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The present study aims to (1) follow up with 4-year changes in the efficacy outcome, defense style questionnaire (DSQ) score, and clinical features of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and (2) analyze the relationship between different levels of efficacy and changes in the patients' psychological defense mechanisms.The following data collection and 4-year follow-up were completed for 153 patients with OCD: (1) the treatment process, efficacy outcome, course of disease, and clinical features of OCD were collected using a self-made general information questionnaire and (2) the control method was used to analyze the changes in clinical symptoms (Yale-Brown obsessive compulsive scale [YBOCS], Hamilton anxiety score [HAMA], and Hamilton depression scale [HAMD]) in patients with OCD. Moreover, the changes in the psychological defense mechanism (measured by DSQ) and the relation between the prognosis and DSQ score were investigated.(1) The HAMA score (8.7 ± 4.8 points), HAMD score (12.0 ± 6.6 points) and YBOCS score (16.4 ± 8.4 points) were significantly lower during the follow-up than at the time of enrollment (p 0.01). In the two DSQ evaluations, there were no significant differences in the factors, with the exception of a significant decrease in the use of "reaction formation" (t = 2.533, p = 0.015). The changes of mature defense factors in the significant efficacy group significantly increased (p 0.01). Which was mainly manifested in the significant increase in the score of "sublimation" item, and the difference was extremely significant (t = -3.093, p = 0.006).An abnormal psychological defense mechanism plays an important role in OCD, and the use of a mature defense mechanism is significantly related to the treatment efficacy.

Deep models have demonstrated recent success in single-image dehazing. Most prior methods consider fully supervised training and learn from paired clean and hazy images, where a hazy image is synthesized based on a clean image and its estimated depth map. This paradigm, however, can produce low-quality hazy images due to inaccurate depth estimation, resulting in poor generalization of the trained models. In this paper, we explore an alternative approach for generating paired clean-hazy images by leveraging computer graphics. Using a modern game engine, our approach renders crisp clean images and their precise depth maps, based on which high-quality hazy images can be synthesized for training dehazing models. To this end, we present SimHaze: a new synthetic haze dataset. More importantly, we show that training with SimHaze alone allows the latest dehazing models to achieve significantly better performance in comparison to previous dehazing datasets. Our dataset and code will be made publicly available., Comment: Submitted to ICIP 2023

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Comparison of conversion efficiency between EM-seq and BS-seq. a Dot plot compare individual methylation values in hypermethylated CpGs acquired by EM-Seq and BS-seq (r = 0.91, P < 0.0001). Percentages indicate the fraction of CpGs that differed between conditions. Hypermethylated CpGs are those with BS-seq detection values of > 80% on pUC19 DNA. b Genome plot for unmethylated control λ DNA(30,000–35,000)compares CH reads between EM-seq and BS-seq datasets. Boxes represent reads, and unmethylated (blue) and methylated (red) CHGs are indicated. c Pie charts compare the proportion of reads with 0, 1, 2 and ≥ 3 CH sites in EM-seq (SRR10532128) and BS-seq (SRR10532135) sequencing reads from public database. d Methylation values on hypermethylated CpGs acquired by EM-Seq and BS-seq, before and after ≥ 3CHs filtration. ns represents no significance. e Dot plot compare individual methylation values in hypomethylated CpGs acquired by EM-Seq and BS-seq after 3CH read filtering. Percentages indicate the fraction of CpGs that differed between conditions. Figure S2. Performance of targeted EM-seq. a Unique read depth (PCR duplication removed) observed in EM-seq and BS-seq with same input quantities (20 ng). b Heat maps compare individual CpG methylation values in the target panel acquired by targeted EM-Seq between technical replicates (r = 0.999). c Heat map shows coverage depth of CpGs between replicates of a 20 ng targeted EM-seq library (r = 0.982). d Fragment size distributions of plasma sample from a healthy donor. Figure S3. Comparison of HCC predictive model with AFP and PIVKA-II. a Proportions of positive calling by HCC screening model in HCC patients with different AFP levels in the test set. b Proportions of positive calling by HCC screening model in HCC patients with different PIVKA-II levels in the test set.

When doing private domain marketing with cloud services, the merchants usually have to purchase different machine learning models for the multiple marketing purposes, leading to a very high cost. We present a unified user-item matching framework to simultaneously conduct item recommendation and user targeting with just one model. We empirically demonstrate that the above concurrent modeling is viable via modeling the user-item interaction matrix with the multinomial distribution, and propose a bidirectional bias-corrected NCE loss for the implementation. The proposed loss function guides the model to learn the user-item joint probability $p(u,i)$ instead of the conditional probability $p(i|u)$ or $p(u|i)$ through correcting both the users and items' biases caused by the in-batch negative sampling. In addition, our framework is model-agnostic enabling a flexible adaptation of different model architectures. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our framework results in significant performance gains in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods, with greatly reduced cost on computing resources and daily maintenance.

