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The spectral bundle method developed by Helmberg and Rendl is well-established for solving large-scale semidefinite programs (SDPs) in the dual form, especially when the SDPs admit $\textit{low-rank primal solutions}$. Under mild regularity conditions, a recent result by Ding and Grimmer has established fast linear convergence rates when the bundle method captures $\textit{the rank of primal solutions}$. In this paper, we present an overview and comparison of spectral bundle methods for solving both $\textit{primal}$ and $\textit{dual}$ SDPs. In particular, we introduce a new family of spectral bundle methods for solving SDPs in the $\textit{primal}$ form. The algorithm developments are parallel to those by Helmberg and Rendl, mirroring the elegant duality between primal and dual SDPs. The new family of spectral bundle methods also achieves linear convergence rates for primal feasibility, dual feasibility, and duality gap when the algorithm captures $\textit{the rank of the dual solutions}$. Therefore, the original spectral bundle method by Helmberg and Rendl is well-suited for SDPs with $\textit{low-rank primal solutions}$, while on the other hand, our new spectral bundle method works well for SDPs with $\textit{low-rank dual solutions}$. These theoretical findings are supported by a range of large-scale numerical experiments. Finally, we demonstrate that our new spectral bundle method achieves state-of-the-art efficiency and scalability for solving polynomial optimization compared to a set of baseline solvers $\textsf{SDPT3}$, $\textsf{MOSEK}$, $\textsf{CDCS}$, and $\textsf{SDPNAL+}$., 57 pages, 4 figures, and 4 tables

Dan Yuan,&ast; Yan Zhang,&ast; Yiping Li, Ling Li, Hong Yang, Wei Yang, Hang Yu, Liao Feng, Shu Liang Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Shu Liang; Liao Feng, Email Liangshu523@163.com; 58539976@qq.comBackground: Choosing patients with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) with virologic failure observed in the course of treatment, and analyzing the CD4(+) T cell count of PLWH with different subtypes of virus and the risk factors of CD4 (+) T cell count recoveryMethods: Analyze and evaluate the change of median CD4(+) T cell count of PLWH infected with different HIV-1 subtypes in Sichuan Province after treatment by rank sum test. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to analyze the risk factors on CD4(+) T cell count growth after PLWH treatment.Results: A total of 4977 cases were analysed, including CRF07_BC 2358 cases (47.38%), CRF01_AE 1507 cases (30.28%), CRF08_BC 577 cases (11.59%), CRF85_BC 303 cases (6.09%) and other subtypes 232 cases (4.66%). PLWH infected with CRF85_BC had lower median CD4(+) T cell count after treatment (p < 0.05). It was found that protective factors to increase CD4(+) T cell count (p < 0.05) including females, Yi people, married or cohabiting, educational level at primary school or above, initial and recent treatment with Tenofovir + Lamivudine + Nevirapine Wellen, the second-line regimen with lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) and the treatment time is more than 24 months. However, over 50 years old, the disease course is in AIDS stage, the infection of CRF01_AE and CRF85_BC virus was the risk factor on CD4(+) T cell count increase (p < 0.05). PLWH with higher initial CD4 level had a lower ratio of CD4(+) T cell count increase (≥ 50 cells/μL) (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Age, sex, ethnicity, marriage, education, disease status, treatment protocols, treatment time, initial CD4(+) T cell count, and virus subtype are the influencing factors of PLWH CD4(+) T cell count increase. The poor recovery of CD4(+) T cell count after treatment was observed in PLWH infected with CRF85_BC virus.Keywords: HIV, AIDS, antiretroviral therapy, CD4(+) T cells count

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BACKGROUND: Current guidelines recommend that all infected cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) should be removed. However, financial or anatomical concerns can lead to management of infection with simple debridement, as opposed to complete removal. In this observational study, we report the outcomes of our modified procedure for this real-world dilemma. METHODS AND RESULTS: The Quarantine (RESQ) method is characterized as follows: the removal (R) of all non-essential foreign materials, including old sutures and leads; the excision (E) of all non-viable, chronically inflamed, granulation, or scar tissue; the sterilization (S) of the remaining generator; and the quarantine (Q) of a new pocket in the sub-muscular layer for reimplantation. From a review of electronic medical records, 30 patients were selected and divided into three groups according to the intervention used: RESQ (n = 9) in group A, simple debridement (n = 16) in group B, and guideline-recommended replacement (n = 5) in group C. Patient baseline characteristics were similar between the groups. After analyzing the proportion of patients that were free from infection one year following their respective interventions, we found that group A performed better than group B (100% and 31.2% infection-free, respectively, p = 0.001), and was comparable to group C (both 100% infection-free, p = not applicable). CONCLUSIONS: The RESQ method is a feasible and beneficial alternative for selected patients with CIED infections who are unable to receive a generator replacement according to the recommended guideline.

