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Two new solid sources of compositions Y 2 O 3 + 1.15BaCuO 2 + 0.1CuO and Y 2 O 3 + 1.3BaCuO 2 + 0.2CuO were employed in the 011-type infiltration growth (011-IG) technique for fabricating single-grain Y–Ba–Cu–O bulk superconductors, which corresponded to 5 mol% Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 and 10 mol% Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 rich samples respectively. The results indicated that, the natural size expansion phenomenon observed in 011-IG-processed bulks was controlled to some extent via the Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 addition, and the porosity in sample structure was reduced with the increasing Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 amount. The scanning electron microscope measurement showed that, large amount of nano-precipitates were observed in the normal 011-IG-processed sample, but with the addition of Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 , the number of nano-precipitates declines seriously. Because the 5 mol% Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 rich sample can realize both low porosity and presence of nano-precipitates, it exhibits the highest properties of levitation force and zero-field J c , thus the composition Y 2 O 3 + 1.15BaCuO 2 + 0.1CuO can be considered as a more optimized solid source for obtaining higher superconducting properties in the 011-IG technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doping effect of BiFeO3 (BFO) nanoparticles on the growth and properties of Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) superconductors by the powder melt and infiltration growth technique is investigated. The results indicate that nano-BFO doping reduces the growth rate of the Y-123 crystal and finally leads to smaller grain size in the YBCO bulk. Superconducting property measurements prove that improved levitation force and trapped field properties are observed in the 0.2 wt% BFO-doped YBCO sample. Magnetization measurement shows that the YBCO samples exhibit decreased Tc values with the increased BFO amount from 0.1 wt%–0.3 wt%, but the transition width ΔTc shows no evident change. The sample with 0.2 wt% BFO addition presents the largest zero-field Jc value and also the highest secondary peak value, which accounts for the superior performance of the sample. The electron probe micro analysis results combined with the XRD analysis prove the decomposition of the BFO and formation of the YBi-2411 in the final bulk, while Fe element exists in the form of Fe/Cu substitutions. Thus, the simultaneous introduction and cooperation of the two types of flux pinning centers (i.e. non-superconducting inclusions and element substitutions) can be realized through the addition of nano-BFO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing mortgage policy for farmers helps to exert the 'economic attribute of property rights' of farmers' land assets and alleviate the financing difficulties faced by farmers due to the lack of desirable collateral. For farmers who stay in cities, this policy can not only effectively utilize the domicile of the homestead land, but also ease the credit constraints they face in starting businesses. However, the financing effect of this policy on the influence of different entrepreneurial farmers still lacks quantitative analysis currently. Based on the CMDS data in 2017, this paper comprehensively used multiple Logit, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Quantile Regression (QR) methods to conduct a deep theoretical analysis and a quantitative study on the impact of homestead mortgage financing on rural households' off-site entrepreneurship. This paper found that: (1) Compared with non-pilot areas, farmers in pilot areas had a higher possibility for choosing entrepreneurship, in which the possibility of opportunistic entrepreneurship was higher than that of subsistence entrepreneurship. (2) The average monthly income of households in the pilot areas was 926.6 yuan higher than that in the non-pilot areas. The average monthly income of rural households with homesteads in the pilot areas was 348.74 yuan higher than that of rural households without homesteads in the pilot areas. (3) With the expansion of homestead areas, the influence of the unit area of homestead on the income of entrepreneurial farmers showed a trend of decreasing first and rising next. (4) From the perspective of geography, the value of homestead per unit area from east to west presented a U-shaped change trend of decreasing first and increasing next. Through further investigation and theoretical deduction, it was found that early credit assessment and credit investigation were important safeguard measures for financial institutions to reduce operational risks. According to the research, homestead mortgage loan could significantly promote the entrepreneurship of farmers. Reasonable evaluation and hedging mechanism could help reduce social risks, and the improvement of insurance and supporting policies for the entrepreneurship of farmers could help reduce the risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two new briarane metabolites—fragilides K (1) and L (2)—along with five known analogues—gemmacolide X, praelolide, juncins P and ZI, and gemmacolide V (3–7)—were extracted and purified from Junceella fragilis, a gorgonian coral. Based on data obtained via spectroscopic techniques, the structures of new briaranes 1 and 2 were determined and the cyclohexane rings in 1 and 2 were found to exist in chair and twist boat conformation, respectively. Additionally, anti-inflammatory analysis showed that briaranes 2, 3, and 6 inhibited pro-inflammatory inducible nitric oxide synthase protein expression and briaranes 3 and 7 suppressed the cyclooxygenase-2 level, in LPS-stimulated murine macrophage-like RAW264.7 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction of refined second-phase particles in superconducting YBa2Cu3O7− x (Y-123) matrix is known to be an effective route to improve the δ l-type pinning and the performance of Y-Ba-Cu-O ( YBCO) single-grain superconductors, while the δ Tc-type pinning induced by spatial fluctuations in matrix composition is also important and contributes to the in-field Jc performance and high-field applications of bulk superconductors. In this communication, chemical doping of nano-sized NiFe2O4 (mean size 50 nm) in