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Insulator extraction from images or 3D point clouds is an important part of automatic power inspection by unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs), which is vital for improving the efficiency of inspection and the stability of power grids. However, for point cloud data, many challenges, such as the diversity of pylon shape and insulator type, complex topology, and similarity of structures, were not tackled with the study of power element extraction. To efficiently identify the small insulators from complex power transmission corridor (PTC) scenarios, this paper proposes a robust extraction method by fusing multi-scale neighborhood and multi-feature entropy weighting. The pylon head is segmented according to the aspect ratio of horizontal slices following the locating of the pylons based on the height difference and continuous vertical distribution firstly. Aiming to quantify the different contributions of features in decision-making and better segment insulators, a feature evaluation system combined with information entropy, eigen entropy-based optimal neighborhood selection, and designed multi-scale features is constructed to identify suspension insulators and tension insulators. In the optimization step, a region erosion and growing method is proposed to segment complete insulator strings by enlarging the perspectives to obtain more object representations. The extraction results of 82 pylons with 654 insulators demonstrate that the proposed method is suitable for different pylon shapes and sizes. The identification accuracy of the whole line achieves 98.23% and the average F1 score is 90.98%. The proposed method can provide technical support for automatic UAV inspection and pylon reconstruction.

Background: Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is considered a common complication of cancer or cancer treatment, which has a serious adverse effect on the life and of cancer patients, leading to a decline in their quality of life (QoL). The existing clinical trials revealed that acupuncture has a positive effect on CRF, and there are fewer adverse events confirmed in the corresponding systematic review. However, in recent years, new studies on using acupuncture to treat CRF were conducted, so in order to evaluate its efficacy, an updated systematic review. This protocol provides research methods for systematic review and meta-analysis of the safety and effectiveness of acupuncture for the treatment of CRF. Methods: We will searched the randomized controlled trial literature of acupuncture treatment for CRF in 4 English and 4 Chinese databases, including PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Central), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Biomedical Literature Database(CBM), China Science Journal Database (VIP), and Wanfang Database. Simultaneously, other resources are manually retrieved which include reference lists of identified publications, conference articles, and grey literature. We also included the clinical randomized controlled trials of acupuncture treatment for CRF in the study. The search language is limited to Chinese and English. Two trained reviewers independently completed research screening, data extraction, and research quality assessment. RevMan (V.5.3) software was used to perform data statistical analysis and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to evaluate the quality of evidence. Results: This study is based on past and present clinical evidence to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture treatment for CRF. Conclusion: Through this systematic review, we will provide the latest high-quality evidence of whether acupuncture treatment for CRF is effective and safe and also provide a theoretical basis for clinicians to choose acupuncture for the treatment of CRF. Systematic Review Registration: INPLASY 202090049.

The literature of experimental research on diet-induced obesity treated with acupuncture was retrieved. The aspects of epigenetics, neuroendocrine system, intestinal flora, inflammatory response, oxidative stress and substance metabolism of the mechanism of acupuncture in the treatment of diet-induced obesity were summarized. It is suggested that the potential mechanism of acupuncture in the treatment of diet-induced obesity should be discussed in the aspects of the interaction of Toll-like receptors on obesity-intestinal flora-immune function, the improvement of insulin resistance, epigenetics and antioxidant stress.

To develop a stable and marker-free Lactobacillus strain useful for the expression of vaccines, we developed a temperature-sensitive suicide plasmid with expression cassettes containing an HCE promoter, a PgsA anchor, the alpha-toxin gene, and an rrnB T1T2 terminator (PPαT) that uses a 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) counterselectable marker for Lactobacillus casei . Three strains containing the correct PPαT expression cassettes were produced via the selective pressure of 5-FU screening. We confirmed that the upp gene was deleted and that the PPαT expression cassettes were inserted into the upp site of L. casei ATCC 393 by genomic PCR amplification and sequencing. 5-FU resistance in recombinant bacteria could be stably inherited for as long as 40 generations following insertion. However, bacteria containing the integrated DNA grew more slowly than wild-type L. casei . An indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) analysis demonstrated that the alpha-toxin gene was expressed. Also, we visualized expression of the protein on the surface of L. casei cells using laser confocal microscopy. These results taken together demonstrate that these recombinant bacteria should provide a safe tool for effective vaccine production.

Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), is an enteropathogenic coronavirus that causes a highly fatal acute diarrhea in newborn pigs. It's typically clinical manifestations consist of omitting, severe diarrhea, loss water and highly infectious disease. All kinds and ages of pigs can be infected. Particular, the mortality piglets under 3 weeks may reach 100% . The effective protection against TGEV requires the development of vaccines that are able to induce local mucosal immunization. Lactococcus lactis was selected as a bacterial carrier for the expression of TGEV spike glycoprotein. The gene of S glycoprotein was cloned into the Lactococcus lactis vectors pNZ8112. An approximately 2000 bps fragments of TGEV gene S that encompasses all the four major antigenic domains critical for neutralization was transformed into Lactococcus lactis NZ9000 by electroporation, resulting in the recombinant strain pNZ8112-Sa/NZ9000. The recombinant glycoprotein S was detected by SDS-PAGE and Western blot after induced by 1ng/mL nisin. The result indicated that the expressed product maintain the antigenicity of TGEV as expected. In order to detect the location of expressed protein, the yellow and green fluorescence of the recombinant strain pNZ8112-Sa/NZ9000 was detected by the IFA experiments, which indicated that the expressed recombinant protein was secreted and located on the surface of the bacterium cell. Oral immunization of BALB/c mice with recombinant strain that constitutively express the 66kDa fragment of the glycoprotein S, Specific anti-TGEV glycoprotein S secret immunoglobulin A (sIgA) antibodies were detected by indirect enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in the feces after immunization. It was showed that the mice immunized with pNZ8112-Sa/NZ9000 recombinant strain had produced clear antibody level anti TGEV, and which had provided important substance foundation and explored the feasibility of Lactobacillus as oral vaccine.

Lactobacillus casei 393 was selected as a bacterial carrier for the expression of Porcine Parvovirus (PPV) protective antigen VP2 protein. The gene encoding PPV VP2 protein was cloned into the Lactobacillus casei surface expression vector pPG, and then the constructed recombinant vector pPG-VP2 was electrotransformed into Lactobacillus casei 393 generating the recombinant system pPG-VP2/L. casei393 expressing PPV VP2 protein. The recombinant strain was induced by 2% Lactose in MRS and about 74kD protein was detected with SDS-PAGE. The result of Western-blot indicated that the expressed protein possessed the antigenic specificity which could be recognized by mouse anti-PPV serum. The indirect immunofluorescent test showed that the expressed protein was secreted on the cell surface Lactobacillus casei.