In this work, we propose a method to create domain-sensitive speech recognition models that utilize textual domain information by conditioning its generation on a given text prompt. This is accomplished by fine-tuning a pre-trained, end-to-end model (Whisper) to learn from demonstrations with prompt examples. We show that this ability can be generalized to different domains and even various prompt contexts, with our model gaining a Word Error Rate (WER) reduction of up to 33% on unseen datasets from various domains, such as medical conversation, air traffic control communication, and financial meetings. Considering the limited availability of audio-transcript pair data, we further extend our method to text-only fine-tuning to achieve domain sensitivity as well as domain adaptation. We demonstrate that our text-only fine-tuned model can also attend to various prompt contexts, with the model reaching the most WER reduction of 29% on the medical conversation dataset., Comment: F-T Liao and Y-C Chan contributed equally

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The HIV/AIDS cases and proportion in older people are continuously and rapidly increasing in China, especially in males. However, the transmission mechanism is not well understood. This study aims to explore the transmission mechanism of HIV/AIDS and potential ways to prevent or control HIV/AIDS transmission in a city in southwestern China. Data from multiple sources, including HIV/AIDS case reports in 2010–2020, a survey of HIV/AIDS cases in 2020, and sentinel surveillance data of female sex workers (FSWs) in 2016–2020 were analyzed. We explored the transmission mechanism of HIV/AIDS cases aged 50 years and older. In this city, the number of newly reported HIV/AIDS cases aged 50 years and older increased from 2010 to 2019, and decreased in 2020. The number of male and female cases aged 50 years and older both increased rapidly in 2017–2019, though the number of male cases was larger than that of female. The survey data showed that 84.7% of older male cases reported commercial sexual behavior, among whom 87.7% reported never using condom and 37.6% reported more than 10 times of commercial sexual behaviors in 1 year. In terms of price of sexual behavior, 68.3% of older male cases sought low-tier FSWs among whom the HIV/AIDS positive rate was 5.4% from the sentinel surveillance data. These results suggested HIV transmission between older men and low-tier FSWs through commercial sexual behavior. Among female cases aged 50 years and older, most reported non-marital and non-commercial heterosexual (60.5%) or regular sexual partner (31.4%) transmission, suggesting that they were infected by their spouse/regular sexual partner. Data of matched couples showed that most male cases had both marital sexual behavior and commercial sexual behavior, or acquired HIV through commercial sexual behavior, while most female cases had only marital sexual behavior. Based on these findings, we proposed a transmission mode of that local older male people and FSWs are transmitting bilaterally through commercial sexual behavior, and local older male people are spreading to local older female people through spouse or regular sexual partner route. By studying data from multiple sources, we explored the HIV transmission mode among older people. In the meantime, we found that marital status had a different impact on male and female old people in their sex behaviors.

Objective To assess the long‐term clinical efficacy of TiRobot‐assisted percutaneous cannulated screw fixation in the treatment of femoral neck fractures. Methods This retrospective study included 50 patients with unilateral femoral neck fractures who were treated with TiRobot‐assisted percutaneous cannulated screw fixation from September 2017 to May 2018. After at least 2 years of follow‐up, the results of treatment, including operation duration, frequency of fluoroscopy use, intraoperative bleeding, hospital stay, medical expense, screw placement accuracy, rate of fracture healing and necrosis of the femoral head, and Harris hip scores at the last follow up, were recorded and compared with those of 83 matched patients who underwent conventional manual positioning surgery. Results The TiRobot group had longer operation duration (83.3 ± 31.2 min vs 44.1 ± 14.8 min) and higher medical expenses (28,407.1 ± 7498.0 yuan vs 22,672.3 ± 4130.3 yuan) than the conventional group. The TiRobot group had significantly less intraoperative bleeding (11.3 ± 7.3 mL vs 51.6 ± 40.4 mL) and shorter hospital stay (8.6 ± 2.8 days vs 11.1 ± 3.41 days) than the conventional group. Screw parallelism (1.32° ± 1.85° vs 2.54° ± 2.99° on anteroposterior radiograph; 1.42° ± 2.25° vs 3.09° ± 3.63° on lateral radiograph) and distance between screws (58.44 ± 10.52 mm vs 39.69 ± 12.17 mm) were significantly improved. No significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of the use of fluoroscopy (40.1 ± 28.5 times vs 38.6 ± 21.0 times) and Harris hip scores at the last follow‐up (93.2 ± 10.3 points vs 88.4 ± 11.9 points). Two cannulated screws penetrated the femoral head during manual insertion in the conventional group but not in the TiRobot group. The rate of nonunion and necrosis of the femoral head in the TiRobot group was reduced compared with that in the conventional group (0 vs 7.2%; 6.0% vs 24.1%). Conclusion TiRobot‐assisted percutaneous cannulated screw fixation of femoral neck fractures is accurate and minimally invasive and helps in reducing late complications, particularly necrosis of the femoral head and nonunion of fractures., TiRobot‐assisted percutaneous cannulated screw fixation of femoral neck fractures is accurate and minimally invasive, and helps in reducing late complications, particularly necrosis of the femoral head and nonunion of fracture.