To improve the solubility and targeting of Ginsenoside Rg3 (G-Rg3), in the current study, we constructed a novel targeting functional material folic acid -poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline)-cholesteryl methyl carbonate (FA-PEOz-CHMC, FPC) modified G-Rg3 liposomes (FPC-Rg3-L). FPC was synthesized by using folic acid (FA) as a targeted head coupling with acid-activated poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline)-cholesteryl methyl carbonate. The inhibitory effects of the G-Rg3 preparations on mouse breast cancer cells (4T1) were investigated by CCK-8 assay. Paraffin sections of female BALB/c mice viscera were taken for hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining after continuous tail vein injection of G-Rg3 preparations. BALB/c mice bearing triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) were used as animal models to investigate the inhibition of G-Rg3 preparations on tumor growth and improving quality of life. Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) and α-smooth muscular actin (α-SMA) were used to investigate the expression of two fibrosis factors in tumor tissues by western blotting. Compared with G-Rg3 solution (Rg3-S) and Rg3-L, FPC-Rg3-L had a significant inhibitory effect on 4T1 cells (p < .01), and the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of FPC-Rg3-L was significantly lower (p < .01). The H&E results showed that the injection of FPC-Rg3-L and Rg3-S did not cause damage to the organs of mice. Compared with the control group, tumor growth was significantly inhibited in mice treated with FPC-Rg3-L and G-Rg3 solutions (p < .01). This study presents a new and safe treatment for TNBC, reduces the toxic and side effects of the drug, and provides a reference for the efficient use of Chinese herbal medicine components.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Primer Sequences used for RT-qPCR. Table S2. Serum parameters of mice in FMT experiment. Table S3. All Significant Pathways in GSEA of KEGG Pathways. Figure S1. Schematic workflow of the 6-month study design. Figure S2. The growth status of the fecal microbiota after the antibiotic interventionand one week after transplantation. Figure S3. Altered microbiota and Firmicutes/Bacteroides ratio, coabundance network, fecal metabolite profilesand microbiota functionafter 6-month MK-7 intervention. Figure S4. Altered serum biochemical indicators in donor groupsand receiver groupsafter MK-7 intervention and MK-7-regulated microbiota transplantation. Figure S5. Similar alteration of α and β diversity, observed amount of OTUs, significant altered microbiota and functional KEGG pathwaysand relative abundance of Family taxonomy were observed after MK-7 intervention in mouse model. Figure S6. Significantly altered microbiota in relation to high-fat diet and restored after supplementation of MK-7and landscape of top 50 leading-edge subset genes in liver, colon and pancreas tissue. Figure S7. Histopathological manifestationsand RT-qPCRsuggest the ability of MK-7-regulated microbiota to recover the ileal villi length, goblet cell count and visceral adipose tissue inflammatory response.

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) combined with medication therapy in preventing the recurrence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in convalescent patients.MethodsA total of 130 patients with convalescent MDD were enrolled in this prospective study. Sixty-five patients were assigned to the experimental group and received medication therapy combined with MBCT, and 65 patients were assigned to the control group and treated with medication alone. The recurrence rate and related hormonal changes were compared between the two groups.ResultsAfter 1 year of MBCT intervention, eight patients experienced recurrence in the experimental group, a recurrence rate of 12.31%, and 19 patients experienced recurrence in the control group, a recurrence rate of 29.23%. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF) scores in both the experimental and the control groups were significantly improved after treatment (P < 0.05). The difference in the HAM-D scores before and after treatment in the experimental group was 16.74 ± 4.54; this was significantly higher than that of the control group (8 ± 3.89, P < 0.0001). The WHOQOL-BREF scores in the experimental group were significantly improved compared with those of the control group (P < 0.0001). The differences in the levels of corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH), adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol before and after treatment in the experimental group and the control group were statistically significant (P < 0.05). The difference in CRH before and after treatment in the experimental group was 16.8 ± 7.2, which was higher than that of the control group (2.75 ± 9.27, P < 0.0001). The intervention with MBCT had a significant impact on the recurrence of MDD [β = 1.206, P = 0.039, 95% (confidence interval) CI = 0.0790–1.229]. The difference in the HAM-D scores also had a significant impact on the recurrence of MDD (β = 1.121, P = 0.0014, 95% CI = 0.805–0.976).ConclusionCompared with medication therapy alone, the use of MBCT combined with medication therapy can effectively prevent the recurrence of MDD in convalescent patients.

