/O co-enriched graphene hydrogel based supercapacitors were assembled. Owing to the synergistic effect between the heteroatoms (N, O), 3D porous structures and high specific surface area, they present excellent electrochemical properties.

The existing three-phase imbalanced power flow calculation models for isolated micro-grid do not consider the non-smooth constraints such as voltage control limits and dead zone characteristics, which makes the power flow calculation results cannot meet the actual model constraints. In this paper, a more robust projected Levenberg-Marquardt (PLM) method is used to solve the problem after the non-smooth constraints are converted into smooth functions, which can reduce the model dependence on the initial values and solve the convergence problem caused by non-smooth constraints. The numerical experiments of micro-grid show that considering the non-smooth constraints can effectively improve the accuracy of power flow calculation. In addition, the PLM method has better convergence dealing with non-smooth constraints even poor initial value settings.

This paper presents an in-depth study and analysis of large datasets of mixed and attribute features under Spark using a large dataset clustering algorithm. The classical algorithm K-means based on division and the density-based clustering algorithm DPC, which has become more popular in recent years, are selected as the research objects of this paper. Secondly, the original K-means algorithm is improved by combining holdout validation and K-means++ method to address the shortcomings of the K-means algorithm that the number of class clusters K needs to be set in advance and the initial class cluster centers are chosen randomly, which leads to unstable iterations and slow convergence of clustering results. The similarity matrix will be continuously updated during the iterative process. It mainly refers to the process of dividing objects into multiple classes according to the degree of similarity between objects. After the division, the objects within the class are like each other, while the objects between the classes are different from each other. The comparison experiments of the improved algorithm before and after the MovieLens dataset are conducted to verify that the new algorithm has better performance in terms of clustering accuracy and efficiency. Again, to address the drawback that the clustering results in the DPC algorithm rely heavily on the subjective selection of the truncation distance parameter cd, and it is difficult to handle datasets with complex distribution and large density variation, the algorithm can generate the optimal cd adaptively by combining K-nearest neighbors and introducing the distance comparison quantity, which has a better performance by considering the overall and local distribution of the data. The feasibility of the improved method is verified by validating the algorithm with artificial datasets and UCI datasets as well as separation tests. Finally, the parallelized design and implementation of the improved K-means algorithm and CDPC-KNN algorithm are completed by building a Spark clustering environment, and the parallelized algorithm is verified to have much better data processing capability and be more adaptable to the clustering analysis of large-scale data by comparing algorithm string parallelism experiments.

With urbanization occurring around weather stations, its impact on the observed air temperature has been widely recognized. However, its assessments were varied partially due to the poor understanding of its underlying mechanism. Here, we analyzed the effect of urbanization using observations obtained from ~2200 weather stations in China from 1960 to 2014. The results showed that the urbanization effect increased from 1960 to 1984 but slowed after 1995 with rapid urbanization in China, particularly in terms of the daily minimum temperature Tmin and daily mean air temperature Tmean. The urbanization effect is nearly linearly related to the urban–rural contrast of effective cloud cover (including the impact of atmospheric aerosols) derived from the observed sunshine duration. Aerosols increase atmospheric downward longwave radiation Ld through their absorption of solar radiation during the daytime, and they trap longwave radiation emitted from the surface during the nighttime. Increased anthropogenic aerosols caused the urban–rural contrast of effective cloud cover to increase from 1960 to 2014. However, the urban–rural contrast of cloud cover remained stable from 1960 to 1984 but substantially decreased due to the “urban dry island effect” after 1995, which compensated for the impact of anthropogenic aerosols on Ld and resulted in a stable urbanization effect after 1995. The urban–rural difference in Ld increased by 0.57 W m−2 (10 yr)−1, which resulted in warming of 0.074°C (10 yr)−1 (78.2%) for Tmin, 0.037°C (10 yr)−1 (151.5%) for Tmax, and 0.056°C (10 yr)−1 (96.6%) for Tmean.