single-grain YBCO superconductor is performed using a novel top-seeded infiltration growth ( TSIG) technique based on a solid source pellet ( SSP) of nano-Y2O3 + BaCuO2. The results indicate that, significant improvement of bulk performances including levitation force (33.93 N) and trapped field (0.3628 T) has been observed in the 0.2 wt% nano-NiFe2O4-doped sample, which are much higher than the undoped sample (28.81 N and 0.2754 T). Tc measurement indicates that, a decreased onset Tc of about 87.5 K and a broadened transition width of about 5 K are observed in the NiFe2O4-doped sample, indicating appearance of weak superconducting regions in superconducting matrix caused by Ni and Fe substitutions in Y-123 crystal lattice. This study supplies a practical approach to increase the YBCO bulk performance significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-grain Mg-doped Nd–Ba–Cu–O (Mg-NdBCO) bulk was facilely prepared by employing just one precursor pellet of composition Nd 1.6 Ba 2.3 Cu 3.3 O x + 1 wt% MgO. The sample exhibits typical large grains up to 15 mm in dimension, and a series of large Mg-NdBCO crystals of size 5 × 5 mm 2 can be cleaved from the multi-grain sample. Single-grain Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) superconductor of 16 mm in diameter has been successfully grown on the seeding of the Mg-NdBCO large crystal by the infiltration growth (IG) technique, which presents superior performances of levitation force (32.17 N) and trapped field (0.3962 T) compared with the sample grown with a small seed. As a result, by combining the large Mg-NdBCO seed with the novel IG technique we proposed, a practical method for fabricating high-performance YBCO bulk superconductors has been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the top-seed infiltration and growth (TSIG) technique, two Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) single-grain samples were successfully grown with two different kinds of liquid sources: Y 2 O 3 +10BaO+16CuO and Yb 2 O 3 +10BaO+16CuO, labeled as Y-LS and Yb-LS respectively, and systematical comparisons of their microstructure and superconducting properties were carried out. Microstructural observations indicate that the Yb-LS sample exhibits both the micro-sized Y 2 BaCuO 5 (Y-211) particles and the nano-sized Y-211 inclusions with smaller sizes than the Y-LS sample, and the energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) result confirms the existence of Yb element with a concentration up to 0.46 wt% in Yb-LS processed sample. Measurements of superconducting properties showed that, a slightly higher levitation force (29.09 N) and a slightly reduced T c (90.3 K) were observed in the Yb-LS sample, compared with the result (28.54 N and 90.8 K) in Y-LS sample. While for J c property, both a higher zero-field J c of 8.41×10 4 A/cm 2 and an obvious peak effect of 4.33×10 4 A/cm 2 at a higher field of 1.4 T were observed in the Yb-LS sample, indicating the existence of stronger δl -type pinning from smaller Y-211 particles/inclusions, as well as stronger δT c -type pinning from the spatial fluctuations in matrix composition. The results prove the positive impact of the diffused Yb element on YBCO bulk superconductor and validate the element diffusion-doping route through the liquid infiltration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-grain Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) superconductor with nano-sized pinning centers was successfully fabricated by a novel top-seeded infiltration and growth (TSIG) technique using a solid source pellet of composition nano-Y 2 O 3 + BaCuO 2 . Microstructural observation indicates that large amount of fine Y 2 BaCuO 5 inclusions with a mean size 50 nm are successfully introduced in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−x superconducting matrix, which can act as more effective pinning centers for improving the bulk performance. Measurements of superconducting properties show that, the maximum levitation force reaches 29.09 N for a 16 mm diameter sample, corresponding to a force density 14.47 N/cm 2 , and a maximum trapped field of 0.36362 T is present at the center of the sample after magnetization by a permanent magnet ( B = 0.5 T). The calculated zero-field J c property at 77 K reaches 8.41 × 10 4 A/cm 2 , nearly 48% higher than the sample fabricated by the conventional TSIG technique. These results prove the superior performance of the nano-composited YBCO single-grain superconductor infiltration processed with our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nano-composited Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) single-grain superconductor has been facilely fabricated using raw metallic oxides. In this new method, a solid source pellet (SSP) of composition nano-Y 2 O 3 + BaO + CuO + 1wt.%CeO 2 and a liquid source pellet (LSP) of composition Yb 2 O 3 + 10BaO + 16CuO are employed. Because the step of precursor powder synthesis in the conventional technique can be omitted, so the whole process flow is much simplified and the experimental efficiency is advanced. Experimental results indicate that, the sample exhibits homogeneous distribution of nano-sized Y 2 BaCuO 5 (Y-211) inclusions in microstructure, and also a J c performance of 6.24 × 10 4 A/cm 2 in self field at 77 K, which is about 22% higher than that observed in conventional infiltration processed sample. Consequently, this study supplies a practical method for fabricating nano-composited YBCO bulk superconductor with high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a complementary and alternative medicine in medical field, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has drawn great attention in the domestic field and overseas. In practice, TCM provides a quite distinct methodology to patient diagnosis and treatment compared to western medicine (WM). Syndrome (ZHENG or pattern) is differentiated by a set of symptoms and signs examined from an individual by four main diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation and olfaction, interrogation, and palpation which reflects the pathological and physiological changes of disease occurrence and development. Patient classification is to divide patients into several classes based on different criteria. In this paper, from the machine learning perspective, a survey on patient classification issue will be summarized on three major aspects of