PurposeThe aim of this study was to investigate the role and mechanism of berberine (BBR) in the protection of injured retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in diabetic retinopathy (DR).MethodsExperimental diabetic retinopathy rat model was successfully induced by a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (STZ, 60 mg/kg) in male SD rats with sufficient food and water for 8 weeks. Animals were randomly divided into four groups: (1) non-diabetic, (2) diabetic, (3) diabetic + BBR + PBS, and (4) diabetic + BBR + SR95531. BBR (100 mg/kg) was given daily by gavage to rats in the group (3) and group (4) for 8 weeks, and weekly intravitreal injections were conducted to rats in the group (3) with 5 μL of 1×PBS and rats in the group (4) with 5 μL of GABA-alpha receptor antagonist SR95531 to investigate the underlying mechanisms. The survival and apoptosis of RGCs were observed by fluorescence gold labeling technology and TUNEL staining. Visual function was evaluated by visual electrophysiological examination. Western blotting and immunofluorescence staining were used to analyze the expression of GABA-alpha receptors in RGCs.ResultsIn an animal model, BBR can increase the survival of RGCs, reduce RGCs apoptosis, and significantly improve the visual function. The reduction of GABA, PKC-α, and Bcl-2 protein expression caused by DR can be considerably increased by BBR. SR95531 inhibits BBR's protective effect on RGC and visual function, as well as its upregulation of PKC-α and Bcl-2.ConclusionBBR is a promising preventive or adjuvant treatment for DR complications, and its key protective effect may involve the regulation of RGC apoptosis through the GABA-alpha receptor/protein kinase C-alpha (GABAAR/PKC-α) pathway.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-cll-10.1177_09636897221122997 for METTL3-Mediated m6A Modification of lncRNA MALAT1 Facilitates Prostate Cancer Growth by Activation of PI3K/AKT Signaling by Yuanshen Mao, Wenfeng Li, YiMing Weng, Bao Hua, Xin Gu, Chao Lu, Bin Xu, Huan Xu and Zhong Wang in Cell Transplantation

In this study, complex-shaped Ti alloys with near-full density, using three-way pipe as an example, were achieved by the combination of 3D printing and cold isostatic pressing (CIP). A new CIP capsule consisting of porous internal support core and the external shell was prepared by 3D printing, which made it feasible to achieve internal and external co-pressing on Ti-6Al-4V powder during CIP. Therefore, complex-shaped green body was obtained with good surface quality, without obvious defects or cracks. After sintering at 1230 °C, the sintered sample had equivalent mechanical properties (hardness = 382 HV, elongation = 15.5%, tensile strength = 929 MPa and yield strength = 862 MPa) compared to the ASTMB381 standard. This study presents a novel method for fabricating complex-shaped Ti alloys with comprehensive mechanical properties.

In order to improve the electrical quality disturbance recognition ability of theneural network, this paper studies a depth learning-based power quality dis-turbance recognition and classification method: constructing a power qualityperturbation model, generating training set; construct depth neural network;profit training set to depth neural network training; verify the performance ofthe depth neural network; the results show that the training set is randomlyadded 20DB-50DB noise, even in the most serious 20dB noise conditions,it can reach more than 99% identification, this is a tradition. The methodis impossible to implement. Conclusion: the deepest learning-based powerquality disturbance identification and classification method overcomes thedisadvantage of the selection steps of artificial characteristics, poor robust-ness, which is beneficial to more accurately and quickly discover the categoryof power quality issues.

The simultaneous treatment of H

BackgroundSelenium (Se), an essential trace mineral, has been implicated in preterm birth (PTB). We aimed to determine the association of maternal Se concentrations during pregnancy with PTB risk and gestational duration in a large number of samples collected from diverse populations.MethodsGestational duration data and maternal plasma or serum samples of 9946 singleton live births were obtained from 17 geographically diverse study cohorts. Maternal Se concentrations were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis. The associations between maternal Se with PTB and gestational duration were analysed using logistic and linear regressions. The results were then combined using fixed-effect and random-effect meta-analysis.FindingsIn all study samples, the Se concentrations followed a normal distribution with a mean of 93.8 ng/mL (SD: 28.5 ng/mL) but varied substantially across different sites. The fixed-effect meta-analysis across the 17 cohorts showed that Se was significantly associated with PTB and gestational duration with effect size estimates of an OR=0.95 (95% CI: 0.9 to 1.00) for PTB and 0.66 days (95% CI: 0.38 to 0.94) longer gestation per 15 ng/mL increase in Se concentration. However, there was a substantial heterogeneity among study cohorts and the random-effect meta-analysis did not achieve statistical significance. The largest effect sizes were observed in UK (Liverpool) cohort, and most significant associations were observed in samples from Malawi.InterpretationWhile our study observed statistically significant associations between maternal Se concentration and PTB at some sites, this did not generalise across the entire cohort. Whether population-specific factors explain the heterogeneity of our findings warrants further investigation. Further evidence is needed to understand the biologic pathways, clinical efficacy and safety, before changes to antenatal nutritional recommendations for Se supplementation are considered.

OBJECTIVE: The present study provides an overview of studies investigating white matter (WM) integrity in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Furthermore, it studies the correlation of fractional anisotropy (FA) in abnormal cerebral WM areas with the course and clinical signs of the disease. METHODS: The study subjects were divided into two groups, the OCD group (n=38) and the control group (n=40), based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) diagnostic criteria for OCD. Patients with untreated first-episode OCD were assigned to the OCD group, while healthy volunteers were assigned to the control group. The study group was evaluated in accordance with the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS). Subjects who met the inclusion criteria underwent whole-brain scanning via 3.0 T structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI). The WM FA values in different brain areas were compared between the two groups using voxel-based analysis (VBA). Subsequently, the correlations of the patient Y-BOCS score and disorder course with the FA values in significantly improved encephalic areas were analyzed. RESULTS: (I) The FA values of the right precentral gyrus (PreCG.R), left insular lobe, left inferior frontal gyrus and right inferior occipital gyrus (Occipital_Inf_R) WM were significantly lower in the OCD group than in the control group (P

The mixer settler is widely employed in the extraction and recycling of battery materials. The improvement of the separation efficiency is one of the most important issues. In order to investigate the effect of agitating speed on the flow characteristics and settling performance, both computational fluid dynamics coupled population balance model simulations and experiments with particle image velocimetry measurement have been performed in this work to investigate the flow field at different agitating speeds. The predicted data were in good agreement with the experimental data. The results demonstrated that an appropriate agitating speed could effectively promote the collision efficiency of organic phase droplets and accelerate the separation process. When the agitating speed was too large, the shear stress of the fluid would promote the breakage of the organic phase droplets and decrease the separation efficiency. This work will contribute to optimizing and designing large-scale stirring settlers.

