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Background It is well known that circadian rhythms and sleep homeostasis contribute to a pronounced trough in sleepiness and behavioral performance at night. However, the underlying neuroimaging mechanisms remain unclear. How brain-function connectivity is modulated during sleep deprivation (SD) has been rarely examined. Methods By increasing the number of scanning sessions during SD, the current study used voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) to investigate dynamic changes in interhemispheric communication during one night of SD. Every 2 hours from 10 pm to 06 am (session 1, 10 pm; session 2, 12 am; session 3, 2 am; session 4, 4 am; session 5, 6 am), functional magnetic resonance-imaging data and Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) scores were collected from 36 healthy participants with intermediate chronotype. Dynamic changes in SSS scores and VMHC were determined using one-way repeated-measure ANOVA with the false discovery-rate method to correct for multiple comparisons. Results Significant time effects for VMHC were found mainly in the bilateral thalamus, bilateral superior temporal gyrus, and bilateral precentral gyrus. SSS scores and VMHC in these areas were both found to be monotonously increased during SD. Furthermore, significant positive associations were found between SSS valu and VMHC values in the left superior temporal and right superior gyri. Conclusion These findings might represent the dynamic modulation of circadian rhythm merely or the interaction effects of both circadian rhythm and sleep homeostasis on interhemispheric connectivity within the thalamus, default-mode network, and sensorimotor network. Our study provides more comprehensive information on how SD regulates brain connectivity between hemispheres and adds new evidence of neuroimaging correlates of increased sleepiness after SD.

Background Recent progress in neuroscience research has provided evidence that schizophrenia is a disease that involves dysconnectivity of brain networks. Widespread gray matter loss was commonly observed but how these gray matter abnormalities are characterized at the large-scale network-level in schizophrenia, especially patients with first-episode (FE-SCZ) remains unclear. Methods In this study, gray matter structural network aberrations were investigated by applying structural covariance network analysis to 193 first episode schizophrenia patients and 178 age and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs). The mean gray matter volume in seed regions relating to eight specific networks (visual, auditory, sensorimotor, speech, semantic, default-mode, executive control, and salience) were extracted, and voxel-wise analyses of covariance were conducted to compare the association between whole-brain gray matter volume and each seed region for FE-SCZ and HCs. Results The auditory network was less extended in FE-SCZ compared with HCs, with a significant decrease in the structural association between the Hesch's gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. Hyperconnectivity was observed in executive control network with a significant increase in the structural association between the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and the superior frontal gyrus and supplementary motor area. Conclusion Our research shows that seed based structural covariance analysis can well characterize multiple large-scale networks, the observed changes might underly the hallucinations and cognitive impairments observed in FE-SCZ. Given that these patients were experiencing their first episode of schizophrenia, our findings suggest that such structural network deficits are present at an early stage in this disorder.

Endoscopic resection approaches, including endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection (STER) and endoscopic full-thickness resection (EFTR), have been widely used for the treatment of submucosal tumors (SMTs) located in the upper gastrointestinal tract. However, compared to SMTs located in the esophagus or stomach, endoscopic resection of SMTs from the esophagogastric junction (EGJ) is much more difficult because of the sharp angle and narrow lumen of the EGJ. SMTs originating from the muscularis propria (MP) in the EGJ, especially those that grow extraluminally and adhere closely to the serosa, make endoscopic resection even more difficult.To investigate the predictors of difficult endoscopic resection for SMTs from the MP layer at the EGJ.A total of 90 patients with SMTs from the MP layer at the EGJ were included in the present study. The difficulty of endoscopic resection was defined as a long procedure time, failure of en bloc resection and intraoperative bleeding. Clinicopathological, endoscopic and follow-up data were collected and analyzed. Statistical analysis of independent risks for piecemeal resection, long operative time, and intraoperative bleeding were assessed using univariate and multivariate analyses.According to the location and growth pattern of the tumor, 44 patients underwent STER, 14 patients underwent EFTR, and the remaining 32 patients received a standard ESD procedure. The tumor size was 20.0 mm (range 5.0-100.0 mm). Fourty-seven out of 90 lesions (52.2%) were regularly shaped. The overall en bloc resection rate was 84.4%. The operation time was 43 min (range 16-126 min). The intraoperative bleeding rate was 18.9%. There were no adverse events that required therapeutic intervention during or after the procedures. The surgical approach had no significant correlation with en bloc resection, long operative time or intraoperative bleeding. Large tumor size (≥ 30 mm) and irregular tumor shape were independent predictors for piecemeal resection (OR: 7.346,Endoscopic resection is an effective treatment for SMTs in the MP layer at the EGJ. Tumors with large size and irregular shape were independent predictors for difficult endoscopic resection.