TCM: sign classification, syndrome differentiation, and disease classification. With the consideration of different diagnostic data analyzed by different computational methods, we present the overview for four subfields of TCM diagnosis, respectively. For each subfield, we design a rectangular reference list with applications in the horizontal direction and machine learning algorithms in the longitudinal direction. According to the current development of objective TCM diagnosis for patient classification, a discussion of the research issues around machine learning techniques with applications to TCM diagnosis is given to facilitate the further research for TCM patient classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacillary dysentery is an infectious disease caused by Shigella dysenteriae, which has a seasonal distribution. External environmental factors, including climate, play a significant role in its transmission. This paper identifies climate-related risk factors and their role in bacillary dysentery transmission. Harbin, in northeast China, with a temperate climate, and Quzhou, in southern China, with a subtropical climate, are chosen as the study locations. The least absolute shrinkage and selectionator operator is applied to select relevant climate factors involved in the transmission of bacillary dysentery. Based on the selected relevant climate factors and incidence rates, an AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is established successfully as a time series prediction model. The numerical results demonstrate that the mean water vapour pressure over the previous month results in a high relative risk for bacillary dysentery transmission in both cities, and the ARIMA model can successfully perform such a prediction. These results provide better explanations for the relationship between climate factors and bacillary dysentery transmission than those put forth in other studies that use only correlation coefficients or fitting models. The findings in this paper demonstrate that the mean water vapour pressure over the previous month is an important predictor for the transmission of bacillary dysentery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A coated infiltration growth technique was proposed to fabricate single-grain Y?Ba?Cu?O bulk superconductor, in which a liquid source coated Y2 BaCuO5 (Y-211) preform was employed and the liquid source composition was 3 BaO + 5 CuO. Experimental results indicated that, the sample exhibited a single-grain morphology on the top surface, and the liquid source coating always existed surrounding the bulk which contributed to the complete growth of the sample. The homogeneous distribution of fine Y-211 inclusions in microstructure and a satisfactory Jc performance of 5.67 × 104 A/cm2 in self-field at 77 K have also been observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical doping of BiFeO 3 (BFO) nano-particles in Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) superconductor was performed using the powder melt and infiltration growth (PM-IG) technique. The results indicate that improved superconducting properties have been observed in 0.2 wt% nano-BFO doped sample. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) result performed on the ground powder of 5 wt% nano-BFO doped YBCO grain proves the decomposition of BFO phase during the PM-IG process and the formation of Y 2 Ba 4 CuBiO y (YBi-2411) phase. Consequently, the addition of BFO could introduce multi-source pinning centers, i.e. YBi-2411 nanoscale particles and Fe element substitutions, which accounts for the improvement in superconducting properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A seriesof single-grain Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO)bulk superconductors were fabricated using a modified infiltrationgrowth (IG) technique, and the morphology feature associated withthe inner crystallization structure of the samples was investigatedin detail. Experimental observations indicated that YBCO single grainsgrew much larger with the increasing slow-cooling time. A bended a/cgrowth sector boundary was observedin the cross section of the YBCO sample grown for 48 h, which resultedfrom the variations in the Ra/Rcratio duringthe slow-cooling growth process, where Raand Rcrepresent the growth rate in the aaxis and caxis direction, respectively. In addition, different sidesurface morphology (SSM) patterns were presented for the samples fabricatedwith different processings, which originated from the difference inthe crystallization structure of the YBCO single grains and couldbe divided into four groups. On the other hand, for a defined inner-crystallizationstructure, the changes of sample size (diameter or thickness) couldalso lead to various SSM styles. Finally, it was concluded that thecomparison relationship between the ratio of sample radius and thicknesswith the ratio of Ra/Rcdetermined the final SSMpattern of the sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The effects of liquid source (LS) mass and slow-cooling (SC) time on the infiltration growth of the YBCO single grains were investigated. Experimental observations indicated that, the growth rate of YBa2Cu3O7− x crystal increased with the increasing mass of the used LS pellet, and the optimal LS mass for IG process of Y2BaCuO5 preform bulk (12g) was identified as 20g. In addition, it was also found that the YBCO single grains grew much larger with the increasing SC time, and finally up to the whole sample size at a SC time 64h. A crooked a/c growth sector boundary was observed in the cross section of the YBCO single grain grown for 48h, which resulted from the variations of growth rate along different directions during the SC process. The results can help us develop more optimized IG process to fabricate YBCO single grains more economically and efficiently. