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BackgroundSubthreshold depression (sD) negatively impacts well-being and psychosocial function and is more prevalent compared with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, as adults with sD are less likely to seek face-to-face intervention, internet-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (ICBT) may overcome barriers of accessibility to psychotherapy. Although several trials explored the efficacy of ICBT for sD, the results remain inconsistent. This study evaluated whether ICBT is effective in reducing depressive symptoms among Chinese adults with sD.MethodsA randomized controlled trial was performed. The participants were randomly assigned to 5 weeks of ICBT, group-based face-to-face cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), or a waiting list (WL). Assessments were conducted at baseline, post-intervention and at a 6-month follow-up. The primary outcome measured depressive symptoms using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Outcomes were analyzed using a mixed-effects model to assess the effects of ICBT.ResultsICBT participants reported greater reductions on all the outcomes compared to the WL group at post-intervention. The ICBT group showed larger improvement on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) at post-intervention (d= 0.12) and at follow-up (d= 0.10), and with CES-D at post-intervention (d= 0.06), compared to the CBT group.ConclusionsICBT is effective in reducing depressive symptoms among Chinese adults with sD, and improvements in outcomes were sustained at a 6-month follow-up. Considering the low rates of face-to-face psychotherapy, our findings highlight the considerable potential and implications for the Chinese government to promote the use of ICBT for sD in China.

Ceramic/fiber composite armor is a hot research topic of bulletproof equipment. The lightweight design of ceramic materials and structures has attracted much attention. In this work, in the light of the remarkable performance of ceramic against elastic and oblique penetration, a novel honeycomb ceramic panel with a hexagonal prism and spherical body was designed. The splicing ceramic/fiber composite plate was bonded with a PE plate. The splicing ceramic/fiber composite was prepared, and the target test of the composite was conducted. The results show that the bulletproof performance of the hexagonal prism spherical crown ceramic/fiber composite plate is better than that of the conventional ceramic/fiber composite plate of the same thickness. The honeycomb spherical crown structure of the ceramic surface can convert the nominal forward penetration into the actual oblique penetration. This surface structure provides an effective lightweight design of ceramic/fiber composite armor.

Purpose: To explore the effects of octreotide (OCT) on oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis in hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R)-induced cerebral infarction.Methods: The in vitro model of cerebral infarction was established by treating N2A cells with hypoxia for 4 h and reoxygenation for 24 h. The viability of N2A cells was determined by CCK-8 assay. The cells were divided into 3 groups: control group, H/R group, and H/R+OCT group. The cells in H/R+OCT group were pretreated with OCT (60 ng/mL) before H/R treatment. The oxidative stress of N2A cells were assessed by determining the levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx), catalase (CAT), reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA). Inflammation of N2A cells was evaluated by evaluating the levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8, while the apoptosis of N2A cells was assessed by flow cytometry. Western blot analysis was used to determine the expression of Bcl-2, Bax, TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB.Results: Octreotide treatment significantly reduced the level of oxidative stress. The inflammation of N2A cells caused by hypoxia/reoxygenation was inhibited by treatment with octreotide. Apoptosis of N2A cells was also inhibited by octreotide treatment. Hypoxia/reoxygenation activated TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB signaling pathway, while octreotide inhibits the activation of this pathway.Conclusion: The results reveal that octreotide inhibits hypoxia/reoxygenation-induced oxidative stress,as well as the inflammation, and apoptosis of N2A cells by inhibiting TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB signaling pathway. Thus, these findings may provide new insights into the treatment of cerebral infarction.

