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This study aimed to compare the efficiency of these two combined surgeries [prolapse and hemorrhoids (PPH) combined with the external hemorrhoidectomy and inferior internal hemorrhoid ligation; tissue selecting technique with mega-window stapler (TST-MS) combined with anal canal epithelial preservation operation].This is a single-center, evaluator-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT). A total of 204 participants were randomly divided into the two groups. The anal function, reoccurrence, intraoperative variables, and operative complications were assessed. The measurement data were compared by paired t test and rank sum test. Chi-squared or Fisher's exact test was used for count data and rank sum test for ranked data. To assess differences within each group in different time points, the repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted.TST-MS combined with anal canal epithelial preservation operation had lower Wexner score of anal incontinence (Z = 3.062, P = 0.002), higher patients' satisfaction degree (t = 7.32, P 0.001), less residual skin tags (χTST-MS combined with anal canal epithelial preservation operation showed better clinical efficiency in the treatment of prolapsed hemorrhoids.This study has been registered in Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2000038533).

In this reply, we include new experimental results and verify that the observed non-linearity in rippled-MoS$_2$ (leading to mobility kink) is an intrinsic property of a disordered system, rather than contact effects (invasive probes) or other device issues. Noting that Peng Wu's hypothesis is based on a highly ordered ideal system, transfer curves are expected to be linear, and the carrier density is assumed be constant. Wu's model is therefore oversimplified for disordered systems and neglects carrier-density dependent scattering physics. Thus, it is fundamentally incompatible with our rippled-MoS$_2$, and leads to the wrong conclusion.

The intriguing properties of bound states in the continuum (BICs) have attracted a lot of attention in photonics. Besides being effective in confining light in a counter-intuitive way, the correspondence between the near-field mode pattern and the far-field radiation of BICs manifests the fascinating topological characteristics of light. Early works on photonic BICs were mainly focused on designing artificial structures to facilitate their realization, while recent advances have shifted to exploring their exceptional properties in applications. In this review, we survey important breakthroughs and recent advances in this field. We detail the unique properties of BICs, including light confinement enhancement, sharp Fano resonances, and topological characteristics. We provide insights into the unique phenomena derived from BICs and the impact of BICs on various applications. We also discuss the paradigm shift enabled or facilitated by BICs in several emerging research frontiers, such as parity-time symmetric systems, higher-order topology, exciton-photon coupling, and moir\'e superlattices.

Tao Liu,1,* Yue Li,2,* Ji Li,1 Haojun Fan,1 Chunxia Cao1 1Institute of Disaster and Emergency Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China; 2College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Chunxia Cao, Institute of Disaster and Emergency Medicine, Tianjin University, No. 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 02227893596, Fax +86 02227893596-307, Email caochunxia@tju.edu.cnBackground: Injury is one of the leading causes of mortality and disability worldwide. It is a major contributor to the overall burden of disease. This study aimed to analyze the temporal trend, research focus and future direction of research related to injury burden.Methods: Publications on injury burden published between January 1998 and September 2022 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) through topic advanced search strategy. Microsoft Excel, RStudio, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace were used to extract, integrate, and visualize bibliometric information.Results: A total of 2916 articles and 783 reviews were identified. The number of publications on injury burden showed a steady upward trend. The United States of America (USA) (n=1628) and the University of Washington (n=1036) were the most productive country and institution. High-income countries started research in this domain earlier, while research in low- and middle-income countries began in recent years. Lancet was the most influential journal. Public, environmental occupational health, general medicine and neurology were the predominant research domains. Based on keyword co-occurrence analysis, the research focus was divided into five clusters: injury epidemiology and prevention, studies related to the global burden of disease (GBD), risk factors for injury, clinical management of injury, and injury outcome assessment and economic burden.Conclusion: The burden of injury has drawn increasing attention from various perspectives over the years. The research field on injury burden is also becoming more and more extensive. However, there are some gaps among different countries or regions, and more attention needs to be paid to low and middle-income countries.Keywords: injury burden, bibliometric analysis, trend, focus, VOSviewer, CiteSpace

