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Introduction: Noise can induce hearing loss and reduce speech understanding. The Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) test has been widely used in audiology. However, strategies used by listeners to determine ANLs are unclear. The current study evaluated the role of speech recognition in selecting ANL and how well ANL could predict speech understanding in a noisy situation. Methods: Forty-five Mandarin speakers with normal hearing were tested in both ears. ANL is defined as Most Comfortable Level (MCL) minus Background Noise Level (BNL). To obtain ANL monaurally with an earphone, the study measured participants’ MCL to hear a Mandarin story in quiet and the maximum BNL to tolerate while following the story. Then, based on the participant’s ANL, speech recognition in noise was examined using a set of phonemic-balanced Mandarin words. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was adjusted to ANL, ANL – 10 dB (“degraded noise condition”), and ANL + 10 dB (“improved noise condition”). Results: The mean ANLs were 2.4 dB and 2.6 dB for the left and right ears, respectively. The mean speech recognition with SNR adjusted to ANL was relatively high for both ears (81–83% correct). Even for those ear samples with very low ANL (Conclusion: Speech recognition in noise appears to play an important role for listeners with normal hearing in deciding their ANLs. Additionally, ANL can predict speech performance (r-squared = 53–61%) in the degraded noise condition.

OBJECTIVE The classic transopercular or transsylvian approach to insular gliomas removes the tumor laterally through the insular cortex. This study describes a new anteroposterior approach through the frontal isthmus for insular glioma surgery. METHODS The authors detailed the surgical techniques for resection of insular gliomas through the transfrontal isthmus approach. Fifty-nine insular gliomas with at least Berger-Sanai zone I involvement were removed with the new approach, and extent of resection and postoperative neurological outcomes were assessed. RESULTS Fifty-nine patients were enrolled in the study, including 35 men and 24 women, with a mean (range) age 44.3 (19–75) years. According to the Berger-Sanai classification system, the most common tumor was a giant glioma (67.8%), followed by involvement of zones I and IV (18.6%). Twenty-two cases were Yaşargil type 3A/B, and 37 cases were Yaşargil type 5A/B. The average angle between the lateral plane of the putamen and sagittal line was 33.53°, and the average width of the isthmus near the anterior insular point was 33.33 mm. The average angle between the lateral plane of the putamen and the sagittal line was positively correlated with the width of the isthmus near the anterior insular point (r = 0.935, p < 0.0001). The median (interquartile range [IQR]) preoperative tumor volume was 67.82 (57.64–92.19) cm3. Of 39 low-grade gliomas, 26 (66.67%) were totally resected; of 20 high-grade gliomas, 19 (95%) were totally resected. The median (IQR) extent of resection of the whole group was 100% (73.7%–100%). Intraoperative diffusion-weighted imaging showed no cases of middle cerebral artery– or lenticulostriate artery–related stroke. Extent of insular tumor resection was positively correlated with the angle of the lateral plane of the putamen and sagittal line (r = −0.329, p = 0.011) and the width of the isthmus near the anterior insular point (r = −0.267, p = 0.041). At 3 months postoperatively, muscle strength grade exceeded 4 in all cases, and all patients exhibited essentially normal speech. The median (IQR) Karnofsky performance score at 3 months after surgery was 90 (80–90). CONCLUSIONS The transfrontal isthmus approach changes the working angle from lateral-medial to anterior-posterior, allowing for maximal safe removal of insular gliomas.

