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Porous cages with lower global stiffness induce more bone ingrowth and enhance bone-implant anchorage. However, it's dangerous for spinal fusion cages, which usually act as stabilizers, to sacrifice global stiffness for bone ingrowth. Intentional design on internal mechanical environment might be a promising approach to promote osseointegration without undermining global stiffness excessively. In this study, three porous cages with different architectures were designed to provide distinct internal mechanical environments for bone remodeling during spinal fusion process. A design space optimization-topology optimization based algorithm was utilized to numerically reproduce the mechano-driven bone ingrowth process under three daily load cases, and the fusion outcomes were analyzed in terms of bone morphological parameters and bone-cage stability. Simulation results show that the uniform cage with higher compliance induces deeper bone ingrowth than the optimized graded cage. Whereas, the optimized graded cage with the lowest compliance exhibits the lowest stress at the bone-cage interface and better mechanical stability. Combining the advantages of both, the strain-enhanced cage with locally weakened struts offers extra mechanical stimulus while keeping relatively low compliance, leading to more bone formation and the best mechanical stability. Thus, the internal mechanical environment can be well-designed via tailoring architectures to promote bone ingrowth and achieve a long-term bone-scaffold stability.

Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) offers byte-addressability and persistency Because NVM can be plugged into memory and provide low latency, it offers a new opportunity to build new database systems with a single-layer storage design. A single-layer NVM-Native DataBase (N2DB) provides zero copy and log freedom. Hence, all data are stored in NVM and there is no extra data duplication and logging during execution. N2DB avoids complex data synchronization and logging overhead in the two-layer storage design of disk-oriented databases and in-memory databases. Garbage Collection (GC) is critical in such an NVM-based database because memory leaks on NVM are durable. Moreover, data recovery is equally essential to guarantee atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability properties. Without logging, it is a great challenge for N2DB to restore data to a consistent state after crashes and recoveries. This paper presents the GC and data recovery mechanisms for N2DB. Evaluations show that the overall performance of N2DB is up to 3.6× higher than that of InnoDB. Enabling GC reduces performance by up to 10%, but saves storage space by up to 67%. Moreover, our data recovery requires only 0.2% of the time and half of the storage space of InnoDB.

Background Internal hospital infection is one of the major public health concerns worldwide. To investigate the etiological characteristics and risk factors of infections after colorectal cancer(CRC) surgery and the formulation of targeted infection control strategies. Methods This is a retrospective analysis of 1500 patients from colorectal cancer patients from General Surgery between March 2018 and March 2022，Anyang Tumor Hospital. Based on pathogen distribution and results of drug sensitivity testing, pattern of pathogens and drug resistance in infection in hospitalized patients with with colonic malignancy were analyzed. We conducted univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses to determine the risk factors of infections that are associated with postoperative colorectal cancer. Results Infection cases were noted in 5.20% of all 1500 cases (78 of 1500 CRC patients). Drug resistance pattern showed that 88.89% of the implicated coagulase-negative staphylococci species and 40% of the implicated Acinetobacter species were meropenem-resistant. Considering all infection sites, age >60 years (OR=2.190, P=0.002), diabetes mellitus (OR=2.044, P=0.005), operation time >3h (OR=2.178, P=0.002) ), hospitalization time >10d (OR=1.793, P=0.017), parenteral nutrition (OR=2.797, P=0.000), indwelling catheter (OR=1.699, P=0.038), mechanical ventilation (OR=2.294, P=0.001) and the usage of drainage tube (OR=3.455, P=0.000) were risk factors at multivariate analysis. Conclusions: Post-operative infections may negatively affect surgical outcomes. Based on the greatest available evidence,important preoperative risk factors for postoperative colorectal cancer infections have been identified. Knowledge on risk factors may influence treatment and procedure-related decisions, and possibly reduce the postoperative infection rate.

