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Introduction: This study aims to critically assess the appropriateness and limitations of two prominent large language models (LLMs), enhanced representation through knowledge integration (ERNIE Bot) and chat generative pre-trained transformer (ChatGPT), in answering questions about liver cancer interventional radiology. Through a comparative analysis, the performance of these models will be evaluated based on their responses to questions about transarterial chemoembolization and hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy in both English and Chinese contexts., Methods: A total of 38 questions were developed to cover a range of topics related to transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) and hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC), including foundational knowledge, patient education, and treatment and care. The responses generated by ERNIE Bot and ChatGPT were rigorously evaluated by 10 professionals in liver cancer interventional radiology. The final score was determined by one seasoned clinical expert. Each response was rated on a five-point Likert scale, facilitating a quantitative analysis of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the information provided by each language model., Results: ERNIE Bot is superior to ChatGPT in the Chinese context (ERNIE Bot: 5, 89.47%; 4, 10.53%; 3, 0%; 2, 0%; 1, 0% vs ChatGPT: 5, 57.89%; 4, 5.27%; 3, 34.21%; 2, 2.63%; 1, 0%; P  = 0.001). However, ChatGPT outperformed ERNIE Bot in the English context (ERNIE Bot: 5, 73.68%; 4, 2.63%; 3, 13.16; 2, 10.53%；1, 0% vs ChatGPT: 5, 92.11%; 4, 2.63%; 3, 5.26%; 2, 0%; 1, 0%; P  = 0.026)., Conclusions: This study preliminarily demonstrated that ERNIE Bot and ChatGPT effectively address questions related to liver cancer interventional radiology. However, their performance varied by language: ChatGPT excelled in English contexts, while ERNIE Bot performed better in Chinese. We found that choosing the appropriate LLMs is beneficial for patients in obtaining more accurate treatment information. Both models require manual review to ensure accuracy and reliability in practical use., (© The Author(s) 2025.)

Background: Esophageal cancer (EC) metastasized to the kidney is extremely rare clinically. Here, we present a case of metachronous renal metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) through epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)., Case Presentation: A 60-year-old patient, male, complained of left waist pain for 5 days, 11 months after radical esophagectomy. Laboratory tests revealed haematuria. Both CT and PET-CT scan showed retroperitoneal lymph nodes and left renal masses. Subsequently the patient received a left nephrectomy and lymph nodes resection, and squamous cell carcinoma of kidney and renal hilar lymph nodes was diagnosed, combined with morphology, medical history and immunophenotype, it was presumed to be metastasis of ESCC through the EMT pathway., Conclusions: The renal metastasis of squamous cell carcinoma should be considered in patients with history of EC, although this is very rare. Histopathological examination combined with immunochemical detection is helpful in differential diagnosis., Competing Interests: None., (AJTR Copyright © 2024.)

The improvement of food labeling can improve consumers' health awareness, reduce the burden of chronic diseases on the health and economy, and promote the development of the healthy food industry. Disease Risk Reduction Claim has been developed in European Union and the U.S. for over 20 years, with mature management methods and experience, but it is still lacking in China. Learning and drawing on the international management experience of food disease risk reduction claims can assist China to establish food disease risk reduction claims and improve the food health claims and labeling system.

In this paper, based on high-throughput technology, polymer dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC) composed of pentaerythritol tetra (2-mercaptoacetic acid) (PETMP), trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA), and polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGD 600) were investigated in detail. A total of 125 PDLC samples with different ratios were quickly prepared using ink-jet printing. Based on the method of machine vision to identify the grayscale level of samples, as far as we know, it is the first time to realize high-throughput detection of the electro-optical performance of PDLC samples, which can quickly screen out the lowest saturation voltage of batch samples. Additionally, we compared the electro-optical test results of manual and high-throughput preparation PDLC samples and discovered that they had very similar electro-optical characteristics and morphologies. This demonstrated the viability of PDLC sample high-throughput preparation and detection, as well as promising application prospects, and significantly increased the efficiency of PDLC sample preparation and detection. The results of this study will contribute to the research and application of PDLC composites in the future.

