Search

BackgroundThe glycocalyx is a gel-like structure that covers the luminal side of vascular endothelial cells. It plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of the vascular endothelial barrier structure. However, the presence or absence of glycocalyx destruction in hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and its specific mechanism and role is still unclear.MethodsIn this study, we detected the levels of exfoliated glycocalyx fragments, namely, heparan sulfate (HS), hyaluronic acid (HA), and chondroitin sulfate (CS), in HFRS patients and investigated their clinical application value on the evaluation of disease severity and prognosis prediction.ResultsThe expression of exfoliated glycocalyx fragments in plasma was significantly increased during the acute stage of HFRS. The levels of HS, HA, and CS in HFRS patients during the acute stage were significantly higher than in healthy controls and convalescent stages of the same type. HS and CS during the acute stage gradually increased with the aggravation of HFRS, and both fragments showed a significant association with disease severity. In addition, exfoliated glycocalyx fragments (especially HS and CS) showed a significant correlation with conventional laboratory parameters and hospitalization days. High levels of HS and CS during the acute phase were significantly associated with patient mortality and demonstrated an obvious predictive value for the mortality risk of HFRS.ConclusionGlycocalyx destruction and shedding may be closely associated with endothelial hyperpermeability and microvascular leakage in HFRS. The dynamic detection of the exfoliated glycocalyx fragments may be beneficial for the evaluation of disease severity and prognosis prediction in HFRS.

A secondary loop cooling battery thermal management system is designed, and then, a phased control strategy for adjusting the compressor speed according to the battery temperature interval is proposed. On this basis, the compressor speed as the decision variable, and the energy consumption of the compressor and the aging losses of the battery are as the optimization goals, which constitute a multi-objective optimization model, and a genetic algorithm is adopted to solve it. Under different weight coefficients, the Pareto Frontier of the energy consumption of the compressor and the aging losses of the battery are established. The simulation analysis is conducted on high speed dynamic conditions at an ambient temperature of 30 °C. The effects of coolant flow rate and compressor speed on battery pack temperature rise and temperature uniformity are analyzed. The simulation results show that the energy consumption of the phased control strategy is reduced by 10.7% compared with the traditional constant compressor speed control strategy under the same conditions. Under different weight coefficients, different simulation results and control strategies can be obtained, and results show that the maximum temperature and temperature uniformity can meet the requirements. There is a contradiction between the energy consumption of compressor and the aging losses of battery, but both them are highly sensitive. According to the Pareto Frontier curve, when the weight coefficient is 0.17, a balanced control strategy can be obtained, which can reduce the battery aging losses of 61.8% by only sacrificing 9.22% of the vehicle driving mileage.

To explore the CT and MR imaging findings of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) involving the jaw bones.Gnathic NHLs were retrospectively analyzed in 52 patients. The imaging findings were observed from the lesion number, location, size, shape, margin, density and signal intensity, CT value, bone structure change, and soft tissue mass.Of the 52 subjects, there were 43 with solitary gnathic NHL, and 9 with multicentric gnathic NHLs. The maximum diameter of all the 72 lesions ranged from 1.5 to 9.5 cm (mean 4.6 ± 1.67 cm). Of the 72 lesions, 90.3% were identified as irregular shapes, 87.5% as ill-defined margins, and 76.4% as homogeneous densities and signal intensities. The osteolytic destruction was found in 84.7% lesions, cortical disruption in 84.7%, and no periosteal reaction in 93.1%. The soft tissue masses surrounding the gnathic lesions were shown in 93.1% lesions. On MR imaging, the gnathic NHLs (18 lesions) showed as iso-signal intensity on T1WI, slightly higher signal intensity on T2WI, and high signal intensity on DWI. After contrast media administration, 83.3% lesions showed slightly homogeneous enhancement on T1WI.On CT and MR imaging, gnathic NHLs usually reveal as osteolytic lesions with irregular shapes, ill-defined margins, homogeneous densities and signal intensities, and surrounded by soft tissue mass. Some gnathic NHLs are characterized by multicentricity, which is important for indicating the condition.