To improve the accuracy of detection of arrhythmia in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and to enable the scientific management and assessment of AF, a comprehensive management tool for AF is proposed, which is helpful for medical staff to systematically evaluate and manage patients with AF.A professional view of atrial fibrillation (AF View) was designed to unify the statistical information of AF event, and display the statistical distribution data of AF events and trend data of other physiological parameters or characteristics such as heart rate, blood pressure and ST value during the patient monitoring period in a centralized manner. A multi-dimensional summary information was obtained from AF View. In addition, the monitoring period and monitoring parameters or characteristics in the AF View can be adjusted so as to obtain the summary information under different periods and parameters or characteristics, and get the condition of AF of the patient.Accurate detection and comprehensive management of AF were achieved.The application of AF comprehensive management proposed in this study is helpful for medical staff to know the condition of AF patients in real time and adjust the treatment plan in time.

Dysfunction of Tumour Suppressor Genes (TSGs) is a common feature in carcinogenesis. Epigenetic abnormalities including DNA hypermethylation or aberrant histone modifications in promoter regions have been described for interpreting TSG inactivation. However, in many instances, how TSGs are silenced in tumours are largely unknown. Given that miRNA with low expression in tumours is another recognized signature, we hypothesize that low expression of miRNA may reduce the activity of TSG related enhancers and further lead to inactivation of TSG during cancer development. Here, we reported that low expression of miRNA in cancer as a recognized signature leads to loss of function of TSGs in breast cancer. In 157 paired breast cancer and adjacent normal samples, tumour suppressor gene GPER1 and miR-339 are both downregulated in Luminal A/B and Triple Negative Breast Cancer subtypes. Mechanistic investigations revealed that miR-339 upregulates GPER1 expression in breast cancer cells by switching on the GPER1 enhancer, which can be blocked by enhancer deletion through the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Collectively, our findings reveal novel mechanistic insights into TSG dysfunction in cancer development, and provide evidence that reactivation of TSG by enhancer switching may be a promising alternative strategy for clinical breast cancer treatment.

Discrimination of cancer cells/tissues from normal ones is of critical importance for early diagnosis and treatment of cancers. Herein, we present a new strategy for high-contrast fluorescence diagnosis of cancer cells/tissues based on β-Lapachone (β-Lap, an anticancer agent) triggered ROS (reactive oxygen species) amplification specific in cancer cells/tissues. With the strategy, a wide range of cancer cells/tissues, including surgical tissue specimens harvested from patients, were distinguished from normal ones by using a combination of β-Lap and a Si-rhodamine-based NIR fluorescent ROS probe PSiR3 developed in this work with average tumor-to-normal (T/N) ratios up to 15 in cell level and 24 in tissue level, far exceeding the clinically acceptable threshold of 2.0. What's more, the strategy allowed the fluorescence discrimination of tumor tissues from inflammatory ones based on whether a marked fluorescence enhancement could be induced when treated with PSiR3 and β-Lap/PSiR3 combination, respectively.

Leaf senescence reduces the photosynthetic capacity of leaves, thus significantly affecting the growth, development, and yield formation of cotton. Melatonin (MT) is a multipotent substance proven to delay leaf senescence. However, its potential mechanism in delaying leaf senescence induced by abiotic stress remains unclear. This study aimed to explore the effect of MT on delaying drought-induced leaf senescence in cotton seedlings and to clarify its morphological and physiological mechanisms. Drought stress upregulated the leaf senescence marker genes, destroyed the photosystem, and led to excessive accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS, e.g., H2O2 and O2−), thus accelerating leaf senescence. However, leaf senescence was significantly delayed when 100 μM MT was sprayed on the leaves of the cotton seedlings. The delay was embodied by the increased chlorophyll content, photosynthetic capacity, and antioxidant enzyme activities, as well as decreased H2O2, O2−, and abscisic acid (ABA) contents by 34.44%, 37.68%, and 29.32%, respectively. MT significantly down-regulated chlorophyll degradation-related genes and senescence marker genes (GhNAC12 and GhWRKY27/71). In addition, MT reduced the chloroplast damage caused by drought-induced leaf senescence and maintained the integrity of the chloroplast lamellae structure under drought stress. The findings of this study collectively suggest that MT can effectively enhance the antioxidant enzyme system, improve photosynthetic efficiency, reduce chlorophyll degradation and ROS accumulation, and inhibit ABA synthesis, thereby delaying drought-induced leaf senescence in cotton.