This study explored the relationships among online English learners’ perceived teacher support, self-efficacy, and self-regulation in online learning based on social cognitive theory. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping estimation was conducted using data from 220 online English learners engaged in blended learning on the Chinese University MOOC platform. The results showed that online English learners’ perceived teacher support positively influenced their self-efficacy and self-regulation. Moreover, self-efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between their perceived teacher support and self-regulation. On the whole, the findings detailed the effect of English learners’ perceived teacher support on their self-efficacy and self-regulation, as well as empirically identifying the mediation effect of self-efficacy in the relationship between perceived teacher support and self-regulation in an online learning environment. Related pedagogical implications for teacher online teaching, student online learning, and the Chinese University MOOC platform, and limitations were discussed., En el presente estudio, basado en la teoría social cognitiva, se explora la relación entre el apoyo docente percibido por los alumnos de inglés online, la autoeficacia y la autorregulación en el aprendizaje online. Se realizó un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales (MES), con la estimación Bootstrap utilizando los datos de 220 alumnos de inglés online de una universidad politécnica que participan en el aprendizaje combinado en la plataforma MOOC de las Universidades Chinas. Los resultados mostraron que el apoyo docente percibido por los alumnos de inglés online influenció positivamente su autoeficacia y autorregulación. Además, se descubrió que la autoeficacia podía mediar la relación entre el apoyo docente percibido y la autorregulación. En general, los resultados describieron con detalle el efecto del apoyo docente percibido por los alumnos de inglés online sobre su autoeficacia y autorregulación, e identificaron empíricamente el efecto mediador de la autoeficacia en la relación entre el apoyo docente percibido y la autorregulación en un entorno de aprendizaje online. Por último, se discutieron las implicaciones pedagógicas para la enseñanza online de los profesores, el aprendizaje online de los alumnos y la plataforma MOOC de las Universidades Chinas, así como las limitaciones del estudio., North University of China and a provincial research grant (No. J2020180) in China

This paper delves into a rapid and accurate numerical solution for the inverse problem of the nonlinear diffusion equation in the context of multiphase porous media flow. For the realization of this, the combination of the multigrid method with constraint data is utilized and investigated. Additionally, to address the ill-posedness of the inverse problem, the Tikhonov regularization is incorporated. Numerical results demonstrate the computational performance of this method. The proposed combination strategy displays remarkable capabilities in reducing noise, avoiding local minima, and accelerating convergence. Moreover, this combination method performs better than any one method used alone.

An N-of-1 trial is a multiple crossover trial conducted in a single individual to provide evidence to directly inform personalized treatment decisions. Advancements in wearable devices greatly improved the feasibility of adopting these trials to identify optimal individual treatment plans, particularly when treatments differ among individuals and responses are highly heterogeneous. Our work was motivated by the I-STOP-AFib Study, which examined the impact of different triggers on atrial fibrillation (AF) occurrence. We described a causal framework for 'N-of-1' trial using potential treatment selection paths and potential outcome paths. Two estimands of individual causal effect were defined:(a) the effect of continuous exposure, and (b) the effect of an individual observed behavior. We addressed three challenges: (a) imperfect compliance to the randomized treatment assignment; (b) binary treatments and binary outcomes which led to the 'non-collapsibility' issue of estimating odds ratios; and (c) serial inference in the longitudinal observations. We adopted the Bayesian IV approach where the study randomization was the IV as it impacted the choice of exposure of a subject but not directly the outcome. Estimations were through a system of two parametric Bayesian models to estimate the individual causal effect. Our model got around the non-collapsibility and non-consistency by modeling the confounding mechanism through latent structural models and by inferring with Bayesian posterior of functionals. Autocorrelation present in the repeated measurements was also accounted for. The simulation study showed our method largely reduced bias and greatly improved the coverage of the estimated causal effect, compared to existing methods (ITT, PP, and AT). We applied the method to I-STOP-AFib Study to estimate the individual effect of alcohol on AF occurrence.

In the blockchain network, the communication delay between different nodes is a great threat to the distributed ledger consistency of each miner. Blockchain is the core technology of Bitcoin. At present, some research has proven the security of the PoW protocol when the number of delay rounds is small, but in complex asynchronous networks, the research is insufficient on the security of the PoW protocol when the number of delay rounds is large. This paper improves the proposed blockchain main chain record model under the PoW protocol and then proposes the TOD model, which makes the main chain record in the model more close to the actual situation and reduces the errors caused by the establishment of the model in the analysis process. By comparing the differences between the TOD model and the original model, it is verified that the improved model has a higher success rate of attack when the probability of mining the delayable block increases. Then, the long delay attack is improved on the balance attack in this paper, which makes the adversary control part of the computing power and improves the success rate of the adversary attack within a certain limit.

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a tracer of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and its concentration has gradually decreased with the reduction in VOC emissions in recent years, which puts forward higher requirements for the detection of trace HCHO. Therefore, a quantum cascade laser (QCL) with a central excitation wavelength of 5.68 μm was applied to detect the trace HCHO under an effective absorption optical pathlength of 67 m. An improved, dual-incidence multi-pass cell, with a simple structure and easy adjustment, was designed to further improve the absorption optical pathlength of the gas. The instrument detection sensitivity of 28 pptv (1σ) was achieved within a 40 s response time. The experimental results show that the developed HCHO detection system is almost unaffected by the cross interference of common atmospheric gases and the change of ambient humidity. Additionally, the instrument was successfully deployed in a field campaign, and it delivered results that correlated well with those of a commercial instrument based on continuous wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy (R2 = 0.967), which indicates that the instrument has a good ability to monitor ambient trace HCHO in unattended continuous operation for long periods of time.