The rapa whelk Rapana venosa, an economically important marine fishery resource in China but a major invader all over the world, changes from a phytophagous to a carnivorous form following settlement and metamorphosis. However, the low settlement and metamorphosis rates (<1%) of larvae limit the abundance of R. venosa. This critical step (settlement and metamorphosis) remains poorly characterized but may be related to how larvae perceive the presence of shellfish, their new source of food. Here, we report that larvae may use olfactory perception to sense shellfish. Olfactory receptor (OR) genes are involved in odor sensing in animals. We identified a total of 463 OR genes, which could be grouped into nine clades based on phylogenetic analysis. When assessing the attraction of larvae at different developmental stages to oyster odor, R. venosa showed active settlement and metamorphosis behavior only at the J4 stage (competent larva, 1000-1500 μm shell length) and in the presence of shellfish odor at the same time. Expression of OR gene family members differed between stage 2 (four-spiral whorl stage) and stage 1 (single- to three-spiral whorl stage), indicating significant changes in the olfactory system during larval development. These findings broaden our understanding of olfactory perception, settlement, and metamorphosis in gastropods and can be used to improve R. venosa harvesting, as well as the sustainable development and utilization of this resource., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Graphene oxide (GO), reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have their own advantages in electrical, optical, thermal and mechanical properties. An effective combination of these materials is ideal for preparing transparent conductive films to replace the traditional indium tin oxide films. At present, the preparation conditions of rGO are usually harsh and some of them have toxic effects. In this paper, an SnCl 2 /ethanol solution was selected as the reductant because it requires mild reaction conditions and no harmful products are produced. The whole process of rGO preparation was convenient, fast and environmentally friendly. Then, SEM, XPS, Raman, and XRD were used to verify the high reduction efficiency. CNTs were introduced to improve the film conductive property. The transmittance and sheet resistance were the criteria used to choose the reduction time and the content ratios of GO/CNT. Thanks to the post-treatment of nitric acid, not only the by-product (SnO 2 ) and dispersant in the film are removed, but also the doping effect occurs, which are all conducive to reducing the sheet resistances of films. Ultimately, by combining rGO, GO and CNTs, transparent conductive films with a bilayer and three-dimensional structure were prepared, and they exhibited high transmittance and low sheet resistance (58.8 Ω/sq. at 83.45 T%, 47.5 Ω/sq. at 79.07 T%), with corresponding [Formula: see text] values of 33.8 and 31.8, respectively. In addition, GO and rGO can modify the surface and reduce the film surface roughness. The transparent conductive films are expected to be used in photoelectric devices.

Objective: To determine if plasma exosomal microRNAs (miRNAs) can predict survival in patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH)., Methods: The study enrolled patients with IPAH that underwent right heart catheterization. Plasma was collected and exosomal miRNAs were extracted. Exosomes were evaluated using transmission electron microscopy, Western blot analysis and particle size distribution analysis. MiRNAs were evaluated using a miRNA microarray and validated using real-time polymerase chain reaction., Results: This study included 12 patients with IPAH in the study group and 48 patients with IPAH in the validation group. The mean ± SD follow-up duration was 60.3 ± 35.4 months in the overall cohort. The levels of miR-596 were higher in the nonsurvivors compared with the survivors. The levels of miR-596 significantly correlated with survival time, mean right atrial pressure, pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) and cardiac index. High levels of miR-596 and PVR were significantly associated with poor overall survival. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that exosomal miR-596 (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.119; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.402, 3.203) and PVR (HR = 1.146; 95% CI 1.010, 1.300) were independent predictors of survival., Conclusions: High levels of plasma exosomal miR-596 were significantly associated with disease severity and poor prognosis of patients with IPAH.

First-order non-convex Riemannian optimization algorithms have gained recent popularity in structured machine learning problems including principal component analysis and low-rank matrix completion. The current paper presents an efficient Riemannian Stochastic Path Integrated Differential EstimatoR (R-SPIDER) algorithm to solve the finite-sum and online Riemannian non-convex minimization problems. At the core of R-SPIDER is a recursive semi-stochastic gradient estimator that can accurately estimate Riemannian gradient under not only exponential mapping and parallel transport, but also general retraction and vector transport operations. Compared with prior Riemannian algorithms, such a recursive gradient estimation mechanism endows R-SPIDER with lower computational cost in first-order oracle complexity. Specifically, for finite-sum problems with n components, R-SPIDER is proved to converge to an ϵ-approximate stationary point within [Formula: see text] stochastic gradient evaluations, beating the best-known complexity [Formula: see text]; for online optimization, R-SPIDER is shown to converge with [Formula: see text] complexity which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first non-asymptotic result for online Riemannian optimization. For the special case of gradient dominated functions, we further develop a variant of R-SPIDER with improved linear rate of convergence. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed algorithms over the state-of-the-art Riemannian non-convex optimization methods.

In some significant applications such as data forecasting, the locations of missing entries cannot obey any non-degenerate distributions, questioning the validity of the prevalent assumption that the missing data is randomly chosen according to some probabilistic model. To break through the limits of random sampling, we explore in this paper the problem of real-valued matrix completion under the setup of deterministic sampling. We propose two conditions, isomeric condition and relative well-conditionedness, for guaranteeing an arbitrary matrix to be recoverable from a sampling of the matrix entries. It is provable that the proposed conditions are weaker than the assumption of uniform sampling and, most importantly, it is also provable that the isomeric condition is necessary for the completions of any partial matrices to be identifiable. Equipped with these new tools, we prove a collection of theorems for missing data recovery as well as convex/nonconvex matrix completion. Among other things, we study in detail a Schatten quasi-norm induced method termed isomeric dictionary pursuit (IsoDP), and we show that IsoDP exhibits some distinct behaviors absent in the traditional bilinear programs.

Remediation of gold tailings is often difficult due to their extremely barren nature and highly heavy metal concentrations. Returning green manure and applying sewage sludge compost have the beneficial effects of providing nutrients and improving the soil environment. The effects of green manure plants, alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), ryegrass (Lolium perenne Linn.), and tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea), returning in situ on nutrients, bioavailability of trace metals, and community structure of microorganism in gold tailings amended with 0%, 5%, and 10% (weight/weight) sewage sludge compost on the top 4 cm of tailings (SSC-5, SSC-10) were investigated in a pot experiment. The results showed that the plant biomass and microbial biomass carbon in tailings significantly increased in the treatments with sewage sludge compost. The available N and available P and the availability of Zn decreased markedly with the returning of alfalfa and ryegrass. Moreover, through high-throughput sequencing, it was found that the returning of alfalfa had positive effects on the bacterial community richness but a negative impact on the fungal community richness. The microbial community diversity was reduced in the treatment without sewage sludge compost amendment and with alfalfa returning. However, the microbial community diversity was enriched in the treatment of alfalfa returning with sewage sludge compost. In each plant species, 9 dominant bacterial phyla and 10 dominant fungi phyla could be detected. Returning alfalfa green manure and applying sewage sludge compost led to a relative increase in the abundance of Proteobacteria and Ascomycota. These results demonstrated that returning alfalfa and applying sewage sludge compost could be effective in the ecological restoration of gold tailings.