Background The COVID-19 spread worldwide quickly. Exploring the epidemiological characteristics could provide a basis for responding to imported cases abroad and to formulate prevention and control strategies in areas where COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly. Methods The number of confirmed cases, daily growth, incidence and length of time from the first reported case to the end of the local cases (i.e., non-overseas imported cases) were compared by spatial (geographical) and temporal classification and visualization of the development and changes of the epidemic situation by layers through maps. Results In the first wave, a total of 539 cases were reported in Sichuan, with an incidence rate of 0.6462/100,000. The closer to Hubei the population centres were, the more pronounced the epidemic was. The peak in Sichuan Province occurred in the second week. Eight weeks after the Wuhan lockdown, the health crisis had eased. The longest epidemic length at the city level in China (except Wuhan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) was 53 days, with a median of 23 days. Spatial autocorrelation analysis of China showed positive spatial correlation (Moran’s Index > 0, p Conclusions After the closure of the outbreak city, appropriate isolation and control measures in the next 8 weeks were key to control the outbreak, which reduced the peak value and length of the outbreak. Some countries with improved epidemic situations need to develop a continuous “local strategy at entry checkpoints” to to fend off imported COVID-19.

Secondary Ions Mass Spectroscopy and Hall effect measurements were performed on boron doped silicon with concentration between 0.02 at.% and 12 at.%. Ultra-high boron doping was made by saturating the chemisorption sites of a Si wafer with BCl3, followed by nanosecond laser anneal (Gas Immersion Laser Doping). The boron concentration varies thus nearly linearly with the number of process repetitions. However, it is not the case for the hole concentration which tends to saturate at high boron concentration. The difference between boron and hole concentration increases as the square of boron concentration, pointing towards the formation of boron pairs as the dominant contribution to the increase of inactive boron.

In meta-learning, the knowledge learned from previous tasks is transferred to new ones, but this transfer only works if tasks are related. Sharing information between unrelated tasks might hurt performance, and it is unclear how to transfer knowledge across tasks with a hierarchical structure. Our research extends a model agnostic meta-learning model, MAML, by exploiting hierarchical task relationships. Our algorithm, TreeMAML, adapts the model to each task with a few gradient steps, but the adaptation follows the hierarchical tree structure: in each step, gradients are pooled across tasks clusters, and subsequent steps follow down the tree. We also implement a clustering algorithm that generates the tasks tree without previous knowledge of the task structure, allowing us to make use of implicit relationships between the tasks. We show that the new algorithm, which we term TreeMAML, performs better than MAML when the task structure is hierarchical for synthetic experiments. To study the performance of the method in real-world data, we apply this method to Natural Language Understanding, we use our algorithm to finetune Language Models taking advantage of the language phylogenetic tree. We show that TreeMAML improves the state of the art results for cross-lingual Natural Language Inference. This result is useful, since most languages in the world are under-resourced and the improvement on cross-lingual transfer allows the internationalization of NLP models. This results open the window to use this algorithm in other real-world hierarchical datasets., Updated version of paper in EACL workshop: Adapt-NLP 2021

Birds have a wide range of activities in the natural environment, and there are a lot of uncontrollable factors. Therefore, recording the neural signals and behavior data of birds in natural state transition is a major difficulty in the progress of neuroscience. At present, most neuroscience fields usually use wired EEG acquisition equipment, but due to its large size and heavy weight, it is not suitable for small animals, especially birds, to record neural and behavior data in natural state. In order to solve the above problems, we designed a wearable neuro-signal recording system in this study, which can synchronously record the neuro-signal and attitude data of birds in flight. The core processor of this system uses STM32 series high performance single-chip computer, and its peripheral components are described as follows: (1) 8-channel neural signal acquisition module based on AD1299; (2) GPS global positioning module; (3) Attitude measurement unit; (4) TF card storage module. The total weight of the system is about 20 g and the volume is about 27 mm x 25 mm x 15 mm. Finally, the neural signals and attitude data of the pigeons moving freely on the ground and in the sky were collected using the system we designed. The results showed that the system can not only stably record neural signals, attitude information and position information at the same time, but also does not affect their normal flight. The system has a good application prospect. Researchers can use it to record and analyze the neural signals of experimental animals, especially birds in free movement and even flight. Our work provides a portable and feasible experimental tool for further study of the neural mechanism of the brain in more complex environment.

Background: The COVID-19 spread worldwide quickly. Exploring the epidemiological characteristics could provide a basis for responding to imported cases abroad and to formulate prevention and control strategies in areas where COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly.Methods: The number of confirmed cases, daily growth, incidence and length of time from the first reported case to the end of the local cases (i.e., non-overseas imported cases) were compared by spatial (geographical) and temporal classification and visualization of the development and changes of the epidemic situation by layers through maps.Results: In the first wave, a total of 539 cases were reported in Sichuan, with an incidence rate of 0.6462/100,000. The closer to Hubei the population centres were, the more pronounced the epidemic was. The peak in Sichuan Province occurred in the second week. Eight weeks after the Wuhan lockdown, the health crisis had eased. The longest epidemic length at the city level in China (except Wuhan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) was 53 days, with a median of 23 days. Spatial autocorrelation analysis of China showed positive spatial correlation (Moran's Index >0, pConclusions: After the closure of the outbreak city, appropriate isolation and control measures in the next 8 weeks were key to control the outbreak, which reduced the peak value and length of the outbreak. Some countries with improved epidemic situations need to develop a continuous "local strategy at entry checkpoints" to to fend off imported COVID-19.

