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Abstract Background HBP, a novel biomarker released from neutrophils, may induce inflammatory responses and exacerbate vascular permeability, representing the pathophysiological characteristics of sepsis and septic shock. However, it remains uncertain whether the combination of HBP with other biomarkers yields enhanced diagnostic capacity for sepsis. We hypothesized that measurements included IL-6·IL-8·HBP, IL-6·IL-8·HBP/ALB and HBP/ALB which based on HBP will improve its diagnostic efficacy and even better than the traditional infection biomarkers. Methods Between July 2021 and June 2022, we carried out a comprehensive, multi-center, observational cohort study spanning six leading tertiary hospitals located in Heilongjiang Province, China. Patients were stratified into three categories based on the severity of infection: non-sepsis, sepsis, and septic shock. We collected clinical and laboratory data, along with infection and inflammation biomarkers, for analysis. Results A total of 195 patients were enrolled. Among the three groups, patients with septic shock (n = 75, 38.5%) had significantly higher baseline levels of HBP, WBC, Lac, CRP, PCT, IL-6, IL-8, and IL-10 compared to non-sepsis patients (n = 43, 22.0%) and sepsis patients (n = 77, 39.5%), with statistically significant differences (p

Abstract An adaptively hybrid method was proposed to improve the performance of fractal coding methods. First, it is found that the range blocks with large variances (RBLVs) play a crucial role in degrading decoded images, and the effect of the remaining range blocks with small variances (RBSVs) can be ignored. Then, an adaptive method was proposed to divide the range blocks into the above two categories: RBLVs and RBSVs. Second, RBLVs were designed to be encoded in an extended domain block pool (EDBP). Then, better block‐matching effect can be obtained, which will result in better decoded image quality. Further, the no‐search fractal encoding method is adopted for RBSVs to achieve faster encoding speed and fewer bits per pixel (bpp). Finally, four fractal coding methods were adopted to assess the performance of the proposed method. Experimental results show that compared with the previous methods, the PSNR quality of decoded images in the proposed method can be improved by about 0.15–0.4 dB, about 20%–35% of the total computations in encoding process can be saved, and about 0.2 bpp can be saved. Moreover, under the same decoding time, the proposed method can achieve comparable or smaller deviations regarding the decoded image.

Abstract In recent decades, hypoxic areas have rapidly expanded worldwide in estuaries and coastal zones. The Pearl River Estuary (PRE), one of China's largest estuaries, experiences frequent seasonal hypoxia due to intense human activities and eutrophication. However, the ecological effects of hypoxia in the PRE, particularly on fish communities, remain unclear. To explore these effects, we collected fish community and environmental data in July 2021 during the summer hypoxia development period. The results revealed that bottom‐layer dissolved oxygen (DO) in the PRE ranged from 0.08 to 5.71 mg/L, with extensive hypoxic zones (DO ≤ 2 mg/L) observed. Hypoxia has varied effects on fish community composition, distribution, species, and functional diversity in the PRE. A total of 104 fish species were collected in this study, with approximately 30 species (28.6%) exclusively found in hypoxic areas. Species responses to hypoxia varied: species such as Sardinella zunasi, Coilia mystus, and Nuchequula nuchalis were sensitive, while Decapterus maruadsi, Siganus fuscescens, and Lagocephalus spadiceus showed higher tolerance. Within the hypoxia area, dissolved oxygen was the main limiting factor for fish community diversity. Functional diversity (FDiv) decreased with higher dissolved oxygen levels, indicating a potential shift in the functional traits and ecological roles of fish species in response to changing oxygen conditions. Further analysis demonstrated that dissolved oxygen had a significantly stronger effect on fish community structure at hypoxic sites than in the whole PRE. Moreover, other environmental variables also had significant effects on the fish community structure and interacted with dissolved oxygen in the hypoxia area. These findings suggest that maintaining sufficient dissolved oxygen levels is essential for sustaining fish communities and ecosystem health in the PRE. This study provides novel insights into the effects of hypoxia on fish communities in estuarine ecosystems and has significant implications for the ecological health and management of the PRE.

The ability of a novel biorealistic hand prosthesis for grasp force control reveals improved neural compatibility between the human-prosthetic interaction. The primary purpose here was to validate a virtual training platform for amputee subjects and evaluate the respective roles of visual and tactile information in fundamental force control tasks. We developed a digital twin of tendon-driven prosthetic hand in the MuJoCo environment. Biorealistic controllers emulated a pair of antagonistic muscles controlling the index finger of the virtual hand by surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals from amputees’ residual forearm muscles. Grasp force information was transmitted to amputees through evoked tactile sensation (ETS) feedback. Six forearm amputees participated in force tracking and holding tasks under different feedback conditions or using their intact hands. Test results showed that visual feedback played a predominant role than ETS feedback in force tracking and holding tasks. However, in the absence of visual feedback during the force holding task, ETS feedback significantly enhanced motor performance compared to feedforward control alone. Thus, ETS feedback still supplied reliable sensory information to facilitate amputee’s ability of stable grasp force control. The effects of tactile and visual feedback on force control were subject-specific when both types of feedback were provided simultaneously. Amputees were able to integrate visual and tactile information to the biorealistic controllers and achieve a good sensorimotor performance in grasp force regulation. The virtual platform may provide a training paradigm for amputees to adapt the biorealistic hand controller and ETS feedback optimally.

Abstract Background Developing biomarkers for early stage AD patients is crucial. Glucose metabolism measured by 18F-FDG PET is the most common biomarker for evaluating cellular energy metabolism to diagnose AD. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI can potentially provide comparable diagnostic information to 18F-FDG PET in patients with neurodegenerative disorders. However, the conclusions about the diagnostic performance of AD are still controversial between 18F-FDG PET and ASL. This study aims to compare quantitative cerebral blood flow (CBF) and glucose metabolism measured by 18F-FDG PET diagnostic values in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) using integrated PET/MR. Results Analyses revealed overlapping between decreased regional rCBF and 18F-FDG PET SUVR in patients with AD compared with NC participants in the bilateral parietotemporal regions, frontal cortex, and cingulate cortex. Compared with NC participants, patients with aMCI exclusively demonstrated lower 18F-FDG PET SUVR in the bilateral temporal cortex, insula cortex, and inferior frontal cortex. Comparison of the rCBF in patients with aMCI and NC participants revealed no significant difference (P > 0.05). The ROC analysis of rCBF in the meta-ROI could diagnose patients with AD (AUC, 0.87) but not aMCI (AUC, 0.61). The specificity of diagnosing aMCI has been improved to 75.56% when combining rCBF and 18F-FDG PET SUVR. Conclusion ASL could detect similar aberrant patterns of abnormalities compared to 18F-FDG PET in patients with AD compared with NC participants but not in aMCI. The diagnostic efficiency of 18F-FDG-PET for AD and aMCI patients remained higher to ASL. Our findings support that applying 18F-FDG PET may be preferable for diagnosing AD and aMCI.