Chiral stationary phases (CSPs) have always been research hotspot in enantiomer separation. Currently, most of the CSPs are based on silica platform. In this research, monodisperse, porous glycidyl methacrylate-divinylbenzene copolymer particles (poly(GMA-DVB)) were designed and prepared. Then the GMA was further reacted with ethylenediamine to introduce amino groups onto the polymer, which provide anchoring sites for cellulose derivatives. Herein, Cellulose-tris (3,5-dimethylphenylcarbamate) (CDMPC) was successfully coated onto the polymer microspheres, achieving a stable and successful CSP. The porous structure and the surface moieties of the CSPs were studied in detail. The chromatographic separation was optimized. Hexaconazole,methyl DL-mandelate,benzoin and tebuconazole have been successfully separated on the CSP column, with column efficiency as high as 10,200 plates/m, which is comparable with some silica-based CSPs. The research has indicated that the poly(GMA-DVB) is a promising candidate for constructing CSPs for chiral separation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Membrane fouling can be effectively addressed by modifying the membrane to realize anti-fouling capability together with real-time fouling detection. Here, we present the synthesis and water treatment testing of a promising candidate for this application, a composite membrane of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and functionalized carbon nano-materials prepared by a facile phase inversion method. The synergistic effect of oxidized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (OMWCNTs) and graphene oxide (GO) enabled better surface pore structures, higher surface roughness, hydrophilicity, and better antifouling property as compared with that of pristine PVDF membranes. The PVDF/OMWCNT/GO mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) achieved a high water flux of 125.6 L m -2  h -1 with high pollutant rejection rate, and their electrical conductivity of 2.11 × 10 -4  S cm -1 at 100 kHz was sensitive to the amount of pollutant uptake. By using hybrid MMMs, we demonstrate simultaneous pollutant filtering and uptake monitoring, which is an important step in revolutionizing the water treatment industry., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The amphiphilic graphene derivative was prepared by covalent grafting of graphene oxide (GO) with isophorone diisocyanate and N , N -dimethylethanolamine and then noncovalent grafting of GO with sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate. The results obtained from infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, and X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the short chains were successfully grafted onto the surface of GO. Subsequently, scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy results showed that the modified GO (IP-GO) has the best dispersibility and compatibility than GO and reduced GO in the waterborne polyurethane matrix. The relationship between the corrosion resistance of composite coatings and the dispersibility of the graphene derivative and the compatibility of the graphene derivative with a polymer matrix were discussed. The anticorrosive properties were characterized by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy analysis and salt spray tests. Through a series of anticorrosion tests, it is concluded that the anticorrosion performance of a composite coating with 0.3 wt % IP-GO is significantly improved. The excellent anticorrosion performance is due to the perfect dispersion and good compatibility of IP-GO in waterborne polyurethane., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society.)

Nanoformulations with advantages in drug delivery, safety and pharmacodynamics have been booming as a promising strategy for cancer therapy. However, the traditional nanocarrier still suffers from the low drug loading capacity, potential systematic toxicity, unclear metabolism, and other uncertainties. To overcome these issues, carrier-free nanodrugs with desirable bioactivity were developed rapidly and drawn considerable attention. Meanwhile, the multifunctional self-delivery nanoarcheticture fabricated by a simple and "green" method, has significant advantages in synergistic cancer therapy and inhibition of multidrug resistant (MDR). Till now, carrier-free nanoparticles for tumor theranostics, phototherapy, chemotherapy, diagnose and synergistic therapy, have made outstanding progress. In this review, we make an integrated and exhaustive overview of lately reports on carrier-free nanodrug delivery systems formed by several active agents. We summarize the self-assembly and modified strategies, with emphasis on application superiority of carrier-free nanocrystal, and give new insight into the establishment of ideal nanosystems for cancer treatment., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Cistus incanus leaf extract was used to biologically synthesize Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs). The characteristic UV-vis spectral band of CuO NPs found at 290 nm revealed the successful formation of CuO NPs. By the analysis of TEM and SEM, it is confirmed that the obtained CuO NPs were in spherical structure. By the analysis of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, it is evident that the absorption peak was situated at a position of about 480 cm -1 of wavenumber, which is typically considered as an extremely pure CuO NPs. The images of Transmission Electron Microscopy exhibited that the formed CuO NPs were in the size of about 15-25 nm and were relatively uniform in distribution. When related with the treatment of nanomaterials only, the synergistic interaction among CuO NPs and oxidative stress conditions considerably decreased the cardiac-related function catalogs, which includes pathological progressions of myocardium along with an obvious rise in the levels of creatine kinase-MB and cardiac troponin I. When compared to the void reaction of micro-CuO and cardiac operations in alloxan-injected rats, aggravation in the conditions of oxidative stress could be playing a significant part in the heart injury after dual exposing CuO NPs and alloxan. By these results, it is confirmed that the conditions of oxidative stress improved the contrary effects of CuO NPs to the heart, signifying that the utilization of nanomaterials in conditions of stress such as, in the delivery of drug, required to be cautiously monitored., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: To describe a rare case of aggressive fibromatosis of the stomach and discuss the differential diagnoses., Methods: A 47-year-old man presented with nonspecific abdominal pain. Gastroscopy revealed stomach wall swelling. An antral gastrectomy was performed. Histological examination revealed spindle-shaped cells and morphology typical of aggressive fibromatosis. We performed a literature search to identify conditions with features similar to those of aggressive fibromatosis., Results: Aggressive fibromatosis does not metastasize, but it is locally invasive and has a tendency to relapse; however, our patient has not had recurrence > 1 year after surgery. Aggressive fibromatosis of the stomach may be confused with an inflammatory fibroid polyp, a gastrointestinal stromal tumor, schwannoma, leiomyoma, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor, scirrhous carcinoma of the stomach, follicular dendritic cell sarcoma, inflammatory malignant fibrous histiocytoma, myofibroma/myofibromatosis, and solitary fibrous tumor of the stomach., Conclusions: Aggressive fibromatosis of the stomach is a rare spindle cell tumor that must be differentiated from a variety of conditions., Competing Interests: None., (IJCEP Copyright © 2019.)

