Search

Objective: The better understanding of laying pattern of birds is crucial for developing breed-specific proper breeding scheme and management.Methods: Daily egg production until 50 wk of age of six chicken breeds including one layer (White Leghorn, WL), three dual-purpose (Rhode Island Red, RIR; Columbian Plymouth Rock, CR; and Barred Plymouth Rock, BR), one synthetic dwarf (DY), and one indigenous (Beijing-You Chicken, BYC) were used to characterize their clutch traits and egg production. The age at first egg, egg number, average and maximum clutch length, pause length, and number of clutches and pauses were calculated accordingly.Results: The egg number and average clutch length in WL, RIR, CR, and BR were higher than those in DY and BYC (p

In the present day, online users are incentivized to engage in short text-based communication. These short texts harbor a significant amount of implicit information, including opinions, topics, and emotions, which are of notable value for both exploration and analysis. By alleviating the sparsity in short texts, topic models can be used to discover topics from large collections of short texts. While there is a large body of surveys focused on topic modeling, but only a few of them have focused on the short texts. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of topic modeling methods for short texts from a novel perspective. Firstly, it discusses short text probabilistic topic models and outlines the directions in which they can be improved. Secondly, it explores short text neural topic models, which can be categorized into three groups based on their underlying structures. In addition, this paper provides a detailed investigation of embedding methods in topic modeling. Moreover, various applications and corresponding works are surveyed, with a focus on short texts. The commonly used public corpora and evaluation indicators for topic modeling are also summarized. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of short text topic modeling are discussed in detail, and future research directions are proposed.

Background Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a typical chronic immune disorder with clinical heterogeneity. The systemic abnormal immune response not only challenges the diagnosis and treatment of the disease itself but also the secondary antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), characterized by recurrent arterial or venous thrombosis, recurrent spontaneous abortion, or stillbirth. Clinical interest has primarily focused on primary APS’s pathological and clinical features. However, differences in clinical features and laboratory indicators between SLE with or without APS are still lacking, especially differences between circulating lymphocytes, which are critical in the pathogenesis of SLE and its complications. Methods In this retrospective study, we collected and analyzed clinical characteristics, general laboratory indicators, immunological indicators, and circulating lymphocyte subsets of SLE with or without APS. Results Systemic lupus erythematosus with APS (SLE-APS) had elevated SLEDAI scores, hospitalization costs and time, and frequencies of central nervous system symptoms and spontaneous abortion compared with those without APS. SLE-APS had higher positive anti-Cardiolipin antibodies, anti-β2 Glycoprotein 1 antibodies, and perinuclear antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (pANCA) than none-APS patients. Compared with healthy controls (HCs), the circulating lymphocyte subsets were altered to some extent in all patients, especially in patients with SLE-APS. Reduced Tregs and positive pANCA were independent risk factors for SLE secondary APS. Conclusion The present study revealed a robust association between APS secondary to SLE and reduced Tregs and positive pANCA, which provides essential information regarding the diagnosis and therapeutic possibilities of APS secondary to SLE.

Tianchang Lu,1,* Minyi Wang,1,2,* Nannan Liu,1 Shuqiong Zhang,3 Lei Shi,1 Ling Bao,3 Feng Luo,3 Li Shi,1 Shuyuan Liu,1 Yufeng Yao4 1Department of Immunogenetics, Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Kunming, 650118, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Life Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650500, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Third People’s Hospital of Kunming, Kunming, 650041, People’s Republic of China; 4Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Yunnan Key Laboratory of Vaccine Research & Development on Severe Infectious Disease, Kunming, 650118, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Shuyuan Liu, Department of Immunogenetics, Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Kunming, 650118, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 871 68334483, Email shuyuanliuoo@gmail.com Yufeng Yao, Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Yunnan Key Laboratory of Vaccine Research & Development on Severe Infectious Disease, Kunming, 650118, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 871 68335632, Email leoyyf@gmail.comPurpose: Tuberculosis (TB) is known to result from a complex interaction between the host immune response and Mycobacterium infection. The transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) plays an important role in the processing and presentation pathways for the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) antigen. To investigate the possible association of the TAP1 and TAP2 genes with TB.Patients and Methods: A total of 449 TB patients and 435 control subjects were included in this study, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TAP gene, as well as TAP1 and TAP2 alleles, were genotyped.Results: TAP gene association analysis of TB diseases showed that rs41551515-T in the TAP1 gene was significantly associated with susceptibility to TB (P=7.96E-04, OR=4.124, 95% CI: 1.683– 10.102), especially pulmonary TB (PTB, P=6.84E-04, OR=4.350, 95% CI: 1.727– 10.945), and the combination of rs1057141-T-rs1135216-C in the TAP1 gene significantly increased the risk of TB susceptibility (P=5.51E-05, OR=10.899, 95% CI: 2.555– 46.493). Five novel TAP1 alleles were detected in Yunnan Han people, and the allele frequency of TAP1*unknown_3 (rs41555220-rs41549617-rs1057141-rs1135216-rs1057149-rs41551515: C-A-T-C-C-T) was notably increased in all TB patients, including in the PTB and EPTB subgroups, and was significantly associated with the risk of susceptibility to TB. However, no association between the TAP2 gene and TB was found in this study.Conclusion: Host genetic variants of rs41551515-T and the combination rs1057141-T-rs1135216-C, as well as TAP1*unknown_3 may play a critical role in susceptibility to TB disease.Keywords: tuberculosis, association, TAP gene, polymorphism, novel allele