China’s transport industry has made rapid progress, which has led to a great amount of carbon emissions. However, it is still unclear how carbon emissions from the transport sector are punctuated by shifts in underlying factors. This paper aims to examine the process of China’s carbon emissions from the transport sector as well as its major driving forces at the provincial level during the period of 2000 to 2015. We first estimate the carbon emissions from the transport sector at the provincial level based on the fuel and electricity consumption using a top-down method. We find that the carbon emission per capita is steadily increasing across the country, especially in the provinces of Chongqing and Inner Mongolia. However, the carbon emission intensity is decreasing in most provinces, except in Yunnan, Qinghai, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Anhui. We then quantify the effect of socioeconomic factors and their regional variations on carbon emissions using a panel model. The results show that the development of secondary industry is the most significant variable for carbon intensity at both the national and regional levels, while the effects of the other variables vary across regions. Among these factors, population density is the main factor of the increasing carbon emissions per capita from the transport sector for both the whole country and the western region, whereas the consumption level per capita of residents and the development of tertiary industry are the primary drivers of per capita carbon emissions for the eastern and central regions.

Atmospheric haze from particulate matter has become a major health concern in many large and medium-sized cities of China. Fine airborne particles, PM2.5, are a major component of haze, and the reasons for their fluctuating concentrations need to be better understood to improve air quality. While much of the air quality data from the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre (CNEMC) has already been analyzed for larger Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the data from Fuzhou is the topic of this study. Time series data of pollutant concentrations and meteorological parameters were accessed for Fuzhou from August 2014 to July 2016, covering two cold periods (November through February) and two warm periods (May through July). PM2.5 concentrations were compared with those of other pollutants and with meteorological parameters, and the AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model was applied to forecast PM2.5 concentrations. The correlation analysis of Spearman’s rho showed that PM2.5 concentrations had significant positive correlations with PM10, SO2 and NO2 concentrations, while they had negative correlations with meteorological parameters. The ARIMA results showed that PM2.5 concentrations experienced seasonal fluctuations over the two years, which were higher in the cold periods and lower in the corresponding warm periods, ranging from 23 to 52 μg/m3 and from 19 to 31 μg/m3, respectively. Average PM2.5 concentrations during these same cold periods and warm periods were 35 μg/m3 over the two cold periods, which was 52% higher than the 23 μg/m3 averaged over the two warm periods. Compared to the two observed years, 2014–15 and 2015–16, the forecast of PM2.5 concentrations for 2016–17, ranging from about 15 to 30 μg/m3, exhibited similar seasonal fluctuations but also reduced in the same period, ranging from 19 to 52 μg/m3. It is speculated that the Fuzhou Government's macro-policy on air quality may be one of the reasons for the decrease in PM2.5 concentration during the cold periods. Possible causes were given for the discrepancies between actual and fit values.

Peripheral primitive neuroendodermal tumors (PNETs) and Ewing's sarcoma belong to the Ewing family of tumors and are small round-cell malignancies originating from spinal cord cells. These tumors account for 5% of all small round-cell malignant neoplasms. PNETs that arise from the lung parenchyma without pleural or chest wall involvement are very rare. We report a case of an adult female with a large pulmonary PNET who had given birth just 1 month prior to the diagnosis. She had cough and expectoration for 6 months, and the preoperative examination showed no metastases. Thus, we performed radical pneumonectomy and lymph node dissection. The patient recovered well without surgical complications and was discharged 7 days after the surgery. Postoperative pathology confirmed that the tumor was a small round-cell malignancy, and the tumor cells were positive for CD99, Friend leukemia virus integration 1 (FLI-1), and neuron-specific enolase (NSE), which was consistent with the diagnosis of a PNET. For primary large pulmonary PNETs, radical pneumonectomy may be a safe surgical method, worthy of further application in clinical practice.

The incidence of multiple lung cancer has been steadily increasing worldwide. Although cases of patients with lung cancers in the right upper and lower lobe have also become more frequently reported in clinical work, simultaneous right upper and lower lobectomy reports with the middle lobe preservation are still quite rare. A total of three patients with lung cancers in the right upper and lower lobe were included in the study. The patients underwent simultaneous right upper and lower lobectomy, whereas the remaining middle lobe was sutured and fixed to the intercostal muscle of the incision to prevent postoperative lobe torsion. There was no procedure to reduce residual space，such as phrenic nerve crush or thoracoplasty. All patients were discharged from the hospital 7 days after the operation. The chest tube was removed 5 days after the operation in two patients. One patient was discharged with the tube because of slight pulmonary leakage, and the tube was removed 2 weeks after the operation. Six months after the operation, the chest computer tomography showed that the middle lobe expanded well and no obvious cavity or pleural effusion was found. The suture of the remaining middle lobe and intercostal muscle of the incision is a simple and effective method that can be used to successfully avoid middle lobe torsion. This strategy is safe and can be used as the first choice for eligible patients., The patients with lung cancers in right upper and lower lobe have been found in clinical work. Right pneumonectomy has a higher risk of mortality than lobectomy. We found a new simple and effective method to fix the middle lobe after right upper and lower bilobectomy, and the method can be preferred as the first choice of surgical procedure for eligible patients in clinical work.