Limited supersaturation maintaining duration is the main challenge for amorphous solid dispersion design. Nucleation or crystal growth inhibitors may function in different ways but the combination use of nucleation and crystal growth inhibitors in supersaturated system is rarely explored. Thus, using Lacidipine (LCDP) as a Biopharmaceutical Classification System (BCS) II model drug, the aim of this study was to explore whether the combination use of nucleation and crystal growth inhibitors could provide a synergistic effect on the in vitro-in vivo performance of poorly water-soluble drugs. First of all, based on compatibility screening using solubility parameter (Δδ) and crystallization inhibition efficiency as criteria, soluplus (SOL) and gum arabic (GA) were selected as the most effective nucleation and crystal growth inhibitor respectively. Thereafter, the supersaturated drug solutions were spray dried and characterized. The in vitro release, physical stability as well as pharmacokinetic behavior were investigated. It was found that the combination use of SOL and GA did not present remarkable advantage in prolonging the supersaturation time in solution state. However, their synergistic effect in equilibrium solubility and dissolution enhancement was noticed at SOL/GA ratio 3:1, with 5-7 times higher dissolution rate observed for LCDP/SOL/GA based formulation compared with that of LCDP/SOL, which was maintained even after three months accelerated stability test under non-sink condition. Moreover, compared to the LCDP/SOL formulation, approximately 2.8 and 2.5-fold increase in the maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) and the area under the plasma-time curve (AUC0-∞) was achieved with LCDP/SOL/GA based formulation. Possible mechanism of the synergistic effect was elucidated, indicating GA may penetrate into SOL particles providing both electrostatic and steric stabilization. In conclusion, the combination use of screened nucleation and crystal growth inhibitors might be an efficient approach to design supersaturated drug delivery system.

Water quality prediction is an effective method for managing and protecting water resources by providing an early warning against water quality deterioration. In general, the existing water quality prediction methods are based on a single shallow model which fails to capture the long-term dependence in historical time series and is more likely to cause a high rate of false alarms and false negatives in practical water monitoring application. To resolve these problems, a new model combining recurrent neural network (RNN) with improved Dempster/Shafer (D-S) evidence theory (RNNs-DS) is proposed in this paper. Among them, the RNNs which can handle the long-term dependence in historical time series effectively are used to realize the preliminary prediction of water quality. And the improved D-S evidence theory is used to synthesize the prediction results of RNNs. In addition, an improved strategy based on correlation analysis method is presented for evidence theory to obtain the number of evidence, which reduces uncertainty in evidence selection effectively. Besides, a new basic probability assignment function which based on modified softmax function is proposed. The new function can effectively solve the problems of weight allocation failure in the traditional function. Then, data about permanganate index, pH, total phosphorus, and dissolved oxygen from Jiuxishuichang monitoring station near Qiantang River, Zhejiang Province, China is used to verify the proposed model. Compared with support vector regression (SVR) and backpropagation neural network (BPNN) and three RNN models, the new model shows higher accuracy and better stability as indicated by four indices. Finally, the engineering application of the RNNs-DS algorithm has been realized on the self-developed water environmental monitoring and forecasting system, which can provide effective support for early risk assessment and prevention in water environment.

Mixer-settlers have been widely employed in the rare earth element separation industry. Presently, reducing the loss of reagents and occupied areas and achieving a highly efficient separation in the settler are challenging issues. In this work, we report numerical simulations of the liquid–liquid flow in a stirring settler and thereafter describe the experimental validation. A computational fluid dynamics coupled population balance model (CFD-PBM) was developed to investigate the liquid–liquid flow characteristics and settling performance. The dispersion band thickness predicted by the turbulent aggregation model was in good agreement with the experimental measurements. The effects of the total liquid flow rate and initial average droplet diameter on the settling characteristics were further investigated. It was found that the dispersion band thickness increased significantly as the droplet diameter decreased. Moreover, this research shows that the CFD-PBM coupled model is promising for designing large-scale stirring settlers.