Benzodiazepine-receptor agonists (BZRAs), including benzodiazepines (BZDs) and drugs related to BZDs (Z-drugs), are commonly used for anxiety, but often have side effects. We retrospectively investigated the utilization and prescription characteristics of BZRAs for patients with anxiety disorders in a large tertiary care general hospital between 2018 and 2021, based on electronic healthcare records. We also examined the pattern of simultaneous consumption of multiple BZRA drugs, and the diseases coexisting with anxiety that are associated with this. The numbers of patients and BZRA prescriptions increased over the 4 years. Moreover, 7195 prescriptions from 694 patients contained two or more BZRAs, of which 78.08% contained both BZDs and Z-drugs, 19.78% contained multiple BZDs, and 2.14% contained multiple Z-drugs. For anxiety patients with concomitant Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, and dyslipidemia, they were more likely to consume multiple BZRAs simultaneously, whereas patients with concomitant insomnia, depression, hypertension, diabetes, or tumors were less likely to consume multiple BZRAs (all p < 0.05). Furthermore, older patients who consume multiple BZRAs simultaneously may have higher probabilities of long-term drug use. Better interventions supporting standardized BZD utilization may be needed to minimize the side effects of inappropriate BZRA administration.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an effective treatment for major depression (MD). We retrospectively analyzed the efficacy of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) combined with low-frequency rTMS (LF-rTMS) on the right DLPFC as an additional therapy to standard medication treatment.The study included 54 patients with MD who completed 10 courses (5 days per week) of rTMS as an add-on therapy. Thirty patients were treated in the combination group (120% resting motor threshold; left DLPFC, iTBS, 600 stimuli + right DLPFC, 1-Hz rTMS, 600 stimuli), while 24 patients were in the high-frequency rTMS (HF-rTMS) group (120% resting motor threshold; left DLPFC, 10-Hz rTMS, 3000 stimuli). The outcome was assessed based on the changes in scores of 24-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-24) and 14-item Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA-14).Both depression and anxiety were significantly improved after 2 weeks of treatment by rTMS combined with medication. The combination of iTBS and LF-rTMS was significantly superior to HF-rTMS in improving the scores of HAMD-24 (The pilot study showed that the combination of iTBS and LF-rTMS may hold promise as a potentially effective alternative therapy for MD due to its efficacy and time-saving benefit. The preliminary results shed light on the study of the efficacy and acceptability of the combination of iTBS and LF-rTMS for MD.

In the present research mixed strains of Bacillus subtilis, Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used for solid state fermentation of tea residue. Fermentation conditions were optimized using response surface methodology as: temperature 29.24%, water content 54.14%, fermentation time 5.58 days, B. subtilis: A. niger: S. cerevisiae inoculum ratio 1:1:2. At optimal conditions there was a significant increase in crude protein (CP), the reducing sugar, cellulose activity of 19.32%, 39.5%, 33.3% respectively in comparison with pre-fermentation.

The major objective of this study conducted for 8 weeks was to investigate the influence of different carbohydrate levels in the feed on the digestion and tissue structure of snakeheads (Channa argus) with prolonged feeding time. The control (CT) group was fed chilled fish, and the experimental groups were fed flour as a carbohydrate source to prepare puffed feed containing 13%, 16% and 19% flour (WS13, WS16 and WS19 respectively). The results demonstrated that carbohydrate levels in the feed had significant effects on amylase activity in the intestinal segment and Na+, K+‐ATPase activity in the stomach (p

BackgroundPatients with the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have different degrees of psychological pain, such as anxiety and depression, which may related to their prognosis. Psychological intervention can be conducted in different ways to improve psychological pain and improve the treatment effect.ObjectiveThe present study aimed to investigate and analyze the psychological status of patients with COVID-19 during the course of illness, and to evaluate the effect and influencing factors of psychological crisis intervention, so as to explore the effective mode of clinical psychological intervention in acute patients under isolation environment.MethodsA total of 143 persons participated in the study, including 26 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in the isolation ward (COVID-19 group), 87 patients with general pneumonia in the observation ward (General Pneumonia group) and 30 healthy volunteers (Normal group). All the patients in the ward received comprehensive psychological intervention, including telephone psychological counseling (active and passive), self-adjustment of written materials and one-to-one psychological crisis intervention. Hamilton depression scale (HAMD) and Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA) were used to evaluate the mental health status of all patients on the day of admission and 1 week after treatment.ResultsThe scores of HAMA and HAMD of all patients (including isolation ward and observation ward) were significantly higher than the healthy volunteers at the time of admission. The total score of HAMA and HAMD in CVOID-19 group were both higher than that General Pneumonia group. After 1 week’s hospitalization with comprehensive psychological intervention, the scores of HAMA and HAMD in CVOID-19 group were significantly decreased.ConclusionPatients those who diagnosed with COVID-19 in the isolation ward and/or general pneumonia in observation ward have different degrees of anxiety, depression and sleep problems. While receiving antiviral treatment, patients also need psychological intervention. Comprehensive psychological intervention model has been proved to be effective.

