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To analyze the clinical characteristics and to improve clinicians’ understanding of multiple pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma (PSP) patients. A total of 36 PSP patients with multiple tumor characteristics were identified from the literature search. They were compared with 43 solitary PSP patients diagnosed and treated in our hospital in the past 5 years. Thus, the pathogenesis, clinical symptoms, diagnosis methods, treatment strategies, and prognosis of pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma (PSP) patients with multiple tumors were explored. Patients with multiple PSP are mostly distributed in Asia (88.89%) and are females (83.33%). PSP can be located in any one lobe (19.44%), or grow across ipsilateral lobes (44.44%), or even, bilateral lobes (36.11%). It can be accompanied by metastasis (9.09%) and is prone to misdiagnosis (27.78%). Compared with solitary PSP, the occurrence age of multiple PSP was younger (mean ± standard deviation [SD]: 40.36 ± 18.12: 51.28 ± 12.74 years), but there was no significant difference in sex, tumor size (mean ± SD: 43.54 ± 46.18: 30.56 ± 17.62 mm), or symptoms. Individualized surgical resection is required for treatment, including pneumonectomy (17.65%), lobectomy (23.53%), subpulmonary lobectomy (38.24%), or combined lobectomy (5.88%). Multiple PSP is relatively rare. Surgical resection within a limited time should be the main treatment for such patients. The prognosis of patients with multiple PSP is generally good, but inappropriate diagnosis and treatment plans may lead to poor prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The poor targeting delivery efficiency and limited efficacy of single therapeutic approach have consistently posed significant challenges in tumor management. Results: In this research, we have conceived and synthesized a dual-targeting nanodrug delivery system denoted as PDA-DEM-Fe3O4@M, which incorporates a polydopamine nanoparticle (PDA) with photothermal properties, diethyl maleate (DEM) as a chemotherapy agent accelerating tumor apoptosis, iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4) eliciting magnetic targeting effects, and tumor cell membranes (M) contributing to homologous targeting capabilities. The synergistic effect of PDA-induced photothermal therapy and DEM-mediated chemotherapy has been demonstrated in this study to exert a robust inhibitory and cytotoxic influence on tumor cells. Additionally, the biocompatibility of this system has also been demonstrated. Conclusions: Through the synergistic effects of PDA's photothermal therapy and DEM's chemotherapy, this system demonstrated excellent inhibition and killing effects on tumor cells. Furthermore, we established its excellent biological safety profile. This study demonstrated the potential of this nanomaterial for clinical application in tumor therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insulin secretion from pancreatic β cells is regulated by multiple stimuli, including nutrients, hormones, neuronal inputs, and local signalling. Amino acids modulate insulin secretion via amino acid transporters expressed on β cells. The granin protein VGF has dual roles in β cells: regulating secretory granule formation and functioning as a multiple peptide precursor. A VGF-derived peptide, neuroendocrine regulatory peptide-4 (NERP-4), increases Ca2+ influx in the pancreata of transgenic mice expressing apoaequorin, a Ca2+-induced bioluminescent protein complex. NERP-4 enhances glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from isolated human and mouse islets and β-cell–derived MIN6-K8 cells. NERP-4 administration reverses the impairment of β-cell maintenance and function in db/db mice by enhancing mitochondrial function and reducing metabolic stress. NERP-4 acts on sodium-coupled neutral amino acid transporter 2 (SNAT2), thereby increasing glutamine, alanine, and proline uptake into β cells and stimulating insulin secretion. SNAT2 deletion and inhibition abolish the protective effects of NERP-4 on β-cell maintenance. These findings demonstrate a novel autocrine mechanism of β-cell maintenance and function that is mediated by the peptide–amino acid transporter axis. Amino acids modulate insulin secretion via amino acid transporters expressed on β cells. Here, the authors show a VGF-derived peptide NERP-4 acts as a positive allosteric modulator on the amino acid transporter SNAT2/SLC38A2, thereby contributing to β-cell maintenance and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The LES and nutrient resorption are thought to jointly modulate leaf litter traits, including the litter decomposition, but it is unknown how the two factors affect the temperature sensitivity of litter decomposition (Q10). The Q10 of litter decomposition was evaluated for 15 co-occurring subtropical woody species under laboratory conditions. The LES of these species, as well as