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Partial least squares (PLS) has been widely applied to process scientific data sets as an effective dimension reduction technique. The main way to determine the number of dimensions extracted by PLS is by using the cross validation method, but its computation load is heavy. Researchers presented fixing the number at three, but intuitively it’s not suitable for all data sets. Based on the intrinsic connection between PLS and the structure of data sets, two novel algorithms are proposed to determine the number of extracted principal components, keeping the valuable information while excluding the trivial. With the merits of variety with different data sets and easy implementation, both algorithms exhibit better performance than the previous works on nine real world data sets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The infiltration and growth (IG) process is an effective method for the preparation of single-grain REBa2Cu3O7−x (RE-123) bulk superconductors with finely dispersed RE2BaCuO5 (RE-211) particles, compared with the conventional melt growth (MG) technique. However, this process is more complicated and time-consuming because three kinds of precursor powders, involving RE-211, RE-123 and BaCuO2, have to be prepared for the IG process. Based on the regular liquid source composed of RE-123 and Ba3Cu5O8, in this paper, different new liquid sources were developed for simplifying the IG process. And the GdBa2Cu3O7−x (Gd-123) single grains have been successfully prepared using these liquid sources. The morphology, microstructure and levitation force of the Gd-123 superconducting grains have also been investigated. The results indicate that the new liquid sources can be used to simplify the process flow, reduce the cost and advance the efficiency during the fabrication of single-grain Gd-123 superconductors, because only two precursor powders (GdBaCuO5 and BaCuO2) are needed to prepare for the whole process flow. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Feature selection has been a key technology in massive data processing, e.g. in microarray data analysis with few samples but high-dimensional genes. One common problem in multi-class microarray data analysis is the unbalanced recognition or prediction accuracies among classes, which usually leads to poor system performance. One of the main reasons is the unfair feature (gene) selection method. In this paper, a novel feature selection framework by using pairwise-class and all-class techniques (namely FrPA) is proposed to balance the performance among classes and improve the average accuracy. The feature (gene) rank list on all classes and the lists on each pair of classes are all taken into consideration during feature selection. The strategy of round-robin is embedded into the framework to select final features from the different rank lists. Experimental results on several microarray data sets show that FrPA helps to achieve higher classification accuracy and balance the performance among classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to articles published in this issue including the article "Tri-training and MapReduce-based massive data learning," "Feature selection for multi-class problems by using pairwise-class and all-class techniques" and the article "Intelligent information retrieval system using automatic thesaurus construction."

Abstract: Large single-domain Gd–Ba–Cu–O bulk material was successfully fabricated by a modified infiltration and growth process (IG) using a liquid source composed of Gd2O3, BaCuO2 and CuO. The growth character, microstructure, and performance of the GdBCO product were investigated. The results indicate that, this modified IG technique can be used to fabricate well-textured and high performance GdBCO large single domains more efficiently. Moreover, an increasing number of small Gd2BaCuO5 (Gd-211) particles and coarsening of large Gd-211 particles were both observed in the microstructure with increasing distance from the seed, which together are jointly responsible for the increasing volume fraction of Gd-211 particles during the GdBa2Cu3O7−x (Gd-123) growth process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of partial least squares (PLS) in unbalanced pattern classification. Beyond dimension reduction, PLS is proved to be superior to generate favorable features for classification. The PLS classifier (PLSC) is illustrated to give extremely better prediction accuracy to the class with the smaller data number. In this paper, an asymmetric PLS classifier (APLSC) is proposed to boost the poor performance of PLSC to the class with the larger data number. PLSC and APLSC are compared with five state-of-arts algorithms, support vector machines (SVMs), unbalanced SVMs, asymmetric principal component and discriminant analysis (APCDA), SMOTE and Adaboost. Experimental results on six UCI data sets show that APLSC improves PLSC in promoting overall classification accuracy, at the same time, APLSC and PLSC perform better than other five algorithms even under seriously unbalanced distribution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A small high-temperature superconducting maglev propeller system model has been designed and constructed. It mainly consists of a permanent-magnet track, a superconducting maglev vehicle, two linear motors, an automatic controlling electric circuit, and a spring. The linear motors can be powered by a single- or three-phase power supply. It can be used to do many experiments in different fields of science and technology for polytechnic instruction. Some experiments such as the effect of capacitive load in the electrocircuit, the voltage of the power supply, and the initial moving speed of the maglev model on the total mechanical work of the vehicle, which is done by the linear motors in single-phase power supply, have been carried out. Results will be discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Compared to the conventional melt growth (MG) method, the top seeded in- filtration and growth (TSIG) process is an effective way for preparing bulk REBa2Cu3O7− x (RE-123) with finely dispersed RE2BaCuO5 (RE-211) particles. However, it is more complicated and time-consuming, because three kinds of precursor powders, namely, RE-211, RE-123 and BaCuO2, have to be prepared for the conventional TSIG process. In this paper, a new liquid source (NLS) composed of RE-211 and Ba3Cu5O8, was proposed for simplifying the TSIG process, which is different from the regular liquid source (RLS) composed of RE-123 and Ba3Cu5O8. In this modified TSIG technique, we need to prepare only RE-211 and BaCuO2 powders. Single-grain GdBa2Cu3O7− x (GdBCO) bulk superconductors have been fabricated using the RLS and NLS separately. The morphology, microstructure and levitation force of the bulk GdBCO have also been investigated. The results indicate that the NLS can be used to simplify the process flow and improve the efficiency on the