This study focused on how the ISO 9001:2008 standard has influenced organisational Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation success. Data were collected through a survey, followed by interviews with the quality managers/representatives of 85 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the textile industry. Additionally, case studies on four of the textile SMEs were carried out to validate the results. Our analysis revealed that the main benefits of LSS, among others, are problem solving improvement, reduction of the quality problem, waste reduction, and increase of productivity. However, certified companies are aware of continuous improvements to tools, which ensures the continuity of improvements made by the LSS project and facilitates the integration of Lean Six Sigma tools, which can help to make better use of the Lean Six Sigma project. The type of article produced was also found to have a considerable effect on the success of the Lean Six Sigma project.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) can induce oxidative injury and are generally regarded as toxic byproducts, although they are increasingly recognized for their signaling functions. Increased ROS often accompanies liver regeneration (LR) after liver injuries, however, their role in LR and the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, by employing a mouse LR model of partial hepatectomy (PHx), we found that PHx induced rapid increases of mitochondrial hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and intracellular H2O2 at an early stage, using a mitochondria-specific probe. Scavenging mitochondrial H2O2 in mice with liver-specific overexpression of mitochondria-targeted catalase (mCAT) decreased intracellular H2O2 and compromised LR, while NADPH oxidases (NOXs) inhibition did not affect intracellular H2O2 or LR, indicating that mitochondria-derived H2O2 played an essential role in LR after PHx. Furthermore, pharmacological activation of FoxO3a impaired the H2O2-triggered LR, while liver-specific knockdown of FoxO3a by CRISPR-Cas9 technology almost abolished the inhibition of LR by overexpression of mCAT, demonstrating that FoxO3a signaling pathway mediated mitochondria-derived H2O2 triggered LR after PHx. Our findings uncover the beneficial roles of mitochondrial H2O2 and the redox-regulated underlying mechanisms during LR, which shed light on potential therapeutic interventions for LR-related liver injury. Importantly, these findings also indicate that improper antioxidative intervention might impair LR and delay the recovery of LR-related diseases in clinics.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that soybean meal (SBM) contains high levels of anti-nutritional factors, which interrupt gastrointestinal homeostasis or metabolism normally of the weaned piglets. Here, the mixed probiotics, including Bacillus licheniformis (B. licheniformis, CGMCC 8147), Saccharomyces cerevisiae H11 (S. cerevisiae H11) and Lactobacillus casei (L. casei, CGMCC 8149) were applied to the three-stage fermentation of functional feed. Our research investigated the optimum ratio of inoculation, optimal time of inoculation, combination of substrates, and nutritional value of the fermented feed. The optimal microbial combination was B. licheniformis: S. cerevisiae: L. casei = 2:2:1, inoculating at 0, 12 and 24 h, respectively. The results revealed that crude protein and acid-soluble protein were remarkably improved and had lower pH. Trypsin inhibitor, glycine and β-glycine were reduced by 79.86, 77.18, and 69.29%, respectively. Moreover, animal trials further evaluated the growth-promoting effects of the fermented feed. It was noted that the average daily gain of weaned piglets was significantly higher, and the ratio of feed with weight, diarrhea incidence and mortality were lower significantly. The concentrations of serum immunoglobulin G(IgG), IgA, IgM, Complement C3 and interferon-γ (IFN-γ), and lysozyme activity were all increased. The relative abundance of fecal microbiota improved, especially lactobacillus, which increased the abundance of fecal dominant probiotics. Overall, the fermented feed may be conducive to the growth and health of weaned piglets by improving nutritional value, immunity properties, relative abundance of fecal microflora, and decreasing anti-nutritional factors of feed, thereby making them viable and usable feedstuffs for potential use in livestock industries.

Aiming at the problem that the geomagnetic sensor is vulnerable to external interference in the navigation process, this paper analyzes the frequency distribution range of geomagnetic signal and the noise characteristics in geomagnetic signal and proposes an improved morphological filtering and Hilbert–Huang transform (IMMF–IHHT) algorithm to extract and recognize the features of geomagnetic measurement signal. To avoid frequency aliasing and distortion caused by empirical mode decomposition, an improved morphological filtering algorithm based on mean constraint is used to preprocess the measured signal. The Hilbert spectrum of the decomposed signal is solved, the signal components are discriminated by the similarity criterion, and the signal components in line with the frequency range of the geomagnetic signal are extracted and processed to reconstruct the geomagnetic measurement signal. Simulation and experiments show that the signal-to-noise ratio and root-mean-square error of IMMF–IHHT combination algorithm are better than MF-HHT combination algorithm and IHHT algorithm. This algorithm has good signal feature extraction and recognition ability.

Background: Tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption have been associated with frailty in observational studies. We sought to examine whether these associations reflect causality using the two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) design.Methods: We used summary genome-wide association statistics for smoking initiation (N = 2,669,029), alcohol consumption (N = 2,428,851), and the frailty index (FI, N = 175,226) in participants of European ancestry. Both univariable and multivariable MR were performed to comprehensively evaluate the independent effects of smoking and alcohol consumption on the FI, accompanied by multiple sensitivity analyses. Results were verified using lifetime smoking and alcohol use disorder. Reverse direction MR was undertaken to assess the potential for reverse causation.Results: Genetic predisposition to smoking initiation was significantly associated with increased FI (univariable MR: β = 0.345; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.316 to 0.374; p = 1.36E-113; multivariable MR: β = 0.219; 95% CI = 0.197 to 0.241; p = 2.44E-83). Genetically predicted alcohol consumption showed a suggestive association with the FI (univariable MR: β = −0.090; 95% CI = −0.151 to −0.029; p = 0.003; multivariable MR β = −0.153; 95% CI = −0.212 to −0.094; p = 2.03E-07), with inconsistent results in sensitivity analyses. In complementary analysis, genetic predicted lifetime smoking, but not alcohol use disorder was associated with the FI. There is no convincing evidence for reverse causation.Conclusion: The present MR study supported smoking as a causal risk factor of frailty. Further research is warranted to investigate whether alcohol consumption has a causal role in frailty.