species-specific N (NRE) and P resorption efficiency (PRE) during leaf senescence, were also determined. Results showed that the Q10 values were significantly correlated to LES, with litters from resource-conservative species having higher Q10 values than those from resource-acquisitive species. Among the parameters characterizing LES, leaf N concentration, C:N ratio, and lignin:N ratio were correlated to Q10, whereas leaf P and lignin concentrations, specific leaf area, and C:P ratio showed no relationships. The LES was correlated to litter C:N and lignin:N ratios, and, in turn, litter C:N and lignin:N ratios were correlated to Q10. This result suggested that LES affects litter quality and thus the Q10 of litter decomposition. However, NRE and PRE were not correlated to Q10. In addition, the LES effects on litter quality and the Q10 of decomposition did not depend on nutrient resorption, as indicated by the lack of correlation between LES and NRE or PRE. Our results reveal an association between plant functional features and forest C dynamics in a warmer future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quartic flow velocity field is proposed to establish an online rolling force predicting model for the rolling process of aluminum alloy thick plates. The solving process relies on the energy method. Through comparing the calculated rolling force data and the actual rolling force, it is found that this model can be applied for online rolling force predicting. The assumption of the metal flow velocity in this paper is a beneficial attempt at the plastic mechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a mature shape-controlling technology, the segmented cooling of the work roll can directly change the thermal expansion of the work roll, and that affects the thickness and elongation distribution along the width direction of the strip. However, it cannot improve shape defects at the two edges of a strip. In this paper, edge thermal spraying is applied to solve the shape defects at the two edges of a strip because it can change the temperature field and thermal expansion locally at the two edges of the work roll, which is contrary to cooling. Through establishing and solving the thermodynamic coupling finite element model of the work roll, it was found that edge thermal spraying can raise the temperature and thermal expansion at the edges of the work roll and hardly influence the temperature inside the work roll. The relationship between the local increment of thermal expansion and the temperature difference between cooling water and heating water was fitted to a linear model. Then, this model was applied in a real rolling process, and it was found that the effect of edge thermal spraying on flatness defects at the edges of the work roll was significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Videos and images have been widely used, and the requirements for camera imaging quality are getting higher and higher. At present, most methods of camera lens sharpness testing are divided into five areas: upper left, lower left, upper right, lower right, and middle. The test results of each area are used to approximate the overall sharpness level of the camera lens. The local sharpness failure of the camera lens cannot be solved by these methods. Because of this limitation, we proposed the idea of indirectly reflecting the local sharpness of the lens according to the image blur detection, and develop an image blur assessment method based on intensity and derivative (IDD). It can visualize the degradation process of camera sharpness from center to edge and the location of local failure. We demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the method through a case, as well as comparison to other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marine multi-robot system, which consists of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), would provide a promising alternative for conducting complex and hazardous marine missions with reduced costs and human involvement. However, the energy issue of the UAVs substantially limits the practical application of this cooperative multi-robot system in maritime tasks. In order to efficiently guarantee the energy replenishment for the UAVs, this paper presents a dynamic route planning strategy to solve the route planning problem for a USV-UAV multi-robot system, with the USVs traveling as mobile charging stations on the sea with obstacles. Based on the graph theory and receding horizon control (RHC) strategy, we formalize the dynamic route planning problem into a dynamic multiple generalized traveling salesman problem (DMGTSP). A heuristic approach is utilized to solve the optimization problem at each control step in a receding manner. The proposed strategy is compared with the global horizon strategy in different case studies with static and moving obstacles. A lake experiment is conducted to validate the developed dynamic planning strategy. The