As a natural focus disease characterized by systemic immunopathological injury, there is a considerable diversity and heterogeneity in clinical course and prognosis of the patients with hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). Therefore, the importance of early prediction and prognostic evaluation of severe patients in reducing mortality is self-evident. In this study, we detected the expression of serum ferritin and investigated its role on disease severity assessment and prognosis prediction in HFRS patients. The levels of serum ferritin in acute phase were higher than that of healthy controls and in convalescent phase of the same type, and gradually increased with the aggravation of the disease, which showed highest expression in the critical-type patients. Serum ferritin demonstrated significant correlations with conventional laboratory parameters (WBC, PLT, AST, ALB, APTT, Fib) and the length of hospital stay. High levels of ferritin were significantly associated with the death of HFRS, with a hazard ratio of 4.12. Serum ferritin showed a comparable predictive efficacy for the prognosis (death) of HFRS with that of conventional laboratory parameters, which with the AUC of 0.860 (95%CI: 0.782 ~ 0.938, P

Background Pentraxin-3 is an acute-phase protein involved in the processes of inflammatory and infection. This study aimed to analyze the changes of plasma pentraxin-3 prospectively and evaluate its predictive value on disease severity and prognosis in patients with hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). Methods 105 patients with HFRS admitted by the Second Affiliated Hospital of Air Force Medical University from October 2012 to December 2014 were randomly enrolled in this study. All patients were divided into a mild-type group (17 cases), a moderate-type group (27 cases), a severe-type group (26 cases) and a critical-type group (35 cases) according to the HFRS criteria for clinical classification. 96 venous blood samples of acute phase and 65 of convalescent phase were collected from patients during hospitalization, while venous blood samples of 27 healthy volunteers were taken as controls. The levels of plasma pentraxin-3 were detected using the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and which were compared among the acute and convalescent phases in different types of patients, as well as the control group. Spearman correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between pentraxin-3 and conventional laboratory parameters. The predictive effectiveness for prognosis of pentraxin-3 was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Results There was no significant difference in gender and age distribution between all types of patients and control group (P > 0.05). In all types of patients, the levels of pentraxin-3 in acute phase were significantly higher than that of control group and convalescent phase of the same type (P P |rs|>0.500, P CI: 0.593 ~ 0.914, P = 0.003). Conclusions The detection of plasma pentraxin-3 can be beneficial to the evaluation of disease severity and prognosis in patients with HFRS.

The large, complex batteries that are increasingly used in applications such as electric vehicles generate heat. As such, they require thermal management systems that can predict this heat generation. In this study, an electric-thermal coupled model was established to predict the temperature evolution of an air-cooled battery pack comprising three parallel branches with four cells in each branch. The model considers the influences of cell temperature and state of charge on ohmic and polarization resistances, and the interactions of cell temperature, resistance and current distribution. It can accurately predict temperature increases in cells in a pack unevenly cooled by air under different conditions. Experiments were conducted to verify the model's precision at different discharge rates and ambient temperatures. The majority of average relative errors (REave) between the estimated and measured values were

This paper establishes a dynamic thermal model for the Air Conditioning (AC)-cabin coupled system that includes the influences of vehicle speed and external environment on the heat exchange with the cabin. An Intelligent Model Predictive Control strategy (IMPC strategy) integrating the vehicle speed previewer and the self-adaptor of passenger’s thermal comfort, is proposed and applied to the AC-cabin system. This strategy can predict both the car speed and the preferred predicted mean vote of passengers by learning the historical car speed and the passenger’s comfort temperature. With their help, the IMPC has a more dynamic response of compressor speed to the car speed change and can automatically adjust cabin temperature, making it satisfy the thermal preference of the passenger with a little control error of PMV and cabin temperature. In aspect of energy conservation, the IMPC strategy saves more energy than the other control strategies researched in this paper. Its energy consumption is 4.32% less than the traditional MPC strategy, 40.4% less than the on-off controller, and 25.6% less than the PID controller. Moreover, the IMPC algorithm can keep the surface temperature of evaporator above 0 °C by setting the restricted condition in the MPC strategy, which can avoid the frosting on the evaporator wall and make the AC system work efficiently.

This paper establishes a coupled thermal model of the air conditioning system and cabin for electric vehicles, which considers the effects of solar radiation, vehicle speed, and the external environment on the heat exchanged with the cabin. An intelligent air conditioning system control strategy that can learn passengers’ thermal comfort preferences is proposed. This strategy predicts the preferred predicted mean vote of passengers by learning their thermal comfort preferences, then converts it into a target temperature for the air conditioning system. The performance of the proposed strategy is compared with that of conventional on-off and fuzzy PID controllers. In a simulated hot environment, the proposed control algorithm directly and automatically decreased the cabin temperature to the passengers’ preferred temperature without any manual adjustment. It can also maintain stable passenger PMVs and corresponding temperatures regardless of solar radiation, vehicle speed, and external environmental changes. The proposed strategy can improve the thermal comfort of passengers, compared with the on-off and fuzzy PID controllers; moreover, it consumes less energy. In a simulated driving cycle, its energy consumption was 31.8% less than that of the on-off controller and 10% less than that of the fuzzy PID controller, and its COP was respectively 20.4% and 18.7% more than those of on-off controller and the fuzzy PID controller. Therefore, the proposed strategy can make vehicles, especially electric ones, more efficient.

