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Fast timing detector is widely used for its picosecond (ps)-level timing resolution, such as Photek-PMT210 with about 50 ps at single-photon electron (SPE) mode. The time characteristics of these types of fast timing photodetectors include rise time, fall time, and electron transit time (TT) of the output signal. The test results of fast timing detector are affected by the light 7 source, the electronic device board, the data acquisition (DAQ) system, and so on. In this article, some comparative test results will be shown and discussed on the factors affecting the performance of fast timing detector.

Image restoration (IR) has been extensively studied with lots of excellent strategies accumulated over the years. However, most existing methods still have large room for improvement. In this paper, we boost an unsupervised iterative feature refinement model (IFR) with the enhanced high-dimensional deep mean-shift prior (EDMSP), termed IFR-EDMSP. The proposed model inherits the fantastic noise suppression characteristic of embedded network and the fine detail preservation ability of IFR model. Moreover, based on the fact that multiple implementations of artificial noise in prior learning improve underlying representation capability, three-sigma rule is adopted in IFR-EDMSP for accurate and robust results. Extensive experiments demonstrated that IFR-EDMSP outperforms the typical methods in compressed sensing, image deblurring and super-resolution.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the expression of type Ⅱ inflammatory-related cytokines in nasal secretions of patients with eosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps(ECRSwNP), and to preliminarily explore the role of type Ⅱ inflammatory cytokines in nasal secretions in predicting ECRSwNP. METHODS: A prospective analysis was made of 91 patients with CRSwNP who underwent endoscopic sinus surgery in Peking University Third Hospital from November 2020 to June 2021. All the selected patients had their SNOT-22 score, Lund-Mackay score and blood eosinophilia collected before surgery. Percentage and absolute value; the nasal secretions of patients were collected before operation, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the typeⅡinflammatory cytokines(IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, IL-33, Eotaxin-3, periostin), intraoperative nasal polyp tissue was collected for eosinophil count. According to the proportion of eosinophils in the tissue≥10%, they were divided into ECRSwNP group and nECRSwNP group. The clinical baseline data and type Ⅱ inflammatory cytokines were compared between the two groups, and the related factors of ECRSwNP were evaluated by univariate logistic regression analysis. The receiver operating characteristic(ROC) curve was used to evaluate the predictive potential of each clinical index. RESULTS: The SNOT-22 score, Lund-Mackay score, blood eosinophil percentage and absolute value in the ECRSwNP group were higher than those in the nECRSwNP group(P < 0.05). In the nECRSwNP group(P < 0.01). Logistic regression analysis found that IL-5, Eotaxin-3 and blood eosinophil percentage were risk factors for ECRSwNP(P < 0.05). ROC analysis found that IL-5, Eotaxin-3 and blood eosinophil percentage had predictive diagnostic value(P < 0.01), among which blood eosinophil percentage had the greatest predictive value(AUC=0.756). The prediction model composed of Eotaxin-3, SNOT-22 score, sinus CT Lund-Mackay score, blood eosinophil percentage and blood eosinophil absolute value had better prediction effect on ECRSwNP(AUC=0.873). CONCLUSION: Type Ⅱ inflammatory cytokines IL-5 and Eotaxin-3 in nasal secretions may be involved as biomarkers for early diagnosis of ECRSwNP.

As a compulsory course in universities, physical fitness is an important part of public health. At present, research on physical fitness lacks a comprehensive evaluation method, which cannot accurately guide public health. Based on this, this paper compares the key factors affecting public health, aiming to better guide public health and improve the level of public health. In this paper, 219 college students were selected as the research object, using statistical analysis methods, to find out the significant differences in influencing factors. Then, regression analysis is carried out on different influencing factors to determine the key factors affecting physical fitness. The results show that physical fitness level, exercise frequency, and physical injury are the key factors affecting physical fitness and have a serious impact on public health, with an impact level of about 70~80%. Therefore, colleges and sports departments should set out from the above factors, formulate a development plan for physical fitness, and promote the improvement of public health.