Background: The COVID-19 spread worldwide quickly. Exploring the epidemiological characteristics could provide a basis for responding to imported cases abroad and to formulate prevention and control strategies in areas where COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly. Methods: The number of confirmed cases, daily growth, incidence and length of time from the first reported case to the end of the local cases (i.e., non-overseas imported cases) were compared by spatial (geographical) and temporal classification and visualization of the development and changes of the epidemic situation by layers through maps. Results: In the first wave, a total of 539 cases were reported in Sichuan, with an incidence rate of 0.6462/100,000. The closer to Hubei the population centres were, the more pronounced the epidemic was. The peak in Sichuan Province occurred in the second week. Eight weeks after the Wuhan lockdown, the health crisis had eased. The longest epidemic length at the city level in China (except Wuhan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) was 53 days, with a median of 23 days. Spatial autocorrelation analysis of China showed positive spatial correlation (Moran's Index >0, p

Background: To compare the epidemiological characteristics of Sichuan Province, other provinces in China and the world epidemic trends by analyzing the prevalence and length of epidemic time. in order to provide a basis for responding to imported cases abroad and to formulate prevention and control strategies in areas that are still rapidly circulating.Methods: The number of confirmed cases, daily growth, incidence and the length of time from the first reported case to the end of local case(non-overseas imported cases) were compared by spatial and temporal (geographical, temporal) classification. Visualizing the development and changes of epidemic situation by layer through maps.Results: In the first wave, total of 539 cases were reported in Sichuan Province, with the incidence rate of 0.6462 / 100,000. The closer to Hubei, the heavier the epidemic. The peak of Sichuan Province came earlier and the value was lower. Eight weeks after Wuhan lockdown, all became better. The longest epidemic length in city level of China was 53 days, median 23 days. It was released quickly in the 1st month, and accelerated in the 2ed month (three times of 1st month). Most countries outside China began to rise rapidly 4 weeks after their first case. Some European countries was earlier than USA. Germany, Spain, Italy, and China cost 28, 29, 34, and 18 days to reached the peak of daily increment, after their daily increase up to 20 cases. Countries in African Region and South-East Asia Region were at the early stage, in Eastern Mediterranean Region and Region of the Americas were at rapid growth phase,in European presented an inflection point or at a plateau period but falling slowly.Conclusions: Adopting appropriate isolation and control measures is necessary to actively respond to the epidemic situation. If effective measures were implemented at the 8 key weeks, the peak value of the confirmed cases will be lower and decrease quickly. Some countries with improved epidemic situations also need to develop a continuous "local strategy at entry checkpoints" to respond to a possible second local epidemic.

To compare the epidemiological characteristics of Sichuan Province, other provinces in China and the world epidemic trends by analyzing the prevalence and length of epidemic time. Visualizing the development and changes of epidemic situation by layer through maps. 539 cases were reported in Sichuan Province, with the incidence rate of 0.6462 / 100,000. The closer to Hubei, the heavier the epidemic. Eight weeks after Wuhan lockdown, all became better. The longest epidemic length in city level was 53 days, median 23 days. It was released quickly in the 1st month, and accelerated in the 2ed month (three times of 1st month). Most countries outside China began to rise rapidly 4 weeks after their first case. Some European countries was earlier than USA. Most countries now entered the second phase of the rise. Adopting positive isolation and control measures in key 8 weeks will help us to fight the epidemic.

Background: Fracture is a common disease; many factors affect fracture healing. Recent studies have confirmed that hydrogen sulfide (H2S) plays an essential role in bone formation, but most of these studies are drawing conclusions based on animal experiment; whether H2S could promote fracture healing in patients is still unclear. We aim to investigate the change of serum H2S in fracture patients, and analyze its effort on fracture healing. Methods: This is a single-center, prospective cohort study. Patients with spinal or limb fracture will be recruited. Patient's serum and urine will be collected at baseline for examination (serum H2S, β-CTX, OC, PINP, 25-OH-VitD3, S-CTX, urinary calcium, and urinary creatinine). All patients will be followed-up for 24 months in outpatients settings, the image of X-ray or CT will be reviewed and fracture healing will be judged by 2 experienced orthopedic physicians. The difference in serum parameters especially H2S will be compared between patients with fracture healed within 9 months and those with fracture unhealed at 9 months. Discussion: Results of the trial could provide insight into influence of H2S on fracture healing. Ethics and dissemination: The study was approved by the ethics committee of School of Medicine UESTC & Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital Ethics Committee. All the participants will be asked to provide written informed consent before data collection. The findings of the study will be published in peer-reviewed journals and will be presented at national or international conferences.

Additional file 1. The molecular typing database of patients’ MRSA in Yunnnan province of China.

During software front-end development, the work to convert Graphical User Interface(GUI) image to the corresponding front-end code is an inevitable tedious work. There have been some attempts to make this work to be automatic. However, the GUI code generated by these models is not accurate due to the lack of attention mechanism guidance. To solve this problem, we propose PixCoder based on an artificially supervised attention mechanism. The approach is to train a neural network to predict the style sheets in the input GUI image and then output a vector. PixCoder generate the GUI code targeting specific platform according to the output vector. The experimental results have shown the accuracy of the GUI code generated by PixCoder is over 95%.