SummaryDiffusion MRI is a complex technique, where new discoveries and implementations occur at a fast pace. The expertise needed for data analyses and accurate and reproducible results is increasingly demanding and requires multidisciplinary collaborations. In the present work we introduce Reproducible Tract Profiles (RTP2): a set of flexible and automated methods to analyze anatomical MRI and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) data for reproducible tractography. The tools read structural MRI data and process them through a succession of serialized containerized analyses. We describe the DWI algorithms used to identify white-matter tracts and their summary metrics, the flexible architecture of the platform, and the tools to programmatically access and control the computations. The combination of these three components provides an easy-to-use automatized tool developed and tested over 20 years, to obtain usable and reliable state-of-the-art diffusion metrics at the individual and group levels for basic research and clinical practice.HighlightsAutomated, flexible and reproducible protocol for white-matter tractography and tractometry.High computational (same data, different computations) and test-retest reproducibility (data from different sessions, different computations).Open-source code and publicly available containers.

Physiological parameter monitoring is essential to medical staff to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Monitoring in NICU includes basic vital signal monitoring and functional monitoring. Basic vital signal monitoring (including ECG, respiration, SpO2, blood pressure, temperature) is advanced and focus on study of usability, continuity and anti-interference. Functional monitoring (including respiratory function, circulatory function, cerebral function) still focus on study of monitoring precision and reliability. Meanwhile, video monitoring and artifact intelligence have presented well performance on improving monitoring precision and anti-interference. In this article, the main parameters and relevant measurement technology for monitoring critical neonates were described.

Physiological parameters monitoring is essential to direct medical staff to evaluate, diagnose and treat critical patients quantitatively. ECG, blood pressure, SpO2, respiratory rate and body temperature are the basic vital signs of patients in the ICU. The measuring methods are relatively mature at present, and the trend is to be wireless and more accurate and comfortable. Hemodynamics, oxygen metabolism and microcirculation should be taken seriously during the treatment of acute critical patients. The related monitoring technology has made significant progress in recent years, the trend is to reduce the trauma and improve the accuracy and usability. With the development of machine vision and data fusion technology, the identification of patient behavior and deterioration has become hot topics. This review is focused on current parameters monitoring technologies, aims to provide reference for future related research.