AbstractAs the basic unit structure of electromagnetic metamaterial, the structure size of open resonant ring directly determines the constitutive parameters of SRR (dielectric constant ε and permeability μ). In order to improve the energy exchange efficiency of the electromagnetic acoustic transducer, the coil backplane of the electromagnetic ultrasonic shear wave sensor was optimized. First, the influence of the thickness of the coil backplane on the ultrasonic signal is studied by the experimental method, and then, the magnetic field distribution of the coil backplane is simulated by the finite element simulation software. Finally, the SNR and lift distance of the shear wave sensor before and after the coil backplane optimization are compared by experiments. In this article, a multi-hypothesis data fusion method in distributed detection system is proposed, which extends the multi-sensor data fusion rules to more general cases. The results show that the optimum thickness of the coil back plate in the electromagnetic ultrasonic transverse wave sensor is 1.5–2.0 mm. Using iron powder with the same length and width as the working area of the coil as the coil backplane can significantly increase the magnetic field strength in the working area of the sensor. Compared with the coil backplane made of non-magnetic materials, the optimized backplane can increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the sensor by about one time and the lift-off distance by about 1 mm.

Abstract Background Artificial habitats can allow many fish to flock together and interact and have been widely used to restore and protect fishery resources. The piece of research intends to elucidate the relationship of microbial communities between tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) intestines and artificial fishery habitats (water and sediments). Hence, 16 S rDNA sequencing technology was used to study the bacterial communities from intestines, water, and sediments. Results The results showed that the tilapia intestines had the lowest richness of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and the lowest diversity of the bacterial community compared to water and sediments. The intestine, water, and sediment microbial communities shared many OTUs. Overall, 663 shared OTUs were identified from the tilapia intestines (76.20%), the surrounding water (71.14%), and sediment (56.86%) in artificial habitats. However, there were unique OTUs that were detected in different sample types. There were 81, 77 and 112 unique OTUs observed in tilapia intestines, the surrounding water and sediment, respectively. Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Fusobacteria, and Bacteroidetes were the most common and dominant bacterial phyla between the tilapia intestines and habitats. In the two groups, the microbial communities were similar in the taxonomic composition but different in the abundance of bacterial phyla. Interestingly, Firmicutes increased, while Fusobacteria decreased in artificial habitats. These findings indicated that the artificial habitats had fewer effects on the water environment and indicated that the mode of artificial habitats could have an effect on the enriched bacteria in the tilapia intestines. Conclusions This study analysed the bacterial communities of artificial habitats from the intestines, water, and sediments, which can explain the relationship between the tilapia intestines and habitats and strengthen the value of ecological services provided by artificial habitats.

The habitats of oyster reefs had played various ecological services functions, as an important means of marine ecological restoration and fishery resources conservation, which had been widely used worldwide. And the characteristics of microbial communities would be inevitably affected by habitat of oyster reefs. The aim of this study was to reveal the relationship between oyster reefs and the intestinal microbiota of fish (Takifugu ocellatus, Acanthopagrus latus, Clupanodon thrissa, and Mugil cephalus). Here, based on 16S rRNA sequencing, this research analyzed the microbial communities of fishes gut in the oyster reefs from the most crucial estuary economic zone in Southern China. It was significantly lower that the bacterial alpha-diversity in the fish intestines than in the sediments of oyster reefs. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) results showed that intestines microbiota of T. ocellatus and A. latus were more homologous to sediments microbiota, but intestines microbiota of C. thrissa and M. cephalus were more similar to the water microbiota. There were obvious differences in the contribution of oyster reefs habitat to intestinal microorganisms of four fishes. Source tracking analysis as well reached the similar conclusion. For instance, contribution of water to T. ocellatus and A. latus was lesser than sediments, which was related to their benthic habits. Based on the differences in microbial community compositions, the functional prediction analysis had demonstrated that special functional pathways and independent core indicators had been formed separately from oyster reefs and fish intestines. Overall, these findings highlighted the characteristics of microbial diversity and functions from the omnivorous fish living in oyster reefs habitats. This research proposed new insights into the function of oyster reefs habitats, which have enriched the ecological service value of oyster reefs from microbial ecology and provided a reference for the application of oyster reefs habitats in other estuaries.

Object: Based on the comparisons of the somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs), the object of this study is to investigate the underlying cognition mechanism of somatotopy and the homology of tactile sensation between the projected fingers in the residual limb and the natural fingers in the intact limb. Methods: One amputee subject and three able-bodied subjects were recruited. The forearm amputee had a clear projected finger mapping (PFM) that could evoke the tactile sensation of the entire five missing fingers. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) was used to evoke the sensation pattern of touch. Stimulation locations were divided into three groups: the locations of Group PA (projected-finger of amputee-subject) were located on the entire five projected fingers for the amputee subject, the locations of Group NA (natural-finger of amputee-subject) were located on the entire five natural fingers for the amputee subject, and the locations of Group NH (natural-finger of healthy-subject) were located on the bilateral natural index fingers for the able-bodied subjects. The somatosensory ERPs evoked by the stimulations were recorded. We measured the latency and amplitude of the ERP components and made statistical analyses for them. Main results: Since the ERP components of the early-stage are similar for both the stimulation in the projected fingers and the natural fingers, it can infer that the delivery pathway of the projected finger was similar to that of the natural finger. The second finding of the study is that, as the processing of sensory sensation in the cortex of the three groups is similar, it can also infer that the somatosensory evoked by the external stimuli are also similar. Conclusion: The present findings suggest that the somatotopy and the homology of tactile sensation between the projected fingers in the residual limb and the natural fingers in the intact limb have evident uniformity. We infer that the median nerve and the ulnar nerve of the peripheral nerve may divaricate new pathways, and these pathways would have been linked to the PFM.

Parametric splines are popular tools for precision optical metrology of complex freeform surfaces. However, as a promising topologically unconstrained solution, existing T-spline fitting techniques, such as improved global fitting, local fitting, and split-connect algorithms, still suffer the problems of low computational efficiency, especially in the case of large data scales and high accuracy requirements. This paper proposes a speed-improved algorithm for fast, large-scale freeform point cloud fitting by stitching locally fitted T-splines through three steps of localized operations. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm produces a three-to-eightfold efficiency improvement from the global and local fitting algorithms, and a two-to-fourfold improvement from the latest split-connect algorithm, in high-accuracy and large-scale fitting scenarios. A classical Lena image study showed that the algorithm is at least twice as fast as the split-connect algorithm using fewer than 80% control points of the latter.

The Multi-receiver Encryption (MRE) scheme can meet the secure data transmission requirements in multicast and broadcast scenarios. To meet compliance, critical information infrastructure in China should be protected with Chinese national commercial cryptographic algorithms. Designing an MRE scheme based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is one of the current design methods with better flexibility and performance. However, the research on MRE schemes based on SM2 elliptic curve public-key cryptography is still in a blank state. This paper proposes a Certificateless SM2-based Multi-receiver Encryption (CL-SM2-MRE) scheme. We prove the security of the CL-SM2-MRE scheme under the Random Oracle Model (ROM) and analyze the performance.

Abstract Background Artificial fishery habitat has been widely used in fishery resource protection and water habitat restoration. Although the bacterioplankton plays an important ecological role in fisheries ecosystems, the effect of artificial fishery habitat on bacterioplankton is not clear. In this study, high-throughput sequencing based on the 16S rRNA gene was carried out to study the characteristics of bacterioplankton community structure in artificial fishery habitat and to determine the principal environmental factors that shaped the composition, structure and function of bacterioplankton communities in an unfed aquaculture system. Results The results indicated that the most dominant phyla were Proteobacteria (Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria), Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria, and Bacteroidetes, which accounted for 28.61%, 28.37%, 19.79%, and 10.25% of the total abundance, respectively. The factors that cause the differences in bacterioplankton community were mainly manifested in three aspects, including the diversity of the community, the role of artificial fishery habitat, and the change of environmental factors. The alpha diversity analysis showed that the diversity and richness index of the bacterioplankton communities were the highest in summer, which indicated that the seasonal variation characteristics had a great influence on it. The CCA analysis identified that the dissolved oxygen, temperature, and ammonium salt were the dominant environmental factors in an unfed aquaculture system. The LEfSe analysis founded 37 indicator species in artificial structure areas (AS group), only 9 kinds existing in the control areas of the open-water group (CW group). Meanwhile, the KEGG function prediction analysis showed that the genes which were related to metabolism in group AS were significantly enhanced. Conclusions This study can provide reference value for the effect of artificial habitat on bacterioplankton community and provide fundamental information for the follow-up study of ecological benefits of artificial fishery habitat. It may be contributed to apply artificial fishery habitat in more rivers.