fabrication of single-grain GdBCO superconductors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we report a processing method for fabricating large single-domain Gd–Ba–Cu–O (GdBCO) bulk superconductors using a new Yb-based liquid source composed of Yb2O3, BaCuO2, and CuO by the top seeded infiltration and growth process (TSIG). Using our method, only two kinds of precursor powders, involving Gd2Ba-CuO5 (Gd-211) and BaCuO2, are needed to prepare for the whole TSIG flow, which can effectively shorten the experimental cycle and then advance the experimental efficiency. The microstructure and superconducting property of the GdBCO product were investigated. The results indicate that this Yb-based liquid source can be used to fabricate well-textured large GdBCO single domains, and can also raise the utilization rate of the liquid source powder. The results are helpful to reduce the time and cost during the fabrication of GdBCO bulk superconductors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Top-seed infiltration and growth technique ( TSIG) is proposed to fabricate Y-Ba-Cu-O ( YBCO) single-grain superconductor nano-composites, in which a solid source composition of nano-Y2O3 + BaCuO2 and a liquid source composition of Y2O3 + 10BaO + 16CuO are employed. As can be seen, this novel technique uses just one source of precursor powder of BaCuO2, so it is more simplified and efficient. Microstructural observation indicates that fine Y2BaCuO5 (Y-211) inclusions with a size from dozens of nanometers to about one hundred nanometers are successfully introduced in YBa2Cu3O7− x (Y-123) superconducting matrix, which can act as more effective pinning centers for improving the bulk performance. Superconducting property measurement shows that, a maximum trapped field of 0.36044 T is present at the center of the sample after magnetization by a permanent magnet ( B = 0.5 T). These results prove that our proposed TSIG technique is a practical method for fabricating YBCO bulk superconductor nano-composites with high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simplified top-seeded infiltration growth (TSIG) technique is reported for fabricating single-grain Y–Ba–Cu–O (YBCO) bulk superconductor by employing just one precursor powder: Y 2 BaCuO 5 (Y-211). The composition of Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 +15 wt% Y-211, while Ba 3 Cu 5 O 8 was prepared using raw materials of BaO and CuO, was used as liquid source for the TSIG process of YBCO bulk, thus the BaCuO 2 precursor powder could be avoided in the whole TSIG flow, which simplified the fabrication process and advanced the efficiency. Experimental results indicated that, the sample exhibited well single-grain morphology in top surface and homogeneous distribution of fine Y-211 inclusions in microstructure, as well as a satisfactory J c performance of 5.11×10 4 A/cm 2 in self-field at 77 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• NdBCO/YBCO/MgO film seed is employed in IG process for growing YBCO bulk. • YBCO single grains were successfully grown using the 211-IG and 011-IG techniques. • The embedded seed mode was employed in 011-IG for preventing the movement of seed. • The 011-IG YBCO sample exhibits enhanced levitation force and J c properties. The quality of the seed is a key factor for growing well c -axis oriented RE–Ba–Cu–O (REBCO) single-grain superconductors. In this study, the commercial NdBCO/YBCO/MgO film (300 nm NdBCO with 20 nm YBCO buffer layer on MgO substrate) is employed as seed in the infiltration growth (IG) method for growing YBCO single grains, including the conventional 211-IG and the novel 011-IG techniques. And an embedded seed mode was used for preventing the movement of the thin film during heat treatment process in the 011-IG technique. The results indicate that, YBCO single grains have been successfully grown via the seeding of NdBCO/YBCO/MgO film in the two IG processes, which proves the feasibility of the film seed in the IG method. Four strictly perpendicular growth sector boundaries on the top surface of the samples and clear (0 0 l) diffraction peaks in the X-ray diffraction (XRD) results both indicate the high c -axis orientation and well growth quality of the samples, which proves the excellent performance of the NdBCO/YBCO/MgO film seed in the IG method. Superconducting property measurement showed that, the 011-IG YBCO sample exhibited enhanced levitation force and J c properties than the 211-IG sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The degree of malignancy in brain glioma needs to be assessed by MRI findings and clinical data before operations. There have been previous attempts to solve this problem with a fuzzy rule extraction algorithm based on fuzzy min–max neural networks. We utilize support vector machines with floating search method to select relevant features and to predict the degree of malignancy. Computation results show that the feature subset selected by our techniques can yield better classification performance. In contrast with the base line method, which generated two rules and obtained 83.21% accuracy on the whole data set, our method generates one rule to yield 88.21% accuracy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A method of gas chromatography mass spectrometry was established, which could accurately analysze the amount of benzene, toluene and ethyl benzene in the pyrolysis products of cigarette lap adhesive samples. The parameters of pyrolysis temperature, moisture, dryness temperature and dryness time were optimized. The results showed that the linear possessed good in the range of 2~500 µg/mL, the linear correlation coefficients were above 0.990 0, the limits of detection were from 0. 