Audio-driven talking face has attracted broad interest from academia and industry recently. However, data acquisition and labeling in audio-driven talking face are labor-intensive and costly. The lack of data resource results in poor synthesis effect. To alleviate this issue, we propose to use TTS (Text-To-Speech) for data augmentation to improve few-shot ability of the talking face system. The misalignment problem brought by the TTS audio is solved with the introduction of soft-DTW, which is first adopted in the talking face task. Moreover, features extracted by HuBERT are explored to utilize underlying information of audio, and found to be superior over other features. The proposed method achieves 17%, 14%, 38% dominance on MSE score, DTW score and user study preference repectively over the baseline model, which shows the effectiveness of improving few-shot learning for talking face system with TTS augmentation., 4 pages. Accepted by ICASSP 2023

In the field of surveying and mapping, inertial sensor deterministic errors are poorly understood, and error calibration and compensation are not carried out. Thus, in this study, the effects of three types of deterministic errors (i.e., bias, scale factor error, and installation error) in a conventional inertial measurement unit (IMU) error model on a navigation system are theoretically deduced and verified by simulation. Subsequently, navigation experiments are carried out to investigate the effects of the three deterministic errors on the navigation system. The experimental results show that the gyro bias has the strongest influence on the navigation and positioning accuracy of the system. Consequently, we designed a two-position continuous calibration scheme to calibrate the IMU. The calibration scheme can simultaneously calibrate the bias error of the gyroscope and the accelerometer. When calibrating the bias error of the 0.005°/h order of magnitude, the maximum relative error is 13.16%, and the rest of the calibration relative errors are less than 10%, which verifies the effectiveness of the calibration path designed in this paper. The system is compensated by using the IMU bias calibration results, and the navigation experiment results show that the position accuracy and heading accuracy are improved by 72.68% and 79.65%, respectively, through the calibration and compensation of IMU bias error. Therefore, the position and heading accuracy of the system will be greatly improved by calibrating and compensating the bias error through the two-position calibration path before the IMU is used.

Quantifying the response of marine mussel plaque attachment on wet surfaces remains a significant challenge to a mechanistic understanding of plaque adhesion. Here, we developed a customised microscopy system combined with two-dimensional (2D) in-situ digital image correlation (DIC) to quantify the in-plane deformation of a deformable substrate that interacts with a mussel plaque while under directional tension. By analysing the strain field in the substrate, we gained insight into how in-plane traction forces are transmitted from the mussel plaque to the underlying substrate. Finite element (FE) models were developed to assist the interpretation of the experimental measurement. Our study revealed a synergistic effect of pulling angle and substrate stiffness on plaque detachment, with mussel plaques anchoring to a 'stiff' substrate at a smaller pulling angle having mechanical advantages with higher load-bearing capacity and less plaque deformation. We identified two distinct failure modes, i.e., shear traction-governed failure (STGF) mode and normal traction-governed failure (NTGF). It was found that increasing the substrate stiffness or reducing the pulling angle resulted in a failure mode change from NTGF to STGF. Our findings offer new insights into the mechanistic understanding of plaque and substrate interaction, which provides a general plaque-inspired strategy for wet adhesion., 19 pages

As a new approach to realizing high-precision time synchronization between remote time scales, quantum two-way time synchronization via laboratory fiber link has shown significant enhancement of the synchronization stability to several tens of femtoseconds. To verify its great potential in practical systems, the field test in long-haul installed fiber optic infrastructure is required to be demonstrated. In this paper, we implement the two-way quantum time synchronization over a 103 km urban fiber link. A time synchronization stability of 3.67 ps at 10 s and 0.28 ps at 40000 s has been achieved, despite the large attenuation of 38 dB leading to fewer than 40 correlated events per second. This achievement marks the first successful step of quantum two-way time synchronization in the task of high-precision long-distance field synchronization systems.