results indicate that the dynamic route planning approach enables the USV-UAV cooperative system to fulfill the recharging task successfully and efficiently by periodically rendezvousing at varying locations during the long-term mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, increasing studies are indicating a close association between dysregulated enhancers and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, their contributions were poorly defined for lacking direct links to disease genes. To bridge this gap, we presented the Hi-C datasets of 4 AD patients, 4 dementia-free aged and 3 young subjects, including 30 billion reads. As applications, we utilized them to link the AD risk SNPs and dysregulated epigenetic marks to the target genes. Combining with epigenetic data, we observed more detailed interactions among regulatory regions and found that many known AD risk genes were under long-distance promoter-enhancer interactions. For future AD and aging studies, our datasets provide a reference landscape to better interpret findings of association and epigenetic studies for AD and aging process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To take the advantage of good conductivity and network structure of Ni foam, the NiSe@MoSe2 foam is prepared by transforming Ni into NiSe and growing a layer of MoSe2 on the outside. In theory, the NiSe network can help to form conduction network and generate conduction loss, and causes dipole polarization loss. Additionally, the MoSe2 sheath can give rise to both dipole and interface polarization loss. The prepared composite not only has proper impedance matching but also displays good attenuation capability. The minimum reflection loss is -30.9 dB and the effective absorption bandwidth is 3.8 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: A complete toxicity profile, toxicity profile, and safety ranking of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) for treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) will be provided in this network meta-analysis. Methods: We searched 14 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) including 9572 NSCLC patients by PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, and ClinicalTrials.gov. Randomized pairwise and network meta-analyses were used to compare the incidence of severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs) across different ICIs-based treatments using risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: For severe dermatologic irAEs, the corresponding ranking of incidences of the nine groups from high to low was: nivolumab + ipilimumab + platinum (79.1%), pembrolizumab (75.2%), nivolumab + ipilimumab (72.9%), camrelizumab + platinum (64.9%), atezolizumab + platinum (47.4%), nivolumab (44.2%), durvalumab (40.5%), pembrolizumab + platinum (15.5%), platinum-based chemotherapy (10.3%). For severe colitis, the corresponding ranking of incidences of the seven groups from high to low was: nivolumab + ipilimumab + platinum (72.4%), nivolumab (63.1%), atezolizumab + platinum (56.9%), durvalumab (56.6%), pembrolizumab (54.9%), pembrolizumab + platinum (38.6%), platinum-based chemotherapy (7.4%). For severe endocrine irAEs, the corresponding ranking of incidences of the nine groups from high to low was: durvalumab (74.3%), atezolizumab + platinum (54.5%), nivolumab + ipilimumab (54.0%), camrelizumab + platinum (51.7%), nivolumab + ipilimumab + platinum (51.6%), pembrolizumab + platinum (49.8%), pembrolizumab (49.2%), nivolumab (46.3%), platinum-based chemotherapy (18.6%). For severe pneumonitis, the corresponding ranking of incidences of the nine groups from high to low was: nivolumab (84.3%), pembrolizumab (84.1%), durvalumab (66.1%), camrelizumab + platinum (61.4%), atezolizumab + platinum (50%), pembrolizumab + platinum (43.4%), platinum-based chemotherapy (16.2%), atezolizumab (6.2%). For severe hepatitis, the corresponding ranking of incidences of the eight groups from high to low was: pembrolizumab (68.8%), nivolumab + ipilimumab + platinum (65%), pembrolizumab + platinum (64.6%), durvalumab (57.9%), nivolumab (47.1%), atezolizumab + platinum (43.4%), camrelizumab + platinum (42%), platinum-based chemotherapy (11.2%). Conclusions: In addition to platinum-based chemotherapy, pembrolizumab + platinum for severe dermatologic irAEs and colitis, nivolumab for severe endocrine irAEs, atezolizumab for severe pneumonitis, camrelizumab + platinum for severe hepatitis may be associated with lower rates of irAEs than other immune-based regimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from previous epidemiological studies on the effect of physical activity on the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is conflicting. We performed a two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis to verify whether physical activity is causally associated with AD. This study used two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to estimate the