SummaryBackgroundWe previously found that human identical sequences (HIS) of SARS-CoV-2 promote the clinical progression of COVID-19 by upregulating hyaluronan (HA). As one of the drugs for hyaluronan inhibition, hymecromone was chosen for evaluating its therapeutic effects on COVID-19.MethodsELISA was performed to detect the level of HA in COVID-19 patients. We first analyzed the correlation between the level of plasma HA and clinical parameters (lymphocytes, C-reactive protein, D-dimer, and fibrinogen). We then assessed the correlation between the plasma HA level and pulmonary lesions, which were quantified by using artificial intelligence based on chest CT scans, including ground-glass opacity (GGO) and consolidation. Furthermore, we assessed the effect of hyaluronan treatment on the formation of pulmonary lesions in mice and evaluated the role of hymecromone on hyaluronan production in cultured cells. Finally, 94 of the 144 confirmed COVID-19 patients received oral hymecromone in addition to standard care, whereas the others with only standard care were treated as control. Abnormal serological markers in two groups were selected to determine the efficacy of hymecromone.FindingsPlasma HA was closely relevant to clinical parameters, including lymphocytes (n = 158;r= -0.50;P< 0.0001), CRP (n = 156;r= 0.55;P< 0.0001), D-dimer (n = 154;r= 0.38;P< 0.0001), and fibrinogen (n = 152;r= 0.37;P< 0.0001), as well as the mass (n = 120;r= 0.30;P= 0.0008) and volume (n = 120;r= 0.30;P= 0.0009) of GGO, the mass (n = 120;r= 0.34;P= 0.0002) and volume (n = 120;r= 0.35;P< 0.0001) of consolidation. Mice experiment further verified that hyaluronan could cause pulmonary lesions directly. Hymecromone remarkably reduced HA via downregulatingHAS2/HAS3expression. Accordingly, the number of lymphocytes recovered more quickly as the fold change of lymphocytes per day was higher in hymecromone-treated patients (n = 8) than the control group (n = 5) (P< 0.01). Moreover, 89% patients with hymecromone treatment had pulmonary lesion absorption while only 42% patients in control group had pulmonary lesion absorption (P< 0.0001).InterpretationHyaluronan is closely correlated with COVID-19 progression and can serve as a plasma biomarker. As a promising treatment for COVID-19, hymecromone deserves our further efforts to determine its effect in a larger cohort of COVID-19 patients.FundingNational Key R&D Program of China, Major Special Projects of Basic Research of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, and Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan, Medical Innovation Research Special Project, Research of early identification and warning of acute respiratory infectious diseases.Research in contextEvidence before this studyOur previous study revealed that human identical sequences (HIS) of SARS-CoV-2 promotes hyaluronan production in COVID-19 patients. We searched PubMed for studies associated with hyaluronan and COVID-19 using the search terms (“hyaluronan” OR “hyaluronic acid” OR “hymecromone”) AND (“COVID-19” OR “SARS-CoV-2”) without any language restrictions from inception up to May 27, 2021. The studies showed that hyaluronan was present in lung alveoli of severe COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced hyaluronan. Meanwhile, one report showed that hyaluronan was related to the severity of COVID-19 based on the research of 32 COVID-19 cases. As the inhibitor of hyaluronan synthesis, hymecromone is already an approved drug for patients with biliary spasms in Europe and Asia. However, it is unclear whether hymecromone is an effective therapeutic drug for COVID-19.Added value of this studyWe found significant correlations between hyaluronan and clinical parameters (lymphocytes, C-reaction protein, D-dimer, fibrinogen, and pulmonary lesions) in COVID-19 patients. Hyaluronan is the essential material for the induction of ground-glass opacity formation in the lung of COVID-19 patients. The lymphopenia of COVID-19 may be due to T cell exhaustion caused by hyaluronan. Notably, we demonstrated that hymecromone could accelerate the recovery of lymphopenia and pulmonary lesion absorption of COVID-19 in clinical sets.Implications of all the available evidenceOur finding shows that hymecromone could significantly improve the clinical manifestations, especially in severe COVID-19 patients. Reducing hyaluronan using specific drugs could be a promising and alternative therapeutic strategy for COVID-19, especially for the treatment of patients with lymphopenia and pulmonary lesion.x

The patient monitors were used to explore the alarm actuality in a ICU and NICU to investigate the awareness and reaction of medical staff to alarms.A series of surveys and interviews were taken to acquire clinicians' feelings and attitudes to monitoring alarms. The researchers were scheduled to track the alarms with annotations, and collect the alarm data of patient monitors using central monitoring system.A total of 235 387 and 67 783 alarms occurred in ICU and NICU respectively. The average alarm rate was about 142 alarms/patient-day in ICU and 96 alarms/patient-day in NICU.There remains alarm fatigue in ICU and NICU, the main reason is the large number of false alarms and clinically irrelevant alarms. In addition, patient monitor is still in the level of threshold alarms or combined alarms, the data integrity and intelligence level need to be improved in future.

The patient monitors were used to explore the alarm fatigue in a cardiac care unit and to investigate the awareness and reaction of nurse to alarms.A semi-structured survey was taken to acquire nurses' feeling and knowledge about monitoring alarm. Three full-time researchers were scheduled to track the alarms with annotations, and analyze the alarm data of 12 patient monitors using central monitoring system.A total of 72 310 unique alarms occurred in the 67-day study period. About 75.7% of them were physiological alarms and less than 10% of medium-low alarms were false positives. The average alarm rate was 128 alarms/patient-day.There remains alarm fatigue in CCU, the alarm accuracy has improved than the past by applying new technologies. In some cases, clinicians will pay more attention to trend alarm and combination alarm.