China is a globally important ecosystem that is undergoing rapid development and land use/cover change (LUCC). The role of road networks in the LUCC is becoming increasingly important. Much of the upgrading in road networks is propelled by economy and population growth. However, the relationships between the road networks and the social-economic factors are poorly understood by using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, which assumes that the estimated beta value holds the same everywhere within a given study area. To determine whether there is spatial variation in the relationship between the road networks and the social-economic drivers in a given region, we employed a local model, geographically weighted regression (GWR), that provides a regression coefficient (beta) for each sample location within the study area. Taking Fujian Province, one of the most developed regions in China, as a case, this paper firstly employed an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) to identify the spatial patterns of the road networks at the different sizes of sampling units. We found that the spatial distribution of road networks had an obvious tendency toward the geographical dependency, with High-High clusters seated in the eastern coastal areas and Low-Low clusters distributed dispersedly in the study area. The spatial patterns of the road networks had highly consistency in the different sizes of sample units. Then, the GWR model confirmed that the relationships between the road networks and the socioeconomic factors varied by locations, with multiple relationships (both synergy and tradeoff) between them coexisting in the study region. These relationships were also visualized by sign and magnitude of the estimated coefficients of GWR for each sampling unit, which allow us to compare the different effects of the dependent variables on the road networks across locations. We also found that the variable of gross domestic product density (GDPD) is a preferred indicator over the variable of population density (PD) to analyze the associations with the road networks. Thus, this study provided useful information to develop differentiated strategies for road development at the finer level by using the more nuanced GWR models.

Diurnal cycle of surface air temperature T is an important metric indicating the feedback of land–atmospheric interaction to global warming, whereas the ability of current reanalyses to reproduce its variation had not been assessed adequately. Here, we evaluate the daily maximum temperature Tmax, daily minimum temperature Tmin, and diurnal temperature range (DTR) in five reanalyses based on observations collected at 2253 weather stations over China. Our results show that the reanalyses reproduce Tmin very well; however, except for Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2), they substantially underestimate Tmax and DTR by 1.21°–6.84°C over China during the period of 1980–2014. MERRA-2 overestimates Tmax and DTR by 0.35° and 0.81°C, which are closest with observation. The reanalyses are skillful in reproducing the interannual variability of Tmax and Tmin but relatively poor for DTR. All reanalyses underestimate the warming trend of Tmin by 0.13°–0.17°C (10 yr)−1 throughout China during 1980–2014, and underestimate the warming trend of Tmax by 0.24°–0.40°C (10 yr)−1 in northwestern China while overestimating this quantity by 0.18°–0.33°C (10 yr)−1 in southeastern China. These trend biases in Tmax and Tmin introduce a positive trend bias in DTR of 0.01°–0.26°C (10 yr)−1 within China, especially in the north China plain and southeastern China. In the five reanalyses, owing to the sensitivity discrepancies and trend biases, the surface solar radiation Rs and precipitation frequency (PF) are notable deviation sources of the diurnal cycle of air temperature, which explain 31.0%–38.7% (31.9%–37.8%) and 9.8%–22.2% (7.4%–15.3%) of the trend bias in Tmax (DTR) over China, respectively.