Hashing is emerging as a powerful tool for building highly efficient indices in large-scale search systems. In this paper, we study spectral hashing (SH), which is a classical method of unsupervised hashing. In general, SH solves for the hash codes by minimizing an objective function that tries to preserve the similarity structure of the data given. Although computationally simple, very often SH performs unsatisfactorily and lags distinctly behind the state-of-the-art methods. We observe that the inferior performance of SH is mainly due to its imperfect formulation; that is, the optimization of the minimization problem in SH actually cannot ensure that the similarity structure of the high-dimensional data is really preserved in the low-dimensional hash code space. In this paper, we, therefore, introduce reversed SH (ReSH), which is SH with its input and output interchanged. Unlike SH, which estimates the similarity structure from the given high-dimensional data, our ReSH defines the similarities between data points according to the unknown low-dimensional hash codes. Equipped with such a reversal mechanism, ReSH can seamlessly overcome the drawback of SH. More precisely, the minimization problem in our ReSH can be optimized if and only if similar data points are mapped to adjacent hash codes, and mostly important, dissimilar data points are considerably separated from each other in the code space. Finally, we solve the minimization problem in ReSH by multilayer neural networks and obtain state-of-the-art retrieval results on three benchmark data sets.

We introduce a family of Newton-type greedy selection methods for -constrained minimization problems. The basic idea is to construct a quadratic function to approximate the original objective function around the current iterate and solve the constructed quadratic program over the cardinality constraint. The next iterate is then estimated via a line search operation between the current iterate and the solution of the sparse quadratic program. This iterative procedure can be interpreted as an extension of the constrained Newton methods from convex minimization to non-convex -constrained minimization. We show that the proposed algorithms converge asymptotically and the rate of local convergence is superlinear up to certain estimation error. Our methods compare favorably against several state-of-the-art greedy selection methods when applied to sparse logistic regression and sparse support vector machines.

A greenhouse experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Funneliformis mosseae on three parameters: Pb, Zn, Cu and Cd accumulation, translocation and plant growth in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne), tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea), showy stonecrop (Hylotelephium spectabile) and Purple Heart (Tradescantia pallida). The purpose of this work is to enhance site-specific phytostabilization of lead/zinc mine tailings using native plant species. The results showed that mycorrhizal fungi inoculation significantly increased plant biomass of F. arundinacea, H. spectabile and T. pallida. The Pb, Zn, Cu and Cd concentrations in roots were higher than those in shoots both with and without mycorrhizae, with the exception of the Zn concentration in H. spectabile. Mycorrhizae generally increased metal concentrations in roots and decreased metal concentrations in shoots of L. perenne and F. arundinacea. In addition, it was found that the majority of the bioconcentration and translocation factors were lower than 1 and mycorrhizal fungi inoculation further reduced these values. These results suggest that appropriate plant species inoculated with mycorrhiza might be a potential approach to revegetating mine tailing sites and that H. spectabile is an appropriate plant for phytostabilization of Pb/Zn tailings in northern China due to its higher biomass production and lower metal accumulation in shoots.

A major progress in deep multilayer neural networks (DNNs) is the invention of various unsupervised pretraining methods to initialize network parameters which lead to good prediction accuracy. This paper presents the sparseness analysis on the hidden unit in the pretraining process. In particular, we use the L 1 -norm to measure sparseness and provide some sufficient conditions for that pretraining leads to sparseness with respect to the popular pretraining models-such as denoising autoencoders (DAEs) and restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs). Our experimental results demonstrate that when the sufficient conditions are satisfied, the pretraining models lead to sparseness. Our experiments also reveal that when using the sigmoid activation functions, pretraining plays an important sparseness role in DNNs with sigmoid (Dsigm), and when using the rectifier linear unit (ReLU) activation functions, pretraining becomes less effective for DNNs with ReLU (Drelu). Luckily, Drelu can reach a higher recognition accuracy than DNNs with pretraining (DAEs and RBMs), as it can capture the main benefit (such as sparseness-encouraging) of pretraining in Dsigm. However, ReLU is not adapted to the different firing rates in biological neurons, because the firing rate actually changes along with the varying membrane resistances. To address this problem, we further propose a family of rectifier piecewise linear units (RePLUs) to fit the different firing rates. The experimental results show that the performance of RePLU is better than ReLU, and is comparable with those with some pretraining techniques, such as RBMs and DAEs.