Using a highly specific “lock and key” fluorescent Cys probe, we confirmed that targeting Cys metabolism to deplete intracellular Cys is a more potent strategy to sensitize cancer cells to chemotherapies., To probe the regulatory roles of cysteine (Cys) in cancer cell survival, a highly selective and sensitive fluorescent Cys probe SiR was developed by employing a novel “lock and key” strategy, which allows Cys to be detected without any interference or probe consumption caused by the intracellular high concentration of glutathione (GSH). Using SiR, we confirmed that inhibiting cystine (Cys2) transporter system xc– to deplete intracellular Cys is more efficient than inhibiting glutamate–cysteine ligase GCL to deplete intracellular GSH for sensitizing cancer cells to chemotherapy. Moreover, with the probe, a possible self-protection mechanism of cancer cells was indicated: when extracellular Cys sources are blocked, cancer cells could still survive by multidrug resistance protein transporter (Mrp1)-mediated export of intracellular GSH/GSSG as sources to supply intracellular Cys for resisting detrimental oxidative stress. Based on this finding, we further confirmed that abrogating the self-protection mechanism is an even more efficient strategy for sensitizing cancer cells to chemotherapy.

Background: Understanding the drought tolerance of white clover seeds during germination and early seedling growth and how that is linked to seed maturation in legume species, is crucial to developing new stand establishments.Methods: An experiment was conducted in Randomized Block design in two factorial concept to explore how seed maturation and drought tolerance influence seed germination and early seedling growth using the two factors: seed coat color (yellow and brown, two levels as one factor) and drought intensity (control: 0 MPa [distilled water], mild drought: -0.2 MPa, moderate drought: -0.4 MPa and severe drought: -0.6 MPa, four levels as another factor).Result: In contrast to the yellow-coated seeds, the mean germination percentage, germination index, seedling vigour index and radicle length of the brown-coated seeds were lowered by 7.9%, 23.1%, 20.5% and 12.9%, respectively. Compared to the control, introducing drought conditions reduced the mean of germination percentage, germination index, seedling vigour index and radicle length of yellow-coated seeds by 52.4%, 64.1%, 41.9% and 23.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, drought affected brown-coated seeds more than yellow-coated seeds. The results indicating that the seed quality of white clover seed lots with yellow-colored coats higher than the seed lots with brown-coloured coats. In agronomic practice, a larger proportion of yellow-coated seeds should be harvested to improve new stands successful establishment under environment easy to dry.

In order to ameliorate alarm fatigue, three optimization strategies are proposed to reduce false alarms and repetitive non-actionable true alarms. The four-lead arrhythmia analysis, multi-parameter fusion and intelligent threshold reminder are adopted and evaluated in multi-center clinic study. The four-lead arrhythmia analysis algorithm includes lead optimization, beat matching, detection and classification combinations. The multi-parameter fusion algorithm aggregates the information obtained from ECG, SpO 2 and IBP wave signals. The intelligent threshold reminder can help medical staff to adjust and recover alarm limits appropriately. The results show that more than 50% of false alarms can be reduced by the four-lead analysis and the multi-parameter fusion analysis. In some specific occasions, the intelligent threshold reminder can reduce repetitive non-actionable true alarms significantly. And no further false-negative events are generated after using the strategies in our experiments. We demonstrate that increasing the dimensionality of parametric analysis and controlling the alarm limits is beneficial for reducing alarm fatigue in intensive care units.

Boron-dipyrromethenes (Bodipys), since first reported in 1968, have emerged as a fascinating class of dyes in the past few decades due to their excellent photophysical properties including bright fluorescence, narrow emission bandwidth, resistance to photobleaching, and environment insensitivity. However, typical Bodipys are highly lipophilic, which often results in nonfluorescent aggregates in aqueous solution and also severely limits their bioavailability to cells and tissues. In this work, based on a simple one-atom B → C replacement in the Bodipy scaffold, we present a new class of carbon-dipyrromethenes (Cardipys for short) fluorescent dyes with tunable emission wavelengths covering the visible and near-infrared regions. These Cardipys not only retain the excellent photophysical properties of conventional Bodipys but also show improved water solubility and photostability due to their cationic character. Moreover, the cationic character also makes them extremely easy to penetrate the cell membrane and specifically accumulate into mitochondria without resorting to any mitochondria-targeted groups. Interestingly, several Cardipys bearing active styryl groups could serve as fluorescent indicators to map cellular trafficking of the glutathione conjugates produced within mitochondria under the catalysis of glutathione S-transferase (GST), thus showing potential in either exploring the detoxification mechanism of the mitochondrial GST/GSH system or evaluating the drug resistance of cancer cells that is closely related with GST activity.

