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Transcervical inflatable mediastinoscopic esophagectomy (TIME) is a novel method of minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) for esophageal cancer. However, whether TIME is effective and feasible as conventional MIE remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of TIME by comparing it with thoracoscopic esophagectomy (TE).Surgical outcomes and relapse-free survival (RFS) rates of patients with local early- or intermediate-stage thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma that underwent TIME or TE from January 2017 to December 2019 were analyzed in this retrospective study. Propensity score matching was used to control the confounding factors.The mean operation time in TIME was shorter than that in TE (p 0.05). Patients in the TIME group achieved postoperative ambulation earlier than those in the TE group (p 0.05). The rate of pulmonary complications was lower in TIME than in TE (p 0.05). The number of lymph nodes harvested during surgery and the RFS rates of two groups did not have significant differences.TIME may be a feasible and safe method to treat local early- and intermediate-stage thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma effectively and it could be a supplementary surgical method of TE for patients with poor pulmonary function or cannot undergo TE.

Background To evaluate the safety and efficacy of single incision plus one (SI+1) port three-dimensional (3D) laparoscopic minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE). Methods Clinical data of patients who underwent 3D thoracic laparoscopic MIE in our department from September 2020 to March 2021 were analyzed retrospectively. According to the different methods of laparoscopic surgery, the patients were divided into 2 groups: SI+1 port 3D laparoscopy group and multiportal 3D laparoscopy group. The operation time of the 3D laparoscopy component, amount of intraoperative blood loss, number of celiac lymph node dissections, postoperative abdominal drainage days, postoperative total abdominal drainage, postoperative complications, and length of hospital stay were analyzed. Results There was no significant difference between the 2 methods in laparoscopic operation time (30.11±5.86 vs. 28.45±4.72 min, P=0.49), intraoperative blood loss (34.44±9.82 vs. 35.91±6.25 mL, P=0.69), number of celiac lymph node dissections (8.44±3.13 vs. 7.09±2.12, P=0.27), postoperative abdominal drainage days (3.11±0.33 vs. 3.00±0.00 days, P=0.28), postoperative total abdominal drainage (95.00±23.33 vs. 92.27±11.26 mL, P=0.74), postoperative complications (22.2% vs. 27.3%, P=0.33), and hospital stay (9.67±0.71 vs. 10.18±0.87 days, P=0.17). None of the patients enrolled in the study had recurrence or death to date. Conclusions The application of SI+1 port 3D laparoscopy in minimally invasive resection of esophageal carcinoma is safe and feasible.

This paper presents a passive sensing method based on Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag for precise detection of actions or states. The RFID sensing tag is a ring structure consisting of RFID tag, spring antenna and reed switch. By adding a certain threshold of magnetic field, the tag’s antenna will work as dipole antenna or loop antenna, which can induce differences on RFID tag parameters. Among them, received signal strength (RSS) and phase can be used to detect the state change of the tag. It can perform accurate action or state detection such as open box and bottle cap rotation. In the future, this method can be applied in the field of health and life monitoring or other interaction scene of human and object.

Background Esophagectomy via transcervical incision inflatable single-port mediastinoscope combined with laparoscopy as a safe and feasible minimally invasive technique has gained attention recently. But the occurrence of Intraoperative events is inevitable. It's necessary to investigate and discuss the intraoperative events and countermeasures during operation. Methods Intraoperative events were retrospectively reviewed in 60 patients who underwent esophagectomy via transcervical incision inflatable single-port mediastinoscope combined with laparoscopy in the recent 3 years. Results There was no perioperative death and no aortic or bronchial injury. Bronchial artery injury occurred in 2 cases (3.34%), bronchial artery combined with azygos vein hemorrhage occurred in 1 case (1.67%). The pleura were injured in 3 cases (5%). Recurrent laryngeal nerve injury was noticed in 7 cases (11.67%). Thoracic duct injury occurred in 1 case (1.67%). Conclusions As a new surgical method, esophagectomy via transcervical incision inflatable single-port mediastinoscope combined with laparoscopy is considered safe and feasible, but requires improvement when compared with traditional surgical methods. Due to the influence of surgical space and with experienced surgeons, the incidence of intraoperative events such as intraoperative bleeding and thoracic duct injury is not dominant when compared with the traditional surgical methods. Thoracic surgeons should continuously improve their clinical knowledge as well as skills. Careful preoperative examination and evaluation of the patients, being familiar with the anatomical structure and various methods, wise selection of energy devices and calmly dealing with all kinds of events are the key factors for successful surgeries with fewer intraoperative events.