Morels (Morchella) are one of the most popular edible fungi in the world, especially known for their rich nutrition and delicious taste. Earlier research indicates that the production of fruiting bodies can be affected by the growth of mycelium. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying mycelium growth in Morchella importuna, we performed transcriptome analysis and metabolomics analysis of three growth stages of the hypha of M. importuna. As a result, 24 differentially expressed genes, such as transketolase (tktA), glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), fructose-diphosphate aldolase (Fba), and ribose-5-phosphate isomerase (rpiA), as well as 15 differentially accumulated metabolites, including succinate and oxaloacetate, were identified and considered as the key genes and metabolites to mycelium growth in M. importuna. In addition, guanosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (cGMP), guanosine-5′-monophosphate (GMP), and several small peptides were found to differentially accumulate in different growth stages. Furthermore, five pathways, namely, starch and sucrose metabolism, pentose and glucuronate interconversions, fructose and mannose metabolism, tyrosine metabolism, and purine nucleotides, enriched by most DEGs, existed in the three compared groups and were also recognized as important pathways for the development of mycelium in morels. The comprehensive transcriptomics and metabolomics data generated in our study provided valuable information for understanding the mycelium growth of M. importuna, and these data also unveiled the key genes, metabolites, and pathways involved in mycelium growth. This research provides a great theoretical basis for the stable production and breeding of morels.

Background: The clinical applications of stromal vascular fraction (SVF) therapy for osteoarthritis (OA) have attracted academic and clinical attention. However, data of the effects of stromal vascular fraction therapy on regeneration of degenerated cartilage are limited in the literature. Meanwhile, there is a great need for a simple and non-invasive evaluation method to analyze the changes of joint cartilage qualitatively and quantitatively in clinical trials. This study entitled “stromal vascular fraction Therapy for Human Knee Osteoarthritis” was registered in ClinicalTrial.gov # NCT05019378.Materials and Methods: We designed and conducted a single center, open labeled clinical phase I/II study, and 6 osteoarthritis patients with both knee cartilage defect I-II were enrolled in this study. The two knees of each patient were randomly assigned to autologous stromal vascular fraction treatment group or non-treatment control group to evaluate the safety and therapeutic effect of stromal vascular fraction therapy for human knee osteoarthritis. We have also established a novel protocol to provide 3D MRI imaging for human knee cartilage enabling us to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate cartilage degeneration and regeneration in this study.Results: The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of 3D Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) imaging of knee cartilage demonstrated that the stromal vascular fraction therapy reduced the cartilage defects; and significant increase of cartilage value both in defect cartilage area and whole cartilage area of treated group and significant increase of thickness and area of both femoral and tibia cartilage in vertical sections of the stromal vascular fraction treated Group at 12 and 24 W post treatment in cartilage defect I-II osteoarthritis patients.Conclusion: This clinical phase I/II study indicated that stromal vascular fraction therapy is a safe clinical procedure and provided evidence that the stromal vascular fraction therapy significantly facilitated cartilage regeneration, opening the opportunity to a phase III trial investigating authentic efficacy of the procedure. This study is the first qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the efficacy of autologous stromal vascular fraction cellular therapy on cartilage regeneration. Through early and definite diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis patients, and providing safe and efficient therapy to facilitate cartilage regeneration, we will be able to control or reverse cartilage degeneration and completely change the epidemiology of osteoarthritis worldwide.

In this proceeding, we have presented some highlight results on the constraints of the nuclear matter equation of state (EOS) from the data of nucleus resonance and neutron-skin thickness using the Bayesian approach based on the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model and its extension. Typically, we have discussed the anti-correlation and positive correlation between the slope parameter and the value of the symmetry energy at the saturation density under the constraint of, respectively, the neutron-skin thickness and the isovector giant dipole resonance. We have shown that the Bayesian analysis can help to find a compromise for the ``PREXII puzzle'' and the ``soft Tin puzzle". We have further illustrated the possible modifications on the constraints of lower-order EOS parameters as well as the relevant correlation when higher-order EOS parameters are incorporated as independent variables. For a given model and parameter space, the Bayesian approach serves as a good analysis tool suitable for multi-messengers versus multi-variables, and is helpful for constraining quantitatively the model parameters as well as their correlations., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, proceeding of the workshop on applications of machine learning in nuclear physics and nuclear data, Rui Chang, Jiangxi province, China, Aug. 5-7 th, 2022

Additional File 4. Table S3

Additional file 3: Fig. S3. Sensitive analysis.

Additional file 4: Fig. S4. Main microbial pathogens including bacteria, virus, fungi, and others detected by mNGS within HHV-7-positive and HHV-7-negative BALF. All data represent the number of times pathogens were detected within different groups, not the number of patients.