IntroductionThe waters surrounding the Wanshan Islands are important traditional fishing grounds in China, with rich habitat types. Acanthopagrus latus is an economically important species in this area; however, the distribution of its spawning grounds and habitat use patterns remain unknown.MethodsThus 100 otolith samples of A. latus were collected from three geographic areas (MW: Qi’ao Island Mangrove Water Habitat; OW: Yamen Estuary Oyster Farm Water Habitat; RW: Dong’ao-Guishan Island Reef Water Habitat), and the concentrations of Sr and Ca along the shortest axis of the vertical otolith annual or lunar rings were measured to span the entire life cycle of A. latus, with the core and edge areas corresponding to environmental characteristics at birth and capture, respectively.Results and discussionAnalysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that the ratios of Sr/Ca in otolith edges of RW samples are significantly higher than those of OW and MW samples; however, both the values of Sr/Ca ratio in otolith cores collected from OW and MW are comparable with those of RW samples. Cluster analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) indicated that at the juvenile stage, RW and MW individuals in the two main clusters belonged to the same cluster. There was no significant difference between the cores of the RW samples and the edges of the MW and OW samples. Therefore, the spawning area of A. latus in the Wanshan Islands is thought to have originated from low to medium-salinity waters with mangroves and oyster farm habitats in the Pearl River Estuary. A. latus from RW was found to have three distinct habitat-use patterns: 1) Marine Resident (7.2% of sampled fish) fish that remain in marine habitats for life; 2) Marine Migrant (16.4% of sampled fish) juveniles inhabit low to moderate salinity habitats and migrate to marine habitats as they grow; 3) Estuarine Visitor (76.4% of sampled fish) repeated migration between low to moderate salinity and marine habitats. This suggests widespread migration between estuarine and marine habitats throughout the ontogeny. The plasticity of this habitat use and the protection of spawning grounds should be considered in future fisheries management because A. Latus in this area has been the victim of the overexploitation of resources.

Abstract Background To investigate the antimicrobial profiles and genomic characteristics of MDR-Citrobacter spp. strains isolated from Fennec fox imported from Sudan to China. Methods Four Citrobacter spp. strains were isolated from stool samples. Individual fresh stool samples were collected and subsequently diluted in phosphate buffered saline as described previously. The diluted fecal samples were plated on MacConkey agar supplemented with 1 mg/l cefotaxime and incubated for 20 h at 37 °C. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI–TOF–MS) was used for identification. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed using the broth microdilution method. Whole-genome sequencing was performed on an Illumina Novaseq-6000 platform. Acquired antimicrobial resistance genes and plasmid replicons were detected using ResFinder 4.1 and PlasmidFinder 1.3, respectively. Comparative genomic analysis of 277 Citrobacter genomes was also performed. Results Isolate FF141 was identified as Citrobacter cronae while isolate FF371, isolate FF414, and isolate FF423 were identified as Citrobacter braakii. Of these, three C. braakii isolates were further confirmed to be extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL)-producer. All isolates are all multidrug resistance (MDR) with resistance to multiple antimicrobials. Plasmid of pKPC-CAV1321 belong to incompatibility (Inc) group. Comparative genomics analysis of Citrobacter isolates generated a large core-genome. Genetic diversity was observed in our bacterial collection, which clustered into five main clades. Human, environmental and animal Citrobacter isolates were distributed into five clusters. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first investigation of MDR-Citrobacter from Fennec Fox. Our phenotypic and genomic data further underscore the threat of increased ESBL prevalence in wildlife and emphasize that increased effort should be committed to monitoring the potentially rapid dissemination of ESBL-producers with one health perspective.

Hydrogel-based supercapacitors with excellent mechanical properties can overcome several unsettled challenges that current wearable power supply devices confront as a result of the distinctive dense intriguing nanostructures of hydrogels, which serve as an ideal candidate with durability and reliability for supplying power to truly wearable electronics. More importantly, benefiting from the broadly tunable physicochemical characterizations, the hydrogel electrolyte components with high ionic conductivity could possess several additional functions including ultrahigh stretchability, strong self-healability, and low-temperature tolerance, which qualifies these multifunctional supercapacitors for application in a variety of extreme working environments, especially in significant deformations caused by human-motion, conditions of applied destructive external force, and extremely frigid circumstances. Herein, the state-of-the-art advanced multifunctional supercapacitors are discussed, focusing on the introductions and explanations of particularly functionalized hydrogel electrolytes, ultra-flexible textile-based electrodes or hydrogel-based electrodes, and the combination strategies of electrolytes and electrodes.

Estuaries are one of the most important ecosystems with high biological productivity. They connect freshwater and marine ecosystems, and the fish community assemblages face intense environmental changes, so estuarine fish communities have unique ecological characteristics. With the increase of human activities and the discharge of pollutants, the pressure on the ecosystem of the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) is intensifying, and its ecosystem functions and services are inevitably affected. To better understand the functional structure of the fish community in the PRE and its response to environmental changes, we analyzed the trait composition of the community and its relationships to environmental factors based on 10 functional traits of 130 fish species collected in the PRE during the summer and winter of 2020–2021. In addition, we built a multi-dimensional functional space to visualize the overall functional structure of the PRE and explore the seasonal variation of the selected traits in the functional space. Our findings suggest that the functional traits of the fish communities in the PRE were mainly affected by temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, and depth. Among them, the effects of dissolved oxygen, temperature, and chlorophyll-a on CWM traits were reflected in seasonal differences, while the effects of depth were reflected in spatial differences. We also found the main trait categories that occupied the most functional space and contributed the most to the seasonal differences in functional space. The results of this study are significant for understanding the seasonal variation of the functional structure in the PRE and how environmental gradients drive the functional traits of fish communities, and also provide insights for effective ecosystem-based management in the PRE.

Recently developed ingenious devices fabrication, van der Waals (vdW) heterojunction integration, and characterization techniques of the novel two-dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) have profoundly promoted the in-depth research in terms of the extraordinary properties of 2DLMs, which are conducive to the precise manipulation of atomically thin layered materials. It is possible to realize the fabrication of the extremely complex electronic and optoelectronic devices in combination with the current hybrid structure at the single atomic–layer scale, which can maximize the unique properties of 2DLMs. Herein, we review the sophisticated and progressive mechanical processing techniques ranging from the exfoliation, the stack methods of vdW heterostructures to the mechanical characterization techniques, and discuss the fundamental principles and detailed steps of each technique. Then, their advantages and drawbacks are pointed out to help the experimentalists to choose a more appropriate experimental method. We hope that this review would broaden the reader's horizon in the matter of the mechanical processing of 2DLMs.

