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Cis-regulatory elements play an important role in the development of traits and disease in organisms (Ma et al., 2020; Woolfe et al., 2005) and their annotation could facilitate genetic studies. The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) (Davis et al., 2018) and Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) (FAANG Consortium et al., 2015) offer pioneering data on regulatory elements in several species. Currently, however, regulatory element annotation data remain limited for most organisms. In this study, we developed a tool (OrthReg) for annotating conserved orthologous cis-regulatory elements in targeted genomes using an annotated reference genome. Cross-species validation of this annotation tool using human and mouse ENCODE data confirmed the robustness of this strategy. To explore the efficiency of the tool, we annotated the pig genome and identified more than 28 million regulatory annotation records using the reference human ENCODE data. With this regulatory annotation, some putative regulatory non-coding variants were identified within domestication sweeps in European and East Asian pigs. Thus, this tool can utilize data produced by ENCODE, FAANG, and similar projects, and can be easily extended to customized experimental data. The extensive application of this tool will help to identify informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in post-genome-wide association studies and resequencing analysis of organisms with limited regulatory annotation data.

Although extremity chronic osteomyelitis is common in China, updated data were still limited regarding its characterizations. The present study aimed to review clinical features of extremity chronic osteomyelitis in Southern China. A retrospective analysis was conducted in the patients who had sought medical attention from January 2010 to April 2015 for extremity chronic osteomyelitis in Nanfang Hospital in Southern China. Clinical data were collected and analyzed. A total of 394 patients (307 males and 87 females) were included, giving a gender ratio of 3.53. The median age at first diagnosis was 42 years for all. The most frequent type was traumatic osteomyelitis (262 cases, 66.50%), which was mainly caused by open injury (166 cases, 63.36%) and during a road accident (91 cases, 34.73%). Single-site infection accounted for 81.98% (323 cases), with tibia (126 cases), femur (79 cases), calcaneus (37 cases), and toes (37 cases) as the top sites. The positive rate of intraoperative culture was 70.63% (214/303), 78.97% (169/214) of which was monomicrobial infection. Staphylococcus aureus (59 cases) was the most frequent bacteria for monomicrobial infection, followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (29 cases) and Escherichia coli (11 cases). The positive ratios of preoperative serum white blood cell (WBC), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) were 21.63%, 64.92%, 53.27%, 42.25%, 72.82%, and 66.67%, respectively. The most frequently used intravenous antibiotic was cephalosporins. The overall cure rate was 77.74%, with a total amputation rate of 16.75%. In this representative Chinese cohort, extremity chronic osteomyelitis was mostly caused by open injury and during a road accident, predominated in males and favored the tibia. S. aureus was the most frequent pathogenic organism. Preoperative elevated levels of serum IL-6, TNF-α, and ESR may be helpful diagnostic indicators of the disease. Most patients achieved a favorable clinical efficacy after appropriate treatment.

Grid structure is a light and efficient structure. The composites have many excellent performances, such as that it can be designed excellently. This study mainly studies the grid structures with foam quadrilateral core-type. In this paper, the mechanical performance and the energy absorption properties were studied for the nine different kinds of core-type configurations, which undering quasi-static compressive test and impact test. And the optimize design of the structures could be obtained through comparing the mechanical properties and the energy absorption ability of the structures.

Gliding discharges driven by microsecond-pulse power supply can generate non-thermal plasmas with high energy and high power density at atmospheric pressure. However, the flowing air significantly influences the characteristics of the microsecond-pulse gliding discharges in a repetitive mode. In this paper, in order to obtain the characteristics of the microsecond-pulse gliding discharges in a needle-to-needle gap, a microsecond-pulse power supply with an output voltage up to 30 kV, a pulse width 8 s, and a pulse repetition frequencies 1 Hz 3000 Hz is used to investigate the electrical characteristics of gliding discharges by analyzing the voltage-current waveforms and obtaining the discharge images. Experimental results show that there are three typical discharge modes in the microsecond-pulse gliding discharges as the applied voltage increases, i.e. corona discharge, diffuse discharge, and gliding-like discharge. Both voltage-current waveforms and the discharge images at different discharge modes have significantly different behaviors. Corona discharge only exists near the positive electrode with a small radius of curvature. Diffuse discharges behave as the overlapped plasma channels bridge the entire gap. The channel of diffuse discharge is full of gap, which starts from the positive electrode, spreads in all directions, and ends at the negative electrode. Gliding-like discharge behaves as a continuous spark channeling, showing a continuous spark, which is discharging strongly and influenced by flow rates. Furthermore, both pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and flow rate remarkably affects the characteristics of microsecond-pulse gliding discharges. When the flow rate is small (2 L/min), the spark channels of gliding-like discharge gradually concentrate with the increase of the PRF. However, when the flow rate is larger (16 L/min), the spark channels of gliding-like discharge behave dispersively when the PRF increases. In our opinion, different characteristics of microsecond-pulse gliding discharge at different flow rates are closely related to the memory effect of the residual particles in the discharges and the state of the air flow. When the flow rate is small (2 L/min), the air flow is stable, and the discharge is generated in a laminar flow state. In this case, the memory effect of particles in repetitive microsecond-pulse gliding discharges dominates the formation of the discharges. These particles could enhance the electric field strength for the next pulse. Because the time interval between two pulses at high PRF is shorter than that at low PRF, there are fewer particles leaving the air gap at high PRF. Thus, memory effect is more significant at high PRF. As a result, the channel of spark discharge concentrates with the increase of the PRF. When the flow rate increases to 16 L/min, the calculated Reynolds number increases to 2864, indicating the transition from laminar state to turbulence state. The residual particles are more likely to escape from the gap. Thus, memory effect slightly affects the characteristics of the microsecond-pulse gliding discharges. In this case, the state of the air flow dominates the formation of the discharge. The spark channels spread towards the top in the direction of the gas flow, making the region of the spark channels gradually disperse as the PRF increases.