Despite evidence of structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia, the current study aimed to explore the effects of antipsychotic treatment on gray matter (GM) volume using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and investigate the relationship between brain structure and treatment response. The GM volumes of 33 patients with first-episode schizophrenia were calculated with voxel-based morphometry (VBM), with 33 matched healthy controls. Longitudinal volume changes within subjects after 4-month antipsychotic treatment were also evaluated. Correlation between volumetric changes and clinical symptoms derived from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) were further investigated. Compared with healthy controls, decreased GM volumes in the frontal gyrus were observed in schizophrenia patients. After 4-month treatment, patients showed significantly decreased GM volume primarily in the bilateral frontal, temporal and left parietal brain regions. In addition, the GM volume changes of the left postcentral gyrus was positively correlated with negative symptoms improvement, and the correlation analysis revealed the total PANSS scores changes were associated with GM volume changes in the right inferior frontal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus. Besides, non-responders had reduced GM volume in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus and the right superior frontal gyrus compared with responders and healthy controls. Our results suggest that the abnormality in the right frontal gyrus exists in the early stage of schizophrenia. Moreover, the relationship between antipsychotics and structural changes was identified. The GM volume might have the potential to reflect the symptom improvement in schizophrenia patients. And MRI may assist in predicting the antipsychotic treatment response in first-episode schizophrenia patients.

Objective We aimed to evaluate the functional network properties in first-episode schizophrenia (SZ) patients at baseline and after 4-months treatment with second-generation antipsychotic drugs. Methods Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and graph theory approaches were utilized to evaluate the functional integration and segregation of brain networks in 36 first-episode patients (20 male/16 female) with SZ and 36 age and sex matched healthy controls (20 male/16 female). Results Compared with healthy controls, SZ at baseline showed lower clustering coefficient (Cp) and local network efficiency (Eloc), and this abnormal pattern was modulated with treatment of antipsychotic drugs at follow-up. Longitudinally, the increase of Cp was associated with the improvement of negative symptom. We found that the strength of functional connectivity between brain regions were significantly increased in three connections after treatment, mainly involving the frontal, parietal and occipital lobes. Conclusion The current study suggested that antipsychotic drugs could modulate the faulty local clustering of the functional connectome in SZ. Furthermore, Cp, the parameter that reflects local clustering of topological organization, demonstrated the potential to be a connectome-based biomarker of treatment response to second-generation antipsychotics in patients with SZ.