High-frequency gravitational waves (HFGWs) carry a wealth of information on the early Universe with a tiny comoving Hubble horizon and astronomical objects of small scale but with dense energy. We demonstrate that the nearby planets, such as Earth and Jupiter, can be utilized as a laboratory for detecting the HFGWs. These GWs are then expected to convert to signal photons in the planetary magnetosphere, across the frequency band of astronomical observation. As a proof of concept, we present the first limits from the existing low-Earth-orbit satellite for specific frequency bands and project the sensitivities for the future more-dedicated detections. The first limits from Juno, the latest mission orbiting Jupiter, are also presented. Attributed to the long path of effective GW-photon conversion and the wide angular distribution of signal flux, we find that these limits are highly encouraging, for a broad range of frequencies including a large portion unexplored before., 10 pages, 8 figures. Updated Fig.3 (projected limits) with the extreme UV band. Typos are fixed

Nano-titanium dioxide (nano-TiO2) is widely used in many aspects of human life. However, there are still inconsistent conclusions about the effects of nano-TiO2 exposure on autophagy. Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis were used to reveal whether nano-TiO2 induces dysregulation of autophagy. The results showed that LC3 II, Beclin-1 protein, and LC3 II/LC3 I protein ratio were significantly increased, but p62 protein was insignificantly changed. Subgroup analyses showed that p62 and Beclin-1 protein were increased significantly when the treatment time of nano-TiO2 was >24 h. Nano-TiO2 can induce dysregulation of autophagy and cause stagnation of autophagy after prolonged exposure.

To go beyond quantum optics in free-space setups, atom-light interfaces with structured photonic environments are often employed to realize unconventional quantum electrodynamics (QED) phenomena. However, when employed as quantum buses, those long-distance nanostructures are limited by fabrication disorders. In this work, we alternatively propose to realize structured lightmatter interactions by engineering multiple coupling points of hybrid giant atom-conventionalenvironments without any periodic structure. We present a generic optimization method to obtain the real-space coupling sequence for multiple coupling points. We report a broadband chiral emission in a very wide frequency regime, with no analog in other quantum setups. Moreover, we show that the QED phenomena in the band gap environment, such as fractional atomic decay and dipole-dipole interactions mediated by a bound state, can be observed in our setup. Numerical results indicate that our proposal is robust against fabrication disorders of the coupling sequence. Our work opens up a new route for realizing unconventional light-matter interactions., 19 papges, 12 figures

Inspired by recent developments in self-assembled chiral nanostructures, we have explored the possibility of using spherical particles packed in cylinders as building blocks for chiral photonic crystals. In particular, we focused on an array of parallel cylinders arranged in a perfect triangular lattice, each containing an identical densest sphere packing structure. Despite the non-chirality of both the spheres and cylinders, the self-assembled system can exhibit chirality due to spontaneous symmetry breaking during the assembly process. We have investigated the circular dichroism effects of the system and have found that, for both perfect electric conductor and dielectric spheres, the system can display dual-polarization photonic band gaps for circularly polarized light at normal incidence along the axis of the helix. Further, we have examined how the polarization band gap size depends on the dielectric constant of the spheres and the packing fraction of the cylinders. Our study suggests that a cluster formed by spheres self-assembling inside parallel cylinders with appropriate material parameters can be a promising approach to creating chiral photonic crystals., 17 pages, 4 figures

Wave dark matter (DM) represents a class of the most representative DM candidates. Due to its periodic perturbation to spacetime, the wave DM can be detected with a galactic interferometer - pulsar timing array (PTA). We perform in this Letter a first analysis of applying the $\gamma$-ray PTA to detect the wave DM, with the data of Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT). Despite the limitation in statistics, the $\gamma$-PTA demonstrates a promising sensitivity potential for a mass $\sim 10^{-23}-10^{-22}$ eV. We show that the upper limits not far from those of the dedicated radio-PTA projects can be achieved. Particularly, we have fulfilled an analysis to cross-correlate the pulsar data, which has been essentially missing so far in real data analysis but is known to be crucial for identifying the nature of potential signals, with the Fermi-LAT data of two pulsars., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Comments welcome!

Background: The recurrence of colorectal adenomas (CRAs) after endoscopy predisposes patients to a risk of colorectal cancer. Guided by the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), patients with colorectal diseases usually manifest with spleen deficiency syndrome (SDS) and are treated with Sijunzi decoction (SJZD). Therefore, this trial aims to explore the efficacy and safety of SJZD in the prevention and treatment of CRAs recurrence.Methods: SJZD on prevention and treatment of CRAs recurrence after resection: a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was designed. Patients who undergo polypectomy of CRAs will be recruited and randomized into a SJZD group and a placebo group in a 1:1 ratio. The intervention phase will be 12 months. The follow-up period will last 24 months. The primary outcome is the CRA recurrence rate after intervention. The secondary outcomes include the CRA recurrence rate at the second year post-polypectomy, the pathological type of adenoma and the alterations in SDS scores after intervention.Discussion: Previous clinical practice has observed the sound effect of SJZD in the context of gastrointestinal diseases. A number of experiments have also validated the active components in SJZD. This trial aims to provide tangible evidence for the usage of SJZD, hoping to reduce the recurrence of CRAs.