Although global warming has been attributed to increases in atmospheric greenhouses gases, the mechanisms underlying spatiotemporal patterns of warming trends remain under debate. Herein, we analyzed surface and air warming observations recorded at 1977 stations in China from 1960 to 2003. Our results showed a significant spatial pattern for the warming of the daily maximum surface (Ts-max) and air (Ta-max) temperatures, and the pattern was stronger in northwest and northeast China and weaker or negative in South China and the North China Plain. These warming spatial patterns were attributed to surface shortwave solar radiation (Rs) and precipitation (P), which play a key role in the surface energy budget. During the study period, Rs decreased by −1.50 ± 0.42 W m−2 10 yr−1 in China, which reduced the trends of Ts-max and Ta-max by about 0.139 and 0.053 °C 10 yr−1, respectively. More importantly, the decreasing rates in South China and the North China Plain were stronger than those in other parts of China. The spatial contrasts in the trends of Ts-max and Ta-max in China were significantly reduced after adjusting for the effect of Rs and P. For example, after adjusting for the effect of Rs and P, the difference in the Ts-max and Ta-max values between the North China Plain and the Loess Plateau was reduced by 97.8 and 68.3 %, respectively; the seasonal contrast in Ts-max and Ta-max decreased by 45.0 and 17.2 %, respectively; and the daily contrast in the warming rates of the surface and air temperature decreased by 33.0 and 29.1 %, respectively. This study shows that the land energy budget plays an essential role in the identification of regional warming patterns.

This study compared the diurnal and seasonal cycles of atmospheric and surface urban heat islands (UHIs) based on hourly air temperatures (Ta) collected at 65 out of 262 stations in Beijing and land surface temperature (Ts) derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer in the years 2013–2014. We found that the nighttime atmospheric and surface UHIs referenced to rural cropland stations exhibited significant seasonal cycles, with the highest in winter. However, the seasonal variations in the nighttime UHIs referenced to mountainous forest stations were negligible, because mountainous forests have a higher nighttime Ts in winter and a lower nighttime Ta in summer than rural croplands. Daytime surface UHIs showed strong seasonal cycles, with the highest in summer. The daytime atmospheric UHIs exhibited a similar but less seasonal cycle under clear-sky conditions, which was not apparent under cloudy-sky conditions. Atmospheric UHIs in urban parks were higher in daytime. Nighttime atmospheric UHIs are influenced by energy stored in urban materials during daytime and released during nighttime. The stronger anthropogenic heat release in winter causes atmospheric UHIs to increase with time during winter nights, but decrease with time during summer nights. The percentage of impervious surfaces is responsible for 49%–54% of the nighttime atmospheric UHI variability and 31%–38% of the daytime surface UHI variability. However, the nighttime surface UHI was nearly uncorrelated with the percentage of impervious surfaces around the urban stations.

In the conventional power flow (PF) calculation, when using the PV-PQ bus switching to deal with the problem of the generator buses reactive power limits violation for power systems, this method may cause the power flow calculation to fail. If using the Fischer-Burmeister (FB) function to handle constraint exchange issues, then using the Newton-Raphson (NR) method to solve PF, this operation will lead to a slow convergence. In this paper, a semi-smooth projected Levenberg-Marquardt (PLM) power flow method based on the FB function to deal with the constraints exchange issues is proposed. This method can change the search direction when the constraint exchange positions are at sharp corners, and adjust the size of the trust region to prevent the power flow from divergence due to excessive step size in the iterative process, thus improving convergence and reliability. Furthermore, the traditional power flow calculation method is sensitive to the initial value, which may cause the PF divergence, however the method of PLM proposed in this paper is globally convergent, which is not sensitive to the initial value. Numerical tests implemented on a small 3-bus network and a modified IEEE 118-bus system show that the proposed method is more efficient and robust than existing methods.

Correction for ‘N/O co-enriched graphene hydrogels as high-performance electrodes for aqueous symmetric supercapacitors’ by Yong Zhang et al., RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 19737–19746, DOI: 10.1039/D1RA01863A.

During the development of low and ultra-low permeability sandstone reservoir, due to the starting pressure gradient of poor reservoir physical properties, it is difficult to establish effective displacement between oil and water wells, and high voidage replacement ratio and low formation pressure are common phenomena. So it is necessary to analyze the influential factor of high voidage replacement ratio of low and ultra-low permeability reservoir. A one source and one sink flow model considering low velocity non-Darcy flow and unconnected reservoirs was established by using the flow theory of unidirectional flow and radial flow, and the model was solved by numerical method. The results show that the unconnected layers of water well will lead to the increase of invalid water injection; the larger the starting pressure gradient is and the larger the volume proportion of unconnected layer is, the smaller the maximum annual liquid production rate is and the higher the cumulative voidage replacement ratio corresponding to maintaining the maximum liquid production rate is. It is theoretically proved that the existence of unconnected layers and starting pressure gradient are the factors leading to the existence of high voidage replacement ratio in low and ultra-low permeability reservoirs. The study provides a theoretical basis for the adjustment of high-efficiency water injection in reservoirs.