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) causes outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in many countries, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. The EV71 engages diverse strategies to escape immune responses during infections. Arg-1, iNOS and COX-2 are particular suppressors secreted by MDSCs to inactivate T cells, which have been considered to play a significant role in the immune escape of viruses or malignant tumours. However, whether EV71 escapes the immune response through T-cell suppressors remains unknown. We established an animal model of HFMD by EV71 infection in BALB/c mice. The expressions of cytokines IL-10 and Arg-1, iNOS and COX-2 were detected by ELISA and qRT-PCR. The phosphorylation of STAT3 was detected by western blot. The number of MDSCs in PBMCs was examined by flow cytometry. The number of MDSCs in HFMD mice was significantly higher than that in the control, which is in agreement with the upregulation of T-cell suppressors (Arg-1, iNOS and COX-2) secreted by MDSCs in the infection group. The percentage of the gMDSC subpopulation was significantly increased in severe HFMD mice. The serum level of IL-10 and p-STAT3 were upregulated significantly in the infected group whilst inhibition of IL-10 and STAT3 led to the reduction in the T-cell suppressors. Our results suggest that T-cell suppressors (Arg-1, iNOS and COX-2) upregulated in HFMD in response to EV71 infection is attributable to STAT3 signalling activation triggered by IL-10 induction. We speculate that it was caused by elevation of MDSCs to facilitate the immune escape of EV71 in severe HFMD.

Adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD) is a rare systemic auto-inflammatory disease that is an exclusive diagnosis that needs to previously exclude infections, tumors, and rheumatic diseases. There are few reports on AOSD overlapping with other rheumatic diseases. We reported a 55-year-old male who presented with a high, daily spiking fever associated with an evanescent salmon-pink rash, arthralgia, and sore throat. He had a history of dryness of the mouth and eyes for decades with no medical treatment. On admission, tests for antinuclear antibody (ANA) and anti-SSA/Ro-52 antibody were positive, and salivary gland biopsy showed focal lymphocytic sialadenitis with a focus score of ≥ 1 foci/4 mm2, which was consistent with a diagnosis of primary Sjogren’s syndrome (SS). However, the disease activity of SS was low at the time of the report. Combined with significantly elevated acute phase reactants, the patient also met the classification criteria of both Yamakuchi and Futel for AOSD. His clinical symptoms were relieved quickly with glucocorticoid therapy. We also reviewed the literature on SS with AOSD and AOSD with other rheumatic diseases, and scattered case reports were retrieved. So we think that AOSD is not an absolutely exclusive diagnosis and can occur in patients with other rheumatic diseases. To our knowledge, this is the only literature review of a reported AOSD case in a SS patient.

Carbon fiber-reinforced resin matrix composites are often used in the surface structure of helicopters. In the process of flight, the structure often suffers from different degrees of damage due to the influence of the harsh environment. To explore the superiority of the repair method and obtain a good repair process, the intact and damaged carbon fiber composite laminates were prepared in this paper. The damaged specimens were repaired by single-sided double-layer patch bonding. The allowable value of tensile strength of carbon fiber laminates was tested, and the mechanical properties of carbon fiber composite laminates after repair were studied. Combined with the failure mode of the specimen after failure, the results show that the mechanical properties of the repaired specimen can be restored to about 81.9 % of the non-destructive specimen. The single-sided double-layer patch can effectively improve the mechanical properties of the middle loading area. The repair process has high reliability and good stability, which provides a new method for the repair of the composite laminate structure.

In the process of synthetic diamond, as a key component of high-temperature and high-pressure devices, the crack of the six-sided press anvil is easy to cause serious safety accidents. This paper introduces a crack detection method based on an eddy current sensor. Through the detection system, the induced voltage value in the receiving coil is obtained when the hammer has cracks, so as to judge whether there are cracks in the hammer. The results show that when there is a crack in the anvil, the induced voltage in the receiving coil will increase significantly. When the crack length, width, and depth increase, the induced voltage in the receiving coil will increase significantly. It is proved that eddy current testing is feasible in anvil detection.

In order to reconstruct the possible defects on the plate surface with arrays, a new wave tomography method based on the method of moments is established in this paper. According to the relationship between the probe number and grid amount, two algorithms, that is, the neural network and principal component analysis (PCA), are proposed and used to solve the ill-conditioned inversion equations. The neural network makes imaging feasible even if input data are not enough, and the PCA can greatly improve the computational efficiency via reducing the matrix dimension. Both numerical simulations and experimental measurements are conducted with the algorithm’s correctness and high precision validated. After investigating the influence of probe number on imaging quality, it is demonstrated that the algorithm can exactly predict the defect location when the input scattering data is not enough or fewer probes are arranged. More probes are needed for reconstructing the specific shape and thickness, especially when multiple defects are included. The qualitative results and quantitative data are conducive to providing some reference for engineering applications in nondestructive testing and structural health monitoring.