Additional file 1: Table S1. List of primers used for fusion genes SuIL-15Rα-dFc and SuIL-15Rα-mFc construction. Table S2. List of antibodies used for flow cytometry.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jet-10.1177_15266028211032956 for Paeonol Suppresses Vasculogenesis Through Regulating Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotypic Switching by Huan Xu, Ziqiang Wu, Zhong Jin, Xiao Wu, Wangming Hu, Bing Liang, Guanhua Lou, Zixian Chen, Huan Yao, Xiongbing Chen, Xin Zhou, Han Xiao, Cenghao Yu, Delai Zhang, Daoying Gong, Lan Yang, Yaping Shi, Yiming Xu and Yong Wang in Journal of Endovascular Therapy

User representation is essential for providing high-quality commercial services in industry. Universal user representation has received many interests recently, with which we can be free from the cumbersome work of training a specific model for each downstream application. In this paper, we attempt to improve universal user representation from two points of views. First, a contrastive self-supervised learning paradigm is presented to guide the representation model training. It provides a unified framework that allows for long-term or short-term interest representation learning in a data-driven manner. Moreover, a novel multi-interest extraction module is presented. The module introduces an interest dictionary to capture principal interests of the given user, and then generate his/her interest-oriented representations via behavior aggregation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the learned user representations., Comment: 8 pages, during peer review

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-jet-10.1177_15266028211032956 for Paeonol Suppresses Vasculogenesis Through Regulating Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotypic Switching by Huan Xu, Ziqiang Wu, Zhong Jin, Xiao Wu, Wangming Hu, Bing Liang, Guanhua Lou, Zixian Chen, Huan Yao, Xiongbing Chen, Xin Zhou, Han Xiao, Cenghao Yu, Delai Zhang, Daoying Gong, Lan Yang, Yaping Shi, Yiming Xu and Yong Wang in Journal of Endovascular Therapy

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Quality control of exosomes isolation. Figure S2. Identificationc the existing forms of circulating emRNAs. Figure S3. Selection of potential diagnostic exosomes mRNA in the LASSO model. Figure S4. Optimized detection strategy for the detection of 13 PCa-associated emRNAs. Figure S5. Scatter plots of emRNA expression validation. Figure S6. Testing of previous reported reference genes. Figure S7. Standard curve generated with real-time quantitative PCR. Figure S8. Established the subtype signatures for the detection of PCa. Figure S9. EmRNAs are derived from PCa and then released into the cell culture medium or circulation by packing into exosomes. Figure S10. The potential biological function of the emRNAs. Table S1. The list of dysregulated transcripts with varied expression between tissue and serum exosomes. Table S2. The list of primers and probes. Table S3. The list of upregulated emRNA in PCa. Table S4. Diagnosis performance of emRNAs. Table S5. Demographics of PCa patients and control participants for QC of exosome isolation. Table S6. Demographics of PCa patients and control participants for RNA-seq of their serum exosome. Table S7. Demographcs of PCa patients and control participants for dysregulated emRNAs validation. Table S8. Demographics of PCa patients and control participants for TaqMan qPCR testing. Table S9. Diagnosis performance of emRNAs in different PSA group. Table S10. Diagnosis performance of emRNAs in different ages. Table S11. Diagnosis performance of emRNAs in differentiating BPH and PCa with GS 6 from PCa with GS ≥7. Identification the existing forms of circulating emRNAs. Optimized detection strategy for the detection of 13 PCa-associated emRNAs. Established the subtype signatures for the detection of PCa. Correlation analysis between emRNAs and the grade of PCa aggressiveness. The source of circulating emRNAs. The potential importance of the emRNAs. Methods.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-jet-10.1177_15266028211032956 for Paeonol Suppresses Vasculogenesis Through Regulating Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotypic Switching by Huan Xu, Ziqiang Wu, Zhong Jin, Xiao Wu, Wangming Hu, Bing Liang, Guanhua Lou, Zixian Chen, Huan Yao, Xiongbing Chen, Xin Zhou, Han Xiao, Cenghao Yu, Delai Zhang, Daoying Gong, Lan Yang, Yaping Shi, Yiming Xu and Yong Wang in Journal of Endovascular Therapy

Medical image segmentation plays a vital role in clinical application of auxiliary diagnosis. Having said that, it is still a challenging task to accurately segment lesion areas from case images, because lesions are always different in size and shape, and the boundaries of lesion area is usually too rough, which greatly limits the accuracy of the current mainstream automatic segmentation algorithms. The lesions in stroke data are mostly small targets, and the boundary area are very tortuous, which greatly increases the difficulty of segmentation. Therefore, there is still a lot of space for segmentation of stroke data sets. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple encoders network for stroke lesion segmentation, called ME-Net, which is mainly composed of the atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) module and residual encoder. Particularly, ASPP uses a parallel structure of porous convolutions with different sampling rates to obtain context information for multi-scale features. The residual encoding can obtain high-level semantic features at high resolution. In addition, ME-Net adopts an encoding and decoding framework. We divided the pathological images into three levels according to the number of pixels in the masked area and evaluated our proposed method on an open dataset Anatomical Tracings of Lesions After Stroke (ATLAS) with encouraging performance achieved compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.

Additional file 3: Figure S2. Estimation of mortality risks with or without interaction term in all cancer survivors. (A: without interaction term, B: with interaction term by sex, C: with interaction term by age).