China’s transportation industry has made rapid progress, which has led to a mass of carbon emissions. However, it is still unclear how the carbon emission from transport sector is punctuated by shifts in underlying drivers. This paper aims to examine the process of China’s carbon emissions from transport sector as well as its major driving forces during the period of 2000 to 2015 at the provincial level. We firstly estimate the carbon emissions from transport sector at the provincial level based on the fuel and electricity consumption using a top-down method. We find that the carbon emission per capita is steadily increasing across the nation, especially in the provinces of Chongqing and Inner Mongolia. However, the carbon emission intensity is decreasing in most provinces of China, except in Yunnan, Qinghai, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Anhui. We then quantify the effect of socio-economic factors and their regional variations on the carbon emissions using panel data model. The results show that the development of secondary industry is the most significant variable in both the entire nation level and the regional level, while the effects of the other variables vary across regions. Among these factors, population density is the main motivator of the increasing carbon emissions per capita from transport sector for both the whole nation and the western region, whereas the consumption level per capita of residents and the development of tertiary industry are the primary drivers of per capita carbon emissions for the eastern and central region.

Existing studies have shown that observed surface incident solar radiation (Rs) over China may have important inhomogeneity issues. This study provides metadata and reference data to homogenize observed Rs, from which the decadal variability of Rs over China can be accurately derived. From 1958 to 1990, diffuse solar radiation (Rsdif) and direct solar radiation (Rsdir) were measured separately, and Rs was calculated as their sum. The pyranometers used to measure Rsdif had a strong sensitivity drift problem, which introduced a spurious decreasing trend into the observed Rsdif and Rs data, whereas the observed Rsdir did not suffer from this sensitivity drift problem. From 1990 to 1993, instruments and measurement methods were replaced and measuring stations were restructured in China, which introduced an abrupt increase in the observed Rs. Intercomparisons between observation-based and model-based Rs performed in this research show that sunshine duration (SunDu)-derived Rs is of high quality and can be used as reference data to homogenize observed Rs data. The homogenized and adjusted data of observed Rs combines the advantages of observed Rs in quantifying hourly to monthly variability and SunDu-derived Rs in depicting decadal variability and trend. Rs averaged over 105 stations in China decreased at −2.9 W m−2 per decade from 1961 to 1990 and remained stable afterward. This decadal variability is confirmed by the observed Rsdir and diurnal temperature ranges, and can be reproduced by high-quality Earth System Models. However, neither satellite retrievals nor reanalyses can accurately reproduce such decadal variability over China.

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) following surgery significantly improves the survival rate of patients with rectal cancer. However, nCRT is associated with significant adverse symptoms and high medical costs. Therefore, it is important to investigate potential biomarkers for the prediction of the response to nCRT in patients with rectal cancer. The present study identified candidate biomarkers for predicting a complete response (CR) to nCRT in patients with rectal cancer and investigated the associated mechanisms. Microarray data (accession no. GSE29298) was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Differentially expressed microRNAs (miRNAs/miR) were screened between the pathological CR (pCR) group and no pCR (incomplete response) group. miRNA target genes were predicted using the miRWalk 2.0 online tool and subjected to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis. Furthermore, a miRNA co‑regulatory network was constructed and disease‑associated genes were predicted. The results demonstrated that a total of 36 upregulated and 5 downregulated miRNAs were identified between the two groups. Among these differentially expressed miRNAs, miR‑548c‑5p, miR‑548d‑5p and miR‑663a were significantly associated with a CR to nCRT. The co‑regulatory network and pathway analysis indicated that miR‑548c‑5p and miR‑548d‑5p may function together through stem cell pluripotency and ubiquitin‑mediated proteolysis signaling pathways. Furthermore, the prediction of disease‑associated genes demonstrated that miR‑548c‑5p/miR‑548d‑5p and miR‑663a may regulate genes associated with rectal cancer, including mutated in colorectal cancers (MCC) and adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), and colorectal neoplasms, including interleukin‑6 signal transducer (IL6ST), cell cycle checkpoint kinase 2 (CHEK2), marker of proliferation Ki‑67 (MKI67), cadherin 7 (CDH7), calreticulin (CALR) and transforming growth factor β1 (TGFB1). Therefore, miR‑548c‑5p, miR‑548d‑5p and miR‑663a are promising candidate biomarkers for predicting a CR to nCRT. miR‑548c‑5p/miR‑548d‑5p may be associated with a CR by regulating IL6ST, CHEK2, MKI67 and MCC. In addition, it may function through the pluripotency of stem cells and ubiquitin‑mediated proteolysis signaling pathways. miR‑663a may be associated with a CR to nCRT by targeting CDH7, CALR, APC and TGFβ1. Thus, the miRNA biomarkers investigated in the present study may represent novel therapeutic targets for the prediction and eventual improvement of the response to nCRT in patients with rectal cancer.