The indications for percutaneous kyphoplasty (PKP) and percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) are painful vertebral compression fractures. Our study is to assess the risk–benefit ratio of PKP/PVP surgery in the patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma (NDMM) without receiving antimyeloma therapy. The clinical data of 426 consecutive patients with NDMM admitted to our center from February 2012 to April 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. The baseline data, postoperative pain relief, the proportion of recurrent vertebral fractures, and survival time were compared between the PKP/PVP surgical group and the nonsurgical group in the NDMM patients. Of the 426 patients with NDMM, 206 patients had vertebral fractures (206/426, 48.4%). Of these, 32 (32/206, 15.5%) underwent PKP/PVP surgery for misdiagnosis of simple osteoporosis prior to diagnosis of MM (surgical group), and the other 174 (174/206, 84.5%) did not undergo surgical treatment prior to definitive diagnosis of MM (non-surgical group). The median age of patients in the surgical and nonsurgical groups was 66 and 62 years, respectively (p = 0.01). The proportion of patients with advanced ISS and RISS stages was higher in the surgical group (ISS stage II + III 96.9% vs. 71.8%, p = 0.03; RISS stage III 96.9% vs. 71%, p = 0.01). Postoperatively, 10 patients (31.3%) never experienced pain relief and 20 patients (62.5%) experienced short-term pain relief with a median duration of relief of 2.6 months (0.2–24.1 months). Postoperative fractures of vertebrae other than the surgical site occurred in 24 patients (75%) in the surgical group, with a median time of 4.4 months postoperatively (0.4–86.8 months). Vertebral fractures other than the fracture site at the first visit occurred in 5 patients (2.9%) in the nonoperative group at the time of diagnosis of MM, with a median time of 11.9 months after the first visit (3.5–12.6 months). The incidence of secondary fractures was significantly higher in the surgical group than in the nonsurgical group (75% vs. 2.9%, p = 0.001). The time interval between the first visit and definitive diagnosis of MM was longer in the surgical group than in the nonsurgical group (6.1 months vs. 1.6 months, p = 0.01). At a median follow-up of 32 months (0.3–123 months), median overall survival (OS) was significantly shorter in the surgical group than in the nonsurgical group (48.2 months vs. 66 months, p = 0.04). Application of PKP/PVP surgery for pain relief in NDMM patients without antimyeloma therapy has a limited effect and a high risk of new vertebral fractures after surgery. Therefore, patients with NDMM may need to have their disease controlled with antimyeloma therapy prior to any consideration for PKP/PVP surgery.

The problem of mixed static and dynamic obstacle avoidance is essential for path planning in highly dynamic environments. However, the paths formed by grid edges can be longer than the actual shortest paths in the terrain since their headings are artificially constrained. Existing methods can hardly deal with dynamic obstacles. To address this problem, we propose a new algorithm combining Model Predictive Control (MPC) with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG). Firstly, we apply the MPC algorithm to predict the trajectory of dynamic obstacles. Secondly, the DDPG with continuous action space is designed to provide learning and autonomous decision-making capability for robots. Finally, we introduce the idea of the Artificial Potential Field to set the reward function to improve convergence speed and accuracy. In this paper, Matplotlib is used for simulation experiments. The results show that our method has improved considerably in accuracy by 8.11% -43.20% compared with theother methods, and on the length of the path and turning angle by reducing about 50 units and 340 degrees compared with DeepQ Network (DQN), respectively. We also employ Unity 3D to perform simulation experiments in highly uncertain environments, such as squares.

Social networks have accelerated the speed and scope of information dissemination. However, the lack of regulation and freedom of speech on social platforms has resulted in the widespread dissemination of the unverified message. Therefore, rapid and effective detection of social network rumors is essential to purify the network environment and maintain public security. Currently, the defects of rumor detection technology are that the detection time is too long and the timeliness is poor. In addition, the differences based on specific regions or specific fields will lead to deviations in the training dataset. In this paper, firstly, the definition of rumor is described, and the current problems and detection process of rumor detection are described; Secondly, introduce different data acquisition methods and analyze their advantages and disadvantages; Thirdly, according to the development of rumor detection technology, the existing rumor detection methods of artificial, machine learning and deep learning are analyzed and compared; Finally, the challenges of social network rumor detection technology are summarized.