Objective To investigate nutritional treatment in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the mainland China. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in 116 ICUs of 118 mainland hospitals on April 26th, 2017. All patients of these ICUs were investigated at 0 o'clock on April 26th. Demographic and clinical parameters of those patients on April 25th (the investigation day) were recorded, including the dates of hospitalization, ICU admission and nutrition initiation and clinical outcome on 28 days after the investigation day. Results A total of 1953 patients were collected, including 631 females and 1306 males. The mean age was (64.1±19.3) years old (1950 cases). The means of Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation Ⅱ (APACHEⅡ) scores were (10.76±4.35)(1749 cases), (5.65±3.52)(1783 cases), (17.14±7.31)(1792 cases), respectively. The outcomes of 28 days after the investigation day were 1483 survivors (75.9%), 312 non-survivors (16.0%) and 158 cases (8.1%) being lost to follow-up. There were no significant differences between the males and the females in age, severity of disease and clinical outcomes of 28 days but in height and weight. There were 73.7%(1440 cases) of patients with normal or mildly injured gastrointestinal function, 10.8%(210 cases) with moderately or severely injured function, 1.7%(33 cases) with gastrointestinal failure and 13.2%(258 cases) without evaluation. To the investigation day, enteral nutrition (EN) had been initiated in 69.4%(1356 cases) of patients and parenteral nutrition (PN) in 36.4%(711 cases) of patients. There were 1720(88.1%) patients with EN administration on the investigation day. The proportion of patients with nausea, vomit/regurgitation, aspiration, abdominal pain, abdominal distention and diarrhea was 4.8%(93 cases), 5.4%(105 cases), 0.9%(17 cases), 8.7%(170 cases), 27.5%(538 cases) and 4.3%(84 cases) respectively, while that of patients using EN was 3.1%(40 cases), 4.25%(54 cases), 0.79%(10 cases), 4.41%(56 cases), 26.85%(341 cases) and 5.43%(69 cases) correspondingly. The proportion of cases starting EN within 24, 48 and 72 hours after ICU entry was 22.4%(437/1953), 38.6%(754/1953) and 46.6%(911/1953), respectively. The proportion of cases receiving ≥80% estimated energy target (=past body weight ×25 kcal/kg.d) within 3, 7 and 14 days after ICU entry was 12.9%(78/607), 18.7%(189/1010) and 23%(305/1325) respectively, while that of cases with EN was 9.9%(60/607), 15.0%(151/1010) and 18.6%(246/1325) correspondingly. Conclusions Nowadays, most of patients in the mainland ICUs receive nutrition therapy and the EN usage rate is much higher than the PN rate. However, the time of EN initiation and the target-reaching rate of energy are suboptimal and an individualized plan of nutrition therapy is still missing. Details of energy delivery still need to be improved. DOI: 10.11855/j.issn.0577-7402.2019.05.05

OBJECTIVES: Our previous study has found that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) inhibited inflammation in rats with esophagitis. This study was aimed to observe the protective effect of n-3 PUFAs on esophageal epithelial cells against acid damage and to explore its mechanism. METHODS: Human esophageal epithelial cells (Het-1A) were repeatedly treated with acidified medium (pH 5.0) and PUFAs with different ratios of n-6/n-3 (9:1, 3:1, 1:1 and 1:3, respectively), and Nrf2 agonists or inhibitors were used to assess the role of Nrf2 in mechanism of n-3 PUFAs. Western Blot and Quantitative Real-time PCR (qPCR) were used to assess the expression of Nrf2, NLRP3 and caspase-1. IL-1β, IL-18 and LDH levels in cell culture supernatants were detected by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), while pyroptosis was assessed by caspase-1 and TUNEL double staining. RESULTS: Compared with the normal group, the level of MDA was increased after acid intervention, while that of SOD was decreased (P 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: N-3 PUFAs protected esophageal epithelial cells from acid damage through upregulating Nrf2, which therefore disrupted oxidative stress and NLRP3 inflammasome activation, and then resulted in pyroptosis inhibition. FUNDING SOURCES: This study was supported by the Science Foundation of the Fujian Province, China(Grant No. 2019J01447).

Nowadays, the design of tourism cultural and creative products based on regional cultural characteristics has gradually occupied the market. On the basis of ordinary cultural and creative product design, shoe mountain cultural creation can also cover certain cultural value, artistic value, commercial value and inheritance value. This paper is based on Hukou shoe mountain as a tourist resort, combined with the local historical background, customs, cultural heritage, geographical features and other elements to start, the unique characteristics of shoe mountain, Design and research of electronic cultural and creative products through computer aided means.