association between physical activity (including overall activity, sedentary behavior, walking, and moderate-intensity activity) and AD. Genetic instruments for physical activity were obtained from published genome-wide association studies (GWAS) including 91,105 individuals from UK Biobank. Summary-level GWAS data were extracted from the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project IGAP (21,982 patients with AD and 41,944 controls). Inverse Variance Weighted (IVW) was used to estimate the effect of physical activity on AD. Sensitivity analyses including weighted median, MR-Egger, MR-PRESSO, and leave-one-out analysis were used to estimate pleiotropy and heterogeneity. Mendelian randomization evidences suggested a protective relationship between walking and AD (odds ratio (OR) = 0.30, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.13–0.68, P = 0.0039). Genetically predicted overall activity, sedentary behavior, and moderate-intensity activity were not associated with AD. In summary, this study provided evidence that genetically predicted walking might associate with a reduced risk of AD. Further research into the causal association between physical activity and AD could help to explore the real relationship and provide more measures to reduce AD risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the case of the fuzzy correlation between variables of faults due to the complex monitoring information of diesel engines, neither Mahalanobis distance (MD) nor Euclidean distance (ED) can effectively diagnose by features, in this paper, a novel Adaptive Dynamic Weighted Hybrid Distance-Taguchi method (ADWHD-T) is presented to diagnose diesel engine faults. The method used Adaptive Dynamic Weighted Hybrid Distance (ADWHD) to fuse data of many sensors into the single system-level performance index. The ADWHD is an adaptive and dynamic weighting of MD and Standardized Euclidean distance (SED). The adaptive weights are adjusted according to the distance scale of MD and SED. The dynamic weight coefficients are calculated by the correlation coefficient of characteristic variables to consider the correlation and independence of characteristic variables. The diagnosis results are derived according to the optimized and adjusted fault threshold of ADWHD defined by 3σ method. In view of the dimension reduction optimization of characteristic variables, combining Taguchi method (T), ADWHD-T provides one systematic method for determining the key parameters of characteristic variables to solve the cost problem of multi-sensor analysis. Aiming at the real-time diagnosis, offline-online modeling and real-time fault diagnosis program based on ADWHD-T are designed. Quoting real-time data from diesel engine benches verifies the effectiveness of the scheme. Compared with MD and MD-T methods, ADWHD-T could promote diagnosis efficiency, enhance classification accuracy and expand its application range in fault diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross-sectional study based on the community was conducted to explore the association between sleep status and LUTS among middle and old-aged men. Male residents in Zhengzhou aged 40 or older were recruited. Participants received the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index questionnaire and the International Prostate Symptom Score questionnaire to evaluate sleep status and the severity of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), respectively. Logistic regression analyses and linear regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relationship between sleep quality and sleep duration and LUTS. A total of 5785 participants were enrolled. Multivariable analyses showed a positive relationship between sleep quality and LUTS (β 0.716, 95% CI 0.647–0.784), and poor sleepers were significantly associated with moderate or severe LUTS (OR 2.486, 95% CI 2.095–2.950). U-shaped dose–response relationship revealed that sleeping less than 5.8 h/day and more than 7.9 h/day was related to moderate or severe LUTS and more than 7.9 h/day of sleep duration was associated with poor voiding and storage symptoms (P for nonlinearity < 0.001). Similar relationship was observed between sleep status and nocturia. It showed a significantly positive relationship between sleep quality and LUTS. U-shaped dose–response relationships between sleep duration and LUTS were observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial neural network (ANN) is the main tool to dig data and was inspired by the human brain and nervous system. Several studies clarified its application in medicine. However, none has applied ANN to predict the efficacy of folic acid treatment to Hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy). The efficacy has been proved to associate with both genetic and environmental factors while previous studies just focused on the latter one. The explained variance genetic risk score (EV-GRS) had better power and could