Additional File 4. Table S3

We investigate observational signatures of explosive chromospheric evaporation during a white-light flare (WLF) that occurred on 2022 August 27. Using the moment analysis, bisector techniques, and the Gaussian fitting method, red-shifted velocities of less than 20 km/s are detected in low-temperature spectral lines of Ha, C I and Si IV at the conjugated flare kernels, which could be regarded as downflows caused by chromospheric condensation. Blue-shifted velocities of about 30-40 km/s are found in the high-temperature line of Fe XXI, which can be interpreted as upflows driven by chromospheric evaporation. A nonthermal hard X-ray (HXR) source is co-spatial with one of the flare kernels, and the Doppler velocities are temporally correlated with the HXR fluxes. The nonthermal energy flux is estimated to be at least (1.3+-0.2)*10^10 erg/s/cm^2. The radiation enhancement at Fe I 6569.2 A and 6173 A suggests that the flare is a WLF. Moreover, the while-light emission at Fe I 6569.2 A is temporally and spatially correlated with the blue shift of Fe XXI line, suggesting that both the white-light enhancement and the chromospheric evaporation are triggered and driven by nonthermal electrons. All our observations support the scenario of an electron-driven explosive chromospheric evaporation in the WLF., Comment: The manuscript was accepted for publication in ApJ, and it was a part of the ApJ Focus Issue "Early results from the Chinese Ha Solar Explorer (CHASE)"

Additional file 2: Fig. S2. The results of multivariable analyses for 28-day all-cause mortality with the Cox regression model, p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant and shown in bold.

Additional file 1: Fig S1. Study profile.

Additional file 11. Images of the original blots.

Additional file 2. The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: author checklist.

Additional File 2. Table S2

We are carrying out the GPPS survey by using the FAST, the most sensitive systematic pulsar survey in the Galactic plane. In addition to about 500 pulsars already discovered through normal periodical search, we report here the discovery of 76 new transient radio sources with sporadic strong pulses, detected by using the newly developed module for a sensitive single pulse search. Their small DM values suggest that they all are the Galactic RRATs. More radio pulses have been detected from 26 transient radio sources but no periods can be found due to a limited small number of pulses from all FAST observations. The following-up observations show that 16 transient sources are newly identified as being the prototypes of RRATs with a period already determined from more detected sporadic pulses, 10 sources are extremely nulling pulsars, and 24 sources are weak pulsars with sparse strong pulses. On the other hand, 48 previously known RRATs have been detected by the FAST. Except for 1 RRAT with four pulses detected in a session of five minute observation and 4 RRATs with only one pulse detected in a session, sensitive FAST observations reveal that 43 RRATs are just generally weak pulsars with sporadic strong pulses or simply very nulling pulsars, so that the previously known RRATs always have an extreme emission state together with a normal hardly detectable weak emission state. This is echoed by the two normal pulsars J1938+2213 and J1946+1449 with occasional brightening pulses. Though strong pulses of RRATs are very outstanding in the energy distribution, their polarization angle variations follow the polarization angle curve of the averaged normal pulse profile, suggesting that the predominant sparse pulses of RRATs are emitted in the same region with the same geometry as normal weak pulsars., Comment: Accepted for publication in RAA

Based on the deformed nucleon distributions obtained from the constrained Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculation using different nuclear symmetry energies, we have investigated the effects of the neutron skin and the collision geometry on the yield of free spectator nucleons as well as the yield ratio $N_n/N_p$ of free spectator neutrons to protons in collisions of deformed nuclei at RHIC energies. We found that tip-tip (body-body) collisions with prolate (oblate) nuclei lead to fewest free spectator nucleons, compared to other collision configurations. While the $N_n/N_p$ ratio is sensitive to the average neutron-skin thickness of colliding nuclei and the symmetry energy, it is affected by the polar angular distribution of the neutron skin in different collision configurations. We also found that the collision geometry effect can be as large as 50% the symmetry energy effect in some collision systems. Due to the particular deformed neutron skin in $^{238}$U and $^{96}$Zr, the symmetry energy effect on the $N_n/N_p$ ratio is enhanced in tip-tip $^{238}$U+$^{238}$U collisions and body-body $^{96}$Zr+$^{96}$Zr collisions compared to other collision orientations in the same collision system. Our study may shed light on probing deformed neutron skin by selecting desired configurations in high-energy collisions with deformed nuclei., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2301.07893

Additional file 1. Supplementary data.