Improving quality of areca nut is a critical problem for manufacturers. A steam experimental explosion device has been developed. An areca nut processing technology was optimized by using the orthogonal experiment method. In which, the processing parameters including pressure, processing time and temperature, were taken by three factors. Each factor selected three levels and nine groups of orthogonal experiments were carried out. The volume expansion rate of the sample was taken as evaluation standard; the best treatment scheme is obtained through optimization. The experimental results showed that the equipment shortened soaking time of normal process, orthogonal experiment reduced the number of experiments, and orthogonal experiment accelerated the application speed. Products will meet the use requirements of customers.

The major objective of this study conducted for 7 weeks was to investigate the influence of supplementation with multienzyme complex and probiotic and their interaction effects on the growth performance, body composition, serum biochemical parameters and gut microorganism composition of snakehead (Channa argus). There were four treatments in this experiment coded as control, probiotic (Bacillus amyloliquefaciens), multienzyme (amylase, acid protease and papain) and pro‐multi (B. amyloliquefaciens and amylase, acid protease and papain), respectively. The results demonstrated that snakeheads on the multienzyme resulted in better growth performance in terms of final body weight (FBW), weight gain ratio (WGR) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) significantly (p 0.05) on probiotic and pro‐multi. Snakeheads receiving multienzyme increased significantly (p

Diagnosis for rod pumping systems usually requires special instruments used on the surface and the bottom of the well. The need for these external instrumentation increases the cost and complexity of rod pumping system and reduces system reliability. To solve this problem, since significant information about properties of rod pumping system is hidden in instantaneous terminal parameters of the induction motor, this paper establishes a practical parameter estimator that combines the T-type equivalent circuit model of an induction motor and the "four bar linkage" model of beam pumping unit. With this practical model, by measuring the terminal characteristics of the induction motor driving beam pumping unit, the surface dynamometer card is acquired in order to identify oil well properties. The practical application in oil fields proved the effectiveness and practicability of the parameter estimator in this paper.

The motivation of this work is to help outpatients find their corresponding departments or clinics, thus, it needs to provide indoor positioning services with a room-level accuracy. Unlike wireless outdoor localization that is dominated by the global positioning system (GPS), wireless indoor localization is still an open issue. Many different schemes are being developed to meet the increasing demand for indoor localization services. In this paper, we investigated the AoA-based wireless indoor localization for outpatients&rsquo, wayfinding in a hospital, where Wi-Fi access points (APs) are deployed, in line, on the ceiling. The target position can be determined by a mobile device, like a smartphone, through an efficient geometric calculation with two known APs coordinates and the angles of the incident radios. All possible positions in which the target may appear have been comprehensively investigated, and the corresponding solutions were proven to be the same. Experimental results show that localization error was less than 2.5 m, about 80% of the time, which can satisfy the outpatients&rsquo, requirements for wayfinding.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and characteristics of Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) in a group of Chinese older patients and to study whether CBS is associated with rapid eye movement behavior disorder (RBD). Methods: Four hundred and thirty-two consecutive patients aged 60 years and above were asked a standardized question to determine if they hadsymptomsofCBS.Iftheyrespondedpositively,adetailedquestionnairewasorallyadministeredtoinquireintothedetailsofthesymptoms. Results: There were 238 men (55.1%) and 194 women (44.9%). Six (1.4%) patients of 432 had hallucinations attributable to CBS. The clinical characteristics of CBS hallucinations are quite variable between patients. No patient was pathologically confirmed to have RBD. Conclusion: This is the first report on the epidemiology of CBS in mainland China. CBS is not uncommon in elderly, visually handicapped Chinese patients. The natures of the hallucinations experienced were similar to those previously reported. None of the CBS patients had evidence of RBD. Further studies are needed to investigate the prevalence of CBS in the general population.