Ventilation Corridor is an important technique to mitigate local climate problems. Evaluating the benefits of ventilation corridors has gradually become the standard of its construction in cities. Previous studies have often analyzed the volume of ventilation from the perspective of geometric morphology, while there is a lack of discussion on its performance. Therefore, this study innovatively combined the roughness length (Z0), 3-dimensional aerodynamics parameter, with NDVI and M-NDWI, 2-dimensional indices of land cover through the combination of remote sensing inversion and urban morphology analysis. Compared with the traditional ventilation method, the composite indicator could not only guarantee ventilation volume, but also consider the cooling benefits brought by waters and vegetated areas. In detail, this study was contextualized in four districts in the city core of Hefei, Anhui Province, China. Based on the method of least cost path, we set up four different schemes for comparison, including roughness, roughness ​+ ​vegetated areas, roughness ​+ ​waters, and roughness ​+ ​vegetated areas ​+ ​waters. Comparative results were effectively verified through land surface temperature retrieved from the Landsat Thematic Mapper. Results were as follows: (1) Different scenarios exerted different impacts on urban ventilation. Of the four regions, the ventilation corridor that only considers Z0 presented the highest average land surface temperature. (2) The general temperature of ventilation corridors along the path of Z0 ​+ ​NDVI ​+ ​M-NDWI was respectively 34.11 ​êC, 31.73 ​êC, 34.80 ​êC, and 34.93 ​êC, presenting a lowest temperature compared with other scenarios of the same region. (3) Among the four regions, ventilation corridors constructed based on the path of Z0 ​+ ​M-NDWI presented a slightly lower temperature that those based on Z0+NDVI, with respective data of 34.22 ​êC ​

Ventilation corridors in cities can decrease air pollution and alleviate heat island problems but there remains a need to fully assess their effectiveness. Few urban managers have been able to take city-scale approaches to the construction of urban ventilation corridors. This study aimed to introduced the Ventilation Corridor Planning (VCP) model, which is a multi-criteria evaluation method combined with a geographical information system (GIS) to determine where the ventilated environment is most appropriate. Specifically, the VCP model took Bozhou, China as the research object and contained two scales, including mesoscale and local scale. In mesoscale scale, we got three outputs to build urban ventilation corridors, including 1) background wind environment, 2) ventilation potential, 3) heat island intensity. In local scale, we used traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to verify the impact of VCP criteria. The results revealed that compared with the traditional CFD model, the proposed VCP model has advantages in establishing a comprehensive evaluation standard. In addition, the application of VCP model in macro and micro also enhances the efficiency of ventilation corridor construction. Overall, this study introduced a effective modeling method to urban ventilation corridors planning, and provide a way to study the urban climate.

The wave of intelligent manufacturing has swept the world, and intelligent manufacturing has realized the interconnection of the physical world and the information world. With the deep integration of intelligent manufacturing, cognitive computing and cognitive science, the manufacturing industry presents a new manufacturing model, which is called cognitive manufacturing. Cognitive manufacturing, as the evolution stage of intelligent manufacturing, endows industrial manufacturing system with perception and judgment ability. In addition, it enables the machine to realize self-adaptation, self-organization and self-decision-making based on cognition, thus completing accurate execution. But the manufacturing system cannot be entirely controlled by machines without the involvement of human. Based on the new generation of intelligent manufacturing for human-information-physical system and human-computer synthetic-intelligent system. This paper compares and extends the relevant technical models of intelligent manufacturing and cognitive manufacturing. Furthermore, it presents a framework that integrates the cognitive ability of human and machine, putting forward a cognitive manufacturing system architecture of human-machine collaborative cognition, called Human-in-Cognition Manufacturing-Loop (HCML). Additionally, the connotation, key implementation technology and future development trend of the system are discussed in details, and the role of artificial intelligence in the system are introduced.

Feasibility of combined sludge conditioning process of micro-disintegration, floc reconstruction and skeleton building with KMnO4/FeCl3/Biochar to enhance sludge dewaterability was investigated. The changes of sludge characteristics were analyzed to unravel the sludge conditioning mechanisms. The optimal conditioner dosages were: KMnO4 of 20 g/kg dry sludge (DS), FeCl3 of 138.09 g/kg DS and sludge cake biochar of 70% DS. Compared with raw sludge, specific resistance to filtration (SRF) decreased by 99.03%, net sludge solids yield (YN) increased by 24.6 times and the moisture content decreased from 83.38% to 60.63%. Sludge flocs were micro-disintegrated by KMnO4 oxidation, therefore more EPS and bound water were released from the sludge flocs. The more uniform and compact flocs were reconstructed by electrostatic neutralization of FeCl3 flocculation. Sludge cake biochar helps to build an incompressible and permeable sludge cake to further improve the sludge dewaterability. Combined sludge conditioning by adding KMnO4/FeCl3/Biochar to enhance sludge dewaterability is promising.

The coupling effect between urban PM2.5 concentrations and urban heat island effect has been paid more and more attention to. Previous studies mostly focused on the analysis of data correlations, lacking the interpretation of the formation texture. Taking Hefei as the subject, this study combined the spatial statistical model with the coupling coordination degree model to explore the influence of spatial environment-related indicators on the coupling effect of cities. In addition, at the micro level, the paper used grid unit to verify the relevance and made a comprehensive analysis on the formation texture of coupling effect. The results indicated that: (1) there is a significant coupling effect between the urban heat island intensity and PM2.5 concentrations in the main urban area of Hefei with significant spatial heterogeneity. (2) to some extent, the indicators of urban spatial environment, including vegetated areas, buildings, residential land, commercial land, industrial land, building density, floor area ratio, building form ratio, the densities of road junctions and sub-arterial roads, have different effects on the coupling effect. In general, the higher the degree of human activity, the higher the degree of coupling effect. (3) the coupling effect may be influenced by a variety of spatial environment factors.