Abstract Species differentiation and local adaptation in heterogeneous environments have attracted much attention, although little is known about the mechanisms involved. Hyporhamphus intermedius is an anadromous, brackish‐water halfbeak that is widely distributed in coastal areas and hyperdiverse freshwater systems in China, making it an interesting model for research on phylogeography and local adaptation. Here, 156 individuals were sampled at eight sites from heterogeneous aquatic habitats to examine environmental and genetic contributions to phenotypic divergence. Using double‐digest restriction‐site‐associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD‐Seq) in the specimens from the different watersheds, 5498 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were found among populations, with obvious population differentiation. We find that present‐day Mainland China populations are structured into distinct genetic clusters stretching from southern and northern ancestries, mirroring geography. Following a transplant event in Plateau Lakes, there were virtually no variations of genetic diversity occurred in two populations, despite the fact two main splits were unveiled in the demographic history. Additionally, dorsal, and anal fin traits varied widely between the southern group and the others, which highlighted previously unrecognized lineages. We then explore genotype–phenotype‐environment associations and predict candidate loci. Subgroup ranges appeared to correspond to geographic regions with heterogeneous hydrological factors, indicating that these features are likely important drivers of diversification. Accordingly, we conclude that genetic and phenotypic polymorphism and a moderate amount of genetic differentiation occurred, which might be ascribed to population subdivision, and the impact of abiotic factors.

Fishery resources are threatened by environmental changes and anthropogenic pressures, particularly in coastal ecosystems. It is crucial to understand the changes of fish communities and their responses to environmental changes and human disturbances to formulate rational fisheries and ecosystem-based management. The Pearl River Estuary (PRE) is a typical sub-tropic coastal ecosystem located in the center of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the northern South China Sea. The demersal fish in the PRE is traditionally targeted as commercial fishing and severely impacted by overexploitation and hypoxia in the last few decades. In this study, we analyze the fish survey data during the period of 2020~2021 using multivariate statistics to investigate the impacts of human disturbances on the species and functional dynamics of the demersal fish community in the PRE. The results reveal that dissolved oxygen and temperature have significant correlations with the functional traits of the demersal fish community. The impacts of hypoxia on the demersal fish vary with species and locations. We found that the mean functional redundancy of the demersal fish community in the PRE was high across three surveys, but the functional diversity was low in this region. The abundance and richness of the demersal fish community increased during the summer fishing moratorium in the South China Sea in 2021, but the functional diversity did not increase significantly. We conclude that the high functional redundancy in the PRE might not be sufficient to buffer against environmental disturbances because of its low functional diversity. Our study highlights the complicated interactions between the demersal fish community and disturbances in the PRE. Understanding the traits structure and functional diversity of the fish community can help elucidate the factors determining the dynamic responses of the fish community to disturbances.

Purpose: Sensory feedback for prosthetics is an important issue. The area of forearm stump skin that has evoked tactile sensation (ETS) of fingers is defined as the projected finger map (PFM), and the area close to the PFM region that does not have ETS is defined as the non-projected finger map (NPFM). Previous studies have confirmed that ETS can restore the tactile pathway of the lost finger, which was induced by stimulation of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on the end of stump skin. This study aims to reveal EEG features between the PFM and the NPFM regions of the stumps under the same TENS stimulation condition.Methods: The PFM and NPFM regions of the two subjects were stimulated with the same intensity of TENS, respectively. TENS as target stimuli are modulated according to the Oddball paradigm to evoke the P300 components.Result: The PFM regions of both subjects were able to elicit P300 components, while their NPFM regions were not able to elicit P300 components. However, this P300 appears early (249 ms for subject 1,230 ms for subject 2) and has continuous positive peaks (peak 1,139 ± 3 ms, peak 2,194 ± 0.5 ms) in front of it.Discussion: N30 and P300 can prove that the two subjects with PFM can perceive and recognize ETS. The heteromorphisms of the P300 waveform may be related to the difficulty in subjects’ cognition of ETS or caused by the fusion of P150, P200, and P300.

Astaxanthin (AX) is a naturally occurring carotenoid often used as a dietary supplement in the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) culture industry. This study evaluated the effects of chemically synthesized astaxanthin on growth performance, survival, stress resistance, immune responses, and pigmentation of the Pacific white shrimp fed diets supplemented with five dietary levels of AX containing 0, 20, 40, 80, and 160 mg kg−1. The feeding trial was conducted for 8 weeks. The results showed the individuals fed diets supplemented with AX exhibited better growth performance, whose final body weight (FBW), body weight gain (BWG), specific growth ratio (SGR), and Myostatin (MSTN) showed a dose-dependent increase in Astaxanthin levels. Following acute hypoxia and ammonia stress test, the survival rate (SR) of shrimp fed with 40, 80 and 160 mg kg−1 diets were higher than that of the control group. AX diet groups improved their capacity of antioxidant defense to prevent oxidative damage, including increasing the activities of acid phosphatase (ACP), total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), and decreasing the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT), the content of malondialdehyde (MDA) compared to the control group. In addition, the gene expression of various antioxidant enzymes in the hepatopancreas of shrimp was significantly upregulated higher such as manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) and glutathione S-transferase (GST). High expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH-β), glutamine synthetase (GS) in 80 and 160 mg kg−1 group indicated their effect on glycolysis possibly, which is vital on energy production required. Quadratic regression analysis indicated that the optimal levels for growth and pigmentation were 126.94 mg kg−1 and 138.96 mg kg−1 diet, respectively. In conclusion, Astaxanthin can enhance growth performance, alleviate oxidative and ammonia stress, improving the immunity of Pacific white shrimp.

Water adsorbed on the electrode surface of electrochemical energy storage devices narrows the electrochemical windows. Combining atomistic simulations and cyclic voltammetry experiments the authors demonstrate an approach to expand the voltage window of humid ionic liquids based on the addition of lithium salt.

A neural network (NN)-based decoding algorithm of block Markov superposition transmission (BMST) was researched.The decoders of the basic code with different network structures and representations of training data were implemented using NN.Integrating the NN-based decoder of the basic code in an iterative manner,a sliding window decoding algorithm was presented.To analyze the bit error rate (BER) performance,the genie-aided (GA) lower bounds were presented.The NN-based decoding algorithm of the BMST provides a possible way to apply NN to decode long codes.That means the part of the conventional decoder could be replaced by the NN.Numerical results show that the NN-based decoder of basic code can achieve the BER performance of the maximum likelihood (ML) decoder.For the BMST codes,BER performance of the NN-based decoding algorithm matches well with the GA lower bound and exhibits an extra coding gain.

In this article, we provide an in-depth review of important works on phase segregation which occurs as a result of mixing organic semiconductors with polymeric additives. Throughout the discussion, the indispensable correlations among phase segregation, crystal growth, layer structure and film morphology are showcased using specific examples that mainly entail small-molecule organic semiconductors such as 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS pentacene) and 2,8-difluoro-5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene (diF-TES-ADT). The various factors that impact the phase segregation are analyzed, which include surface energy, solvent choice, additive nature, and substrate interaction. The beneficial effects of phase segregation on charge transport and operational stabilities of organic semiconductor based organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) are also assessed. We believe that the phase segregation examples discussed in this work shed light on optimizing the electrical performance of organic semiconductors and unlock favorable features useful for their application in high-performance organic electronics on flexible substrates.