Additional File 1. Table S1

Supplementary Material 1

To promote the widespread use of mobile robots in diverse fields, the performance of trajectory tracking must be ensured. To address the constraints and nonlinear features associated with mobile robot systems, we apply nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) to realize the trajectory tracking of mobile robots. Specifically, to alleviate the online computational complexity of nonlinear MPC, this paper devises a lattice piecewise affine (PWA) approximation method that can approximate both the nonlinear system and control law of explicit nonlinear MPC. The kinematic model of the mobile robot is successively linearized along the trajectory to obtain a linear time-varying description of the system, which is then expressed using a lattice PWA model. Subsequently, the nonlinear MPC problem can be transformed into a series of linear MPC problems. Furthermore, to reduce the complexity of online calculation of multiple linear MPC problems, we approximate the optimal solution of the linear MPC by using the lattice PWA model. That is, for different sampling states, the optimal control inputs are obtained, and lattice PWA approximations are constructed for the state control pairs. Simulations are performed to evaluate the performance of our method in comparison with the linear MPC and explicit linear MPC frameworks. The results show that compared with the explicit linear MPC, our method has a higher online computing speed and can decrease the offline computing time without significantly increasing the tracking error.

Sequential recommender systems train their models based on a large amount of implicit user feedback data and may be subject to biases when users are systematically under/over-exposed to certain items. Unbiased learning based on inverse propensity scores (IPS), which estimate the probability of observing a user-item pair given the historical information, has been proposed to address the issue. In these methods, propensity score estimation is usually limited to the view of item, that is, treating the feedback data as sequences of items that interacted with the users. However, the feedback data can also be treated from the view of user, as the sequences of users that interact with the items. Moreover, the two views can jointly enhance the propensity score estimation. Inspired by the observation, we propose to estimate the propensity scores from the views of user and item, called Dually Enhanced Propensity Score Estimation (DEPS). Specifically, given a target user-item pair and the corresponding item and user interaction sequences, DEPS firstly constructs a time-aware causal graph to represent the user-item observational probability. According to the graph, two complementary propensity scores are estimated from the views of item and user, respectively, based on the same set of user feedback data. Finally, two transformers are designed to make the final preference prediction. Theoretical analysis showed the unbiasedness and variance of DEPS. Experimental results on three publicly available and an industrial datasets demonstrated that DEPS can significantly outperform the state-of-the-art baselines., Comment: Accepted in CIKM2022

Additional File 2. Table S2

The debut of ChatGPT has recently attracted the attention of the natural language processing (NLP) community and beyond. Existing studies have demonstrated that ChatGPT shows significant improvement in a range of downstream NLP tasks, but the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT in terms of recommendations remain unclear. In this study, we aim to conduct an empirical analysis of ChatGPT's recommendation ability from an Information Retrieval (IR) perspective, including point-wise, pair-wise, and list-wise ranking. To achieve this goal, we re-formulate the above three recommendation policies into a domain-specific prompt format. Through extensive experiments on four datasets from different domains, we demonstrate that ChatGPT outperforms other large language models across all three ranking policies. Based on the analysis of unit cost improvements, we identify that ChatGPT with list-wise ranking achieves the best trade-off between cost and performance compared to point-wise and pair-wise ranking. Moreover, ChatGPT shows the potential for mitigating the cold start problem and explainable recommendation. To facilitate further explorations in this area, the full code and detailed original results are open-sourced at https://github.com/rainym00d/LLM4RS.

Aim:To pilot study the therapeutic effect of dexmedetomidine-induced sleep balance treatment (DISBT) on the chronic refractory primary insomnia patients. Methods:Forty-two patients with chronic refractory primary insomnia were randomly divided into two groups by random number table. Patients in DISBT group were given DISBT for 3 days, while patients in the control group were given conventional treatment for 3 day. Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI), the hyperarousal scale (HAS), and Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA) were evaluated and compared between the pre-treatment and post-1-week-treatment. Sleep architecture and electroencephalogram (EEG) spectrum were also recorded and compared pre-treatment and post-treatment. Results:The scores of PSQI and HAMA in both groups after treatment were lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05), DISBT group-reduced degree were higher than those of the control group (P < 0.05). Sleep architecture of Stage 2 sleep proportion, EEG spectrum beta, and gamma relative power value in DISBT group were lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05), Stage 3 sleep proportion and delta relative power value were higher than those before treatment (P < 0.05); Sleep architecture of Stage 2 sleep proportion,beta, and gamma relative power value in control group were higher than those before treatment (P < 0.05); rapid eye movement sleep, Stage 3 sleep proportion, and delta relative power value were lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05). The total scores of the hyperarousal scale (HAS) in both groups after treatment were lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05), DISBT group-reduced degree were higher than those of the control group (P < 0.05), the extreme score, introspectiveness score, react score of HAS in control group after treatment had no statistical significance compared to those before treatment (P > 0.05), the extreme score, introspectiveness score, react score of HAS in DISBT group after treatment were lower than those before treatment (P < 0.05). Conclusion:DISBT effectively reduced the insomnia patient cortex hyperarousal level, corrected disorder of sleep-awakening pathways and easedup insomnia symptom. It is an effective method for chronic refractory primary insomnia.