Background: This meta-analysis examined the effects of exercise training on length of hospital stay, postoperative complications, exercise capacity, 6-minute walking distance (6MWD), and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients following resection of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)., Methods: This review searched PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Collaboration data base up to August 16, 2015. It includes 15 studies comparing exercise endurance and quality of life before versus after exercise training in patients undergoing lung resection for NSCLC., Results: This review identified 15 studies, 8 of which are randomized controlled trials including 350 patients. Preoperative exercise training shortened length of hospital stay; mean difference (MD): -4.98 days (95% CI = -6.22 to -3.74, P < .00001) and also decreased postoperative complications for which the odds ratio was 0.33 (95% CI = 0.15 to 0.74, P = .007). Four weeks of preoperative exercise training improved exercise capacity; 6MWD was increased to 39.95 m (95% CI = 5.31 to 74.6, P = .02) .While postoperative exercise training can also effectively improve exercise capacity, it required a longer training period; 6MWD was increased to 62.83 m (95% CI = 57.94 to 67.72) after 12 weeks of training ( P < .00001). For HRQoL, on the EORTC-QLQ-30, there were no differences in patients' global health after exercise, but dyspnea score was decreased -14.31 points (95% CI = -20.03 to -8.58, P < .00001). On the SF-36 score, physical health was better after exercise training (MD = 3 points, 95% CI = 0.81 to 5.2, P = .007) while there was no difference with regard to mental health. The I 2 statistics of all statistically pooled data were lower than 30%. There was a low amount of heterogeneity among these studies., Conclusions: Evidence from this review suggests that preoperative exercise training may shorten length of hospital stay, decrease postoperative complications and increase 6MWD. Postoperative exercise training can also effectively improve both the 6MWD and quality of life in surgical patients with NSCLC, but requiring a longer training period.

Explicit feature mapping is an appealing way to linearize additive kernels, such as χ 2 kernel for training large-scale support vector machines (SVMs). Although accurate in approximation, feature mapping could pose computational challenges in high-dimensional settings as it expands the original features to a higher dimensional space. To handle this issue in the context of χ 2 kernel SVMs learning, we introduce a simple yet efficient method to approximately linearize χ 2 kernel through random feature maps. The main idea is to use sparse random projection to reduce the dimensionality of feature maps while preserving their approximation capability to the original kernel. We provide approximation error bound for the proposed method. Furthermore, we extend our method to χ 2 multiple kernel SVMs learning. Extensive experiments on large-scale image classification tasks confirm that the proposed approach is able to significantly speed up the training process of the χ 2 kernel SVMs at almost no cost of testing accuracy.

Bio-based solvents have recently been discussed as sustainable green and promising alternatives to conventional organic media for enzymatic processes. In this paper, highly regioselective synthesis of the 6″-O-crotonyl-polydatin catalyzed by Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase (TLL) in biomass-derived 2-methyltetrahydrofuran (2-MeTHF) was successfully performed for the first time. The results indicated that TLL lipase displayed significantly improved catalytic performance in 2-MeTHF than in other traditional solvents. Under the optimal conditions, the initial reaction rate, 6″-regioselectivity, and maximum substrate conversion were as high as 12.38 mM h(-1), 100 %, and 100 %, respectively. Moreover, further investigations on the operational stability, kinetic parameters like V max, K m, V max/K m, and E a revealed that 2-MeTHF exhibited excellent biocompatibility and rendered the greener process of the enzymatic acylation.

Objective: To explore the correlation between electronic bronchus mirror and Chinese medical syndrome typing of Mycoplasma pneumonia children., Methods: Totally 198 Mycoplasma pneumonia children inpatients were assigned to three syndrome types according to Chinese medical syndrome typing and self-formulated typing standards of electronic bronchus mirror, i.e., Fei-qi accumulation of damp and heat syndrome, Fei-qi accumulation of toxicity and heat syndrome, deficient vital qi leading to lingering of pathogen syndrome. The correlation between electronic bronchus mirror and Chinese medical syndrome typing was explored., Results: As for comparison between electronic bronchus mirror and Chinese medical syndrome typing, Kappa value (K^) was 0.645 and Spearman coefficient correlation (r) was 0.653 (P < 0.01) for Fei-qi accumulation of damp and heat syndrome; K^ was 0.724 and r(s) was 0.727 (P < 0.01) for Fei-qi accumulation of toxicity and heat syndrome; K^ was 0.506 and r(s) was 0.515 (P < 0.01) for deficient vital qi leading to lingering of pathogen syndrome., Conclusion: Chinese medical syndrome typing of Mycoplasma pneumonia children was moderately in line with inspection typing under electronic bronchoscope with significant correlation.

