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Apples are highly susceptible to bruising during picking, packing, and transportation, and early detection of apple bruises allows timely screening and treatment to reduce food safety risks. However, early bruises on apples, especially bruises of 30 min or less, with similar appearance to sound tissue, making manual sorting difficult. To address this problem, a near‐infrared (NIR) camera imaging technology combined with adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm for early apple bruise detection is proposed in this article. First, a NIR camera imaging system is built to acquire full‐band images of fruit face, fruit stem face and calyx face of sound apples and apples with single bruise and multiple bruises at 30 min of occurrence. Then, an adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm is proposed and an image processing algorithm, which includes high‐pass filtering, feature extraction, adaptive threshold segmentation and Hough circle detection, is developed and applied to full‐band images in response to the interference of apple stem and calyx on early bruising detection in this article. The results show that the proposed algorithm has an accuracy of 95.56% for the detection of sound apple samples and an F1‐score of 94.70% for the detection of early bruised samples, which is better than the commonly used image segmentation algorithms such as Otsu and fixed thresholding. This study shows that the combination of NIR camera imaging and the adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm proposed in this article can effectively detect early bruises on apples, providing a new idea for rapid and nondestructive detection of agricultural product quality. Practical applications: Detecting early bruises on apples can achieve effective monitoring and control of apple supply chain, and guarantee the quality and safety of agricultural products. Most studies are based on conventional machine vision with RGB camera or hyperspectral imaging technology, while conventional machine vision based on RGB camera is difficult to detect apple early bruises that are not visible to the naked eye, and hyperspectral imaging has a large amount of data and redundant image data among wavelengths. Compared with previous studies, apple early bruise detection method proposed in this article combining NIR camera imaging technology and adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm can avoid the interference of bright spots, fruit stem and calyx on bruise segmentation while capturing a single channel image, providing a new method for accurate and rapid detection of early bruises on apples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which is caused by various proinflammatory cytokines, will present some kinds of complication with progression such as Pulmonary Artery Hypertension (PAH). CRP (C-Reactive Protein) and ET-1(Endotheline-1) play pivotal function in inflammatory responses. The aim of this study is to investigate the prognosis value of CRP and ET-1 in COPD patients with pulmonary artery hypertension. CRP and ET-1 were measured in the plasma, sputum and exhaled breath condensate (EBC) of 55 COPD patients, 75 COPD patients with PAH and 57 healthy controls. Then, we analyzed the influence of these two proteins on the lung function, pulmonary artery pressure, exercise capacity and other clinical indices. The amount of CRP and ET-1 were the highest in COPD patients with PAH, followed by the COPD patients and the healthy controls. And there were statistically significant differences (p<0.05). The amount of CRP and ET-1 were negatively correlated with the lung function and exercise capacity, positively correlated with the pulmonary artery pressure. CRP and ET-1 are two valuable indicators in the diagnosis of COPD patients with PAH in clinic.

Objective: To explore the relationship between disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM33) gene polymorphism of bronchial asthma and its severity in Xinjiang Uygur population., Methods: From January to December 2009, a total of 126 consecutive Uighur asthmatics with a definite diagnosis at First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University were assigned into intermittent mild (n = 62), moderate (n = 39) and severe (n = 25) groups according to the severity of illness. The control group was a 1: 1 paired population from healthy subjects matched similarly with regards to gender, race, residence and age (with a difference <5 years). The ADAM33 gene polymorphisms of F+1, S+1, T1, T2 and V4 locus allele in each group were tested by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP)., Results: In ADAM33, the distribution of T1, T2 and V4 locus allele in asthmatics and controls had a significant difference (χ² = 8.064, P = 0.018; χ² = 8.013, P = 0.018 and χ² = 11.737, P = 0.003). The distribution of allelic frequency showed that all T1 (C), T2 (A) and V4 (G) locus allele increased the relative risk degree of asthmatics (OR = 2.080, 2.139 and 1.912). The distribution frequency of T1 (TC and TT), T2 (AG and GG), V4 (GG and CC) genotypes in mild, moderate and severe groups had significant differences (all P < 0.05).Linkage disequilibrium analysis showed that in asthmatics, the presence of Hap2 (CATGC) was much lower than controls (20.4% vs 30.4%; χ² = 6.597, P = 0.010) while Hap4 (CACAC) and Hap5 (TACAG) were much higher than those in controls (9.6% vs 4.8% and 6.8% vs 2.8%; χ² = 4.545, P = 0.033 and χ² = 4.377, P = 0.036)., Conclusions: The ADAM33 gene polymorphism of T1, T2 and V4 locus allele may be associated with asthma and its severity in Xinjiang. And Uighur population may have both susceptible and protective haplotypes of asthmatics.