With the development of deep learning processors and accelerators, deep learning models have been widely deployed on edge devices as part of the Internet of Things. Edge device models are generally considered as valuable intellectual properties that are worth for careful protection. Unfortunately, these models have a great risk of being stolen or illegally copied. The existing model protections using encryption algorithms are suffered from high computation overhead which is not practical due to the limited computing capacity on edge devices. In this work, we propose a light-weight, practical, and general Edge device model Pro tection method at neuron level, denoted as EdgePro. Specifically, we select several neurons as authorization neurons and set their activation values to locking values and scale the neuron outputs as the "asswords" during training. EdgePro protects the model by ensuring it can only work correctly when the "passwords" are met, at the cost of encrypting and storing the information of the "passwords" instead of the whole model. Extensive experimental results indicate that EdgePro can work well on the task of protecting on datasets with different modes. The inference time increase of EdgePro is only 60% of state-of-the-art methods, and the accuracy loss is less than 1%. Additionally, EdgePro is robust against adaptive attacks including fine-tuning and pruning, which makes it more practical in real-world applications. EdgePro is also open sourced to facilitate future research: https://github.com/Leon022/Edg

ObjectiveMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with suicidal attempts (SAs) among adolescents, with suicide being the most common cause of mortality in this age group. This study explored the predictive utility of support vector machine (SVM)-based analyses of amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) results as a neuroimaging biomarker for aiding the diagnosis of MDD with SA in adolescents.MethodsResting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) analyses of 71 first-episode, drug-naive adolescent MDD patients with SA and 54 healthy control individuals were conducted. ALFF and SVM methods were used to analyze the imaging data.ResultsRelative to healthy control individuals, adolescent MDD patients with a history of SAs showed reduced ALFF values in the bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus (mSFG) and bilateral precuneus. These lower ALFF values were also negatively correlated with child depression inventory (CDI) scores while reduced bilateral precuneus ALFF values were negatively correlated with Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire Junior (SIQ-JR) scores. SVM analyses showed that reduced ALFF values in the bilateral mSFG and bilateral precuneus had diagnostic accuracy levels of 76.8% (96/125) and 82.4% (103/125), respectively.ConclusionAdolescent MDD patients with a history of SA exhibited abnormal ALFF. The identified abnormalities in specific brain regions may be involved in the pathogenesis of this condition and may help identify at-risk adolescents. Specifically, reductions in the ALFF in the bilateral mSFG and bilateral precuneus may be indicative of MDD and SA in adolescent patients.

Rapid urbanization drives social development, but at the same time brings sustainable development Rapid urbanization drives social development, but at the same time brings sustainable development advantages of expanding underground space and relieving urban traffic congestion. High quality TOD complexes with natural elements in the intermediary space have been considered as one of the important means to address sustainable urban development. Nevertheless, intermediary spaces in TOD complexes face various challenges, such as significant contradictory factors in their physical environment spaces. This study classifies the underground open intermediary space into four types according to the characteristics of TOD complexes. And for these four types'Cthe physical environment—generated by various influencing factors of planar geometric, three-dimensional geometric, and detailed construction elements—is simulated using a numerical simulation method based on a static Taguchi experiment. The results demonstrate that space shape is a primary influencing factor for luminous and thermal environments; the window-atrium ratio (W/A ratio) and hole-atrium ratio (H/A ratio) comprise contradictory factors between the luminous and thermal environments of these spaces; profile inclination angle and sunken plaza height are primary impact factors for the acoustic environment; and skylight type has minimal influence on the physical environment. On average, their luminous and acoustic environment comfort can be improved by 200%; whereas, their thermal environment comfort can be improved by 21% and the potential for optimizing it in their shallow space (underground space depth ≤ 10 m) is relatively low. Subsequently, the necessity of comfort optimization as the passive optimization design of underground open intermediary spaces' physical environment in TOD complexes in the future is discussed. Finally, the feasible path and prospect of how to improve the livability and comfort of the spatial physical environment of TOD complexes are discussed and prospected.

A novel ultrasonic vibration enhanced friction stir welding (UVeFSW) process was employed to join the 6061-T6 aluminum alloy and QP980 high-strength steel. The macro morphology, microstructure and tensile shear properties of the joint with or without ultrasonic energy were compared and analyzed. Meanwhile, the effects of ultrasonic energy on the welding load were studied. The results show that the ultrasonic vibration applied to the base metal before welding can soften the base metal, promote the plastic flow of the material, expand interface zone and nugget zone of the aluminum/steel, make more steel particles rotate into the aluminum alloy side with the stirring needle, forming a hook structure at the edge of the interface zone which can improve the failure load of the joint. The fracture position and fracture morphology of FSW joint are changed by ultrasonic, and the mechanical properties of FSW joint are improved. Under the welding parameters conducted in the experiment, the maximum average failure load of the joint is 4.99 kN. Under the conditions of a welding rate of 90 mm/min and a depth of 0.1 mm, the application of ultrasonic vibration makes the average failure load of the joint increase by 0.98 kN and the tensile shear performance increase by 28.24%. After applying ultrasonic vibration, the axial force Fz, the tool torque Mt and the spindle power decrease by 2.46%, 6.44% and 4.59% respectively.