represent the effect of genetic architectures. Our aim was to add EV-GRS into environmental factors to establish ANN to predict the efficacy of folic acid therapy to HHcy. We performed the prospective cohort research enrolling 638 HHcy patients. The multilayer perception algorithm was applied to construct ANN. To evaluate the effect of ANN, we also established logistic regression (LR) model to compare with ANN. According to our results, EV-GRS was statistically associated with the efficacy no matter analyzed as a continuous variable (OR = 3.301, 95%CI 1.954–5.576, P < 0.001) or category variable (OR = 3.870, 95%CI 2.092–7.159, P < 0.001). In our ANN model, the accuracy was 84.78%, the Youden's index was 0.7073 and the AUC was 0.938. These indexes above indicated higher power. When compared with LR, the AUC, accuracy, and Youden's index of the ANN model (84.78%, 0.938, 0.7073) were all slightly higher than the LR model (83.33% 0.910, 0.6687). Therefore, clinical application of the ANN model may be able to better predict the folic acid efficacy to HHcy than the traditional LR model. When testing two models in the validation set, we got the same conclusion. This study appears to be the first one to establish the ANN model which added EV-GRS into environmental factors to predict the efficacy of folic acid to HHcy. This model would be able to offer clinicians a new method to make decisions and individual therapeutic plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microwave absorbing materials have been widely studied and applied nowadays, but their loss mechanism, especially the correlation between attenuation characteristics and impedance matching, is still not clear. In this system comparative study, a novel metal − organic framework with the Co ions (Co-MOF), CoS2@MoS2 and CoxSy/C@MoS2 nanofibers were prepared by hydrothermal reaction and heat treatment. All the samples were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vector network analyzer (VSA). The results indicated that the minimum value of reflection loss (RL) for CoS2@MoS2-2 was − 31.12 dB and the corresponding bandwidth with effective attenuation (RL ≤ − 10 dB) was up to 2.36 GHz (from 7.0 to 10.6 GHz) at 2.7 mm. Compared with CoS2@MoS2 composites, the microwave absorbing performance (MAP) of CoxSy/C@MoS2 nanofibers was enhanced obviously: the bandwidth with effective attenuation of CoxSy/C@MoS2 was up to 3.67 GHz (7.24 GHz − 10.91 GHz) with coating thickness 3.7 mm, and the minimum RL value was − 41.32 dB. The enhanced MAP originated from the synergistic effect between polarization loss and conductive loss, which results from CoxSy, MoS2 and introducing C, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MoSe2 is a graphene-like material with hierarchical structure similar to MoS2, which is similar to many transition metal sulfides. Compared with MoS2, a widely used microwave absorber, MoSe2 possesses a narrower bandgap. Due to the high similarity between MoSe2 and MoS2, MoSe2 is considered as a dielectric loss type of microwave absorber. In recent years, layered, spherical and flower-like microstructures are popular due to their unique multi interface nanostructures and good interfacial loss ability. In this work, the relationship between MoSe2 with three morphological structures (MoSe2-NS, MoSe2-MS and MoSe2-NF), the introduction of C source and MAP were studied. MoSe2-NF has the best effective absorption bandwidth of electromagnetic wave, reaching 6.1 GHz (11.9 GHz–18.0 GHz) and the minimum RL value is − 38.5 dB, covering the whole Ku band. When the thickness of MoSe2/C is 1.7 mm, the corresponding effective absorption bandwidth (RL < − 10 dB) is as high as 6.2 GHz (11.8 GHz–18.0 GHz) and the minimum RL is − 43.1 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting small objects is a challenging job for the single-shot multibox detector (SSD) model due to the limited information contained in features and complex background interference. Here, we increased the performance of the SSD for detecting target objects with small size by enhancing detection features with contextual information and introducing a segmentation mask to eliminate background regions. The proposed model is referred to as a "guided SSD" (Mask-SSD) and includes two branches: a detection branch and a segmentation branch. We created a feature-fusion module to allow the detection branch to exploit contextual information for feature maps with large resolution, with the segmentation branch primarily built with atrous convolution to provide additional contextual information to the detection branch. The input of the segmentation branch was also the output of the detection branch, and output segmentation features were fused with detection features in order to classify and locate target objects. Additionally, segmentation features were applied to generate the mask, which was utilized to guide the detection branch to find objects in potential foreground regions. Evaluation