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Objective Liver cirrhosis is associated with frequent bacterial infections that increase the mortality rate. However, the early diagnosis and treatment of these infections are often difficult. In this retrospective-prospective observational study, the serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and procalcitonin (PCT) were measured in 233 cirrhotic patients to evaluate the early diagnostic and prognostic values of IL-6 and PCT for cirrhotic patients. Methods Cirrhotic patients admitted to the Liver Research Center of the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University between 1 October 2012 and 30 June 2014 were enrolled. They showed no evidence of infection on admission, and all had first onset of fever and met the systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria 72 hours after admission. The serum IL-6 and PCT levels were determined on admission, at the onset of fever (0 hour) and 24 and 48 hours after fever onset. Results A total of 233 cirrhotic patients, including 183 men and 50 women, with a median age of 56 (46-65) years were enrolled. A training group of 159 patients was retrospectively enrolled from 1 October 2012 to 31 December 2013, and a validation group of 74 patients was prospectively enrolled from 1 January 2014 to 30 June 2014. Among these patients, 134 were diagnosed with bacterial sepsis, 96 of whom were in the training group and 38 of whom were in the validation group; infections were ultimately ruled out in 99 patients: 63 training patients and 36 validation patients. At 0 hour, the IL-6 and PCT levels as well as the proportion of neutrophils were much higher in septic patients than in nonseptic ones. The IL-6 level and proportion of neutrophils peaked upon the onset of fever, 24 hours before the PCT levels and white blood cell count, and then sharply declined. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of IL-6 for diagnosing sepsis was largest at the onset of fever (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.983; 95% confidence interval, 0.967-0.999). The threshold of IL-6 for diagnosis was 135 pg/mL, with a sensitivity of 94.8% and a specificity of 93.7%. These diagnostic values were also confirmed in the validation group, with a sensitivity of 97.4% and specificity of 80.6%. Eleven (11.5%) patients died, and 85 (88.5%) patients recovered in the sepsis group of training patients after a 4-week follow-up. The IL-6 level was significantly higher in the nonsurvival group than that in the survival group (1813.00 vs 472.10 pg/mL, P = .004) at the onset of sepsis. The cutoff value for predicting prognosis was 1105 pg/mL, with a sensitivity of 81.8% and a specificity of 76.5%. Conclusions The serum IL-6 levels increased earlier than the PCT in septic cirrhotic patients. The direct measurement of the serum IL-6 level can help to rapidly detect bacterial infection, thus allowing for early therapeutic decisions and prognostic predictions.

The recently proposed single image super-resolution method which makes use of the theory of sampling signals with finite rate of innovation (FRI) can obtain the state-of-the-art performance. However, the FRI-based method might bring in artifacts in border areas because some values of edge pixels might be overcorrected, leading to extremely sharp edges. To address such issues, we propose an improved FRI-based single image super-resolution method. Specifically, our method can detect the artifacts, and correct the fake value by taking advantage of the correlation of the surrounding pixels. The method would prevent the edges of image from becoming extremely sharp and preserve the true edge texture. The obtained simulation results reveal that the improved FRI-based method can achieve a better performance than the original FRI-method.

Cobalt porphyrin (TPPCo) has been prepared in situ as a guest molecule in the layered host material phosphatoantimonic acid, HSb(PO4)2, here denoted SbP. The powder X-ray diffraction of the purified sample, the SbP-intercalated cobalt porphyrin (SbPTPPCo), showed the expanded interlamellar distance of SbP upon the intercalation. The electronic absorption and electron paramagnetic resonance spectra revealed the retention of cobalt porphyrin in the layered host material. The catalytic behaviour of the novel catalyst SbPTPPCo for the thiol autoxidation was investigated in quantitative detail. In our experimental conditions, the catalytic autoxidation proceeded without induction period for oxygen consumption. The intercalated cobalt porphyrin appears to be a promising catalyst owing to its good catalytic capability. No loss in activity was observed for SbPTPPCo after eight reaction cycles and a total of more than 5390 turnovers. The proposed reaction scheme for the autoxidation catalyzed by SbPTPPCo involves the formation of catalytic center of mononuclear complex by which the electron of RS− is transferred to bound and activated dioxygen.

Unsupported alumina membranes were prepared by sol-gel technique using aluminum isoproxide. The influence of the hydrolysis conditions, the type and concentration of peptizant acid on the boehmite sols has been studied. The suitable hydrolysis temperature for the aluminum isoproxide was above 50°C. Crack-free unsupported alumina membranes were obtained by rapid gelation processing of sols. The boehmite gel membrane and γ-Al2O3 membrane formed exhibited (020) and (440) preferred orientation.

MLAT (Multilateration) is a necessary technique in A-SMGCS (Advanced - Surface Movement Guidance & Control System) in the future. The precision of MLAT is related to GDOP (Geometric Dilution of Precision) and TOA (Time of Arrival) accuracy of its distributed stations. In view of the optimization among the multi-stations, an improved method based on fuzzy clustering is proposed. Different stations constitute different combinations and lead to different locating results. But the distribution based on combinations with good condition is collective and clustered. So the modified fuzzy clustering is used to analyze the distribution, abstract the stations with good condition and achieve the goal of multi-stations optimization. The experimental results based on the simulations and practical data illustrate the proposed method is not only feasible but also more accurate than the traditional optimization method based on GDOP only.

In this study, to detect person-borne concealed threats in range profiles under the circumstance of unknown clutter, we propose a binary integration nonparametric detection method based on the generalized sign (GS) detector for range-spread targets in a distributed terahertz radar network (DTRN). In the detection, the length of range-spread targets and the number of dominant scatterers on range-spread targets are considered and adaptively estimated. Furthermore, the GS detection method is applied to maintain a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) under the circumstance of unknown clutter. The detection performance of the proposed method for single terahertz radar and DTRN are both examined with the data synthesized by real range-spread targets data and real clutter data. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective, and for a given false alarm probability, the DTRN exhibits better detection performance than the single terahertz radar.