The purpose of writing this paper. Through the in-depth understanding and value analysis of Mo Gao Grottoe at Dunhuang culture, as well as the analysis of the design of daily furniture — —according to hangers, the comparison of product types and the current situation of development, this paper tries to do a good job in the study of integrating Dunhuang cultural symbols with furniture design. How to write this paper. The first is to study the development of Dunhuang culture and the types of murals represented by Mogao Grottoes culture through historical literature exploration and research, and the second is to investigate and analyze the clothes hangers and compare the existing clothes hangers. Through these two methods, the shortcomings of existing hangers are found and the necessity of innovative design of hangers is put forward. The third is to integrate Dunhuang culture with clothes hanger through semiotics in order to better spread Dunhuang culture and let more people understand the depth of Chinese traditional culture. Fourth, through the method of computer-aided design, the product modeling, the determination of the scale, color collocation, design deliberation, refining and finally according to the semiotics and formal beauty law to come up with a computer-aided scheme. Write the conclusion of this paper. According to the interpretation and analysis of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes culture combined with the current situation of social shortcomings of clothes hangers, the two are combined by semiotics research method to help people understand the connotation of Chinese traditional culture in their daily life.

This paper describes the status and attention of artificial intelligence technology in the international academic and industrial circles, as well as the classification and appearance characteristics of wearable products. This paper analyzes the correlation between artificial intelligence technology and product applicability, and discusses the combination method of wearable products and artificial intelligence technology. Through the research on the appearance design of wearable products and the aesthetic analysis of wearable backpacks, an intelligent assisted wearable backpack with product aesthetic characteristics was designed by using design practice. The design not only meets the functional requirements of the product, but also meets the visual aesthetic requirements, which makes the design not only integrates artificial intelligence technology, but also conforms to formal aesthetics.

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is an inherited disease, with the familial risk being among the most important factors when evaluating an individual’s risk for SCZ. However, robust imaging biomarkers for the disease that can be used for diagnosis and determination of the prognosis are lacking. Here, we explore the potential of functional connectivity (FC) for use as a biomarker for the early detection of high-risk first-degree relatives (FDRs). Thirty-eight first-episode SCZ patients, 38 healthy controls (HCs), and 33 FDRs were scanned using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The subjects’ brains were parcellated into 200 regions using the Craddock atlas, and the FC between each pair of regions was used as a classification feature. Multivariate pattern analysis using leave-one-out cross-validation achieved a correct classification rate of 88.15% [sensitivity 84.06%, specificity 92.18%, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) 0.93] for differentiating SCZ patients from HCs. FC located within the default mode, frontal-parietal, auditory, and sensorimotor networks contributed mostly to the accurate classification. The FC patterns of each FDR were input into each classification model as test data to obtain a corresponding prediction label (a total of 76 individual classification scores), and the averaged individual classification score was then used as a robust measure to characterize whether each FDR showed an SCZ-type or HC-type FC pattern. A significant negative correlation was found between the average classification scores of the FDRs and their semantic fluency scores. These findings suggest that FC combined with a machine learning algorithm could help to predict whether FDRs are likely to show an SCZ-specific or HC-specific FC pattern.

Objective The symptom-related neurobiology characteristic of schizophrenia in the brain from a network perspective is still poorly understood, leading to a lack of potential biologically-based markers and difficulty identifying therapeutic targets. We aim to test the dysregulated cross-network interactions among the Salience Network (SN), Central Executive Network (CEN) and Default Mode Network (DMN) and how they contributed to different symptoms in schizophrenia patients. Methods We examined network interactions among the SN, CEN and DMN in 76 patients with schizophrenia vs. 80 well-matched controls using dynamic causal modeling (DCM). We further analyzed the relation between network dynamics and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results We observed that the DMN, CEN and SN across healthy controls and schizophrenia patients showed several similarities within or between-network pattern in the resting state. Comparing schizophrenia to controls, SN-centered cross-network interactions were most significantly reduced. Crucially, the strength of connections from CEN subnetwork 1 to DMN subnetwork 1 was positively correlated with the Positive Score of PANSS. The connection from the DMN subnetwork 2 to CEN subnetwork 2 was negatively correlated with the Negative Score of PANSS. Conclusions Our study provides strong evidence for the dysregulation among SN, CEN and DMN in a triple-network perspective in schizophrenia. The connection between DMN and CEN could be clinically-relevant neurobiological signature of schizophrenia symptoms. Our study indicated that the description of brain triple network hypothesis could be a novel and possible bio-marker for schizophrenia.