Background To explore the correlation between the preoperative systemic immune inflammation index (SII) and the prognosis of patients with gastric carcinoma (GC). Methods The clinical data of 771 GC patients surgically treated in the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Qinghai University Affiliated Hospital from June 2010 to June 2015 were retrospectively analyzed, and their preoperative SII was calculated. The optimal cut-off value of preoperative SII was determined using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, the confounding factors between the two groups were eliminated using the propensity score matching (PSM) method, and the correlation between preoperative SII and clinicopathological characteristics was assessed by chi-square test. Moreover, the overall survival was calculated using Kaplan-Meier method, the survival curve was plotted, and log-rank test was performed for the significance analysis between the curves. Univariate and multivariate analyses were also conducted using the Cox proportional hazards model. Results It was determined by the ROC curve that the optimal cut-off value of preoperative SII was 489.52, based on which 771 GC patients were divided into high SII (H-SII) group and low SII (L-SII) group, followed by PSM in the two groups. The results of Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that before and after PSM, the postoperative 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates in L-SII group were superior to those in H-SII group, and the overall survival rate had a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.05). Before PSM, preoperative SII [hazard ratio (HR) = 2.707, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.074-3.533, P < 0.001] was an independent risk factor for the prognosis of GC patients. After 1:1 PSM, preoperative SII (HR = 2.669, 95%CI 1.881–3.788, P < 0.001) was still an independent risk factor for the prognosis of GC patients. Conclusions Preoperative SII is an independent risk factor for the prognosis of GC patients. The increase in preoperative SII in peripheral blood indicates a worse prognosis.

Visual localization achieves indoor localization by matching visual data (collected by camera) with visual features of an environment. However, visual feature matching requires a long computation time, which makes it difficult to provide a continuous localization result. Besides, for environment with sparse visual data (e.g. images), it is also difficult to achieve continuous indoor localization using only visual feature matching. To solve this problem, this study proposes a continuous indoor localization approach using perceptual Hash algorithm (pHash) and spatial-constrained image searching strategies. It realizes accurate indoor localization by matching the collected video frames (from smartphone) with the images from a generated indoor image dataset. To improve the efficiency of visual feature matching, a two-level image searching and matching strategy is designed, including a pHash-based global searching strategy and a local strategy considering motion continuity. Based on the two-level strategy, a continuous indoor visual localization algorithm is proposed, which can increase the spatial continuity of localization result by integrating both visual localization and dead reckoning. Besides, this algorithm employs a structure from motion method to improve its heading estimation accuracy. Experimental results show that the localization errors of the image querying, continuous offline localization and online localization of this method are approximately 0.70, 0.86 and 0.93 m, respectively, which achieves sub-meter level localization accuracy. In the online localization condition, its average computation time is about 0.42 s, which can provide continuous visual localization.

We demonstrate a low phase noise all polarization-maintaining (PM) Er-fiber optical frequency comb (OFC) with low phase noise, which is synchronized to the hydrogen maser clock (HMC) using the 18th harmonic of the repetition rate for tight phase locking. The instability of the locked carrier envelope offset frequency is 1.24 × 10−18@1 s, the phase noise of the OFC is −96 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz offset, and the corresponding RMS timing jitter of the repetition rate is 62 fs (1 Hz–1 MHz). The residual frequency instability of the repetition rate (200 MHz) is 1.46 × 10−14@1 s, and the residual phase noise of the OFC normalized to 10 MHz is −138 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz offset and declines to about −160 dBc/Hz at the far-end, much lower than that of the HMC (−122 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz and −156 dBc/Hz at the far-end).

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate the advantages of the double-screen contrast method compared with the short-axis ultrasound display method for teaching ultrasound-guided femoral vein puncture during the standardized training of resident doctors.MethodsSixty resident doctors undergoing standardized training were randomly divided into a test group (short–long axis switching double-screen contrast, n = 30) and a control group (n = 30). These two groups of physicians underwent teaching and training of ultrasound-guided femoral vein puncture, and the success rate of the first puncture attempt, the total catheterization time, and any accidental femoral artery punctures were recorded and compared between the two groups.ResultsThe success rate of the first puncture attempt in the test group was significantly higher than that in the control group (P < 0.05). In the control group, two doctors accidentally punctured the artery, while in the test group, no arterial punctures occurred. The puncture time for the test group was longer than for the control group (P < 0.05).ConclusionIn the standardized training of ultrasound-guided femoral vein puncture for resident doctors, the double-screen contrast method has significant advantages. It enables resident doctors to quickly understand and apply the technique, so it is worth making this the method of choice.