With the popularity of the internet, the expression of emotions and methods of communication are becoming increasingly abundant, and most of these emotions are transmitted in text form. Text sentiment classification research mainly includes three methods based on sentiment dictionaries, machine learning and deep learning. In recent years, many deep learning-based works have used TextCNN (text convolution neural network) to extract text semantic information for text sentiment analysis. However, TextCNN only considers the length of the sentence when extracting semantic information. It ignores the semantic features between word vectors and only considers the maximum feature value of the feature image in the pooling layer without considering other information. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a convolutional neural network based on multiple convolutions and pooling for text sentiment classification (variable convolution and pooling convolution neural network, VCPCNN). There are three contributions in this paper. First, a multiconvolution and pooling neural network is proposed for the TextCNN network structure. Second, four convolution operations are introduced in the word embedding dimension or direction, which are helpful for mining the local features on the semantic dimensions of word vectors. Finally, average pooling is introduced in the pooling layer, which is beneficial for saving the important feature information of the extracted features. The verification test was carried out on four emotional datasets, including English emotional polarity, Chinese emotional polarity, Chinese subjective and objective emotion and Chinese multicategory. Our approach is effective in that its result was up to 1.97% higher than that of the TextCNN network.

Background: Neuropathic pain (NP), a severe and disruptive symptom following many diseases, normally restricts patients' physical functions and leads to anxiety and depression. As an economical and effective therapy, exercise may be helpful in NP management. However, few guidelines and reviews focused on exercise therapy for NP associated with specific diseases. The study aimed to summarize the effectiveness and efficacy of exercise for various diseases with NP supported by evidence, describe expert recommendations for NP from different causes, and inform policymakers of the guidelines.Design: A systematic review and expert consensus.Methods: A systematic search was conducted in PubMed. We included systematic review and meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which assessed patients with NP. Studies involved exercise intervention and outcome included pain intensity at least. Physiotherapy Evidence Database and the Assessment of Multiple Systematic reviews tool were used to grade the quality assessment of the included RCTs and systematic reviews, respectively. The final grades of recommendation were based on strength of evidence and a consensus discussion of results of Delphi rounds by the Delphi consensus panel including 21 experts from the Chinese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine.Results: Eight systematic reviews and 21 RCTs fulfilled all of the inclusion criteria and were included, which were used to create the 10 evidence-based consensus statements. The 10 expert recommendations regarding exercise for NP symptoms were relevant to the following 10 different diseases: spinal cord injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, cervical radiculopathy, sciatica, diabetic neuropathy, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, HIV/AIDS, and surgery, respectively. The exercise recommended in the expert consensus involved but was not limited to muscle stretching, strengthening/resistance exercise, aerobic exercise, motor control/stabilization training and mind-body exercise (Tai Chi and yoga).Conclusions: Based on the available evidence, exercise is helpful to alleviate NP intensity. Therefore, these expert consensuses recommend that proper exercise programs can be considered as an effective alternative treatment or complementary therapy for most patients with NP. The expert consensus provided medical staff and policymakers with applicable recommendations for the formulation of exercise prescription for NP. This consensus statement will require regular updates after five–ten years.

Abstract Tetanus is a fatal but vaccine‐preventable disease. The currently available tetanus vaccines are tetanus toxoid (TT)‐based. Although these vaccines are generally effective, challenges in vaccine development and access remain. A randomized, double‐blind, dose escalation, placebo‐ and positive‐controlled, phase 1/2 trial (ChiCTR1800015865) is performed to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of an alternative recombinant tetanus vaccine based on the Hc domain of tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT‐Hc) in healthy adult volunteers. The primary outcome is the safety profile of the recombinant tetanus vaccine, and immunogenicity is the secondary outcome. 150 eligible participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive one of the three doses of recombinant tetanus vaccine (TeNT‐Hc 10/20/30 µg), TT vaccine, or placebo. The recombinant tetanus vaccine shows a good safety profile. The frequency of any solicited and unsolicited adverse events after each vaccination does not differ across the vaccine and placebo recipients. No serious treatment‐related adverse events occur. The recombinant tetanus vaccine shows strong immune responses (seroconversion rates, geometric mean titer, and antigen‐specific CD4+/CD8+ T‐cell responses), which are roughly comparable to those of the TT vaccine. In conclusion, the findings from this study support that recombinant tetanus vaccine is safe and immunogenic; thereby, it represents a novel vaccine candidate against tetanus.

A 40 day experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of different salinities (0, 5 and 10 ppt) on the growth, osmoregulatory and hypothalamic–pituitary–somatotropic (HPS) axis response of juvenile largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). At the same time, two extra groups salinities (8 and 9 ppt) were used to explore the threshold of osmoregulation in M. salmoides to salinity stress. The survival were 94.45 %, 98.15 % and 32.00 % in 0, 5, 10 ppt, respectively. According the final body weight, specific growth rate (SGR), feed conversion ratio (FCR), condition factor (K) and chemical composition of muscle, largemouth bass should not be cultured at or above 10 ppt and 5 ppt is better than 0 ppt. The results found that the content of serum prolactin (PRL) and cortisol (COR) were no significant differences between groups of the 0, 5, 8, 9 and 10 ppt. Compared with the control group (0 ppt), the serum thyroxine (T4) content of 8 and 9 ppt groups decreased significantly and the serum triiodothyronine (T3) content all decreased significantly. Serum osmolality increased with increasing salinity. Na+-K+-ATP (NKA) and Ca2+-Mg2+-ATP (CMA) activities in the gills of largemouth bass at 0, 5, 8, 9 and 10 ppt showed tendency of ascend at first and descend at last, among which the activities in 10 ppt were significantly lowest. Gene expression of hepatic growth hormone (GH) at 10 ppt was highest. Meanwhile, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) expression at salinities of 8, 9 and 10 ppt were significantly higher than those at 0 and 5 ppt. Taken together, the findings of this study provide guidance for the practical rearing of largemouth bass in saline waters and contribute to research on stress physiology.

In this study, we report on an effective approach to modulate crystallization, control charge transport and enhance performance consistency of small-molecule semiconductor based organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) with the addition of a polyacrylate polymer additive poly(2-ethylhexyl acrylate) (P2EHA). 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS pentacene) was used as a benchmark semiconductor to blend with the P2EHA additive, leading to a vertical phase separation between these two components. The resultant TIPS pentacene film exhibited greatly reduced crystal misorientation, enlarged grain width and enhanced film coverage. Bottom-gate, bottom-contact OTFTs based on the TIPS pentacene/P2EHA blends were fabricated and showed an increased average hole mobility of 0.317 ± 0.047 cm2/V, as well as a performance consistency factor of 6.72, which is defined as the ratio of the average hole mobility to the standard deviation of mobility. Notably, it leads to a 10-fold and 7-fold enhancement of average mobility and performance consistency as compared to the pristine TIPS pentacene OTFTs. This great improvement of device performance can be attributed to the reduced crystal misorientation, less defects and trap centers at the grain boundaries as a result of the enlarged grain width, as well as increased film coverage, due to the addition of the P2EHA polyacrylate polymer additive. Keywords: Small-molecule semiconductor, Polymer additive, Charge transport, Organic thin film transistors, Organic electronics

With the rapid development of deep convolutional neural networks, more and more computer vision tasks have been well resolved. These convolutional neural network solutions rely heavily on the performance of the hardware. However, due to privacy issues or the network instability, we need to run convolutional neural networks on embedded platforms. Critical challenges will be raised by limited hardware resources on the embedded platform. In this paper, we design and implement an embedded inference framework to accelerate the inference of the convolutional neural network on the embedded platform. For this, we first analyzed the time-consuming layers in the inference process of the network, and then we design optimization methods for these layers. Also, we design a memory pool specifically for neural networks. Our experimental results show that our embedded inference framework can run a classification model MobileNet in 80ms and a detection model MobileNet-SSD in 155ms on Firefly-RK3399 development board.