Zhu Y, Ren F, Zhu Y, et al. Nat Sci Sleep. 2020;12:1067–1074. The authors have advised that the name of last author on page1067 is incorrect. Mingwen Zheng should be Minwen Zheng. The authors apologize for this error. Read the original article

The smart grid frequently collects consumers’ fine-grained power usage data through smart meters to facilitate various applications, such as billing, load monitoring, regional statistics, and demand response. However, the smart meter reading streams may also pose severe privacy threats to the consumers by leaking their appliances’ ON/OFF status. In this paper, we first quantitatively measure the information leakage with respect to specific appliances’ status from any reading stream, and define a novel privacy notion to bound such information leakage. In addition, we propose a privacy preserving streaming algorithm with different options to effectively convert readings and promptly stream safe readings in different fashions. The output time series readings satisfy our privacy notion while guaranteeing excellent utility, such as extremely low aggregation errors and billing errors. Finally, we experimentally validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach using real data sets.

The goal of the study was to investigate cerebral blood flow (CBF) and its connectivity (an across-subject covariance measure) patterns of schizophrenia (SZ) patients with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). A total of demographically matched 25 SZ patients with AVHs, 25 without AVHs, and 25 healthy controls (HCs) underwent resting state perfusion imaging using a pulsed arterial spin labeling sequence. CBF and its connectivity were analyzed and then CBF topological properties were calculated. AVHs patients exhibited decreased CBF in the bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri and postcentral gyri, and right supplementary motor area compared with SZ patients without AVHs. SZ patients without AVHs showed reduced CBF in the left middle frontal gyrus relative to HCs. Moreover, AVHs groups showed distinct connectivity pattern, an intermediate level between HCs and patients without AVHs in the global efficiency. Our study demonstrates aberrant CBF in the brain regions associated with inner speech monitoring and language processing in SZ patients with AVHs. The complex network measures showed by CBF-derived functional connectivity indicate dysconnectivity between different functional units within the network of AVHs in SZ. Our findings might shed light on the neural underpinnings behind AVHs in this devastating disease at the level of CBF and its connectivity.

Investigations of brain structure in schizophrenia using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have identified variations in regional grey matter (GM) volume throughout the brain but the results are mixed. This study aims to investigate whether the inconsistent voxel-based morphometry (VBM) findings in schizophrenia are due to the use of different software packages. T1 MRI images were obtained from 86 first-episode schizophrenia (FESZ) patients and 86 age- and gender-matched Healthy controls (HCs). VBM analysis was carried out using FMRIB software library (FSL) 5.0 and statistical parametric mapping 8 (SPM8). All images were processed using the default parameter settings as provided by these software packages. FSL-VBM revealed widespread GM volume reductions in FESZ patients compared with HCs, however, for SPM-VBM, only increased and circumscribed GM volume changes were found, both software revealed increased GM volume within cerebellum. Significant correlations between Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and GM volume were mainly found in frontal regions. Algorithms of GM tissue segmentation, image registration and statistical strategies might contribute to these disparate results.