This paper proposes a vehicle reidentification (VRI) system with self-adaptive time windows to estimate the mean travel time for each time period on the freeway under traffic demand and supply uncertainty. To capture the traffic dynamics in real-time application, interperiod adjusting based on the exponential smoothing technique is introduced to define an appropriate time-window constraint for the VRI system. In addition, an intraperiod adjusting technique is also employed to handle the nonpredictable traffic congestion. To further reduce the negative effect caused by the mismatches, a postprocessing technique, including thresholding and stratified sampling, is performed on the travel time data derived from the VRI system. Several representative tests are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed VRI against potential changes in traffic conditions, e.g., recurrent traffic congestion, freeway bottlenecks, and traffic incidents. The results show that this method can perform well under traffic demand and supply uncertainty.

Although the global warming has been successfully attributed to the elevated atmospheric greenhouses gases, the reasons for spatiotemporal patterns the warming rates are still under debate. In this paper, we report surface and air warming based on observations collected at 1977 stations in China from 1960 to 2003. Our results show that the warming of daily maximum surface (Ts-max) and air (Ta-max) temperatures showed a significant spatial pattern, stronger in the northwest China and weaker in South China and the North China Plain. These warming spatial patterns are attributed to surface shortwave solar radiation (SSR) and precipitation, the key parameters of surface energy budget. During the study period, SSR decreased by −1.50 W m−2 10 yr−1 in China and caused the trends of Ts-max and Ta-max decreased by 0.139 and 0.053 °C 10 yr−1, respectively. More importantly, South China and the North China Plain had an extremely higher dimming rates than other regions. The spatial contrasts of trends of Ts-max and Ta-max in China are significantly reduced after adjusting for the impact of SSR and precipitation. For example, the difference in warming rates between North China Plain and Loess Plateau reduce by 97.8 % and 68.3 % for Ts-max and Ta-max respectively. After adjusting for the impact of SSR and precipitation, the seasonal contrast of Ts-max and Ta-max decreased by 45.0 % and 17.2 %, and the daily contrast of warming rates of surface and air temperature decreased by 33.0 % and 29.1 % over China. This study shows an essential role of land energy budget in determining regional warming.

As more clean energy sources contribute to the electrical grid, the stress on generation scheduling for peak-shaving increases. This is a concern in several provinces of China that have many nuclear power plants, such as Guangdong and Fujian. Studies on the unit commitment (UC) problem involving the characteristics of both wind and nuclear generation are urgently needed. This paper first describes a model of nuclear power and wind power for the UC problem, and then establishes an objective function for the total cost of nuclear and thermal power units, including the cost of fuel, start-stop and peak-shaving. The operating constraints of multiple generation unit types, the security constraints of the transmission line, and the influence of non-gauss wind power uncertainty on the spinning reserve capacity of the system are considered. Meanwhile, a model of an energy storage system (ESS) is introduced to smooth the wind power uncertainty. Due to the prediction error of wind power, the spinning reserve capacity of the system will be affected by the uncertainty. Over-provisioning of spinning reserve capacity is avoided by introducing chance constraints. This is followed by the design of a UC model applied to different power sources, such as nuclear power, thermal power, uncertain wind power, and ESS. Finally, the feasibility of the UC model in the scheduling of a multi-type generation unit is verified by the modified IEEE RTS 24-bus system accommodating large scale green generation units.