A novel concentrating photothermal reactor with the ultrafast heating rate at around 1800 °C/min was developed to study the effects of CO2 and H2O on coal pyrolysis for oxy-fuel combustion. The mass loss rate with the ultrafast heating rate increased by several decuples than that with the slow heating rate. Coal pyrolysis process with the ultrafast heating rate was promoted by CO2 within 50% concentration but inhibited for a further higher concentration (70%). The addition of H2O into 30% CO2 exhibited a continuous positive role in coal pyrolysis with the ultrafast heating rate. Different from the satisfied prediction of chemical reaction models with the slow heating rates, diffusion models were of higher correlation coefficients for the ultrafast-heating pyrolysis process. The correction factors for CO2 and H2O were determined accordingly, and the modified three-dimensional diffusion mechanism model based on Jander equation (D3 model) well described the ultrafast-heating coal pyrolysis process.

PurposeTo develop an appropriate machine learning model for predicting anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangement status in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients using computed tomography (CT) images and clinical features.Method and materialsThis study included 193 patients with NSCLC (154 in the training cohort, 39 in the validation cohort), 68 of whom tested positive for ALK rearrangements and 125 of whom tested negative. From the nonenhanced CT scans, 157 radiomic characteristics were extracted, and 8 clinical features were collected. Five machine learning (ML) models were assessed to find the best classification model for predicting ALK rearrangement status. A radiomic signature was developed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithm. The predictive performance of the models based on radiomic features, clinical features, and their combination was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.ResultsThe support vector machine (SVM) model had the highest AUC of 0.914 for classification. The clinical features model had an AUC=0.805 (95% CI 0.731–0.877) and an AUC=0.735 (95% CI 0.566–0.863) in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. The CT image-based ML model had an AUC=0.953 (95% CI 0.913–1.0) in the training cohort and an AUC=0.890 (95% CI 0.778–0.971) in the validation cohort. For predicting ALK rearrangement status, the ML model based on CT images and clinical features performed better than the model based on only clinical information or CT images, with an AUC of 0.965 (95% CI 0.826–0.882) in the primary cohort and an AUC of 0.914 (95% CI 0.804–0.893) in the validation cohort.ConclusionOur findings revealed that ALK rearrangement status could be accurately predicted using an ML-based classification model based on CT images and clinical data.

The fermentation medium of a newly identified Cordyceps cicadae S1 was optimized by response surface methodology, with the optimal medium containing sucrose (80 g/L), yeast powder (60 g/L), KH2PO4 (5 g/L), MgSO4·7H2O (1 g/L) and Na2SeO3 (0. 1 g/L). Under these conditions, the extracellular polysaccharide yield was 8.09 g/L. A novel selenium-enriched polysaccharide (PACI-1) was isolated from Cordyceps cicadae, purified and identified as a homofructose polysaccharide with a low average molecular weight of 9.95 × 103 Da. The fine structure of PACI-1 was analyzed using NMR, CD, and AFM. Additionally, the in vitro antioxidant results showed that the PACI-1 had stronger antioxidant capacity than natural polysaccharides. These results provided a candidate strain for producing selenium polysaccharide and a new polysaccharide from C. cicadae, which showed good antioxidant activity.

In this work, we present Auto-captions on GIF, which is a new large-scale pre-training dataset for generic video understanding. All video-sentence pairs are created by automatically extracting and filtering video caption annotations from billions of web pages. Auto-captions on GIF dataset can be utilized to pre-train the generic feature representation or encoder-decoder structure for video captioning, and other downstream tasks (e.g., sentence localization in videos, video question answering, etc.) as well. We present a detailed analysis of Auto-captions on GIF dataset in comparison to existing video-sentence datasets. We also provide an evaluation of a Transformer-based encoder-decoder structure for vision-language pre-training, which is further adapted to video captioning downstream task and yields the compelling generalizability on MSR-VTT. The dataset is available at \url{http://www.auto-video-captions.top/2020/dataset}., The Auto-captions on GIF dataset is available at \url{http://www.auto-video-captions.top/2020/dataset}

Background: The development of innovative approaches in drug analysis is a challenging task for medicine, pharmacy, and engineering sciences. For instance, the requirement of proper dosage forms in releasing active ingredients is crucial. It is essential to analyze drugs in biological liquids for early diagnosis and treatment purposes. Drug analysis is also of great importance to control the quality of pharmaceutical products, test their efficacy, and develop novel drug formulation. The present review is aimed to highlight the most recent spectrophotometric approaches applied to analyze various classes of drugs in biological media and/or dosage forms. Methods: Direct and derivative UV/UV-Vis spectrophotometry and a combination of various techniques with spectrophotometry, such as injection analysis and chemometrics, have most widely been applied in the analysis of dosage forms. In addition, emerging technologies, such as UV imaging allows to obtain the distribution of drug concentration in time-resolved 2D images based on UV light absorption, utilization of nanotechnology, self-assembled nanomaterials, and aptamer-based nanoparticles have gained interests to investigate drug assays and to quantify the proper drug release. Results: Due to their high versatility, ease of application, low cost, and fast response, spectrophotometric methods are one of the most preferable methods providing high accuracy and precision with a wide linear range in drug analysis. Conclusion: Selected examples demonstrating the applicability of spectrophotometric methods in pharmaceutical assays in this review might contribute to the overall importance of the analytical test used in modern pharmaceutical analysis.