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) offers non-volatility, byte-addressability, and fast access at the same time. It is suggested that programs should access NVM directly through CPU load and store instructions. To guarantee crash consistency, durable transactions are regarded as a common choice of applications for accessing persistent memory data. However, existing durable transaction systems employ either undo logging , which requires a fence for every memory write, or redo logging , which requires intercepting all memory reads within transactions. Both approaches incur significant overhead. This article presents D ude T x , a crash-consistent durable transaction system that avoids the drawbacks of both undo and redo logging. D ude T x uses shadow DRAM to decouple the execution of a durable transaction into three fully asynchronous steps. The advantage is that only minimal fences and no memory read instrumentation are required. This design enables an out-of-the-box concurrency control mechanism, transactional memory or fine-grained locks, to be used as an independent component. The evaluation results show that D ude T x adds durability to a software transactional memory system with only 7.4%--24.6% throughput degradation. Compared to typical existing durable transaction systems, D ude T x provides 1.7× --4.4× higher throughput. Moreover, D ude T x can be implemented with hardware transactional memory or lock-based concurrency control, leading to a further 1.7× and 3.3× speedup, respectively.

Latest exploration practices revealed appreciable petroleum resources in the deep pre-Cenozoic reservoirs in the southwest area of the Bozhong depression; however, the origins and accumulation mechanisms of deep hydrocarbons remain not fully understood. Here, an integrated study of the geochemical characteristics of overlying source rocks, maturity evaluation of petroleum, and origin of natural gas was conducted to characterize the dynamic petroleum accumulation and illustrate the main factors influencing the differential phases of petroleum distribution in the research area. The third member of the Dongying Formation (Ed3) mudstone in the research area displays high organic richness and is characterized by oil-prone organic matter, indicating high petroleum potential. The oils contained in the CFD18 and BZ13 buried-hill traps were mainly derived from the Ed3 and Shahejie Formation (Es) source rocks, respectively, with natural gas of kerogen cracking origin. Buried-hill oil from the BZ13 field displays a high thermal maturity than that of the CFD18 oils, which was evidenced by maturity parameters of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons and concentrations of stigmastane. Nevertheless, maturity index of diamondoids and carbon isotopic composition of natural gas indicate the possible presence of mixing of higher mature Es fluids for the CFD18 field. This research underlines the contribution of the overlapped effective source rocks to the buried-hill traps. The causes of multiple petroleum phases in the deep reservoirs in the research area are mainly linked to dynamic petroleum accumulation rather than source rock type and oil secondary cracking. Although faults are present to act as vertical migration conduits due to late-stage activation with high intensity, abundant petroleum supply due to near-source charge and favorable constitution relationship of source rock and reservoir rock provide crucial conditions for deep petroleum accumulation in a tectonic activation zone.

Efforts to maximize seed or forage yield with nitrogen (N) fertilizer are common in cropping systems. However, only limited attention has been paid to investigate N fertilizer application in different seasons, especially for perennial grasses, whose seed production requires two or more growing seasons. We conducted a two-year field experiment to evaluate the impacts of N application timing (fall in previous year and spring in current year) and N application rate (0, 28 and 56 kg N ha −1 yr −1 ) on seed yield, forage production and N use efficiency for a semi-arid, perennial grass ( Leymus chinensis ). As compared to the spring N application, we found that fall N application at the inflorescence stage in the previous year significantly increased seed yield, forage yield, seed agronomic N use efficiency (s-aNUE), forage agronomic N use efficiency (f-aNUE), seed physiological N use efficiency (s-PE) and forage physiological N use efficiency (f-PE). Seed yield and forage yield were both higher with high N-rate treatment as compared to low N-rate in both years. Nitrogen rate effects on N use efficiency indices varied with year and N-timing. We conclude that N application in the fall of the previous year matches N demand for increases in seed yield and forage yield and this is an optimum choice to achieve greater seed yield and forage yield with high N use efficiency. Our research implies that N application in the fall increases inflorescence number and fall tillers by stimulating inflorescence and/or fall tillers numbers. Future research should focus on determining for each physiological stage that control the seed and/or forage yield components, the limiting resource. Then targeting the limiting resource at each physiological stage can increase yield, and, for perennial crops, the key stages regulating seed and/or forage yield components can be in different years, as we found for Leymus chinensis .