By the end of 2017, a total of 110,872 people living with HIV (PLWH) had been diagnosed in Sichuan, including 42,496 AIDS patients, making Sichuan one of the provinces heavily affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The male/female ratio was 2.8:1; the 20–49 age group accounted for 68.5% of infections; and the Han ethnic majority accounted for 68.1% and the Yi ethnic minority accounted for 30.3% of the total cases. PLWH have a wide range of occupations, with farmers, unemployed, and rural migrant workers taking up the majority. Transmission by injection drug use accounted for the majority of cases until 2010, with sexual transmission rapidly expanding in the last decade. By the end of 2017, nearly 79,000 PLWH were receiving antiretroviral treatment in Sichuan province. Mortality greatly declined in recent years among those who received treatment. The number of HIV-related deaths surpassed 5000 in 2017. A comprehensive surveillance network has been set up composed of routine screening, case reporting, sentinel surveillance, specific epidemiological investigation, estimation of the HIV epidemic, and analysis of the incidence rate in different risk groups. Education activities targeting different groups have been carried out from provincial level to prefecture level and communities. Free antiretroviral treatment during the past decade has reduced the mortality rate among PLWH and has improved the quality of their life. Tailored behavioral interventions were implemented to effectively change high-risk behaviors among key populations. Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) has covered all 21 prefectures and 181 counties. A comprehensive prevention and treatment system that takes the community as its basis, health departments its mainstay, and professional institutes its backbone, with the coordination of security, civil administration and education, and the general public have been established. Remarkable progress has been made, but a great challenge lies ahead to control HIV sexual transmission, particularly in minorities.

Simple Summary A distributed brain network supports the goal-directed spatial learning of animals, in which the formation of the route from the current location to the goal is one of the central problems. To enhance our understanding of how the avian hippocampus (Hp) and nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) cooperate during route formation, we examined neural activity in the Hp-NCL network of pigeons and explored their connectivity dynamics in a goal-directed spatial task. We found that pigeons’ behavioral changes during route formation are accompanied by modifications of their neural patterns in the Hp-NCL network. The depressed spectral power in Hp and NCL, together with the different dynamics of the functional connectivity in both regions, as well as, most importantly, the enhanced Hp-NCL theta functional connectivity, provide insight into the potential mechanism of avian spatial learning. Abstract Goal-directed spatial learning is crucial for the survival of animals, in which the formation of the route from the current location to the goal is one of the central problems. A distributed brain network comprising the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex has been shown to support such capacity, yet it is not fully understood how the most similar brain regions in birds, the hippocampus (Hp) and nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), cooperate during route formation in goal-directed spatial learning. Hence, we examined neural activity in the Hp-NCL network of pigeons and explored the connectivity dynamics during route formation in a goal-directed spatial task. We found that behavioral changes in spatial learning during route formation are accompanied by modifications in neural patterns in the Hp-NCL network. Specifically, as pigeons learned to solve the task, the spectral power in both regions gradually decreased. Meanwhile, elevated hippocampal theta (5 to 12 Hz) connectivity and depressed connectivity in NCL were also observed. Lastly, the interregional functional connectivity was found to increase with learning, specifically in the theta frequency band during route formation. These results provide insight into the dynamics of the Hp-NCL network during spatial learning, serving to reveal the potential mechanism of avian spatial navigation.

BACKGROUND: Catheter-based renal denervation (RDN) has emerged as a promising treatment option for hypertension. However, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have reported conflicting results on blood pressure (BP) reduction. Patient- and procedure-related confounders have been implied as the potential sources of inconsistent BP responses. We aimed to investigated whether unplanned and frequent medication changes in RDN studies affected the BP response to RDN by conducting sensitivity and subgroup analyses, according to antihypertensive medication change rates in a meta-analysis of RCTs. METHODS: We searched the PUBMED, EMBASE, and COCHRANE databases up to May 2018. RCTs that studied the effects of RDN on hypertensive patients were included. A meta-analysis was carried out using RevMan 5.3. RESULTS: A total of 12 studies were included, of which four fulfilled the inclusion criteria of < 10% medication change rate in our review. Subgroup meta-analyses of the four RCTs with < 10% medication change rates showed statistically significant reductions of 6.07 mmHg and 7.12 mmHg in 24-hour and office systolic BP, respectively. The 24-hour and office diastolic BP were also reduced (mean difference = -3.89 mmHg and -4.27 mmHg, respectively). These subgroup analyses had no heterogeneity (I(2) = 0%). In contrast, the pooled analysis of the 12 studies and the subgroup analysis of eight studies with > 10% medication change rates both had a high level of heterogeneity and no significant BP reduction. CONCLUSIONS: The effectiveness of RDN was demonstrated across a broad range of antihypertensive medications used at baseline after removing the confounder of unplanned medication changes.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been introduced recently and has significantly impacted morbidity and mortality, but can also engender drug resistance. To identify the prevalence of HIV-1 drug resistance (HIVDR) among patients with antiretroviral therapy failure in Sichuan during the period from 2010 to 2016, we carried out a longitudinal study in Sichuan, a province with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in China. The data and blood samples were collected from HIV/AIDS patients who received ART for more than half a year. Overall 5,512 sequences were completed from 7,059 ART-failure patients, and 2,499 individuals were identified as drug resistant. Among those with HIVDR mutations identified, 25.37% were against non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), and 1.60% was against nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). NRTI-resistant drugs were mainly lamivudine (3TC) (57.77%) and emtricitabine (FTC), while NNRTI-resistant drugs were mainly nevirapine (NVP) (91.13%) and efavirenz (EFV) (72.81%). The most common recombination subtypes of HIV-1 in sequenced samples were CRF07_BC (circulating recombinant form, CRF) (41.42%), followed by CRF01_AE (40.77%). Moreover, drug resistance rate increased with the prolongation of treatment time (χ2 = 14.758, P < 0.05). The overall prevalence of acquired drug resistance in HIV-1 infected patients in Sichuan was 5.47%, which has remained relatively stable from 2010 to 2016. HIV-1 CRF01_AE and CRF07_BC subtypes were the main epidemic strains, and the possibility of resistance was higher in CRF01_AE subtypes. The current study highlights the importance of acquired drug resistance surveillance over a long period.