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-jet-10.1177_15266028211032956 for Paeonol Suppresses Vasculogenesis Through Regulating Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotypic Switching by Huan Xu, Ziqiang Wu, Zhong Jin, Xiao Wu, Wangming Hu, Bing Liang, Guanhua Lou, Zixian Chen, Huan Yao, Xiongbing Chen, Xin Zhou, Han Xiao, Cenghao Yu, Delai Zhang, Daoying Gong, Lan Yang, Yaping Shi, Yiming Xu and Yong Wang in Journal of Endovascular Therapy

Additional file 1. The sequences of EVs in this study.

Additional file 5. STROBE Statement—Checklist of items that should be included in reports of cohort studies.

We revisit the concept of "adversary" in online learning, motivated by solving robust optimization and adversarial training using online learning methods. While one of the classical setups in online learning deals with the "adversarial" setup, it appears that this concept is used less rigorously, causing confusion in applying results and insights from online learning. Specifically, there are two fundamentally different types of adversaries, depending on whether the "adversary" is able to anticipate the exogenous randomness of the online learning algorithms. This is particularly relevant to robust optimization and adversarial training because the adversarial sequences are often anticipative, and many online learning algorithms do not achieve diminishing regret in such a case. We then apply this to solving robust optimization problems or (equivalently) adversarial training problems via online learning and establish a general approach for a large variety of problem classes using imaginary play. Here two players play against each other, the primal player playing the decisions and the dual player playing realizations of uncertain data. When the game terminates, the primal player has obtained an approximately robust solution. This meta-game allows for solving a large variety of robust optimization and multi-objective optimization problems and generalizes the approach of arXiv:1402.6361.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we use a classical method to establish Gaussian bounds of the fundamental matrix of a generalized parabolic Lam�� system with only bounded and measurable coefficients. Second, we derive a maximal $L^1$ regularity result for the abstract Cauchy problem associated with a composite operator. In a concrete example, we also obtain maximal $L^1$ regularity for the Lam�� system, from which it follows that the Lipschitz seminorm of the solutions to the Lam�� system is globally $L^1$-in-time integrable. As an application, we use a Lagrangian approach to prove a global-in-time well-posedness result for a viscous pressureless flow provided that the initial velocity satisfies a scaling-invariant smallness condition. The method established in this paper might be a powerful tool for studying many issues arising from viscous fluids with truly variable densities.

Additional file 4: Figure S3. Estimation of mortality risks with or without interaction term in cancer- specific survivors. (A: without interaction term in breast cancer, B: with interaction term in breast cancer by sex, C: with interaction term in breast cancer by age, D: without interaction term in colorectal cancer, E: with interaction term in colorectal cancer by sex, F: with interaction term in colorectal cancer by age, G: without interaction term in lung cancer, H: with interaction term in lung cancer by sex, I: with interaction term in lung cancer by age, J: without interaction term in liver cancer, K: with interaction term in liver cancer by sex, L: with interaction term in liver cancer by age, M: without interaction term in nasopharynx cancer, N: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by sex, O: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by age, P: without interaction term in gastric cancer, Q: with interaction term in gastric cancer by sex, R: with interaction term in gastric cancer by age, S: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by age, T: without interaction term in kidney cancer, U: with interaction term in kidney cancer by sex, V: with interaction term in kidney cancer by age).

Additional file 2: Table S1. Baseline characteristics of 7,065 breast cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S2. Baseline characteristics of 6,870 colorectal cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S3. Baseline characteristics of 5,542 lung cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S4. Baseline characteristics of 2,713 liver cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S5. Baseline characteristics of 2,545 nasopharynx cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S6. Baseline characteristics of 1,421 gastric cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S7. Baseline characteristics of 731 kidney cancer survivors by healthy lifestyle score. Table S8. Distribution of cancer diagnosis by lifestyle index. Table S9. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in all cancer survivors. Table S10. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in breast cancer survivors. Table S11. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in colorectal cancer survivors. Table S12. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in lung cancer survivors. Table S13. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in liver cancer survivors. Table S14. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in nasopharynx cancer survivors. Table S15. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in gastric cancer survivors. Table S16. Criteria for determining the healthy lifestyle factors in kidney cancer survivors. Table S17. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in breast cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S18. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in colorectal cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S19. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in lung cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S20. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in liver cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S21. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in nasopharynx cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S22. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in gastric cancer survivors by sex and age groups. Table S23. Adjusted hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of mortality related to five healthy lifestyle index in kidney cancer survivors by sex and age groups.

Additional file 3: Figure S2. Estimation of mortality risks with or without interaction term in all cancer survivors. (A: without interaction term, B: with interaction term by sex, C: with interaction term by age).

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Study sample selection.

Additional file 4: Figure S3. Estimation of mortality risks with or without interaction term in cancer- specific survivors. (A: without interaction term in breast cancer, B: with interaction term in breast cancer by sex, C: with interaction term in breast cancer by age, D: without interaction term in colorectal cancer, E: with interaction term in colorectal cancer by sex, F: with interaction term in colorectal cancer by age, G: without interaction term in lung cancer, H: with interaction term in lung cancer by sex, I: with interaction term in lung cancer by age, J: without interaction term in liver cancer, K: with interaction term in liver cancer by sex, L: with interaction term in liver cancer by age, M: without interaction term in nasopharynx cancer, N: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by sex, O: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by age, P: without interaction term in gastric cancer, Q: with interaction term in gastric cancer by sex, R: with interaction term in gastric cancer by age, S: with interaction term in nasopharynx cancer by age, T: without interaction term in kidney cancer, U: with interaction term in kidney cancer by sex, V: with interaction term in kidney cancer by age).