Adaptive finite element method (AFEM) is broadly adopted to recover the internal source in biological tissues. In this letter, a novel dual-mesh alternation strategy (dual-mesh AFEM) is developed for bioluminescence tomography. By comprehensively considering the error estimation of the finite element method solution on each mesh, two different adaptive strategies based on the error indicator of the reconstructed source and the photon flux density are used alternately in the process. Combined with the constantly adjusted permissible region in the adaptive process, the new algorithm can achieve a more accurate source location compared with the AFEM in the previous experiments.

Mutations in the low-complexity domain (LCD) of T-cell intracellular antigen-1 (TIA1) have been reported to be associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD) in the Caucasian population. In the present study, we aimed to screen mutations in the LCD (exon 11–13) of TIA1 and determine the mutation frequency in Chinese ALS/FTD patients. A total of 740 ALS patients, including 721 sporadic ALS (sALS), 19 familial ALS, 24 FTD patients, and 501 healthy controls, were directly sequenced. A novel variant p.S349P was found in a male sALS patient who presented with mild cognitive decline and a survival time of 1.23 years since onset. No mutation in the LCD of TIA1 was found in the familial ALS and FTD patients. The mutation frequency of TIA1 was 0.14% (1/721) in Chinese sALS patients, which suggests that TIA1 mutation is an uncommon genetic cause for ALS in the Chinese population.

Molecular imaging possesses the ability to characterize and measure biological processes at the cellular and molecular level in vivo. As one of the new molecular imaging modalities, biolminescence tomography (BLT) is to reconstruct the light distribution inside a small animal from the photon flux measured on its surface. To obtain accurate and robust reconstruction, it needs a good understanding of the propagation of photons in biological tissues, which is referred to as the forward problem in BLT. Because the turbid media is high scattering and low absorption, the propagation process can be described by the steady diffusion equation. In this paper, an hp-adaptivity method for BLT forward problem is presented based on finite elements of high orders and moderate meshes by finite element method (FEM). Both numerical simulation and physical experiment are performed to evaluate the accuracy of solution and the efficiency of computation. The relevant results show that element order is more critical than mesh size to produce an accurate FEM solution efficiently. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Electroluminescence (EL) of bilayer organic light-emitting diodes based on N,N'-diphenyl-N,N'-bis(3-methylphenyl)-(1,1'-biphenyl)-4,4'-diamine (TPD) and 2-(4'-biphenyl)-5-(4”-tert-butylphenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole (PBD) were reported. The EL spectra of bilayer device ITO/TPD/PBD/Al consist of monomolecular emission from TPD, exciplex emission and charge carriers cross recombination at the TPD/PBD interface. By varying the thickness of each organic layer while keeping the thickness of the whole device constant, three kinds of bilayer devices were fabricated and their EL and photoluminescence spectra were compared with each other, and our experimental data show that charge tunneling and cross recombination coexist at the TPD/PBD interface, and these two processes compete with each other under high electric fields.

The temperature dependence of the optical properties in poly [2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethylhexyloxy)- p -phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) blending with 2-(4-biphenyl)-5-(4- tert butylphenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole (PBD) has been investigated. The blending influence on the chain conformation and exciton energy migration in blend film is described. The PL emission from the pure and blend films are all blue shifted with increasing temperature. An addition of PBD in MEH-PPV films suppresses the relative intensity of 0–1 vibronic peaks at lower temperature. This phenomenon will not be promoted with increasing temperature, attributed to a temperature-dependent migration process of singlet excitons.