Nutrition therapy is considered an important treatment of burn patients. The aim of the study was to delineate the nutritional support in severe burn patients and to investigate association between nutritional practice and clinical outcomes. Severe burn patients were enrolled (n 100). In 90 % of the cases, the burn injury covered above 70 % of the total body surface area. Mean interval from injury to nutrition start was 2·4 (sd 1·1) d. Sixty-seven patients were initiated with enteral nutrition (EN) with a median time of 1 d from injury to first feed. Twenty-two patients began with parenteral nutrition (PN). During the study, thirty-two patients developed EN intolerance. Patients received an average of about 70 % of prescribed energy and protein. Patients with EN providing

In recent years, with the use of mobile phone APPs, more and more people like to use tourism APPs when traveling, and the tourism industry also enters a new era of wireless tourism. College students are a huge tourist group. This paper will summarize an APP suitable for students’ tourism through the analysis of tourism APPs and tourist groups. This APP will make travel plans based on the student’s time, including travel time, travel residence, travel strategy, travel expenses, tour groups, etc. It also includes working with schools and local police to keep students safe. There should be such an APP for student travel to make it convenient for students to travel, enrich their university experience, and make student travel safer and more convenient.

With the development of the times and the promotion of technology, people’s living standards and aesthetic requirements have also been continuously improved. Intelligent design enables jewelry to break through its position in the traditional sense It is no longer limited to the handmade production of precious metals. Intelligent design can also be applied to jewelry design. The unlimited choice of materials allows designers to have greater design space and imagination. With the development of fashion trends, jewelry as a kind of decoration, in another way shows the personal quality of life and life attitude. Therefore, the more diversified forms of jewelry design are eclectic, and the pursuit of higher levels and more comprehensive forms to create fashionable and personalized products.

Heterogeneous findings across studies of structural abnormality in schizophrenia (SZ) have impeded the development a unified theory of white matter pathology. As a cardinal symptom of SZ, auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) has been suspected to be associated with improper communication among several brain regions, which might indicated white matter pathology. Participants comprised 25 first-episode (FE) patients with AVH, 25 patients without AVH and 25 healthy subjects. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures were calculated using the TBSS of FSL. Voxel-based ANOVA tests were performed among the three groups and threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) method correction was used for multiple comparisons. Voxel-based one-way ANOVA showed significant group effects for fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) values. Post-hoc t-tests indicated that schizophrenia patients had lower FA and higher RD values in the internal capsule and anterior corona radiata than control subjects. Post-hoc analyses exhibited more widespread fiber disruptions in AVH patients than non-AVH patients. These results hinted on the important role of projection fiber disruption in schizophrenia patients. In addition, the current study also suggested that direct comparison between studies using patients with different symptom profiles should be interpreted with caution.

Abnormal expression of Retinoid X Receptor α (RXRα) seems to be a frequent incident in a variety of cancers. However, the expression pattern and the mechanisms in gastric carcinoma (GC) remain unclear.In GC tissues and cell lines, the expression levels of RXRα mRNA and protein were detected by Q-PCR and Western blot, respectively; the localization of RXRα was evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) or immunocytochemistry (ICC). The effect of IL-1β on RXRα expression and localization was detected by Western blot and ICC. Nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway was assessed via Western blot.RXRα expression was markedly elevated at both mRNA and protein levels in GC tissues and cell lines (all P0.05). The abnormal overexpression of RXRα was predominantly visualized in cytoplasm. IL-1β significantly induced cytoplasmic expression of RXRα in a time-dependent manner. Co-incubation with IL-1β enhanced phospho-IKKα (p-IKKα) expression and this effect could be inhibited by the specific inhibitor for NF-κB (all P0.01).IL-1β upregulated RXRα through activation of NF-κB signaling and these suggested a possible clinic significance of retinoid receptor expression in the diagnosis and treatment of GC.