When weather shocks strike in agrarian economies, households may often utilize offtake of their productive livestock as a major risk coping strategy. However, a distressful asset offtake could lead to difficulties in recovering after the shock; consequently, the macro economy of a subsistence agriculture-dependent country could remain slow for an extended period. In this paper, we analysed the effect of index-based livestock insurance on the herd offtake behaviour of herders in the Borena zone, which is the southernmost area of Ethiopia, using three rounds of panel data. Using fixed effect model analysis, our results shows that households that purchased index-based livestock insurance coverage are less likely to offtake their herds. Empirically, this finding appeared to have a positive and significant effect on reducing the herd offtake behaviour of the households. This finding suggests that the coverage can help in reducing the fear and worry of the herding households regarding the possible incidence of covariate herd loss. Consequently, distressful herd offtake can be reduced, thereby sustaining the household’s economic growth. Keywords: Index-based livestock insurance, Herd offtake, Borena zone

Electrochemical mechanisms of molten salt electrolysis from TiO2 to titanium were investigated by Potentiostatic electrolysis, cyclic voltammetry, and square wave voltammetry in NaCl-CaCl2 at 800 °C. The composition and morphology of the product obtained at different electrolysis times were characterized by XRD and SEM. CaTiO3 phase was found in the TiO2 electrochemical reduction process. Electrochemical reduction of TiO2 to titanium is a four-step reduction process, which can be summarized as TiO2→Ti4O7→Ti2O3→TiO→Ti. Spontaneous and electrochemical reactions take place simultaneously in the reduction process. The electrochemical reduction of TiO2→Ti4O7→Ti2O3→TiO affected by diffusion was irreversible.

Ionic liquid electrolytes can impart increased operational voltage and energy density in supercapacitors, but water may diminish performance. Here the authors show that the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity of ionic liquids can influence electrosorption of water and ultimately the supercapacitor performance.

ZnO material is a crucial layer for organic solar cell due to its excellent photoelectric properties. However, the influence of ZnO fabricated by various methods as well as the effect of 2-dimensional (2D) and 3-dimensional (3D) configuration is still under debate. In this study, a comprehensive study of 2D ZnO made by sol-gel, atomic layer deposition (ALD) method, 3D ZnO nanorods grown from sol-gel seed layer and ALD seed layer was carried out. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to characterize the morphology of the films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to probe bonding nature as well as defects present in different forms of ZnO. Band gap and crystal quality were characterized by UV-vis spectra. The inverted structure of organic solar cells was fabricated using these forms of ZnO, and the I-V curves as well as the power conversion efficiency (PCE) were measured to evaluate the photoelectric property of the synthesized ZnO nanostructures. It is found that 2D ZnO made by the sol-gel method yields the best PCE of 2.53%.

Water quality is a significant issue, and its assessment plays an important role in environmental management and pollution control. In this paper, we proposed a comprehensive water quality assessment method which takes into account both absolute and temporal trends in water quality. As the first step, we derived and applied a comprehensive pollution index (CPI) to characterize water pollution in 16 major tributaries to the Danjiangkou Reservoir, located in the upper reaches of the Hanjiang River in China. Next, we used Spearman’s rank correlation analysis to quantify temporal CPI trends in each tributary. As the final step, we conducted principal component analysis (PCA) using data on 8 water quality parameters and the temporal CPI trend from each of the 16 tributaries. The resultant comprehensive water quality assessment method identified tributaries, which stand to improve and threaten water quality in the Danjiangkou Reservoir from both immediate and future perspectives.

How organisms display many different biochemical, physiological processes through genes expression and regulatory mechanisms affecting muscle growth is a central issue in growth and development. In Siniperca chuatsi, the growth-related genes and underlying relevant mechanisms are poorly understood, especially for difference of body sizes and compensatory growth performance. Muscle from 3-month old individuals of different sizes was used for transcriptome analysis. Results showed that 8,942 different expression genes (DEGs) were identified after calculating the RPKM. The DEGs involved in GH-IGF pathways, protein synthesis, ribosome synthesis and energy metabolisms, which were expressed significantly higher in small individuals (S) than large fish (L). In repletion feeding and compensatory growth experiments, eight more significant DEGs were used for further research (GHR2, IGFR1, 4ebp, Mhc, Mlc, Myf6, MyoD, troponin). When food was plentiful, eight genes participated in and promoted growth and muscle synthesis, respectively. Starvation can be shown to inhibit the expression of Mhc, Mlc and troponin, and high expression of GHR2, IGFR1, and 4ebp inhibited growth. Fasting promoted the metabolic actions of GHR2, IGFR1, and 4ebp rather than the growth-promoting actions. MyoD can sense and regulate the hunger, which also worked with Mhc and Mlc to accelerate the compensatory growth of S. chuatsi. This study is helpful to understand the regulation mechanisms of muscle growth-related genes. The elected genes will contribute to the selective breeding in future as candidate genes.

Propiconazole is fungicide widely used in agriculture, which may enter aquatic ecosystems and affect organisms. In this study, zebrafish (Danio rerio) were exposed to environmentally relevant levels of propiconazole throughout the life cycle, from embryo to sexually mature adults, and the effects on growth, reproduction, and offspring viability were investigated. To investigate the mechanisms of propiconazole action, the sex steroid hormones and the expression of genes related to the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad-liver (HPGL) axis and DNA methylation were examined. Growth decreased in the parental zebrafish (F0) after exposure to propiconazole for 120 days. In males, increases in the levels of 17β-estradiol and vitellogenin were observed. The alterations in sex steroid hormones were regulated by the expression of genes involved with the HPGL axis. The decreases in fecundity and fertilization of the F0 was induced by the global DNA methylation, and then may result in the abnormal development of the F1. Therefore, propiconazole disrupted the steroidogenic pathway and caused changes in global DNA methylation that induced reproductive toxicity. Keywords: Propiconazole, Reproduction, Endocrine disruption, DNA methylation, Offspring development

Large-scale printing fabrication of organic solar cells (OSCs) has attracted much attention in recent decades due to its efficient industrial application. Additive in the organic layer is one of the crucial factors that promote both quality of transferred pattern and the power conversion efficiency of the solar cell. Here, an organic material, 3-Glycidyloxypropyl trimethoxysilane (GLYMO), as an additive was used in cost-efficient multi-layer inking and stamping processes to fabricate OSCs. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was used as a transfer carrier that carries patterns from silicon mold to indium tin oxide (ITO) glass or polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to fabricate rigid or flexible organic solar cell devices. By investigating the effects of chemical additives on OSCs performance in a regular procedure, the amount of additive was found which provides the best power conversion efficiency of 1.71%. Further refining the multi-layer inking and stamping process by using the amount of additive found in previous experiments, high-resolution transferred patterns with maximum efficiency were produced. The overall OSCs efficiency and high yield pattern transfers indicate high potential for future printing processing and will thus reduce OSCs production costs. Keywords: Organic solar cells, Pattern transfer, Additives, Flexible substrate, Power conversion efficiency