Charge carriers bulk recombination instead of forming electroplex after their tunneling through a hole-blocking layer, i.e. 2,9-dimethyl-4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (BCP), in organic electroluminescence (EL) device ITO/poly-(N-vinyl-carbazole)(PVK)/BCP/tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3)/Al is reported. By changing the thickness of BCP layer, one can find that high electric fields enhance the tunneling process of holes accumulated at the PVK/BCP interface into BCP layer instead of forming “electroplex emission” as reported earlier in literatures. Our experimental data show that charge carriers bulk recombination takes place in both PVK layer and BCP layer, and even in Alq3 layer when BCP layer is thin enough. Further, it is suggested that PVK is the origin of the emission shoulder at 595 nm in the EL spectra of trilayer device ITO/PVK/BCP/Alq3/Al.

We report the effect of inorganic nanolayers on electron injection in the polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) in which a hole is the major charge carrier. The inorganic nanolayers with different dielectric constants were placed between the emitting layer and the aluminum cathode, and their influence on the device performance was investigated. The device with a nanolayer of lower dielectric constant demonstrated higher efficiency, which is significantly higher than that of one without an insulating layer. The enhancement may result from the lowering of the effective barrier height for electron injection while increasing electron-tunneling probability, which improve the balanced injection of hole and electrons.

We systematically studied the excitation and the fluorescence steady-state spectroscopy of poly[2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethylhexoxy)-p-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) in two solvents and several concentrations. Fluorescence spectra were recorded for solutions in several concentrations (10−5 mg/ml to 10−3 mg/ml), showing that tetrahydrofuran (THF) and toluene solvate the polymer chain differently. Dilute solution (10−5 mg/ml) in THF exhibit broader fluorescence spectra due to greater conformation disorder. The degree of the aggregation depends on both the solvent and the polymer concentration. Aggregation is promoted in toluene solution and hindered in THF solvent.

The poly(N-vinylcarbozole) (PVK)/tris(8-hydroxy-quinoline) aluminium (Alq3) blend thin films that exhibit asynchronism or simultaneity of transient electroluminescence (EL) onset of PVK and Alq3 under pulsed voltage, depending on the relative composition concentration or the extent of phase separation of blends, have been investigated. The resultant mobility of Alq3 rich regions of blends (doped with Alq3 concentration of several per cent, such as 2 wt% Alq3 and 1.0 wt% Alq3 with heat treatment) is larger than that of PVK rich regions of the same blends due to the percolation path formed by Alq3 when the doping concentration or the phase separation of blends is high enough. When the hopping rate of carriers from PVK to PVK sites is equivalent to or larger than that of Alq3 molecules, such as doping concentration of 0.2 and 1 wt% of Alq3 without heat treatment, the resultant mobility of blends is determined by PVK and their luminescence is synchronous. Transient EL is an effective method for the detection of spatial distribution variation of the product of mobility and electric field of blends in a range of doping concentrations depending on the different orders of luminescence of dopants and host.

We investigated the photoluminescence (PL) quenching of the copolymer, poly(2,5-dimethyl-phenylenevinylene-co-2-methoxy-5-hexyloxy-phenylenevinylene (DMPPV-co-MHOPPV), focusing on the difference between pure films and copolymer-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) blends with and without applied bias in the LEDs. PL quenching of DMPPV-co-MHOPPV is decreased by dispersion in an inert host, PEO. Results show that the introduction of alkyl groups in the main backbone or copolymer, which can affect the interaction of polymer chain, and the PL quenching, can be decreased due to the decreasing of dissociation of bound excitons and limiting excitions to migrate quenching sites. In the LEDs, by studying the different PL quenching with the negative and positive bias, we infer that the internal field in the LEDs decreases the probability of dissociation of bound excitons. Our experimental results suggest that by means of tuning the chemical structure of polymers and the internal field of LEDs, the dissociation of excitons will be controlled and the luminescence quantum yield can be improved.