A smartphone augmented reality (AR) application (app) was explored for clinical use in presurgical planning and lesion scalp localization. We programmed an AR App on a smartphone. The accuracy of the AR app was tested on a 3D-printed head model, using the Euclidean distance of displacement of virtual objects. For clinical validation, 14 patients with brain tumors were included in the study. Preoperative MRI images were used to generate 3D models for AR contents. The 3D models were then transferred to the smartphone AR app. Tumor scalp localization was marked, and a surgical corridor was planned on the patient’s head by viewing AR images on the smartphone screen. Standard neuronavigation was applied to evaluate the accuracy of the smartphone. Max-margin distance (MMD) and area overlap ratio (AOR) were measured to quantitatively validate the clinical accuracy of the smartphone AR technique. In model validation, the total mean Euclidean distance of virtual object displacement using the smartphone AR app was 4.7 ± 2.3 mm. In clinical validation, the mean duration of AR app usage was 168.5 ± 73.9 s. The total mean MMD was 6.7 ± 3.7 mm, and total mean AOR was 79%. The smartphone AR app provides a new way of experience to observe intracranial anatomy in situ, and it makes surgical planning more intuitive and efficient. Localization accuracy is satisfactory with lesions larger than 15 mm.

Background: The number of validated quantification methods for rifampicin, a prototypical Oatp inhibitor, in biological rat samples was limited. Objective: This study was conducted to validate a modified reversed-phase liquid chromatographic method for the determination of rifampicin in rat liver tissue according to the current ICH M10 Bioanalytical Method Validation Draft Guideline (2019) for application to samples of in situ rat liver perfusion studies. Methods: Liver tissue samples were obtained from recirculatory in situ rat liver perfusion studies. The analysis was performed on a C18 column with a mobile phase composed of 0.05 M phosphate buffer (pH 4.58): acetonitrile (55:45, v/v). The assay was validated for selectivity, calibration curve and range, matrix effect, carry-over, accuracy and precision, reinjection reproducibility, and stability. Results: he method was considered selective and stable, without having carry-over and matrix effects. The calibration curve was linear (R2: 0.9983) within the calibration range (0.5-60 ppm). Accuracy and precision values fulfilled the required limits. Liver concentrations of rifampicin in liver tissue, obtained after 60 min perfusion with 10 μM and 50 μM of rifampicin, were 45.1 ± 11.2 and 313.4 ± 84.4 μM, respectively. Conclusion: The bioanalytical method validation was completed and the method was successfully applied for the determination of rifampicin in rat liver tissue.

Introduction: OC26, an ortho-aryl chalcone compound, shows excellent antitumor activity in vitro and vivo. However, the pharmacokinetic characteristics of OC26 have not been comprehensively reported. It is essential to investigate the correlation of pharmacological response. Objective: To further explore OC26, this study aims to develop an ultra-performance liquid chromatography- tandem mass spectrometric (UPLC-MS/MS) method to reveal the pharmacokinetics and distribution characteristics in rats of OC26. Methods: An UPLC-MS/MS method was developed to detect OC26 in plasma and various tissues. The protein precipitation method was applied to process the biological samples. After intravenous injection 12.5mg/kg of OC26 in rats, plasma and tissue samples were collected from rats and the method was applied to investigate pharmacokinetic and distribution characteristics of OC26. Results: Calibration curve samples of OC26 concentration range from 20 to 2000 ng/mL with the goodness of fit (r2> 0.99). The precisions for the method were within 12.3%, while the accuracies for the method were within ±11% (bias). The matrix effect had no influence on the accuracy and precision of the method. After intravenous injection 12.5mg/kg of OC26 in rats, OC26 was rapidly eliminated (t1/2=31.39±7.87min, MRT0→∞=15.03±2.55min) from rat plasma and widely distributed (Vd=4.83±0.96L/kg) in tissues. The highest concentration of OC26 was detected in the brain in which peak content (~8962.78ng/g at 15min) was over 5-fold higher than that of in other tissues, which prompted new potential targets in the brain. Besides, lung and heart also detected quite a high level of OC26. Benefited from quick elimination in the collected tissues and plasma, long-term accumulation was not observed as chronic toxicity might be less. Conclusions: This UPLC-MS/MS method was successfully applied to detect OC26 and provide a theoretical basis for the further study of OC26.