378 ng/mL to 0.996 ng/mL, the limits of quantification were from 1.26 ng/mL to 3.32 ng/mL. The method was suitable for determining the benzenes in cigarette lap adhesive samples. The determined concentration range of benzene was 138.7 ~188.4 mg/g, toluene was 44.0 ~75.2 mg/g and ethyl benzene was 3.0~19.1 mg/g in the pyrolysis products of cigarette lap adhesive samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, four bipolar deep-blue emitting materials of 2-(4-(9 H -carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)-1-(4-methylphenyl)-1 H -phenanthro[9,10- d ]imidazole (MePPIM-Cz), 2-(4-(9 H -carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)-1-(4-chlorophenyl)-1 H -phenanthro [9,10- d ]imidazole (ClPPIM-Cz), 2-(4-(9 H -carbazol-9-yl)phenyl)-1-(4- tert -butyl phenyl)-1 H -phenanthro[9,10- d ]imidazole (BuPPIM-Cz) and 2-(4-(9 H -carbazol-9-yl) phenyl)-1-(4-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)-1 H -phenanthro[9,10- d ]imidazole (TFMPPIM-Cz) based on phenanthroimidazole and carbazole group have been designed and synthesized by introducing different electron active substitutions into the N1 position of phenanthroimidazole. The thermal, photophysical, electrochemical and computational properties of four compounds were investigated. All compounds exhibited the deep blue emission and good thermal stability with glass transition temperature (Tg) in range of 126°C–137 °C. Single carrier devices were also fabricated and demonstrated that the four compounds have bipolar transporting properties. The non-doped organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on MePPIM-Cz , ClPPIM-Cz , BuPPIM-Cz and TFMPPIM-Cz showed deep blue emission with the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.16, 0.07), (0.16, 0.06), (0.16, 0.05) and (0.16, 0.10) and the maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEmax) of 2.67%, 2.24%, 1.81% and 1.09%, respectively. The CIE coordinates of MePPIM-Cz , ClPPIM-Cz and BuPPIM-Cz is extremely close to the National Television System Committee (NTSC) standard blue CIE of (0.14, 0.08), which is very significant for high color purity full-color display. • Four deep blue fluorescent emitters based phenanthroimidazole and carbazole group were designed and synthesized. • All four compounds exhibited good thermal stability and bipolar charge transport properties. • The OLEDs achieved the EQEs of ∼2%, with deep blue emission close to NTSC standard blue CIE of (0.14, 0.08). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A new Y-based liquid source, composed of Y2O3, BaCuO2, and CuO, was prepared and used to fabricate large Gd–Ba–Cu–O (GdBCO) single domains of 30mm in diameter by the infiltration and growth (IG) process. After detailed investigations in the morphology, microstructure, and superconducting property of the grown sample, it was found that, the proposed Y-based liquid source can be used to fabricate well-textured large GdBCO single domains, and can also increase the utilization rate of the liquid source powder. Additionally, employing our method can simplify the IG process and advance the experimental efficiency because only two precursor powders, involving Gd2BaCuO5 and BaCuO2, are needed to prepare for the whole process flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analyzing hedyotis diffusa from the genomics perspective. • A total of 17,930 proteins are used in this study. • Discover unknown signaling pathways that an herb could possibly affect. Hedyotis diffusa is an herb used for anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-fibroblast treatment in the clinical practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine. However, its pharmacological mechanisms have not been fully established and there is a lack of modern scientific verification. One of the best ways to further understand Hedyotis diffusa's mechanisms of action is to analyze it from the genomics perspective. In this study, we used network pharmacology approaches to infer the herb-gene interactions, the herb-pathway interactions, and the gene families. We then analyzed Hedyotis diffusa's mechanisms of action using the genomics context combined with the Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical practice and the pharmacological research. The results obtained in the pathway and gene family analysis were consistent with the Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical experience and the pharmacological activities of Hedyotis diffusa. Our approach can identify related genes and pathways correctly with little a priori knowledge, and provide potential directions to facilitate further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the mixture symptom mention problem which appears in the structuring of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). We accomplished this by disassembling mixture symptom mentions with entity relation extraction. Over 2,200 clinical notes were annotated to construct the training set. Then, an end-to-end joint learning model was established to extract the entity relations. A joint model leveraging a multihead mechanism was proposed to deal with the problem of relation overlapping. A pretrained transformer encoder was adopted to capture context information. Compared with the entity extraction pipeline, the constructed joint learning model was superior in recall, precision, and F1 measures, at 0.822, 0.825, and 0.818, respectively, 14% higher than the baseline model. The joint learning model could automatically extract features without any extra natural language processing tools. This is efficient in the disassembling of mixture symptom mentions. Furthermore, this superior performance at identifying overlapping relations could benefit the reassembling of separated symptom entities downstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the real medical records and web pages of Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis B to extract structured medical knowledge, and obtains a total of 8,563 entities, 96,896 relationships, 32 entity types, and 40 relationship types. The structured data was stored in the Neo4j graph structure database, and a knowledge graph of Chinese medical diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis B was constructed. The knowledge map is used as a structured data source to provide high-quality knowledge information for the medical question and answer system based on hepatitis B disease. Applying the deep learning method to the question identification and knowledge response of the question answering system makes the hepatitis B medical intelligent question answering system has important research and application significance. The question-and-answer system takes aim at hepatitis B, a public health problem in the world and leverages the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine for diagnosis and treatment. It provides a reference for doctors' disease diagnosis, treatment, and patient self-care. Its value is important for the treatment of hepatitis B disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Context: Anterior controllable antedisplacement and fusion (ACAF) is