Neuroimaging studies have proposed specific brain regions for reading Chinese characters. For example, compared to alphabetic languages, Chinese reading has revealed more activation of the left Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) and null or deactivation at left posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus (pSTG). However, the model of specific regions for Chinese was contested by recent findings showing similar activities across languages under the same task demand. Thus, whether the engagement of the Chinese-specific regions was due to stimulus selectivity or to task demand was called into question. The current meta-analysis, using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE), summarized brain regions in previous fMRI studies from two types of contrast, stimulus contrasts (SC), in which more regions were activated for Chinese characters than for other visual stimuli (e.g., Korean words, faces) or for other types of characters (e.g., real > artificial characters), and task contrasts (TC), in which more regions were activated for one task than for another (e.g., lexical decision > symbol detection) in processing Chinese characters. ALE activation maps revealed a shared network for the two types of contrast, including the right Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG, BA47) and four clusters in the left hemisphere, the IFG (BA45/46), Superior Parietal Lobule, Superior Frontal Gyrus, and posterior Middle Temporal Gyrus (pMTG). The SC > TC comparison demonstrated the greater involvement of the left Angular Gyrus and left Fusiform Gyrus. The TC > SC comparison, in contrast, revealed the engagement of left-hemisphere regions in the IFG, MFG, pSTG, pMTG, and Medial Frontal Gyrus. These results suggest that the previously identified Chinese-specific areas (e.g., MFG, pSTG) might be task dependent rather than stimulus selective. This work shed light on the language-general neural network of visual word reading.

Sleep posture recognition is the core index of diagnosis and treatment of positional sleep apnea syndrome. In order to detect body postures noninvasively, we developed a portable approach for sleep posture recognition using BCG signals with their morphological difference. A type of piezo-electric polymer film sensor was applied to the mattress to acquire BCG, the discrete wavelet transform with cubic B-spline was used to extract characteristic parameters and a naive Bayes learning phase was adapted to predict body postures. Eleven healthy subjects participated in the sleep simulation experiments. The results indicate that the mean error obtained from heart rates was 0.04±1.3 beats/min (±1.96 SD). The final recognition accuracy of four basic sleep postures exceeded 97%, and the average value was 97.9%. This measuring system is comfortable and accurate, which can be streamlined for daily sleep monitoring application.

Emerging on-volatile memory (NVM) opens an opportunity to build durable data structures. However, to build a highly efficient complex data structure like B+tree on NVM is not easy. We investigate the essential performance bottleneck for NVM-based B+tree. Even with a single-core CPU, the performance is limited by the atomic-write size which plays an essential role in the trade-off between the persistent overhead and keeping leaf node entries sorted. For the multi-core setting, the overlapping of concurrency and persistency is key to the system scalability. Based on the analysis, we propose RNTree, a durable NVM-based B+tree using the hardware transactional memory (HTM). Our way of using HTM can actually address both problems mentioned above simultaneously. (1) HTM can use cache-line granularity to provide larger atomic-write size. Based on this, we propose a new slot-array approach which traces the order of entries in the leaf nodes while still reducing the number of persistent instructions. (2) With careful design, RNTree moves slow persistent instructions out of critical sections and proposes the dual slot array design, to extract more concurrency. For single thread, RNTree achieves 1.44×/4.2× higher throughput for single-key operations and range queries respectively. For multiple threads, the throughput of RNTree is 2.3× higher than state-of-the-art works.