Mild therapeutic hypothermia has been shown to mitigate cerebral ischemia, reduce cerebral edema, and improve the prognosis of patients with cerebral ischemia. Adipose-derived stem cell-based therapy can decrease neuronal death and infiltration of inflammatory cells, exerting a neuroprotective effect. We hypothesized that the combination of mild therapeutic hypothermia and adipose-derived stem cells would be neuroprotective for treatment of stroke. A rat model of transient middle cerebral artery occlusion was established using the nylon monofilament method. Mild therapeutic hypothermia (33°C) was induced after 2 hours of ischemia. Adipose-derived stem cells were administered through the femoral vein during reperfusion. The severity of neurological dysfunction was measured by a modified Neurological Severity Score Scaling System. The area of the infarct lesion was determined by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining. Apoptotic neurons were detected by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining. The regeneration of microvessels and changes in the glial scar were detected by immunofluorescence staining. The inflammatory responses after ischemic brain injury were evaluated by in situ staining using markers of inflammatory cells. The expression of inflammatory cytokines was measured by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. Compared with mild therapeutic hypothermia or adipose-derived stem cell treatment alone, their combination substantially improved neurological deficits and decreased infarct size. They synergistically reduced the number of TUNEL-positive cells and glial fibrillary acidic protein expression, increased vascular endothelial growth factor levels, effectively reduced inflammatory cell infiltration and down-regulated the mRNA expression of the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-6. Our findings indicate that combined treatment is a better approach for treating stroke compared with mild therapeutic hypothermia or adipose-derived stem cells alone.

Artificial fishery habitats have been extensively used for fishery resource protection and water habitat restoration, and they could attract a large number of omnivorous fishes to gather together. This study intended to reveal the relationship between bacterial communities in the habitats (water and sediment) and intestines of omnivorous fishes (Oreochromis mossambicus, Toxabramis houdemeri and Hemiculter leucisculus). Therefore, we investigated the bacterial communities of samples collected from intestines, water, and sediments in artificial fishery habitats via 16S rRNA metabarcoding high-throughput sequencing technology. The results showed that there were significant differences in the composition, core indicators, diversity and prediction functions in water, sediments, and intestinal microbial communities of the three omnivorous fish. The microbial diversities were significantly higher in habitats than in intestines. The analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) and nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) results indicated that the intestine microbial communities (T. houdemeri and H. leucisculus) were more similar to the water microbiota, but the intestine microbial communities (O. mossambicus) were more similar to the sediments. Source tracking analysis also confirmed that the contribution of habitat characteristics to omnivorous fish intestinal microorganisms was different; the sediment had a greater contribution than water to the intestinal microbiota of O. mossambicus, which was consistent with their benthic habit. Moreover, the functional prediction results showed that there were unique core indicators and functions between the bacterial community of habitats and intestines. Altogether, these results can enhance our understanding of the bacterial composition and functions about omnivorous fish intestines and their living with habitats, which have provided new information for the ecological benefits of artificial fishery habitats from the perspective of bacterial ecology and contributed to apply artificial fishery habitats in more rivers.

Eating disorders are directly or indirectly influenced by gut microbiota and innate immunity. Probiotics have been shown to regulate gut microbiota and stimulate immunity in a variety of species. In this study, three kinds of probiotics, namely, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Clostridium butyricum, were selected for the experiment. The results showed that the addition of three probiotics at a concentration of 108 colony forming unit/mL to the culture water significantly increased the ratio of the pellet feed recipients and survival rate of mandarin fish (Siniperca chuatsi) under pellet-feed feeding. In addition, the three kinds of probiotics reversed the decrease in serum lysozyme and immunoglobulin M content, the decrease in the activity of antioxidant enzymes glutathione and catalase and the decrease in the expression of the appetite-stimulating regulator agouti gene-related protein of mandarin fish caused by pellet-feed feeding. In terms of intestinal health, the three probiotics reduced the abundance of pathogenic bacteria Aeromonas in the gut microbiota and increased the height of intestinal villi and the thickness of foregut basement membrane of mandarin fish under pellet-feed feeding. In general, the addition of the three probiotics can significantly improve eating disorders of mandarin fish caused by pellet feeding.

Abstract Background Hypertrophic scarring (HS) is a severe disease, and results from unusual wound healing. Col1A1 could promote the hypertrophic scar formation, and the expression of Col1A1 in HS tissue was markedly higher than that in the normal. In present study, we aimed to identify miRNAs as post-transcriptional regulators of Col1A1 in HS. Methods MicroRNA-98 was selected as the key miRNA comprised in HS. The mRNA levels of miR-98 in HS tissues and the matched normal skin tissues were determined by qRT-PCR. MTT and flow cytometry were used to determine the influence of miR-98 on cell proliferation and apoptosis of HSFBs, respectively. Col1A1 was found to be the target gene of miR-98 using luciferase reporter assay. Luciferase assay was performed to determine the relative luciferase activity in mimic NC, miR-98 mimic, inhibitor NC and miR-98 inhibitor with Col1A13′-UTR wt or Col1A13′-UTR mt reporter plasmids. The protein expression of Col1A1 in HSFBs after transfection with mimic NC, miR-98 mimic, inhibitor NC and miR-98 inhibitor were determined by western blotting. Results The mRNA level of miR-98 in HS tissues was much lower than that in the control. Transfection of HSFBs with a miR-98 mimic reduced the cell viability of HSFBs and increased the apoptosis portion of HSFBs, while inhibition of miR-98 increased cell viability and decreased apoptosis portion of HSFBs. miR-98 inhibitor increased the relative luciferase activity significantly when cotransfected with the Col1A1-UTR reporter plasmid, while the mutant reporter plasmid abolished the miR-98 inhibitor-mediated increase in luciferase activity. Western blotting revealed that overexpression of miR-98 decreased the expression of Col1A1. Conclusions Overexpression of miR-98 repressed the proliferation of HSFBs by targeting Col1A1.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI)/angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) and calcium channel blocker (CCB) antihypertensive drugs on the treatment of hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and on the expression level of inflammatory factors, serum ferritin (SF), and serum substance P (SP). A total of 160 patients with hypertensive ICH were divided into three groups according to the type of antihypertensive drugs taken before cerebral hemorrhage: group A (40 cases, taking ACEI/ARB antihypertensive drugs before cerebral hemorrhage), group B (40 cases, CCB antihypertensive drugs were regularly taken before the onset of cerebral hemorrhage), and C group (80 cases, nor any antihypertensive drugs were regularly taken before the onset of cerebral hemorrhage). Patients in group C were further divided into two groups: group D (40 cases, ARB antihypertensive drugs were regularly taken after cerebral hemorrhage) and group E (40 cases, CCB antihypertensive drugs were regularly taken after cerebral hemorrhage). On the third day, after the onset of disease, the level of serum interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, SF, and SP in all the patients was detected. At the same time, the brain computed tomography (CT) was used to evaluate the cerebral edema. On the first day and the thirty day after the onset of disease, the patient’s neurological deficit status was assessed according to the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score. On the third day after onset, the levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, SF, and the volume of cerebral edema in group A and group B were significantly lower than those in group C ( P 0.05). On the third day after onset, the mortality of each group is of no significant difference ( P > 0.05). However, NIHSS scores in group A and group B were significantly lower than those in group C ( P 0.05). In conclusion, in the early stage of hypertensive ICH, early normative use of ACEI/ARB or CCB antihypertensive drugs can improve the prognosis of patients, whose mechanism may be related to the improvement of level of serum inflammatory factors and SP and SF.