Online media outlets adopt clickbait techniques to lure readers to click on articles in a bid to expand their reach and subsequently increase revenue through ad monetization. As the adverse effects of clickbait attract more and more attention, researchers have started to explore machine learning techniques to automatically detect clickbaits. Previous work on clickbait detection assumes that all the training data is available locally during training. In many real-world applications, however, training data is generally distributedly stored by different parties (e.g., different parties maintain data with different feature spaces), and the parties cannot share their data with each other due to data privacy issues. It is challenging to build models of high-quality federally for detecting clickbaits effectively without data sharing. In this paper, we propose a federated training framework, which is called federated hierarchical hybrid networks, to build clickbait detection models, where the titles and contents are stored by different parties, whose relationships must be exploited for clickbait detection. We empirically demonstrate that our approach is effective by comparing our approach to the state-of-the-art approaches using datasets from social media., Comment: 10 pages

Figure S1. DAST NWs preparation. (DOC 2375 kb)

To evaluate the attitudes towards informing senile patients about the diagnosis among Chinese clinicians, patients and their relatives, and explore the factors restricting senior citizens from implementing their right of informed consent independently, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Beijing in June 2013. 100 clinicians, 250 competent inpatients and their closest relatives chosen by stratified random sampling method were measured by a questionnaire anonymously. There were 78 doctors, 203 patients and 218 relatives who responded, and 60.6% of the patients were over 65 years old. As with the young and middle-aged, almost all senile patients desired to learn about their condition. However, to avoid dispute or other troubles, 52.9% of medical staff tended to inform the family members first, and 9.5% of relatives were reluctant to disclose all the information to senile patients for fear of embarrassment or other undesirable negative effects. So increasing the communication skills training for clinicians, abandoning the rule of family members’ consent for competent patients and publicising the positive effects of informed consent are the key measures to safeguard senile patients’ rights in China.

We report a novel HIV circulating recombinant form (CRF B/C) identified from 10 epidemiologically unlinked individuals in Sichuan province, China, all self-report infected by heterosexual behavior. Sequencing and analyzing the near-full-length genome of these strains revealed this recombinant form to be composed of subtype B (China and Thailand) and subtype C (China and India), with three subtype B segments inserted into the pol, vpu, and nef regions of the subtype C backbone. To our knowledge, this identified HIV-1 recombinant form differs from previously documented B/C forms in its distinct backbone, inserted fragment size, and breakpoints. In agreement with the current HIV nomenclature system, this novel recombinant form constitutes a novel CRF (CRF85_BC). Our present findings further enrich the diversity of the prevalent HIV-1 CRFs in China.

This study describes the current situation and projects dynamic trends for HIV prevalence in a highly endemic area of China, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Epidemiological, behavioral, and population census data from multiple sources were analyzed to extract input for an Asian Epidemic Model (AEM). Fitting curves to historical trends in HIV prevalence were used as a baseline, and future intervention scenarios were explored using the AEM. For 2007, modeled data suggested approximately 0.5% adult HIV prevalence in Liangshan, with an estimated 17,450 people living with HIV/AIDS and 3,400 new infections. With current high risk behaviors, the model predicts that adult prevalence will rise to 1.5% by 2020. Increased condom use and clean needle exchange among injection drug users (IDUs) have slowed the epidemic. The source of new HIV infections will change from a preponderance of IDU-related infections in 2007 (65.9%) to a mixed epidemic in 2020 (general population heterosexuals 45.2%, IDU 38.6%, homosexual transmission between men 12.7%, female sex workers and their clients 3.5%). We anticipate rising prevalence, stable incidence, and higher representation of sexual transmission over time. Prevention investments should target specific interventions toward sub-groups at highest risk, given that both IDUs and men who have sex with men will likely represent a majority of cases and serve as a bridge population.