a novel surgical technique for the treatment of ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL). Its prognostic factors for decompression have not been well studied. Additionally, no detailed radiological standard has been set for hoisting the vertebrae-OPLL complex (VOC) in ACAF.Purpose: To identify the possible prognostic factors for decompression outcomes after ACAF for cervical OPLL, to determine the critical value of radiological parameters for predicting good outcomes, and to establish a radiological standard for hoisting the VOC in ACAF.Study Design: This was a retrospective multicenter study.Patient Sample: A total of 121 consecutive patients with OPLL who underwent ACAF at a point between January 2017 and June 2018 at any one of seven facilities and were monitored for at least 1 year afterward were enrolled in a multicenter study.Outcome Measures: Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA) scores, recovery rate (RR) of neurologic function, and surgical complications were used to determine the effectiveness of ACAF.Methods: Patients were divided into two groups according to their RR for neurologic function. Patients with an RR of ≥50% and an RR of <50% were designated as having good and poor decompression outcomes, respectively. The relationship between various possible prognostic factors and decompression outcomes was assessed by univariate and multivariate analysis. The receiver operating characteristic curve was used to determine the optimal cutoff value of the radiological parameters for prediction of good decompression outcomes. Next, the patients were redivided into three groups according to the cutoff value of the selected radiological parameter (postoperative anteroposterior canal diameter [APD] ratio). Patients with postoperative APD ratios of ≤80.7%, 80.7%-100%, and ≥100% were defined as members of the incomplete, optimal, and excessive antedisplacement groups, respectively. Differences in decompression outcomes among the three groups were compared to verify the reliability of the postoperative APD ratio and assess the necessity of excessive antedisplacement.Results: Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients' age at surgery (odds ratio [OR]=1.18; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.08-1.29; p<.01) and postoperative APD ratio (OR=0.83; 95% CI=0.77-0.90; p<.01) were independently associated with decompression outcomes. The optimal cutoff point of the postoperative APD ratio was calculated at 80.7%, with 86.2% sensitivity and 73.5% specificity. There were no significant differences in the postoperative JOA scores and RRs between the excessive antedisplacement group and optimal antedisplacement group (p>.05). However, a lower incidence of cerebrospinal fluid leakage and screw slippage was observed in the optimal antedisplacement group (p<.05).Conclusions: Patients' age at surgery and their postoperative APD ratio are the two prognostic factors of decompression outcomes after ACAF. The postoperative APD ratio is also the most accurate radiological parameter for predicting good outcomes. Our findings suggest that it is essential for neurologic recovery to restore the spinal canal to more than 80.7% of its original size (postoperative APD ratio >80.7%), and restoration to less than its original size (postoperative APD ratio <100%) will help reduce the incidence of surgical complications. This may serve as a valuable reference for establishment of a radiological standard for hoisting the VOC in ACAF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultralow field emission is achieved from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by using microwave hydrogen plasma processing. After the processing, typical capped CNT tips are removed, with thinned, open-ended, and defected CNTs left. Structural analyses indicate that the processed CNTs have more SP 3 -hybridized defects as compared to the pristine ones. The morphology of CNTs can be readily controlled by adjusting microwave powers, which change the shape of CNTs by means of hydrogen plasma etching. Processed CNTs with optimal morphology are found to have an ultralow turn-on field of 0.566 V/μm and threshold field of 0.896 V/μm, much better than 0.948 and 1.559 V/μm of the as-grown CNTs, respectively. This improved FE performance is ascribed to the structural changes of CNTs after the processing. The thinned and open-ended shape of CNTs can facilitate electron tunneling through barriers and additionally, the increased defects at tube walls can serve as new active emission sites. Furthermore, our plasma processed CNTs exhibit excellent field emission stability at a large emission current density of 10.36 mA/cm 2 after being perfectly aged, showing promising prospects in applications as high-performance vacuum electron sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Catalyst-free and self-assembled growth of graphene flakes (GFs) on carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays have been realized by using microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The shape of GFs was highly manipulated by adjusting the growth time, C concentration, and microwave power. We qualitatively discussed the nucleation and growth mechanism of GFs based on the growth parameter–GF shape studies. The field emission (FE) properties of graphene flake–carbon nanotube (GF–CNT) composites for different GF shapes were measured and found to be strongly influenced by the GF distribution. The optimal shape of GFs for FE had small scales, sharp edges, and sparse distribution on CNTs. The best FE properties with the optimal shape were observed with a low turn-on electric field of 0.73V/μm and excellent stability, which are superior to those of the as-grown CNT arrays and GF–CNT composites covered by densely distributed GFs. We consider that the large aspect ratio of CNTs and the unique FE stability of GFs play a synergetic effect on the improved FE properties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The magnetic bovine serum albumin (BSA) microspheres (MS) were prepared by emulsification/solidification method. In this experiment, two kinds of magnetic MS, e.g. BSA MS and PEG-incorporated BSA microspheres (PMS) were prepared. The obtained MS were characterized by Malvern laser particle sizer and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The obtained MS were spherical and about 1.3 μm in size. The magnetic responsivity and in vitro release behavior of these MS were studied in detail. The in vivo distribution and targeting delivery of 5-fluorouracil (5-Fu) magnetic MS after artery administration were studied in rat. The results showed that PMS could efficiently delivery 5-Fu to the targeted site compared with BSA MS without PEG MS and free drug. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To evaluate the application of transvaginal hydrolaparoscopy for exploration of the pelvic cavity exploration in infertile women. Study design A total of 510 infertile women were included in this study from May 1st, 2009 to April 30, 2012 in the clinic of the Hebei Research Institute for Family Planning. Results In 495 of 510 of the patients (97.06%), a successful operation was achieved at the first puncture. Of these 495 patients, 286 (57.78%) showed bilateral patency. Completely normal tubo-ovarian and pelvic structures were observed only in 79 patients (15.96%): 16 patients (3.23%) had bilateral tube obstruction, 18 (3.64%) had hydrosalpinx, and 8 (1.62%) had fimbrial stenosis. Pelvic abnormalities occurred in 240 patients (44.04%), including bilateral and/or unilateral tubo-ovarian adhesions in 80 patients (16.16%) and 160 (32.32%) found with adhesions in other parts of the pelvic cavity. Pelvic endometriosis was found in 82 patients (16.57%) and 19 (3.84%) had two or more lesions in the pelvic cavity. In addition, 9 cases (1.82%) of ovarian cysts, 7 (1.41%) of bilateral vesicular appendices and 43 cases (6.69%) of a unilateral vesicular appendix were observed. In addition, convoluted tubes such as bent or twisted tubes were found in 4 cases of bilateral fallopian tube occlusion patients (0.81%) and 17 cases of unilateral tubal occlusion patients (3.43%). Conclusions Transvaginal hydrolaparoscopy is a feasible, safe, and cost-effective microinvasive technique. This technique can be considered as an alternative procedure for evaluating female infertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Self-assembled few-layer graphene–carbon nanotube (FLG–CNT) composites were prepared and their field emission (FE) properties before and after high-temperature (H-T) processing were investigated. It was found that their FE performance deteriorated slightly when they were processed at 1273K for 5h before the FE tests; the applied field increased ~0.05V/μm at 10mA/cm2. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis indicates that the decreased amount of SP3-hybridized defects from 39.91% to 23.87% after the H-T processing directly leads to this FE degradation. However, the largest emission current density (J max) of the FLG–CNT composites increased from 33.48 to 64.00mA/cm2 after the H-T processing. This improved FE performance was attributed to the enhanced adhesion between the CNT and substrates. We consider that the catalyst wrapping at the CNT foot after the H-T processing is responsible for this CNT–substrate reinforcement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Excavating from small samples is a challenging pharmacokinetic problem, where statistical methods can be applied. Pharmacokinetic data is special due to the small samples of high dimensionality, which makes it difficult to adopt conventional methods to predict the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescription. The main purpose of our study is to obtain some knowledge of the correlation in TCM prescription. Here, a novel method named Multi-target Regression Framework to deal with the problem of efficacy prediction is proposed. We employ the correlation between the values of different time sequences and add predictive targets of previous time as features to predict the value of current time. Several experiments are conducted to test the validity of our method and the results of leave-one-out cross-validation clearly manifest the competitiveness of our framework. Compared with linear regression, artificial neural networks, and partial least squares, support vector regression combined with our framework demonstrates the best performance, and appears to be more suitable for this task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cough is an essential symptom in respiratory diseases. In the measurement of cough severity, an accurate and objective cough monitor is expected by respiratory disease society. This paper aims to introduce a better performed algorithm, pretrained deep neural network (DNN), to the cough classification problem, which is a key step in the cough monitor.Method: The deep neural network models are built from two steps, pretrain and fine-tuning, followed by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) decoder to capture tamporal information of the audio signals. By unsupervised pretraining a deep belief network, a good initialization for a deep neural network is learned. Then the fine-tuning step is a back propogation tuning the neural network so that it can predict the observation probability associated with each HMM states, where the HMM states are originally achieved by force-alignment with a Gaussian Mixture Model Hidden Markov Model (GMM-HMM) on the training samples. Three cough HMMs and one noncough HMM are employed to model coughs and noncoughs respectively. The final decision is made based on viterbi decoding algorihtm that generates the most likely HMM sequence for each sample. A sample is labeled as cough if a cough HMM is found in the sequence.Results: The experiments were conducted on a dataset that was collected from 22 patients with respiratory diseases. Patient dependent (PD) and patient independent (PI) experimental settings were used to evaluate the models. Five criteria, sensitivity, specificity, F1, macro average and micro average are shown to depict different aspects of the models. From overall evaluation criteria, the DNN based methods are superior to traditional GMM-HMM based method on F1 and micro average with maximal 14% and 11% error reduction in PD and 7% and 10% in PI, meanwhile keep similar performances on macro average. They also surpass GMM-HMM model on specificity with maximal 14% error reduction on both PD and PI.Conclusions: In this paper, we tried pretrained deep neural network in cough classification problem. Our results showed that comparing with the conventional GMM-HMM framework, the HMM-DNN could get better overall performance on cough classification task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]