As the planning stages for a high energy muon collider enter a more concrete era, an important question arises as to what new physics could be uncovered. A TeV-scale muon collider is also a vector boson fusion (VBF) factory with a very clean background, and as such it is a promising environment to look for new physics that couples to the electroweak (EW) sector. In this paper, we explore the ability of a future TeV-scale muon collider to search for Majorana and Dirac Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) produced via EW bosons. Employing a model-independent, conservative approach, we present an estimation of the production and decay rate of HNLs over a mass range between 200 GeV and 9.5 TeV in two benchmark collider proposals with $\sqrt{s}=3,\,10$ TeV, as well as an estimation of the dominant Standard Model (SM) background. We find that exclusion limits for the mixing between the HNLs and SM neutrinos can be as low as $\mathcal{O}(10^{-6})$. Additionally, we demonstrate that a TeV-scale muon collider allows for the ability to discriminate between Majorana and Dirac type HNLs for a large range of mixing values., 26 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. v2: references updated, typos fixed

Pervasive and mobile sensing is an integral part of smart transport and smart city applications. Vehicle-based mobile sensing, or drive-by sensing (DS), is gaining popularity in both academic research and field practice. The DS paradigm has an inherent transport component, as the spatial-temporal distribution of the sensors are closely related to the mobility patterns of their hosts, which may include third-party (e.g. taxis, buses) or for-hire (e.g. unmanned aerial vehicles and dedicated vehicles) vehicles. It is therefore essential to understand, assess and optimize the sensing power of vehicle fleets under a wide range of urban sensing scenarios. To this end, this paper offers an optimization-oriented summary of recent literature by presenting a four-step discussion, namely (1) quantifying the sensing quality (objective); (2) assessing the sensing power of various fleets (strategic); (3) sensor deployment (strategic/tactical); and (4) vehicle maneuvers (tactical/operational). By compiling research findings and practical insights in this way, this review article not only highlights the optimization aspect of drive-by sensing, but also serves as a practical guide for configuring and deploying vehicle-based urban sensing systems., 24 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

Boundary modes localized on the boundaries of a finite-size lattice experience a finite size effect (FSE) that could result in unwanted couplings, crosstalks and formation of gaps even in topological boundary modes. It is commonly believed that the FSE decays exponentially with the size of the system and thus requires many lattices before eventually becoming negligibly small. Here we identify a special type of FSE of some boundary modes that apparently vanishes at some particular wave vectors along the boundary. Meanwhile, the number of wave vectors where the FSE vanishes equals the number of lattices across the strip. We analytically prove this type of FSE in a simple model and prove this peculiar feature. We also provide a physical system consisting of a plasmonic sphere array where this FSE is present. Our work points to the possibility of almost arbitrarily tunning of the FSE, which facilitates unprecedented manipulation of the coupling strength between modes or channels such as the integration of multiple waveguides and photonic non-abelian braiding., 22 pages, 8 figures

BackgroundFew predictive models have included circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) indicators to predict prognosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients. Here, we aimed to explore whether ctDNA can be used as a predictive biomarker in nomogram models to predict the prognosis of patients with ESCC.MethodsWe included 57 patients who underwent surgery and completed a 5-year follow-up. With next-generation sequencing, a 61-gene panel was used to evaluate plasma cell-free DNA and white blood cell genomic DNA from patients with ESCC. We analyzed the relationship between the mutation features of ctDNA and the prognosis of patients with ESCC, identified candidate risk predictors by Cox analysis, and developed nomogram models to predict the 2- and 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). The area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, concordance index (C-index), calibration plot, and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) were used to evaluate the performance of the nomogram model. The model was compared with the traditional tumor-nodes-metastasis (TNM) staging system.ResultsThe ROC curve showed that the average mutant allele frequency (MAF) of ctDNA variants and the number of ctDNA variants were potential biomarkers for predicting the prognosis of patients with ESCC. The predictors included in the models were common candidate predictors of ESCC, such as lymph node stage, angiolymphatic invasion, drinking history, and ctDNA characteristics. The calibration curve demonstrated consistency between the observed and predicted results. Moreover, our nomogram models showed clear prognostic superiority over the traditional TNM staging system (based on C-index, 2-year DFS: 0.82 vs. 0.64; 5-year DFS: 0.78 vs. 0.65; 2-year OS: 0.80 vs. 0.66; 5-year OS: 0.77 vs. 0.66; based on IDI, 2-year DFS: 0.33, p <0.001; 5-year DFS: 0.18, p = 0.04; 2-year OS: 0.28, p <0.001; 5-year OS: 0.15, p = 0.04). The comprehensive scores of the nomogram models could be used to stratify patients with ESCC.ConclusionsThe novel nomogram incorporating ctDNA features may help predict the prognosis of patients with resectable ESCC. This model can potentially be used to guide the postoperative management of ESCC patients in the future, such as adjuvant therapy and follow-up.