China's commitment to implementing established and emerging HIV/AIDS prevention and control strategies has led to substantial gains in terms of access to antiretroviral treatment and prevention services, but the evolving and multifaceted HIV/AIDS epidemic in China highlights the challenges of maintaining that response. This study presents modeling results exploring the potential impact of HIV vaccines in the Chinese context at varying efficacy and coverage rates, while further exploring the potential implications of vaccination programs aimed at reaching populations at highest risk of HIV infection. A preventive HIV vaccine would add a powerful tool to China's response, even if not 100% efficacious or available to the full population.

In the literature there are reports of static charges appearing with physical (i.e., phase and temperature) changes of water. One of the purposes of the present report is to refine the measurement of charge in heated water. The experiments described in this report confirm the reported phenomenon by comparing the different amounts of charge produced when different amounts of water are heated to the same temperature and in the same setup. When charge differential is correlated to water differential, the source of charge is better isolated to the change in water temperature rather than to any other possible source.

Potential evapotranspiration (PET) is crucial for water resources assessment. In this regard, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization)–Penman–Monteith method (PM) is commonly recognized as a standard method for PET estimation. However, due to requirement of detailed meteorological data, the application of PM is often constrained in many regions. Under such circumstances, an alternative method with similar efficiency to that of PM needs to be identified. In this study, three radiation-based methods, Makkink (Mak), Abtew (Abt), and Priestley–Taylor (PT), and five temperature-based methods, Hargreaves–Samani (HS), Thornthwaite (Tho), Hamon (Ham), Linacre (Lin), and Blaney–Criddle (BC), were compared with PM at yearly and seasonal scale, using long-term (50 years) data from 90 meteorology stations in southwest China. Indicators, viz. (videlicet) Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), relative error (Re), normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE), and coefficient of determination (R2) were used to evaluate the performance of PET estimations by the above-mentioned eight methods. The results showed that the performance of the methods in PET estimation varied among regions; HS, PT, and Abt overestimated PET, while others underestimated. In Sichuan basin, Mak, Abt and HS yielded similar estimations to that of PM, while, in Yun-Gui plateau, Abt, Mak, HS, and PT showed better performances. Mak performed the best in the east Tibetan Plateau at yearly and seasonal scale, while HS showed a good performance in summer and autumn. In the arid river valley, HS, Mak, and Abt performed better than the others. On the other hand, Tho, Ham, Lin, and BC could not be used to estimate PET in some regions. In general, radiation-based methods for PET estimation performed better than temperature-based methods among the selected methods in the study area. Among the radiation-based methods, Mak performed the best, while HS showed the best performance among the temperature-based methods.

The global warming has become worse with the industry developing and environment destroyed. Because of problems on highly land developed, natural environment changed, and other artificial heat infl...

Three community-based surveys recruited 4,310 injection drug users (IDUs) in China from 2004 to 2006. Of the participants, 54.4% were ≤ 3-year new IDUs; 63.9% reported injecting more than two times daily; 31.5% shared needles in the last six months; 37.4% shared equipments in the last month; 30.2% reported their regular sex partners injected drugs; and 23.5% had commercial sex, with 52.2% reporting no condom use during last sex. The risky injection practices (sharing needles/equipments and high injection frequency) were less frequent among new IDUs, emphasizing that effective prevention needs to identify and intervene with IDUs early on. The study's limitations are noted.

To examine the prevalence and correlates for needle-sharing among new and long-term injection drug users (IDUs) in Sichuan province, China.Three consecutive cross-sectional surveys were conducted in 6 prefectures of Sichuan province, from 2003 to 2005. Questionnaire-based interviews provided information including socio-demographics, drug-use, sexual behaviors, and HIV-related services. Multivariable logistic regression methodology was used for data analysis.Of 3852 eligible participants, the rates of needle-sharing in the last 6 months for IDUs with a less than one year, one to three year, and more than three year injection history were 19.9%, 29.1%, and 36.3%, respectively. Needle-sharing for IDUs with a less than one-year injection history was independently associated with factors as: being female, having minority background, higher frequency of injection, sharing injecting equipments, ever having had a non-regular sex partner, or a regular sex partner who injected drugs, never had a test on HIV, being recruited in 2005, and from Zigong prefectures of Sichuan. Needle-sharing for IDUs with a 1-3 year injection history were independently associated with receiving less education, having higher frequency of injecting behavior, sharing injecting equipments, ever having had a non-regular sex partner/a regular sex partner who injected drugs, ever having had unprotected sex with a non-regular sex partner, ever having had unprotected sex with a commercial sex partner or client, never attended skill training for HIV/STD prevention, being recruited in 2005 and 2004, and being recruited from Deyang, Zigong, and Liangshan prefectures. Needle-sharing for IDUs with a more than three-year injection history was independently associated with factors as: less education, higher frequency of injecting, sharing injecting equipment, ever had a non-regular sex partner, ever had unprotected sex with a non-regular sex partner, ever had unprotected sex with a commercial sex partner or client, having had regular sex partners who inject drugs, never attended needle exchange programs, being recruited in 2005 and 2004, and being recruited from Deyang, Zigong, and Liangshan prefectures.The rates for both needle/paraphernalia sharing and unprotected sex behaviors were high in the IDUs in Sichuan province. These rates were higher among longer-term IDUs than in new IDUs. Our data underlined that better targeted, in-depth and sustained comprehensive intervention packages which including needle exchange, condom promotion along with distribution, and education, were urgently needed to reduce both IDU-related and sex-related risk behaviors among both new and longer term IDUs.