of Mask-SSD on the Tsinghua-Tencent 100K and Caltech pedestrian datasets demonstrated its effectiveness at detecting small objects and comparable performance relative to other state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gearbox is one of the key components of the high-speed train system. In order to predict the fatigue damage behavior of high-speed train gearbox shell material, we propose a new method. Because the fatigue process is long and there is no whole life fatigue damage data of the shell, the performance degradation method and acceleration test with acoustic emission instrument have been used. A new Adaboost data distribution adjustment algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of data imbalance of acoustic emission signals during the fatigue process. Then a cumulative count trend model and a fatigue life prediction model are developed. The life prediction error is controlled within 400 s, most errors are less than 200 s, and the relative error is less than 1.1%, which ensures the feasibility of the developed model. In the future, this model can be used in long-time life prediction researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese materia medica processing is a distinguished and unique pharmaceutical technique in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which has played an important role in reducing side effects, increasing medical potencies, altering the properties and even changing the curative effects of raw herbs. The efficacy improvement in medicinal plants is mainly caused by changes in the key substances through an optimized processing procedure. Thus, the use of a rapid method for determining suitable chemical markers between raw and processed TCM is critical in order to elucidate how the bioactive compounds influence the clinical effects. In this study, ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry combined with MS/MS-based molecular networking (MN) and a multivariate statistical analysis method is proposed for the first time. This combination was used to identify the complex chemical composition and clarify the changed constituents between raw and processed Cistanche tubulosa (C. tubulosa). The chemical analysis results demonstrated that a total of 85 compounds were identified in the crude and processed C. tubulosa. Moreover, 34 compounds were detected as chemical markers. This systematic research into chemical constituents and chemical markers of crude and processed C. tubulosa lays a solid foundation for further study of the quality control of C. tubulosa. Moreover, the study provides a new and valuable technical strategy for analyzing chemical components and identifying potential chemical markers for the processing of herbal medicines. Graphical abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Plasmodium falciparum cysteine protease falcipain-2 (FP-2) is an attractive antimalarial target. Here, we discovered that the natural compound NP1024 is a nonpeptidic inhibitor of FP-2 with an IC50 value of 0.44 μmol L−1. The most exciting finding is that both in vitro and in vivo, NP1024 directly targets FP-2 in malaria parasite-infected erythrocytes as a natural fluorescent probe, thereby paving the way for an integration of malaria diagnosis and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative analysis of neural networks is a critical issue to improve their performance. In this paper, we investigate a long-term time series prediction based on the echo state network operating at the edge of chaos. We also assess the eigenfunction of echo state networks and its criticality by the Hermite polynomials. A Hermite polynomial-based activation function design with fast convergence is proposed and the relation between long-term time dependence and edge-of-chaos criticality is given. A new particle swarm optimization-gravitational search algorithm is put forward to improve the parameters estimation that helps attain on the edge of chaos. The method was verified using a chaotic Lorenz system and a real health index data set. The experimental results indicate that evolution makes the reservoir great potential to run on the edge of chaos with rich expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reliable and novel quadrotor flight control system designed to enhance trajectory tracking performance, robustness and adaptiveness against the uncertain parameters and the external wind disturbance. By combining a recursive control methodology with a robust control algorithm, a finite-time adaptive integral backstepping fast terminal sliding mode control is designed for major control loops related to position tracking and attitude stabilization. To estimate quadrotor mass and inertia moments, only four adaptation laws are developed. To compensate the unknown upper bound on the disturbances, a robust and adaptive switching gain is designed. The designed controller guarantees that all the closed signals are semi-global practical