Additional file 3: Figure S2. Immunohistochemical staining analysis of GPC3, P53, RRM1, BRCA1, and ARG protein expression in MVI (-) and MVI (+) patients in the training cohort, 10×magnification. Abbreviations: glypican 3 (GPC3); ribonucleotide reductase catalytic subunit M1 (RRM1); breast cancer gene 1 (BRCA1); arginase (ARG).

Objective. This study compared the effect of ultrasound-guided subclavian vein puncture with traditional blind puncture and the double-screen control method by evaluating the one-time puncture success and total success rates, the completion time for puncture and catheterization, and short-term complications. Methods. From January 2020 to January 2021, 72 patients with right subclavian venipuncture catheterization were collected, 12 of whom were excluded (including 3 cases of pneumothorax, 2 cases of hemothorax, 1 case of difficult positioning of thoracic deformity, 1 case of severe drug eruption, 3 cases of clavicle fracture, and 1 case of severe coagulation dysfunction). The remaining 60 cases were randomly divided into the traditional group (n = 30) and the improved group (n = 30). We record two sets of ultrasound localization time, puncture time, one-time puncture power, total puncture success rate, and short-term (24-hour) complications. Results. Compared with the traditional group, the ultrasound positioning time and puncture time in the improved group were significantly reduced and the puncture success rate was higher. There were no complications, such as incorrect arterial puncture and the occurrence of pneumothorax, in either group. Conclusion. The improved ultrasound-guided subclavian vein catheterization technique can greatly reduce the catheterization time and improve the success rate of puncture and catheterization. It can also reduce the occurrence of complications and damage to adjacent tissues. The operation is simple, fast, and easy to master, and it has a high popularization clinical value.

Supplementary Material 1

We explore the orbital implications of the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) binary in UGC4211, for the frequency spectrum of stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) being measured with pulsar timing arrays. The SMBH binary in UGC4211 has a projected separation of $\sim 230$ pc and relative velocity of $\sim 150$ km/s along the line of sight. It orbits a common disk of gas and stars, with a total dynamical mass of $\sim 10^9 M_\odot$ which is several times larger than the combined SMBHs plus the observed gas and stars. This can be explained by a massive soliton of wave dark matter present within the orbit of two SMBHs. Such a scenario is encouraging as during galaxy merger, the two precursor galactic solitons are expected to combine to generate a new soliton and hence the two initial SMBHs become efficiently bound. Generalizing this scenario to the cosmological population of SMBH binaries, we show that the SGWB spectrum produced by their late-stage inspiraling is modified preferentially at low frequency by the presence of the soliton. Finally we discuss future prospects for this proof-of-concept study, by fitting this scenario to the 15-year NANOGrav data., Comment: Fig. 3 updated, discussions refined, typos fixed, references added

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Tests to determine the optimal soft threshold power for WGCNA. Tests to determine the optimal soft threshold power for rumen microbiome modules at the genera level (A), rumen metabolome (B), serum metabolome (C), and milk metabolome (D). Fig. S2. The relative abundance of rumen bacteria of 12 cows at the genera level. Fig. S3. The network analysis for ruminal enterotypes. A The network analysis of type1. B The network analysis of type2. Fig. S4. The correlation analysis between different bacteria and metabolites between enterotypes of rumen microbiome, rumen metabolome, serum metabolome, milk metabolome, and milk protein. Fig. S5. The correlation analysis between modules of WGCNA and differential bacteria of enterotypes. A The correlation analysis between modules of rumen microbiome, rumen metabolome, serum metabolome, and milk metabolome in the WGCNA analysis. B The correlation analysis between modules of rumen microbiome, rumen metabolome, serum metabolome, and milk metabolome with different bacteria of enterotypes. Fig. S6. The microbial compositions and functions profiles of micro1 module of WGCNA. A The network analysis of micro1 using 16S rRNA sequence data. B The function of micro1 using metagenome data. Fig. S7. The metabolome profiles of rumetab7, bloodmetab2, and milkmetab7 module. A Classification of metabolic compounds based on the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB). B Pathway enrichment analysis. Fig. S8. The SEM established by the Pervotella, Ruminococcus, tyrosine, tryptophan, S-lactoylglutathione, and milk protein. Numbers adjacent to arrows are indicative of the effect size of the relationship. R2 denotes the proportion of variance explained. Red arrows represent positive paths and green arrows represent negative paths. Significance levels are as follows: * P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001. RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; CFI, comparative fit index.