Additional file 5. STROBE Statement—Checklist of items that should be included in reports of cohort studies.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-jet-10.1177_15266028211032956 for Paeonol Suppresses Vasculogenesis Through Regulating Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotypic Switching by Huan Xu, Ziqiang Wu, Zhong Jin, Xiao Wu, Wangming Hu, Bing Liang, Guanhua Lou, Zixian Chen, Huan Yao, Xiongbing Chen, Xin Zhou, Han Xiao, Cenghao Yu, Delai Zhang, Daoying Gong, Lan Yang, Yaping Shi, Yiming Xu and Yong Wang in Journal of Endovascular Therapy

In order to better sort the massive scattered defect data and ensure the effect of data processing, an adaptive sorting method based on cloud computing is proposed. In order to improve the convergence of data, multi-objective processing is carried out in the cloud computing environment. Combined with the fuzzy adaptive sorting algorithm, the difference value of multi-objective variation is calculated to achieve the balanced adjustment of variation data. In order to speed up the data convergence, balance the local optimal sorting value, obtain the initial value of scattered defect data, and complete the adaptive sorting of scattered defect big data. Finally, experiments show that the adaptive sorting method based on cloud computing can better repair and accurately sort the scattered data, and improve the data convergence effect.

The current pneumonia epidemic in China could evolve into a pandemic on a global scale if not effectively contained. The SARS-CoV-2 possesses a 61-amino acid open reading frame resembling SARS-CoV virulence factor - ORF6 peptide. The isoleucine content is 15.9% in ORF6 of SARS-CoV versus 16.4% of that in SARS-CoV-2. Given the proton affinity in the carbonyl oxygen in isoleucine, augmented proton traffic can enhance proton-ion antiport and prompt cell swelling. Calorie restriction has been confirmed in animal studies to extend lifespan, and its underlying mechanism is not fully known. As the content of essential amino acids in the open reading frame of SARS-CoV-2 reaches 57.4%, a starch/vitamin diet served for short period of time does not give rise to essential amino acids and halts virion production, which could be adopted as prophylactic approach of many viral infections. Plant-based diet or fasting/boiled rice water can also minimize the intake of essential amino acids or all amino acids respectively. Furthermore, several proteins of SARS-CoV-2 possess high valine plus glycine content which is implicated in heart disease, justifying the aforementioned approaches.

The current pneumonia epidemic in China could evolve into a pandemic on a global scale if not effectively contained. The 2019-nCoV possesses a 61-amino acid open reading frame resembling SARS-CoV virulence factor - ORF6 peptide. The isoleucine content is 15.9% in ORF6 of SARS-CoV versus 16.4% of that in 2019-nCoV. Given the proton affinity in the carbonyl oxygen in isoleucine, augmented proton traffic can enhance proton-ion antiport and prompt cell swelling. As the content of essential amino acids in the open reading frame of 2019-nCoV reaches 57.4%, a starch/vitamin diet served for short period of time does not give rise to essential amino acids and halts virion production, which could be adopted as prophylactic approach of many viral infections. Plant-based diet or fasting/boiled rice water can also minimize the intake of essential amino acids or all amino acids respectively. Calorie restriction has been confirmed in animal studies to extend lifespan, and its underlying mechanism is not fully known. Furthermore, several proteins of 2019-nCoV possess high valine plus glycine content, which is implicated in heart disease.

Periodicity detection is a crucial step in time series tasks, including monitoring and forecasting of metrics in many areas, such as IoT applications and self-driving database management system. In many of these applications, multiple periodic components exist and are often interlaced with each other. Such dynamic and complicated periodic patterns make the accurate periodicity detection difficult. In addition, other components in the time series, such as trend, outliers and noises, also pose additional challenges for accurate periodicity detection. In this paper, we propose a robust and general framework for multiple periodicity detection. Our algorithm applies maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform to transform the time series into multiple temporal-frequency scales such that different periodic components can be isolated. We rank them by wavelet variance, and then at each scale detect single periodicity by our proposed Huber-periodogram and Huber-ACF robustly. We rigorously prove the theoretical properties of Huber-periodogram and justify the use of Fisher's test on Huber-periodogram for periodicity detection. To further refine the detected periods, we compute unbiased autocorrelation function based on Wiener-Khinchin theorem from Huber-periodogram for improved robustness and efficiency. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets show that our algorithm outperforms other popular ones for both single and multiple periodicity detection., Comment: Accepted by SIGMOD 2021; 10 pages, 6 figures, 8 tables, and 70 referred papers