We present photoluminescence studies as a function of temperature from poly [2-methoxy-5-(20-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV). The photoluminescence transition energies are red-shifted with decreasing temperatures that can be explained by the suppression of the torsional motion in the polymer backbone, which increased the effective conjugation length of the polymer. The enhancement of the relative intensity of the 0–1 to 0–0 vibronic band can be attributed to the formation of aggregates in coincidence with the vibronic 0–1 bands.

The study was aimed to assess the effect of Klotho gene and sinoatrial node pacing channel gene (HCN4 and HCN2) for studying sick sinus syndrome, with Klotho gene under the interference of Plasmid-mediated short hairpin RNA. Twenty-five C57BL/6J mice were divided into four groups, i. e, plasmid shRNA 24h group, plasmid shRNA 12h group, sodium chloride 24h group and sodium chloride 12h group. Plasmid shRNA 50microL (1microg/microL) and sodium chloride 50microl were respectively injected according to mice vena caudalis into those in plasmid shRNA group and sodium chloride group. After 12h or 24h respectively, all mice were executed and their sinoatrial node tissues were cut. The mRNA of Klotho, HCN4 and HCN2 gene were detected by RT-PCR. The results of RT-PCR showed that Klotho, HCN4 and HCN2 mRNA levels were lower compared with those in sodium chloride 12h group after 12h interference interval. The results indicated that there might be the a certain relationship between Klotho gene and sinoatrial node pacing channel gene.

We present a method for mapping the two-dimensional (2D) bioluminescent images (BLIs) onto a three-dimensional (3D) body surface derived from the computed tomography (CT) volume data. This mapping includes two closely-related steps, the spatial registration of the 2D BLIs into the coordinate system of the CT volume data and the light flux recovering on the body surface from BLIs. By labeling markers on the body surface, we proposed an effective registration method to achieve the spatial position alignment. The subsequent light flux recovering is presented based on the inverse process of the free-space light transport model and taking the influence of the camera lens diaphragm into account. Incorporating the mapping procedure into the bioluminescence tomography (BLT) reconstruction, we developed a dual-modality BLT and CT imaging framework to provide both optical and anatomical information. The accuracy of the registration and the light flux recovering methods were evaluated via physical phantom experiments. The registration method was found to have a mean error of 0.41 mm and 0.35 mm in horizontal and vertical direction, and the accuracy of the light flux recovering method was below 5%. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of the dual-modality BLT/CT imaging framework using a mouse phantom. Preliminary results revealed the potential and feasibility of the dual-modality imaging framework.

As one of molecular imaging, bioluminescence tomography (BLT) aims to recover internal source from surface measurement. Being an ill-posed inverse problem, BLT source reconstruction is usually converted to an optimization problem through regularization. In this contribution, we build a bimodal hybrid imaging system consisting of BLT and micro-CT, and then propose an improved source reconstruction method based on adjoint diffusion equations (ADEs). Compared with conventional methods based on constrained minimization problem (CMP), ADEs-based method replaces expensive iterative computation with solving a group of linear ADEs. Given surface flux density, internal source power density and photon fluence rate can be efficiently determined in one step. Both numerical and physical experiments are performed to evaluate the bimodal BLT/micro-CT imaging system and this novel reconstruction method. The relevant results demonstrate the feasibility and potential of this source reconstruction method.

In bioluminescence tomography (BLT), reconstruction of internal bioluminescent source distribution from the surface optical signals is an ill-posed inverse problem. In real BLT experiment, apart from the measurement noise, the system errors caused by geometry mismatch, numerical discretization, and optical modeling approximations are also inevitable, which may lead to large errors in the reconstruction results. Most regularization techniques such as Tikhonov method only consider measurement noise, whereas the influences of system errors have not been investigated. In this paper, the truncated total least squares method (TTLS) is introduced into BLT reconstruction, in which both system errors and measurement noise are taken into account. Based on the modified generalized cross validation (MGCV) criterion and residual error minimization, a practical parameter-choice scheme referred to as improved GCV (IGCV) is proposed for TTLS. Numerical simulations with different noise levels and physical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of TTLS combined with IGCV for solving the BLT inverse problem.