finite-time stability while the tracking error converges to a small neighborhood of the origin. The obtained numerical results and comparison studies show the effectiveness, robustness, adaptiveness and energy efficiency of the proposed flight control system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual tracking is a challenging task as it needs to consider the appearance variations due to some intrinsic and extrinsic interference factors in the process of tracking. This paper proposes a robust visual tracking algorithm based on the discriminative sparse collaborative (DSC) map and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). In the proposed visual tracker, named DSC tracker, a novel multi-task reverse sparse representation model based on the group sparse representation and group collaborative representation is proposed. Different from the traditional trackers that use the accelerated proximal gradient for solution, an effective method called ADMM is adopted to solve the proposed optimization model. With the solution, we can construct the discriminative features that contain the sparsity and coordination for the candidates on all templates simultaneously. Many comparison experiments illustrate that the proposed DSC tracker outperforms the DSS tracker as well as several state-of-the-art trackers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absorbers based on graphene nanoplates (GNPs) are a promising and low-cost solution to electromagnetic (EM) wave pollution; however, it is well known that GNPs by themselves cannot effectively attenuate an EM wave. To elucidate the limiting factors of GNPs and their mechanism of EM wave absorption, a series of GNP-polyaniline composites (GNPs-PANI) were fabricated by growing polyaniline (PANI) nanorods in situ over GNPs with various concentrations of perchloric acid (HClO4) as a dopant. The correlation between HClO4 doping concentration and microstructures as well as conductivity were investigated. The microwave absorbing performance (MAP) was examined, and it was found that when the doping concentration of HClO4 was 1 M, the effective absorption bandwidth (i.e., the range where the reflection loss (RL) < − 10 dB) was as wide as 5.81 GHz and covered the entire X-band. By investigating the effects of impedance matching and attenuation characteristics, we were able to demonstrate that impedance matching is the limiting factor, and that it can be optimized by coating the GNPs with PANI nanorods. To facilitate practical applications, a coating of phenol–formaldehyde resin (PF) filled with GNPs-PANI (PF/GNPs-PANI) was fabricated by spraying, and the effective absorption bandwidth was 3.5 GHz (14.5–18 GHz). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast temperature rise identification method for motorized spindle is presented based on an adaptive particle filter (APF). The advantage of this method is the ability to predict the entire temperature change in a short time. For example, to obtain the whole temperature variation curve of the measured points, it will take about 390 min. However, if APF method is used, the data of the first 24 min can be used to predict the entire temperature change. Temperature signals with multiple variables, long time delay, and nonlinear coupling characteristics as well as the uncertainty of actual measurement of noise in the process making measured temperature fluctuate widely. However, sampled data contain a lot of noise; hence, finding the real temperature range and predicting the future temperature changes using only few data are quite challenging tasks. For this reason, particle filter (PF) method was utilized to get the identification result. Then, the adaptive factor was introduced by adjusting state equations and observation noise variance. Results showed that APF can achieve better identification of temperature rise. Finally, the temperature rise test was verified on the motorized spindle, which utilized PF method and the APF method. Experimental results showed that APF can reduce the recognition time to about 24 min, while the PF takes about 38 min. The effectiveness of the method was verified by using experimental data, and the approach to obtain the minimal recognition time was also explained. In 390 min of measuring time, the root mean square error (RMSE) between estimated and measured temperature is 0.415 °C, and the error between the estimated and measured steady-state temperature is 0.01 °C. The results proved that this method can be used to identify motorized spindle temperature, with high speed and high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a framework of using social media analytics to help study service quality. A case study was conducted to collect and analyze a data set which included nearly half million tweets related to two of the largest supermarkets in the United States: Walmart and Kmart. The results illustrate how businesses can leverage external open data to complement