BACKGROUND: The aim of the study was to identify the clinical features and the factors associated with burn induced mortality among young adults after exposure to indoor explosion and fire. METHODS: This is an observational study which included burn patients who were admitted to eighteen ICUs after a fire disaster. Epidemiologic and clinical characteristics, as well as therapy were recorded. The primary outcome was 90-day mortality. The mortality-related factors were also analyzed. RESULTS: There were 167 burn patients enrolled in the study, the median age was 38 years, 62 (37.1%) patients died within 90 days. Seventy-one percent of patients had a burn size ≥90% TBSA, and 73.7% of patients had a full-thickness burn area above 50% TBSA. The survivors had lower Baux scores, and received earlier escharectomy and autologous skin grafts. The 50% mortality rates (LA50s) for burn size and full-thickness burn area were 95.8% and 88.6% TBSA, respectively. The multivariate analysis showed that full-thickness burn area over 50% TBSA and residual burned surface area (RBSA)/TBSA at 28 days were strong predictors of mortality among burn patients (odds ratio 2.55; 95% CI, 1.01 to 6.44, P=0.047; odds ratio 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04 to 1.09, P

Summary To date, increasing number of entities on the smart grid begin to establish their local energy generator for ensuring reliability and resilience of power supply. These ‘microgrids’ can either connect to the power grid or isolate themselves from the grid by consuming their locally generated or stored energy. In reality, some microgrids may have excessive energy while the others may have to request extra energy from the main grid. To better balance the demand and supply of the distributed smart microgrids, it is desired to develop peer-to-peer (P2P) energy exchange models that enable microgrids to interactively exchange their local energy instead of consuming energy delivered from the main grid. However, in this scenario, all the microgrids have to disclose their private information (e.g., demand load and energy storage amount) to each other in the exchange. To tackle these issues, in this paper, we first formulate several novel energy exchange optimization problems that minimize the global energy loss during the exchange in different scenarios, and then develop an efficient and privacy-preserving scheme to solve the energy exchange optimization problems without private information disclosure. We also extend the privacy-preserving scheme to a collusion-resistant scheme in which all the microgrids cannot learn any additional information through colluding with each other. The performance of our proposed approaches is experimentally validated on real microgrid data. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Data owners are expected to disclose micro-data for research, analysis, and various other purposes. In disclosing micro-data with sensitive attributes, the goal is usually two fold. First, the data utility of disclosed data should be maximized for analysis purposes. Second, the private information contained in such data must be to an acceptable level. Typically, a disclosure algorithm evaluates potential generalization functions in a predetermined order, and then discloses the first generalization that satisfies the desired privacy property. Recent studies show that adversarial inferences using knowledge about such disclosure algorithms can usually render the algorithm unsafe. In this paper, we show that an existing unsafe algorithm can be transformed into a large family of safe algorithms, namely, k-jump algorithms. We then prove that the data utility of different k-jump algorithms is generally incomparable. The comparison of data utility is independent of utility measures and syntactic privacy models. Finally, we analyze the computational complexity of k-jump algorithms, and confirm the necessity of safe algorithms even when a secret choice is made among algorithms.

Objective To explore predictors of the 6-month clinical outcome of thalamic hemorrhage, and evaluate if minimally invasive thalamic hematoma drainage (THD) could improve its prognosis. Methods A total of 54 patients with spontaneous thalamic hemorrhage were evaluated retrospectively. Clinical data, including demographics, stroke risk factors, neuroimaging variables, Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) on admission, surgical strategy, and outcome, were collected. Clinical outcome was assessed using a modified Rankin Scale, six months after onset. Univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed to determine predictors of a poor outcome. Results Conservative treatment was performed for five patients (9.3%), external ventricular drainage (EVD) for 20 patients (37.0%), THD for four patients (7.4%), and EVD combined with THD for 25 patients (46.3%). At six months after onset, 21 (38.9%) patients achieved a favorable outcome, while 33 (61.1%) had a poor outcome. In the univariate analysis, predictors of poor 6-month outcome were lower GCS on admission (P = 0.001), larger hematoma volume (P < 0.001), midline shift (P = 0.035), acute hydrocephalus (P = 0.039), and no THD (P = 0.037). The independent predictors of poor outcome, according to the multivariate logistic regression analysis, were no THD and larger hematoma volume. Conclusions Minimally invasive THD, which removes most of the hematoma within a few days, with limited damage to perihematomal brain tissue, improved the 6-month outcome of thalamic hemorrhage. Thus, THD can be widely applied to treat patients with thalamic hemorrhage.