The use of antipsychotic medications (APMs) could be different among countries due to availability, approved indications, characteristics and clinical practice. However, there is limited literature providing comparisons of APMs use among countries. To examine trends in antipsychotic prescribing in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States, we conducted a cross-national study from 2002 to 2014 b y using the distributed network approach with common data model. We included all patients who had at least a record of antipsychotic prescription in this study, and defined patients without previous exposure of antipsychotics for 6 months before the index date as new users for incidence estimation. We calculated the incidence, prevalence, and prescription rate of each medication by calendar year. Among older patients, sulpiride was the most incident [incidence rate (IR) 11.0–23.3) and prevalent [prevalence rate (PR) 11.9–14.3) APM in Taiwan, and most prevalent (PR 2.5–3.9) in Japan. Quetiapine and haloperidol were most common in the United States (IR 8.1–9.5; PR 18.0–18.4) and Hong Kong (PR 8.8–13.7; PR 10.6–12.7), respectively. The trend of quetiapine use was increasing in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States. As compared to older patients, the younger patients had more propensity to be prescribed second-generation APM for treatment in four countries. Trends in antipsychotic prescribing varied among countries. Quetiapine use was most prevalent in the United States and increasing in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The increasing use of quetiapine in the elderly patients might be due to its safety profile compared to other APMs.

The etiologies of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP)-associated olfactory dysfunction have several potentially overlapping hypotheses. Understanding the association of tissue eosinophils and mucous inflammatory cytokines with olfactory function and identifying predictors of olfactory outcomes in patients with nasal polyposis after surgery is fundamental for future clinical care and research.Eighty-five patients who underwent endoscopic surgery for nasal polyposis were enrolled in this study. Olfactory measurements were performed before surgery and 3-6 months after surgery using a TT olfactometer. Baseline characteristics of CRSwNP patients were collected, and Spearman's rho correlation was performed to assess the association of olfactory function with tissue eosinophils and mucous inflammatory cytokines. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to assess the independent predictors of olfactory outcomes after surgery.Here, 85 CRSwNP patients, including 25 patients without olfactory disorder and 60 patients with hypo-anosmia, were evaluated. Of the 60 patients with preoperative hypo-anosmia, 22 did not have improved olfactory function, and 38 demonstrated normal olfactory function after surgery based on the TT olfactometer results. The levels of tissue eosinophil, interleukin-5 (IL-5), IL-13, eotaxin-3, and periostin in the preoperative hypo-anosmia group were higher than those in the preoperative normosmia group. Tissue eosinophil count, IL-5, and periostin levels in patients without olfactory improvement were higher than those in patients with olfactory improvement. The tissue eosinophil count, blood eosinophil count, and nasal mucus levels of IL-5, eotaxin-3, and periostin were significantly correlated with olfactory function in all patients with CRSwNP. The IL-5 level remained a strong predictor of poor olfactory outcomes after surgery.Both tissue eosinophils and mucous inflammatory cytokines, including IL-5, IL-13, eotaxin-3, and periostin, may contribute to the pathogenesis of CRSwNP-associated olfactory dysfunction. Higher IL-5 levels are associated with a lower chance of olfactory function recovery after each surgical revision.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a common disease in pregnant women with a prevalence from 1.4% to 14% based on the population studied. The number of patients with GDM is increasing annually, and yet, the treatment for GDM remains limited. In this study, we aimed to explore the potential of dendrobine against GDM. For this purpose, a genetic mouse model of GDM was established. GDM mice were orally administered with 20 mg/kg dendrobine daily from the beginning of pregnancy to delivery. It was found that dendrobine significantly ameliorated the symptoms of GDM, as evidenced by reduced maternal body-weight and blood glucose levels, as well as increased insulin levels and insulin sensitivity in GDM mice. Dendrobine also remarkably attenuated the impairments to offspring, such as decreased birth-weight and birth size. Moreover, dendrobine reduced the secretion of inflammatory cytokines by T helper 17 (Th17) cells, including interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumour necrosis factor-α and interleukin-17. Furthermore, we found that dendrobine also reduced the population of Th17 cells in GDM mice. In conclusion, dendrobine could effectively alleviate GDM in mice and might serve as a potential therapeutic drug candidate for GDM patients.