Objective: To evaluate the value of serum procalcitonin (PCT) for the guidance of antibiotic therapy in children with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI)., Methods: A prospective randomized controlled study was conducted in 396 children with LRTI who visited Weifang Maternity and Child Care Hospital. The participants were randomly assigned into a PCT group in which the antibiotic therapy was guided by serum PCT level and a control group in which the standard therapy was given according to clinical guidance. Afterwards, a subgroup analysis was performed according to whether the patient was diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). After 14-day treatment, antibiotic prescription rate, duration of antibiotic treatment, and side events were compared between the groups., Results: A total of 396 cases were recruited and equally assigned into the PCT group and the control group, among whom the numbers of the children with CAP were 125 and 123, respectively. The mean duration of antibiotic treatment was significantly shorter in the PCT group than in the control group (P<0.05). The subgroup analysis showed that the duration of antibiotic treatment in both CAP and non-CAP PCT subgroups was significantly shorter than in the control subgroups (P<0.05), however, the antibiotic prescription rate in the non-CAP PCT subgroup was significantly higher than that in the non-CAP control subgroup (P<0.05). There were no differences in the rate and duration of side events from antibiotic therapy, hospitalization rate, the length of hospital stay, and safety between the PCT and control groups., Conclisopns: Serum PCT-based guidelines on antibiotic use can shorten the duration of antibiotic therapy in children with LRTI.

In order to elucidate the role of bottom-cultured clams in the coastal nutrient cycle, the seasonal filtration, ingestion and biodeposition rates were in situ measured and carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) budgets of Ruditapes philippinarum among four seasons were modeled. The results showed that the scope for growth of R. philippinarum in carbon (SFG(C)), nitrogen (SFG(N)), and phosphorus (SFG(P)) all varied significantly among seasons, with the highest values in spring. Meanwhile, SFG(C) was negative in summer, SFG(N) and SFG(P) were always positive throughout the year. The seasonal variations of SFG(C), SFG(N) and SFG(P) were -3.94-49.82 mg C x ind(-1) x d(-1), 0.72-9.49 mg N x ind(-1) x d(-1), and 0.15-3.06 mg P x ind(-1) x d(-1), respectively. The net growth efficiencies in carbon (K(C2)), nitrogen (K(N2)), and phosphorus (K(P2)) also showed a distinct seasonal pattern among seasons, and ranked as K(P2) > K(N2) > K(C2). The C, N, and P budgets illustrated that the R. philippinarum population relatively used more N and P than C for growth and efficiently transferred the pelagic primary production to a higher trophic level. The current study suggested that R. philippinarum bottom-cultured at large scale might play a dominant role in the nutrient cycle of the coastal ecosystem and should be considered as an important ecological component in coastal areas.

In image classification, recognition or retrieval systems, image contents are commonly described by global features. However, the global features generally contain noise from the background, occlusion, or irrelevant objects in the images. Thus, only part of the global feature elements is informative for describing the objects of interest and useful for the image analysis tasks. In this paper, we propose algorithms to automatically discover the subgroups of highly correlated feature elements within predefined global features. To this end, we first propose a novel mixture sparse regression (MSR) method, which groups the elements of a single vector according to the membership conveyed by their sparse regression coefficients. Based on MSR, we proceed to develop the autogrouped sparse representation (ASR), which groups correlated feature elements together through fusing their individual sparse representations over multiple samples. We apply ASR/MSR in two practical visual analysis tasks: 1) multilabel image classification and 2) motion segmentation. Comprehensive experimental evaluations show that our proposed methods are able to achieve superior performance compared with the state-of-the-art classification on these two tasks.

The forward greedy selection algorithm of Frank and Wolfe has recently been applied with success to coordinate-wise sparse learning problems, characterized by a tradeoff between sparsity and accuracy. In this paper, we generalize this method to the setup of pursuing sparse representations over a prefixed dictionary. Our proposed algorithm iteratively selects an atom from the dictionary and minimizes the objective function over the linear combinations of all the selected atoms. The rate of convergence of this greedy selection procedure is analyzed. Furthermore, we extend the algorithm to the setup of learning nonnegative and convex sparse representation over a dictionary. Applications of the proposed algorithms to sparse precision matrix estimation and low-rank subspace segmentation are investigated with efficiency and effectiveness validated on benchmark datasets.

Antigenic characterization based on serological data, such as Hemagglutination Inhibition (HI) assay, is one of the routine procedures for influenza vaccine strain selection. In many cases, it would be impossible to measure all pairwise antigenic correlations between testing antigens and reference antisera in each individual experiment. Thus, we have to combine and integrate the HI tables from a number of individual experiments. Measurements from different experiments may be inconsistent due to different experimental conditions. Consequently we will observe a matrix with missing data and possibly inconsistent measurements. In this paper, we develop a new mathematical model, which we refer to as Joint Matrix Completion and Filtering, for HI data integration. In this approach, we simultaneously handle the incompleteness and uncertainty of observations by assuming that the underlying merged HI data matrix has low rank, as well as carefully modeling different levels of noises in each individual table. An efficient blockwise coordinate descent procedure is developed for optimization. The performance of our approach is validated on synthetic and real influenza datasets. The proposed joint matrix completion and filtering model can be adapted as a general model for biological data integration, targeting data noises and missing values within and across experiments.