The ability to tune magnetic orders, such as magnetic anisotropy and topological spin texture, is desired in order to achieve high-performance spintronic devices. A recent strategy has been to employ interfacial engineering techniques, such as the introduction of spin-correlated interfacial coupling, to tailor magnetic orders and achieve novel magnetic properties. We chose a unique polar-nonpolar LaMnO3/SrIrO3 superlattice because Mn (3d)/Ir (5d) oxides exhibit rich magnetic behaviors and strong spin-orbit coupling through the entanglement of their 3d and 5d electrons. Through magnetization and magnetotransport measurements, we found that the magnetic order is interface-dominated as the superlattice period is decreased. We were able to then effectively modify the magnetization, tilt of the ferromagnetic easy axis, and symmetry transition of the anisotropic magnetoresistance of the LaMnO3/SrIrO3 superlattice by introducing additional Mn (3d) and Ir (5d) interfaces. Further investigations using in-depth first-principles calculations and numerical simulations revealed that these magnetic behaviors could be understood by the 3d/5d electron correlation and Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The results reported here demonstrate a new route to synchronously engineer magnetic properties through the atomic stacking of different electrons, contributing to future applications.

A coarse-grained molecular dynamics model of linear polyethylene-like polymer chain system was built to investigate the responds of structure and mechanical properties during uniaxial deformation. The influence of chain length, temperature, and strain rate were studied. The molecular dynamic tests showed that yielding may governed by different mechanisms at temperatures above and below Tg. Melt-recrystallization was observed at higher temperature, and destruction of crystal structures was observed at lower temperatures beyond yield point. While the higher temperature and lower strain rate have similar effects on mechanical properties. The correlated influences of time and temperature in the microscopic structures are more complicated. The evolution of microscopic characteristics such as the orientation parameter, the bond length, and the content of trans-trans conformation were calculated from the simulation. The results showed that the temperature have double effects on polymer chains. Higher temperature on one hand makes the chains more flexible, while on the other hand shortens the relaxation time of polymers. It is the interaction of these two aspects that determine the orientation parameter. During deformation, the trans conformation has experienced a rising process after the first drop process. And these microscopic structure parameters exhibit critical transaction, which are closely related to the yield point. A hypothetical model was thus proposed to describe the micro-structure and property relations based the investigations of this study., Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures

In this study, we evaluated and screened the effects of the molecular weight (MW) and molar ratio of poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline)-cholesteryl methyl carbonate (PEtOz-CHMC) on the pH sensitivity, stability, and antitumor efficacy of liposomes. The pH sensitivity of PEtOz-CHMC with different MWs and molar ratios was screened by drug release and cytotoxicity experiments at different pH levels. Results indicated that the liposomes coated with PEtOz1k-CHMC (7% molar ratio) and PEtOz2k-CHMC (5% molar ratio) exhibited the desirable pH responsiveness. When the MW of PEtOz was relatively low, 7% of the modified ratio obtained the strongest stability, but the turbidity of the liposomes did not obviously change when the molar ratio of PEtOz-CHMC was further increased. A375 cells were used as models to investigate the cellular uptake and intracellular localization of coumarin-6-loaded liposomes (C6-L), PEGylated liposomes (PEG-C6-L), and PEtOzylated liposomes. PEtOz1k-C6-L and PEtOz2k-C6-L presented remarkably stronger fluorescence intensity at low pH than at pH 7.4, whereas C6-L and PEG-C6-L did not achieve any obvious diversity at different pH conditions. Compared with C6-L and PEG-C6-L, PEtOz-C6-L showed efficient intracellular trafficking, including endosomal/lysosomal escape and cytoplasmic release. Pharmacokinetic experiments demonstrated that half-lives of PEG2k-C6-L, PEtOz2k-C6-L, and PEtOz1k-C6-L were 11.89-, 7.00-, and 5.29-fold times higher than those of C6-L, respectively. Among the liposomes, the DOX·HCl-loaded liposomes coated with PEtOz2k-CHMC demonstrated the strongest antitumor efficacy against B16 tumor xenograft models in vivo. These findings provide the feasibility of using PEtOz-CHMC with optimal pH sensitivity and long circulation to extend the application of liposomes to efficient anticancer drug delivery.

We study multi-agent coverage algorithms for autonomous monitoring and patrol in urban environments. We consider scenarios in which a team of flying agents uses downward facing cameras (or similar sensors) to observe the environment outside of buildings at street-level. Buildings are considered obstacles that impede movement, and cameras are assumed to be ineffective above a maximum altitude. We study multi-agent urban coverage problems related to this scenario, including: (1) static multi-agent urban coverage, in which agents are expected to observe the environment from static locations, and (2) dynamic multi-agent urban coverage where agents move continuously through the environment. We experimentally evaluate six different multi-agent coverage methods, including: three types of ergodic coverage (that avoid buildings in different ways), lawn-mower sweep, voronoi region based control, and a naive grid method. We evaluate all algorithms with respect to four performance metrics (percent coverage, revist count, revist time, and the integral of area viewed over time), across four types of urban environments [low density, high density] x [short buildings, tall buildings], and for team sizes ranging from 2 to 25 agents. We believe this is the first extensive comparison of these methods in an urban setting. Our results highlight how the relative performance of static and dynamic methods changes based on the ratio of team size to search area, as well the relative effects that different characteristics of urban environments (tall, short, dense, sparse, mixed) have on each algorithm.