Objective: To explore the value of a rapid risk predictive model for the readmission of patients after CABG in China. Methods: The rapid predictive model of readmission risk was translated into Chinese, and then validated with data from 758 patients who underwent CABG in Wuhan Asian Heart Hospital from January 2018 to June 2019. The discrimination was tested by area under the ROC curve (AUC), and the calibration was tested by Hosmer-Lemeshow test. Results: The rapid risk predictive model for readmission showed good discrimination and calibration in Chinese CABG patients (The area under ROC curve c-statistic: 0.704, 95% CI: 0.614-0.794; Hosmer-Lemeshow test: P = .955). Conclusion: The rapid readmission risk predictive model can be used in Chinese CABG patients soon after admission.

Air-coupled ultrasonic testing and C-scan technique has been increasingly applied to the braided CFRP structures owing to its non-destruction, non-contact and high visualization characteristics. Due to the noise, structural vibration, and airflow in the process of detection, the accuracy of defect identification is easily deteriorated. To address this issue and further determine the relationship between the ultrasonic acoustical pressure attenuation and structural parameters, a novel two-level identification method based on the modified two-dimensional variational mode decomposition (2D-VMD) has been proposed. In the first level, C-scan images have been sparsely decomposed into ensembles of modes by 2D-VMD method. Then, the modes have been screened by mutual information method to realize the reconstruction of new image in the second level. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method has the good ability to identify defects with a minimum detectable diameter of 1-2 mm. It has been noted that the ultrasonic acoustical pressure attenuation has become remarkably higher in the twill weave CFRP than the plain weave CFRP and the ratio of pressure attenuation between two weave types of CFRP has decreased with the defect depth increase. Meanwhile, shadows around defects in C-scan images have been suppressed to a great extent. It has been demonstrated that the capability of denoising has enabled the developed method with the accurate detection in terms of the shape, size, depth and weave type. With these advantages, the proposed method has provided valuable insights into the development of an effective method for defect detection of braided CFRP structures.

GATA6 antisense RNA 1 (GATA6-AS1) has been reported to be involved in the progression of several types of cancer. In the present study, the role of GATA6-AS1 in ovarian cancer (OC) was explored. Reverse transcription quantitative PCR was used to detect the expression of GATA6-AS1, microRNA (miR)-19a-5p and tet methylcytosine dioxygenase 2 (TET2) in OC and adjacent normal tissues. Furthermore, OC cells with GATA-AS1 either knocked down or overexpressed were established. The Cell Counting Kit-8 assay was used to evaluate cell proliferation and a Transwell assay was used to assess the migratory and invasive abilities of OC cells. A dual luciferase reporter gene assay was used to determine whether GATA6-AS1 and miR-19a-5p, and miR-19a-5p and TET2, may interact with each other. The results demonstrated that GATA6-AS1 expression level was decreased in OC tissues and cells compared with control groups. In addition, GATA6-AS1 overexpression significantly inhibited the proliferation and migratory and invasive abilities of OC cells, whereas GATA6-AS1 downregulation had the opposite effects. Furthermore, GATA6-AS1 adsorbed miR-19a-5p to repress its expression and GTA6-AS1 indirectly upregulated TET2 expression. Taken together, the findings from this study suggested that GATA6-AS1 could inhibit the proliferation and migratory and invasive abilities of OC cells via regulation of the miR-19a-5p/TET2 axis.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role in peritoneal metastasis of Gastric cancer (GC). Tumor exosomes can mediate tumor directed metastasis, and TGF-β1 is an important factor in inducing tumor Epithelial mesenchymal transition. However, it is not clear whether GC derived exosomes can induce peritoneal mesothelial cells through the TGF-β1/ Smads pathway and the effect of injured peritoneal mesothelial cells on the biological characteristics of GC cells. In this study, we demonstrated that GC-derived exosomes can activate the TGF-β1/Smads pathway in peritoneal mesothelial cells and induce the corresponding EMT process, and that the injured peritoneal mesothelial cells can improve the migration and adhesion of GC cells. Taken together, these data further support the critical role of exosomes in the remodeling of the pre-metastatic microenvironment.