We address the problem of visual classification with multiple features and/or multiple instances. Motivated by the recent success of multitask joint covariate selection, we formulate this problem as a multitask joint sparse representation model to combine the strength of multiple features and/or instances for recognition. A joint sparsity-inducing norm is utilized to enforce class-level joint sparsity patterns among the multiple representation vectors. The proposed model can be efficiently optimized by a proximal gradient method. Furthermore, we extend our method to the setup where features are described in kernel matrices. We then investigate into two applications of our method to visual classification: 1) fusing multiple kernel features for object categorization and 2) robust face recognition in video with an ensemble of query images. Extensive experiments on challenging real-world data sets demonstrate that the proposed method is competitive to the state-of-the-art methods in respective applications.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the most common primary malignant tumor of digestive tract. However, the early diagnosis and molecular mechanisms that underlie tumor formation and progression have been progressed less. To identify new biomarkers for ESCC, we performed a comparative proteomic research. Isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation-based proteomic method was used to screen biomarkers between ESCC and normal. 802 non-redundant proteins were identified, 39 of which were differentially expressed with 1.5-fold difference (29 up-regulated and 10 down-regulated). Through Swiss-Prot and GO database, the location and function of differential proteins were analyzed, which are related to the biological processes of binding, cell structure, signal transduction, cell adhesion, etc. Among the differentially expressed proteins, TP-alpha, collagen alpha-1(VI) chain and S100A9 were verified to be upregulated in 77.19%, 75.44% and 59.65% of ESCC by immunohistochemistry and western-blot. Diagnostic value of these three proteins was validated. These results provide new insights into ESCC biology and potential diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers, which suggest that TP-alpha, collagen alpha-1(VI) chain and S100A9 are potential biomarkers of ESCC, and may play an important role in tumorigenesis and development of ESCC., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We investigate Newton-type optimization methods for solving piecewise linear systems (PLSs) with nondegenerate coefficient matrix. Such systems arise, for example, from the numerical solution of linear complementarity problem, which is useful to model several learning and optimization problems. In this letter, we propose an effective damped Newton method, PLS-DN, to find the exact (up to machine precision) solution of nondegenerate PLSs. PLS-DN exhibits provable semiiterative property, that is, the algorithm converges globally to the exact solution in a finite number of iterations. The rate of convergence is shown to be at least linear before termination. We emphasize the applications of our method in modeling, from a novel perspective of PLSs, some statistical learning problems such as box-constrained least squares, elitist Lasso (Kowalski & Torreesani, 2008), and support vector machines (Cortes & Vapnik, 1995). Numerical results on synthetic and benchmark data sets are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of PLS-DN on these problems.

Objective: To explore the expression of fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAPalpha) and transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1) in myocardial cytoplasm for the cases of sudden death due to acute myocardial ischemia., Methods: The heart tissues of 47 cases were collected. All cases were divided into three groups: control group, acute myocardial infarction group and recurrent myocardial infarction group. FAPalpha and TGF-beta1 expressions were explored in myocardial cytoplasm by immunohistochemistry technology. The staining results were collected by image analysis system and then the positive area ratio and average optical density were detected. The positive signal differences were compared among the groups., Results: Strong FAPalpha and TGF-beta1 expressions were detected in myocardial cytoplasm in both acute and recurrent myocardial infarction groups. The expression of FAPalpha was not detected in myocardial cytoplasm in control group and TGF-beta1 expression showed a weak positive result. FAPalpha and TGF-beta1 expressions showed the statistical difference (P < 0.05) in myocardial infarction (acute and recurrent) groups and control group., Conclusion: FAPalpha and TGF-beta1 can be the diagnostic markers for determing acute myocardial infarction.

By using sediment trap and closed respirator, a year-round in situ investigation was made on the bio-deposition rate, ammonia excretion rate, and phosphate excretion rate in the Ruditapes philippinarum bottom-cultured area of Zhuanghe coast. The three test rates of R. philippinarum all showed obvious seasonal variability, with the bio-deposition rate ranged in 0.15-1.47 g x ind(-1) x d(-1) (annual average 0.61 g x ind(-1) x d(-1)), ammonia excretion rate ranged in 0.02-0.40 mg x ind(-1) x d(-1) (annual average 0.17 mg x ind(-1) x d(-1)), and phosphate excretion rate ranged in 0.01-0.39 mg x ind(-1) x d(-1)(annual average 0. 13 mg x ind(-1) x d(-1)). Based on these, it was estimated that the annual bio-deposit production by the bottom-cultured R. philippinarum in Zhuanghe coast could reach as high as 5.46 x 10(7) t dry mass, amounting to 9.07 x 10(6) t organic matter (OM), 1.00 x 10(6) t organic carbon (OC), or 1.18 x 10(5) t organic nitrogen (ON), and the annual NH4+ -N and PO4(3-)-P productions were 1.49 x 10(4) t and 1.15 x 10(4) t, respectively. Our results suggested that for the large scale and high density bivalve culture in China coasts, the potential impacts of self-pollutants by filter-feeding bivalves on the environment should not be neglected.