Bioluminescence tomography (BLT) allows in vivo localization and quantification of bioluminescent sources inside a small animal to reveal various molecular and cellular activities. In this paper, the overlap domain decomposition method (ODDM) of BLT is proposed, which refers to divide and conquer techniques for solving BLT by iteratively solving sub-problems on smaller sub-domains. Here, two triangulations of the region are adopted. We can obtain the photon density distribution on the object surface, as well as reconstruct the position of the light source by using ODDM and genetic algorithm. The numerical simulations have shown that ODDM is computationally efficient and fairly robust. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Optical and electroluminescent properties of a novel PPV derivative (OPPV) which contains oxadiazole segments in main and side chains were studied. Both the single-layer EL device and the triple-layer EL devices fabricated with OPPV as the active layer emitted blue light from OPPV with a peak of spectrum at around 460 nm. The device structure: ITO/PVK+OPPV(2:1 weight ratio)/OXD(40 nm)/Alq(20 nm)/Al, was fabricated, which showed much better performance than the single-layer EL device and the triple-layer EL device without PVK in the emitter material.

As a promising tool for in-vivo molecular imaging of small animals, Bioluminescence Tomography (BLT) aims at the quantitative reconstruction of the bioluminescent source distribution from the detected optical signals on the body surface. Mathematically, BLT is a highly ill-posed inverse problem per se. Most existing works are based on Tikhonov regularization in which the selection of the proper regular parameter is quite difficult. In this paper, two direct regularization methods, truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) and truncated total least squares (TTLS), as well as two iterative regularization methods, conjugate gradient least squares (CGLS) and least squares QR decomposition (LSQR), are applied to the inverse problem in BLT, with the finite element method solving the diffusion equation. In the numerical simulation, a heterogeneous phantom is designed to compare and evaluate the four methods. The results show that all the four methods can reconstruct the position of bioluminescence sources accurately and are more convenient in the determination of regularization parameter than Tikhonov method. In addition, with a priori knowledge of the source permissible region employed in the reconstruction, the iterative methods are faster than the two direct methods. Among the four methods, LSQR performs quite stably when both model noise and measure noise are considered.

In order to prepare the polymer coating effectively and simply on the stent, which avails producing the drug eluting stent (DES), a novel micro-spraying system was introduced in this paper. Based on the theory of ultrasonic atomization, the spray system was designed and established which was composed of four primary modules. The optimized spray parameters were also determined through orthogonal experiment for preparing coating by the system. The fluorescence stain and image analysis were used to make the morphologies of coating more apparent. Our experimental results reveal that the spray system designed in this paper is suitable for preparing polymer coating, which will facilitate the development of DES.

Image segmentation is a fundamental image processing technology. There are many kinds of image segmentation methods, but most of them are problem oriented. In this paper, image segmentation method based on lateral inhibition network is presented. Lateral inhibition network is a biological vision model. When an image is filtered by a lateral inhibition network, its low frequency components are inhibited while the high frequency components are enhanced. The lateral inhibited image is much easier to be segmented because of its increased inter-class difference and decreased intra-class difference. The parameters of the lateral inhibition network model determine the inhibited image, thus affect the image segmentation result greatly. But there are no assured rules to determine the parameters. We propose an evolutionary strategy (ES) based method to search the optimal weighting parameters of the lateral inhibition network model. The objective function of ES is a multiattribute fitness function that combines multiple criteria of clustering and entropy information. The original image is filtered using the optimal lateral inhibition network and then the inhibited image is segmented by an optimized threshold. Using test images of various characteristics, the proposed method is evaluated by four objective image segmentation evaluation indexes. The experimental results show its validity and universality.