The herb recommendation system aiming for recommending a set of herb for patients is a significant task for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Recent works apply a graph convolutional network to model the relations among symptoms and herbs, showing promising performance. However, they typically suffer from two limitations: (1) The learning of the relations of symptoms and herbs from symptom-herb heterogeneous graphs would be disturbed by the semantic gap and the weak correlations between symptoms and herbs. (2) They ignore the complex diagnosis and systemic relations of a patient's multi-symptom, resulting in the lack of effectiveness and personalization in syndrome diagnosis. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel Homogeneous Symptom Graph Attentive Reasoning Network (HSGARN). Firstly, to alleviate the noisy semantic gap and weak correlations of heterogeneous graphs, we propose a homogeneous graph embedding module to comprehensively model the semantic relations of symptoms and herbs. Secondly, we propose a symptom attentive reasoning module to generate syndrome representation for patients, which can sufficiently exploit the interrelation of a patient's symptoms and model the individual difference. Experimental results on two TCM datasets demonstrate the advantages of HSGARN over the state-of-the-arts.

Video-text retrieval task has raised increasing attention due to the rapid growth of videos on the Internet. Existing works adopt various networks to encode videos and texts into a common latent space and calculate their similarities. However, most works ignore mining significant frames of videos and the difference among different dimensions in word representations, leading to unsatisfactory retrieval results. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Dimensional Attentive Hierarchical Graph Pooling Network (MAGP) to learn improved representations for video-text retrieval. Specifically, we design a novel hierarchical graph pooling method to extract significant frames in videos and discard unrelated frames, hence the model can learn hierarchical and discriminative video representations. Moreover, a multi-dimensional attention mechanism is utilized in text encoder to strengthen representation ability by dimension-level attention. Experimental results on three video-text datasets demonstrate our MAGP model out-performs the state-of-the-art models.

A novel, homing peptide-based ELISA-like method for the determination of fibrin is presented. Compared to the antibody, homing peptides have lower antigenicity, better biodegradability, and higher penetration ability. In this study, fibrin was coated on the surface of a 96-well plate. Then, the homing peptide (CREKA), which was labeled by horseradish peroxidase (HRP), was added and allowed to react with fibrin. After washing, the TMB–H2O2 colorimetric system was utilized for the quantitative analysis of fibrin. The assay showed a linear response toward fibrin concentration in the range of 0.1–10 nM with a correlation coefficient of 0.9976. The limit of detection for fibrin was experimentally determined to be 0.04 nM, based on a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 3. The sensing system has been used for the determination of fibrin in human serum samples. Relative to the conventional methods, this method offers the advantages of high-throughput, stability, simplicity, sensitivity, low cost and selectivity, showing great potential for applications in clinical diagnosis.

Background: Predictive models can be used to assess the risk of readmission for patients after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). However, the majority of the existing prediction models have been developed based on data of western population. Our objective was to develop and validate a risk prediction model for Chinese patients after CABG. Methods: This study was conducted among 1983 patients who underwent CABG in Wuhan Asian Heart Hospital from January 2017 to October 2019. Pearson's chi-squared and multivariate logistic regression were performed to investigate the risk factors of readmission after CABG. The area under the ROC curve and Hosmer-Lemeshow test were used to validate the discrimination and calibration of the model, respectively. Results: Six risk factors were predictive of readmission: age≥65 years (odds ratio [OR] = 2.19; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.11-4.34; P = 0.024), female (OR = 2.46; 95%CI: 1.26-4.80; P = 0.008), private insurance (OR = 4.23; 95%CI: 1.11-16.11; P = 0.034), diabetes (OR = 2.351; 95%CI: 1.20-4.59; P = 0.012), hypertension (OR = 2.33; 95%CI: 1.16-4.66; P = 0.017), and congenital heart disease (OR = 6.93;95%CI: 2.04-23.52; P = 0.002). The area under the curve c-statistic was 0.876 in the derivation sample and 0.865 in the validation sample. Hosmer-Lemeshow test: P=0.561. Conclusion: The risk prediction model in our study can be used to predict the risk of readmission in Chinese patients after CABG.