This paper presents the theoretical development of a revised optimal control pilot model (ROCM) based the modified optimal control model (MOCM) of human operator developed by Davidson and Schmidt. An algorithm designed for easy implantation in current computer simulation and simulator fidelity analysis is presented. Example results based upon the analysis of a tracking task using a basic dynamics system is compared with the results of the ROCM and the results of the MOCM. The pilot frequency responses and root mean square obtained with the ROM are shown to more favorably to the measured experimental results than the MOCM in the pilot's frequency range of interest. The ROCM is not only consonant with the appropriate physical essence of the pilot, but also possess' the advantages of the MOCM.

In mid-July 2005, five patients presented with septic shock to a hospital in Ziyang city in Sichuan, China, to identify the etiology of the unknown reason disease, an epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory study were conducted.An enhanced surveillance program were established in Sichuan, the following activities were introduced: active case finding in Sichuan of (a) laboratory diagnosed Streptococcus suis infection and (b) clinically diagnosed probable cases with exposure history; supplemented by (c) monitoring reports on meningococcal meningitis. Streptococcus suis serotype 2 infection was confirmed by culture and biochemical reactions, followed by sequencing for specific genes for serotype and virulence factors.From June 10 to August 21, 2005, 68 laboratory confirmed cases of human Streptococcus suis infections were reported. All were villagers who gave a history of direct exposure to deceased or sick pigs in their backyards where slaughtering was performed. Twenty six (38%) presented with toxic shock syndrome of which 15 (58%) died. Other presentations were septicaemia or meningitis. All isolates were tested positive for genes for tuf, species-specific 16S rRNA, cps2J, mrp, ef and sly. There were 136 clinically diagnosed probable cases with similar exposure history but incomplete laboratory investigations.An outbreak of human Streptococcus suis serotype 2 infections occurred in villagers after direct exposure to deceased or sick pigs in Sichuan. Prohibition of slaughtering in backyards brought the outbreak to a halt. A virulent strain of the bacteria is speculated to be in circulation, and is responsible for the unusual presentation of toxic shock syndrome with high case fatality.

To study the potential risk factors of human infecting with Streptococcus suis.1: M matched case-control study was conducted. 29 human cases of Streptococcus suis infection in the early phase were included in the case group, Patients' family members, neighbors and peoples who had worked together with patients to handle deceased or sick pigs in the last week were recruited as matched controls. There were 147 controls in total. Both cases and controls received questionnaire investigation including the ways to contact sick/dead pigs. Conditional logistic regression was employed to analyze matching data.According to the results of multivariate analysis, slaughtering (OR = 11.978, 95% CI: 3.355-42.756), carcasses cutting and processing (OR = 3.008, 95% CI: 1.022-8.849) sick/dead pigs were associated with cases related to human Streptococcus suis infection. The attributable risk proportion were 91.65% and 66.76% respectively. The other types of exposures to sick/ dead pigs, including feeding, selling, burying and eating, were not associated with the human Streptococcus suis infection in our study population.Slaughtering, carcasses cutting and processing sick/dead pigs were important risky behavior for humans to be infected by Streptococcus suis.

To describe the clinical and epidemiological features of dead cases with human Streptococcus suis infections, and to find the target population for preventing death and the related indicators.Epidemiological investigation on human Streptococcus suis infections was implemented used unified questionnaires. Analysis on dead cases and survival cases (as contrast) was done.The population with highest fatality rate was in 40-49 age group. 97.37% of dead cases had toxic shock syndrome. The mean interval from onset to admission was 0.76 days, and the mean course was 2.11 days. The progression among dead cases was faster than that among survival cases. Chief clinical manifestations of dead cases that are more frequent than survival cases are purpura (73.68%), diarrhea (50.0%), dyspnea (21.05%), conjunctival congestion (34.21%), etc. Renal impairment and liver involvement in dead cases were more significant than that in survival cases. No significant difference between mean incubation period, exposure rates of main risk factors in dead cases and in survival cases was found.Preventing toxic shock syndrome might reduce the fatality rate. The target population for preventing death is agedor = 40. Liver function and renal function testing might be indicators for monitoring the progression of human Streptococcus suis infections.

An embedded system is a specialized computer system that is application-centered, customized to fit special hardware, designed to satisfy some special requirements of functions, reliability, size costs, power-consumption, and so on. In this research, we create an embedded spatial database (or called geographic information system (GIS)). To perform non-trivial tasks, an embedded system usually is consisted of two integrated components: a customized operating system and an application system. In this research, we modify an existing operating system (Linux) to meet the special requirements for supporting a spatial database, and create a spatial database on the operating system. Since the operating system is required to support a single application, we have the freedom to build a customized file system in order that the requirements of high performance and small size can be achieved. In building the file system, we develop new technique for physical block allocation, data buffering, and reducing system overhead.