Objective: To investigate the value of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or cytokeratin 19 fragment (CYFRA21-1) as an assessment indicator of therapeutic efficacy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients., Methods: 228 cases of advanced NSCLC with chemotherapy were enrolled into this retrospective study. The serum CEA or CYFRA21-1 levels of all patients were above the cut-off limit before treatment. The relationship between changes of tumor markers (TMs) and imaging therapeutic efficacy or progression-free survival (PFS) was analyzed, and the value of TMs in therapeutic efficacy assessment was evaluated., Results: According to RECIST criteria, partial response (PR) occurred in 40 cases, stable disease (SD) in 151 and PD (progressive disease) in 37. The cut-off values of the changes of TMs between pre- and post-treatment were determined according to the above mentioned criteria. The CEA down (D), stable (S), above (A) groups were 90, 49 and 66 cases, respectively. CYFRA21-1 down (D), stable (S), above (A) groups were 84, 26 and 37 cases, respectively. PR groups were 68.4% and 88.9% in CEA and cyfra21-1 down groups, respectively, 7.9% and 5.6% in the above groups, respectively. PD groups were 59.4% and 76.2% in CEA and CYFRA21-1 above groups, respectively. No PD cases were in the down groups. The changes of TMs in SD group were between them. Statistically significant correlations were observed between changes of TMs and imaging therapeutic efficacy (r(CEA) = 0.45, P = 0.00; r(CYFRA21-1) = 0.44, P = 0.00). PFS among different TMs groups were significantly different (all P < 0.05), which can be used to further distinguish the prognosis among SD subgroups., Conclusion: Changes of TMs can be used to predict the imaging therapeutic effect and PFS of the patients, and if the SD group is divided into subgroups according to different therapeutic efficacy and prognosis, it may help the patients to receive individualized treatment.

The hydrogen-bonded liquid crystalline complexes based on 4', 4-bipyridine and 4-(trans-4-propylcyclohexyl) benzoic acid and trans-4-(trans-4-propylcyclohexyl)cyclohexyl carboxylic acid assigned as PCBA-BPy and PCCA-BPy were prepared and measured by polarized optical microscopy (POM), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and temperature-dependent FTIR It was found that PCBA-BPy and PCCA-BPy exhibited both smectic and nematic phase while all of their predecessors showed no smectic phase. The temperature-dependent FTIR studies revealed that the hydrogen bonding in complex PCBA-BPy was very different from that in PCCA-BPy. The wave number of C=O band had an obvious change at the crystal 1-crystal 2 transition but almost didn't change at smectic-nematic and nematic-isotropic transition; while in PCCA-BPy, it showed no sudden changes but shift to 1 709 cm(-1) gradually with the increase in temperature. The results from temperature-dependent FTIR studies also revealed that when the temperature was higher than the clearing point of the complexes, both of the complexes decomposed partially.

Suspension aquaculture of filter-feeding bivalves can produce large amount of faeces and pseudofaeces (biodeposits) that may impact aquaculture environment, while deposit-feeding sea cucumbers may effectively utilize such particulate wastes and act as a scavenger in mariculture system. In this paper, the ingestion, growth, and excretion of deposit-feeder Apostichopus japonicus were investigated in situ seasonally to evaluate its bioremediation potential of a suspension aquaculture system of filter-feeding bivalves. The results showed that A. japonicus could grow well in newly designed culture nets, with its maximum specific growth rate being 0.34% d(-1). The A. japonicus could effectively use the biodeposits generated by co-cultured bivalves, and the ingestion rate at 21.2 degrees C in summer, 19.2 degrees C in autumn, and 7.7 degrees C in winter was 0.1746, 0.0989, and 0.0050 g g(-1) d(-1), respectively. A. japonicus could promote the regeneration of nutriens in biodeposits via the excretion of considerable amount of dissolved N and P, and the excretion also showed obvious seasonal fluctuation. The extrapolation based on the in situ investigation results showed that when co-cultivated with bivalves in lantern nets, A. japonicus would ingest 4.5-159.6 kg hm(-2) d(-1) of dry biodeposits and excrete 1,382.5-3,678.1 mmol hm(-2) d(-1) of NH4(+)-N and 74.6-335.7 mmol hm(-2) d(-1) of PO4(3-)-P, indicating that the deposit-feeding A. japonicus had a great bioremediation capability in suspension aquaculture systems. The integrated model of deposit-feeding A. japonicus and filter-feeding bivalve could not only benefit the economy, but also sustain the environment.

Separated on phenox RP18 column with a mobile phase of methyl alcohol-water (82:18) and detected at wavelength 232nm, yuanhuacine has shown a good linearity in the range from 7.6 x 10(-3) to 0.76 microgram. The recovery is 99.56% with RSD 3.61% (n = 9). The content of yuanhuacine in Daphne genkwa is 0.00848%.

This paper describes isolation and identification of a virus (termed strain 87A) which has the cytopathic effect and haemagglutination properties of hepatitis E virus (HEV). This virus was isolated by tissue culture from the faeces of a patient with acute non-A, non-B enteric hepatitis in Xinjiang, China. The isolated virus was neutralized by acute phase sera obtained from other patients with acute non-A, non-B enteric hepatitis. The virus particles also could be specifically aggregated with acute phase sera from patients with known HEV hepatitis in China, Burma, India and the U.S.S.R., and with acute and convalescent sera from an HEV-infected chimpanzee. Crystalline arrangements of virus particles in the cytoplasm were observed by electron microscopy in ultrathin sections of infected cells. The sedimentation coefficient of the strain 87A virus particles in sucrose gradients was 176S. Purified virus particles revealed a protein band of about 76K on SDS-PAGE and Western blotting. The evidence indicates that the strain 87A virus is an HEV. Our ability to propagate HEV in cell culture should facilitate research on this hepatotropic virus.