This paper presents a coaxial cavity bandpass filter with post-manufacturing tuning capabilities. A 6th degree systematic Chebyshev bandpass filter used in broadcasting is demonstrated. The frequency of broadcasting channels varies from 474MHz to 862MHz and the bandwidth of each channel is 7.6MHz. The variation law of the coupling coefficient and external Q e of the tunable filter in the whole tuning range is described, so that the simulation time can be greatly shortened in order to satisfy the requirement of short design period and high reliability of filters used for broadcasting. The bandpass filter was successfully synthesized to have good pass-band and stop-band performances from the 3D EM full-wave simulation.

To evaluate the CT features of radiation-induced jaw osteosarcoma(RIJOS) developed after therapeutic irradiation for a variety of nonosseous lesions.The demographic and CT findings of thirteen patients with RIJOS were reviewed retrospectively.Observation items included location, bone destruction, mineralized tumor matrix, periosteal reaction, soft tissue extension and calcification.Of the thirteen patients, twelve were male and one was female. The mean age was 48 years (range: 29-68 years).Five patients had tumors in the maxilla and eight in the mandible. All the patients underwent tumor resection.The latent period before development of RIJOS ranged from 3.5 to 14 years (mean, 11 years).In all thirteen patients, eight tumors were osteoblastic, with one osteolytic and four mixed lesions.Osteoid tumor matrix mineralization was present in twelve patients. Periosteal reaction was identified in 11 cases.Soft-tissue extension was present in all patients beyond the area of bone destruction.The characteristic CT imaging of RIJOS showed the bone destruction associated with a large number of mineralized tumor matrix and significant soft tissue extension in the original radiation field after radiotherapy. CT findings could play an important role in identifying the tumor and pre-operative assessment.

The objective is to observe the changes in plasma adiponectin (APN) and its predictive capacity for disease severity and prognosis of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). One hundred and five patients who were treated at our center between October 2011 and December 2012 were randomly enrolled in this study. The patients were divided into a mild-type group, a moderate-type group, a severe-type group, and a critical-type group according to the HFRS criteria for clinical classification. Ninety-three plasma samples from the patients in the acute stage and 78 samples from the patients in the convalescent stage were obtained, and 28 samples from healthy subjects were obtained as controls. The concentrations of APN were detected using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The levels of white blood cells, platelets, hematocrit, albumin, blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine, and uric acid in the samples were routinely tested. The levels of APN among the different types were compared; the correlation between APN and the laboratory parameters was analyzed. The predictive effectiveness for prognosis of APN and the laboratory parameters as mentioned above were evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. The levels of APN in the mild- and moderate-type patients in the acute stage were significantly higher than the severe-type and control (P

To detect hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA in amniotic fluid of gravida and investigate mother-to-infant transmission of HCV.Thirty-four HCV seropositive gravida (experimental group) were engaged. Fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based on amplisensor assay and reverse transcription -PCR (RT-nPCR) was used. Serum HCV RNA positive sera were genotyped by RFLP analysis of PCR products from 5'NC region. Sera and amniotic fluid samples of 40 normal gravida were set as the control group.In the experimental group, HCV RNA was detected in amniotic fluid (5.9%, 2/34) of 2 cases. HCV RNA titers were 10(5) and 10(6) copy/ml respectively. No HCV RNA was detected in the amniotic fluid and sera of the control (n = 40).HCV RNA was rarely detected in amniotic fluid. The amniotic fluid is not the main route of HCV mother-to-infant transmission.

The combination of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) and diffusion-weighted (DW)-MRI adds important information to the findings obtained through conventional spin echo MRI. We aimed to determine the value of combined DW- and DCE-MRI in distinguishing benign from malignant tumors of the tongue and mouth floor. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps were constructed, and the ADC values of the lesions were calculated from DW-MRI. The slopes were derived from time-intensity curves (TICs) from DCE-MRI. The ADC map for malignant tumors was lower compared with the benign lesions. The slope in the malignant tumors was significantly greater compared with the benign lesions. In malignant tumors, the ADC(b=500) threshold of