Web-based applications are gaining popularity as they require less client-side resources, and are easier to deliver and maintain. On the other hand, web applications also pose new security and privacy challenges. In particular, recent research revealed that many high profile web applications might cause sensitive user inputs to be leaked from encrypted traffic due to side-channel attacks exploiting unique patterns in packet sizes and timing. Moreover, existing solutions, such as random padding and packet-size rounding, were shown to incur prohibitive overhead while still failing to guarantee sufficient privacy protection. In this paper, we first observe an interesting similarity between this privacy-preserving traffic padding (PPTP) issue and another well studied problem, privacy-preserving data publishing (PPDP). Based on such a similarity, we present a formal PPTP model encompassing the privacy requirements, padding costs, and padding methods. We then formulate PPTP problems under different application scenarios, analyze their complexity, and design efficient heuristic algorithms. Finally, we confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithms by comparing them to existing solutions through experiments using real-world web applications.

The small structures can directly affect the admissibility of the coal seam, the mining schedule, cost and safety. Seismic attributes extracted from seismic data can be used to identify small structures; However, geophysical methods often have multiple solutions, this will make the results of interpretation become unreliable. In this paper we will use image fusion technology to fuse a variety of seismic attributes, and then make full use of the complementarity of different attributes to reduce the multiple solutions, and make the seismic attributes more accurately in predicting small structures in coalmine.

The conventional inversion can only get P-impedance data, but neural network inversion can obtain various kinds of well-log attributes data by getting the nonlinear relationship through training the data of seismic attributes and well-log attributes, and then apply the nonlinear relationship to the whole seismic data volume. In this paper, we use multilayer feed forward neural network, probability neural network and radial basis function neural network to carry out the log-density inversion research, and obtain three pseudo density data volumes. We compare the effect of the inversion results and analysis the density distribution in spatial domain through section and slice data, at last we predict the stability of the coal seam’s floor in more reasonable way.

SnO2/Al2O3 supports with different SnO2 loadings were prepared by using a deposition–precipitation method and characterized by using N2 and CO adsorption–desorption, XRD, H2 temperature-programmed reduction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy techniques. SnO2 dispersed finely on the Al2O3 surface with a capacity of 0.172 mmol 100 m−2, which equals 6.4 % SnO2 loading. Below this loading, no crystalline SnO2 can be detected owing to the formation of the sub-monolayer- or monolayer-dispersed SnO2 phase. Crystalline SnO2 can be observed only if the SnO2 loading reaches 9 %. With use of these SnO2/Al2O3 supports, all prepared Pd/SnO2/Al2O3 catalysts demonstrate increased activity compared to Pd/SnO2 and Pd/Al2O3 owing to the presence of more active oxygen species on SnO2/Al2O3 supports as well as their higher surface areas, which improve Pd dispersion. This result indicates that with SnO2/Al2O3 supports, less amount of Pd can be used to obtain catalysts with competitive performance.

Nickel is widely used as a bleaching element in white gold alloys, but it is a potential allergen. In this paper, a popular 18 KW gold alloy, often called “safe nickel,” was chosen as the experimental material; its nickel release rates under six different processing conditions were evaluated according to the EN1811 standard. The results reveal that both the surface processing method and heat treatment technology significantly affect the nickel release rate. A coarse surface releases more nickel ions than a smooth surface. The sample normalized at 700 °C in the single region has a lower nickel release rate than the one treated at 550 °C in the two-phase phase region, while high temperature normalizing at 800 °C will accelerate it. All the measured nickel release rates of the experimental material under various processing conditions exceed the permitted threshold value in the Nickel Directive, which indicates that there exists the potential risk of nickel-induced allergy when it is used to make jewelries, especially for piercing types. The surface topography of W4 sample after soaking in artificial sweat for one week, there are a large number of corrosion pits on the surface, which shows that the material under sand blasting is subjected to serious corrosion, and the nickel release rate will be accelerated.