At present, in the field of video-based human action recognition, deep neural networks are mainly divided into two branches: the 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) and 3D CNN. However, 2D CNN’s temporal and spatial feature extraction processes are independent of each other, which means that it is easy to ignore the internal connection, affecting the performance of recognition. Although 3D CNN can extract the temporal and spatial features of the video sequence at the same time, the parameters of the 3D model increase exponentially, resulting in the model being difficult to train and transfer. To solve this problem, this article is based on 3D CNN combined with a residual structure and attention mechanism to improve the existing 3D CNN model, and we propose two types of human action recognition models (the Residual 3D Network (R3D) and Attention Residual 3D Network (AR3D)). Firstly, in this article, we propose a shallow feature extraction module and improve the ordinary 3D residual structure, which reduces the parameters and strengthens the extraction of temporal features. Secondly, we explore the application of the attention mechanism in human action recognition and design a 3D spatio-temporal attention mechanism module to strengthen the extraction of global features of human action. Finally, in order to make full use of the residual structure and attention mechanism, an Attention Residual 3D Network (AR3D) is proposed, and its two fusion strategies and corresponding model structure (AR3D_V1, AR3D_V2) are introduced in detail. Experiments show that the fused structure shows different degrees of performance improvement compared to a single structure.

In this study, we demonstrated for the first time that a metal-containing semicrystalline polymer was used as an additive to mediate the thin film morphology of solution-grown, small-molecule organic semiconductors. By mixing polyferrocenylsilane (PFS) with an extensively-studied organic semiconductor 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS pentacene), PFS as a semicrystalline polymer independently forms nucleation and crystallization while simultaneously ameliorating diffusivity of the blend system and tuning the surface energies as a result of its partially amorphous property. We discovered that the resultant blend film exhibited a 6-fold reduction in crystal misorientation angle and a 3-fold enlargement in average grain width. Enhanced crystal orientation considerably reduces mobility variation, while minimized defects and trap centers located at grain boundaries lessen the adverse impact on the charge transport. Consequently, bottom-gate, top-contact organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) based on the TIPS pentacene/PFS mixture yielded a 40% increase in performance consistency (represented by the ratio of average mobility to the standard deviation of mobility). The PFS semicrystalline polymer-controlled crystallization can be used to regulate the thin film morphology of other high-performance organic semiconductors and shed light on applications in organic electronic devices.

With the synchronized development of computer and communication technology and the rapid rise and popularization of phase network technology, information application system has achieved a qualitative leap in breadth and depth. As a technical medium, virtual reality display provides a wedge machine for the development of different domains, including the ceramic domain. The employ of virtual reality technology to display ceramic products enable users to integrate into virtual products and virtual scenes, and interact with the exhibits in the scene at any time, which provides convenience for the display of ceramic products, thus promoting the development of ceramic industry and the spread of ceramic culture.

As the core equipment of a traction power supply system, the traction transformer is very important to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the system. At present, the three-ratio method is mainly used to distinguish transformer faults, whereas such a method has some defects, such as insufficient coding and over-general fault classification. At the same time, on-site maintenance personnel make an empirical judgment based on various test data, which is subjective and uncertain to a certain extent. For cases with multiple abnormal data and relatively complex conditions, on-site personnel often need to discuss and even dismantle the transformer to identify the fault, which is time-consuming and costly. In order to improve the effect of fault diagnosis for traction transformer, this paper uses Bayesian network to correlate the cause and effect of various tests and faults. By combining the results of field tests, the fault is diagnosed by the causal probability of the Bayesian network, rather than relying on the exception that occurred in a single experiment to judge its fault. The diagnosis results are more accurate and objective by using the Bayesian network. In this paper, the frequent test anomalies of the traction transformer are taken into account in the network, so that the network can more comprehensively analyze the operation situation of the traction transformer and judge the type of fault. According to field situations, based on the existing set of symptoms of the Bayesian network fault diagnosis, this paper further considers the insulation resistance, dielectric loss tangent value, oil and gas, power frequency voltage, and leakage current. By combining the association rules algorithm and the experience of the field operators, the cause–effect relationship of test data and the conditional probability parameters of the network are obtained. Then, the Bayesian network is constructed and used for traction transformer fault diagnosis. The case study shows that the four types of fault diagnosed using the Bayesian network model proposed in this paper are consistent with the fault types inspected by on-site operators, which shows promising engineering application prospects.

Melody extraction is an important task in music information retrieval community and it is unresolved due to the complex nature of real-world recordings. In this paper, the melody extraction problem is addressed in the extreme learning machine (ELM) framework. More specifically, the input musical signal is first pre-processed to mimic the human auditory system. The music features are then constructed by constant-Q transform (CQT), and the concentration strategy is introduced to make use of contextual information. Afterwards, the rough melody pitches are determined by ELM network, according to its pre-trained parameters. Finally, the rough melody pitches are fine-tuned by the spectral peaks around the frame-wise rough pitches. The proposed method can extract melody from polyphonic music efficiently and effectively, where pitch estimation and voicing detection are conducted jointly. Some experiments have been conducted based on three publicly available datasets. The experimental results reveal that the proposed method achieves higher overall accuracies with very fast speed.

High-density surface electromyography (HD-sEMG) and deep learning technology are becoming increasingly used in gesture recognition. Based on electrode grid data, information can be extracted in the form of images that are generated with instant values of multi-channel sEMG signals. In previous studies, image-based, two-dimensional convolutional neural networks (2D CNNs) have been applied in order to recognize patterns in the electrical activity of muscles from an instantaneous image. However, 2D CNNs with 2D kernels are unable to handle a sequence of images that carry information concerning how the instantaneous image evolves with time. This paper presents a 3D CNN with 3D kernels to capture both spatial and temporal structures from sequential sEMG images and investigates its performance on HD-sEMG-based gesture recognition in comparison to the 2D CNN. Extensive experiments were carried out on two benchmark datasets (i.e., CapgMyo DB-a and CSL-HDEMG). The results show that, where the same network architecture is used, 3D CNN can achieve a better performance than 2D CNN, especially for CSL-HDEMG, which contains the dynamic part of finger movement. For CapgMyo DB-a, the accuracy of 3D CNN was 1% higher than 2D CNN when the recognition window length was equal to 40 ms, and was 1.5% higher when equal to 150 ms. For CSL-HDEMG, the accuracies of 3D CNN were 15.3% and 18.6% higher than 2D CNN when the window length was equal to 40 ms and 150 ms, respectively. Furthermore, 3D CNN achieves a competitive performance in comparison to the baseline methods.

Recently, the research in solution-based, small-molecule organic semiconductors has achieved great progress, although their application in organic electronics devices is still restricted by a variety of issues, including crystal misorientation, morphological nonuniformity and low charge-carrier mobility. In order to overcome these issues, hybrid material systems that incorporate both organic semiconductors and additives have been successfully demonstrated to control crystal growth and charge transport of the organic semiconductors. In this work, we first review the recent advances in the charge-carrier mobility of the organic semiconductors, followed by a comparison of the different additives that have been reportedly blended with the semiconductors, including polymeric additives, small-molecule additives and nanoparticle based additives. Then we will review the important nanoparticles employed as additives to blend with solution-based, organic semiconductors, which effectively improved the semiconductor crystallization, enhanced film uniformity and increased charge transport. By discussing specific examples of various well-known organic semiconductors such as 6, 13-bis (triisopropylsilylethynyl) pentacene (TIPS pentacene), we demonstrate the essential relationship among the crystal growth, semiconductor morphology, dielectric properties, and charge-carrier mobilities. This work sheds light on the implementation of nanoparticle additives in high-performance organic electronics device application.