Because nonopioid analgesics are much sought after, we computationally docked more than 301 million virtual molecules against a validated pain target, the α2A-adrenergic receptor (α2AAR), seeking new α2AAR agonists chemotypes that lack the sedation conferred by known α2AAR drugs, such as dexmedetomidine. We identified 17 ligands with potencies as low as 12 nanomolar, many with partial agonism and preferential Gi and Go signaling. Experimental structures of α2AAR complexed with two of these agonists confirmed the docking predictions and templated further optimization. Several compounds, including the initial docking hit '9087 [mean effective concentration (EC50) of 52 nanomolar] and two analogs, '7075 and PS75 (EC50 4.1 and 4.8 nanomolar), exerted on-target analgesic activity in multiple in vivo pain models without sedation. These newly discovered agonists are interesting as therapeutic leads that lack the liabilities of opioids and the sedation of dexmedetomidine.

Background: Hemorrhagic shock (HS) is a type of hypovolemic shock characterized by hemodynamic instability, tissue hypoperfusion and cellular hypoxia. In pathophysiology, the gradual accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) damages the mitochondria, leading to irreversible cell damage and the release of endogenous damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) including mitochondrial DAMPs (MTDs), eventually triggering the inflammatory response. The novel mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1 (Visomitin) effectively eliminate excessive intracellular ROS and exhibits anti-inflammatory effects; however, the specific role of SkQ1 in HS has not yet been explicated.Methods and results: A 40% fixed-blood-loss HS rat model was established in this study. Transmission electron microscopy showed that after HS, the myocardial mitochondrial ultrastructure was damaged and the mtDNA release in circulation was increased and the differentially expressed genes were significantly enriched in mitochondrial and ROS-related pathways. Mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1 attenuated the increased ROS induced by HS in myocardial tissues and by oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) in cardiomyocytes. Ultrastructurally, SkQ1 protected the myocardial mitochondrial structure and reduced the release of the peripheral blood mtDNA after HS. RNA-seq transcriptome analysis showed that 56.5% of the inflammation-related genes, which altered after HS, could be significantly reversed after SkQ1 treatment. Moreover, ELISA indicated that SkQ1 significantly reversed the HS-induced increases in the TNF-α, IL-6, and MCP-1 protein levels in rat peripheral blood.Conclusion: HS causes damage to the rat myocardial mitochondrial structure, increases mtDNA release and ROS contents, activates the mitochondrial and ROS-related pathways, and induces systemic inflammatory response. The mitochondrial antioxidant SkQ1 can improve rat myocardial mitochondria ultrastructure, reduce mtDNA and ROS contents, and decrease inflammation by protecting myocardial mitochondria, thereby playing a novel protective role in HS.

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are a serious potential threat to the safety of life and property in downstream areas. In this study, moraine-dammed glacial lakes in the Yi’ong Zangbo River basin were recognized based on Landsat ETM+/TM/OLI images in 2000 and 2019. Also, GLOFs for the Jionglaco, the largest glacial lake in this basin, were simulated using the one-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The results show that the total number and area of moraine-dammed glacial lakes in this basin increased by 10 (10.52%) and 5.49 km2 (48.24%) from 2000 to 2019, respectively, in which the area of the Jionglaco increased by 3.22 km2. The peak discharge at the breach outlet for five scenarios with different combinations of breach width (80 and 120 m), depth (2.5 and 5 m), and flood time (1.5 and 3 h) are 489 , 1,327.43, 444.32, 617.47, and 1,570.61 m3/s. With the addition of baseflow in the river, the peak discharge at bridge site 15,138.93 km from Jionglaco, is 1,040.89, 1,724.00, 1,024.85, 1,162.25, and 1,990.52 m3/s. The combination of baseflow in river and the GLOF discharge results in an increasing peak discharge in the further downstream region. However, the arrival of peak discharge in downstream areas is delayed, which increases the chances of people escaping.

A total of eleven new dimeric chromanones, paecilins F-P (2–12), were isolated from the endophytic fungus Xylaria curta E10, along with four known analogs (1, 13–15). Their structures and absolute configurations were determined by extensive experimental spectroscopic methods, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and equivalent circulating density (ECD) calculations. In addition, the structure of paecilin A, which was reported to be a symmetric C8-C8′ dimeric pattern, was revised by analysis of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data, and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Compound 1 showed antifungal activity against the human pathogenic fungus Candida albicans with a minimum inhibitory concentration of 16 μg/mL, and Compounds 8 and 10 showed antibacterial activity against the gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli with the same minimum inhibitory concentration of 16 μg/mL.

This systematic review will be used to evaluate the preventive and anti-inflammatory effects of vitamin C on digestive system-related diseases. Therefore, the therapeutic effect of vitamin C on digestive system-related diseases needs to be further improved.