the traditional survey-based approaches in order to better understand and measure their service quality metrics by studying the online opinions of their customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the demand of electromagnetic absorption, cheap and easily available microwave absorbents are urgently required. As an important functional material, carbon fibers (CFs) have been widely reported, however, too high conductivity easily leads to the impedance mismatch, which is not favorable to the microwave absorbing performance (MAP). To address this challenge, in this study, novel TiO2/Fe3O4/CF composites with tunable magnetic were synthesized by hydrothermal method and characterized by SEM, XRD, XPS and VSM. As absorbents, the minimum reflection loss (RL) value is − 41.52 dB at a thickness of 2.1 mm, and the corresponding bandwidth with effective attenuation (RL < − 10 dB) is up to 5.65 GHz (4.54-10.19 GHz). More importantly, the plausible mechanisms for the enhanced MAP are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a new methodology to cover the problem of consensus of multiagent systems with sliding mode control based on Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network. First, neural network adopted to distinguish the uncertainties of the leader and follower agents then a sliding mode tracking controller is applied to force the follower agents to follow the leader’s time-varying states trajectory with the consensus error as small as possible. As the RBF neural network is adopted to approximate the uncertainties, the results can only achieve local consensus. Different from past literature, total error of consensus protocol is considering for sliding surface therefore the local stability of the whole multiagent system is provided meanwhile RBF neural network overcome the problem of unmodeled leader/follower agent dynamics. The weights of the neural networks updated adaptively directly commensurate with consensus error. The point is, there is absolutely no need to have information about dynamical model of the system. The merits of the proposed approach are consisting of consensus protocol robustness, fast error convergence to zero, and local stability of the closed loop multiagent system which is proved by Lyapunov direct method. The simulation results show promising performance of the proposed method on a chaotic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MoS@FeO@PANI composites were prepared by hydrothermal and in-suit polymerization reaction. MoS@FeO composites were fabricated by hydrothermal reaction in the presence of MoS nanosheets. Then, MoS@FeO@PANI composites were successfully synthesized by in-suit polymerization of aniline monomer on the surface of MoS@FeO composites. All the samples were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Moreover, the saturation magnetization (Ms) of MoS@FeO@PANI composite is 28.1 emu/g. The maximum reflection loss of MoS@FeO@PANI composites with 2.3 mm coating thickness is −40.97 dB at 10.06 GHz and the bandwidth of reflection loss less than −15 dB is 4 GHZ (8.2-12.2 GHz), which demonstrates MoS@FeO@PANI composites possess excellent microwave absorption properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monolithic activated carbon (MAC) tubes were prepared from shrubby bamboo. They could be stacked to form honeycomb-like structures with tubular channels, which were then used as alternative adsorbent beds for large-flow-rate emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The activation agents phosphoric acid, zinc chloride, steam, and carbon dioxide were used to prepare the MAC samples. The MAC samples were characterized by N adsorption measurements at −196 °C, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The samples had microcellular structures that resemble the cellular tissue of the precursor bamboo. In comparison with commercial honeycomb activated carbon (HAC) prepared by extruding powder carbon and additives, the MAC samples had superior mechanical strength, were much more stable under wet conditions, and had much higher carbon content. The dynamic toluene adsorption on MAC and HAC was also studied. Well-developed micropores in MAC seemed to have a crucial role in toluene adsorption. Under the experimental conditions, the optimized MAC samples had high dynamic toluene adsorption capacity (up to 350 mg/g). The results suggest that MAC materials have potential use as adsorbents in the control of VOCs emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accordingly, the specific references to these instruments should be deleted, and the sentence should read as follows:Furthermore, PSAAD was developed to meet regulatory guidance and to be included in product-labelling claims in the USA and Europe. However, these instruments, including the Peak Pruritus Numerical Rating Scale, have either accumulated sufficient evidence to meet regulatory guidance related to product-labelling claims and/or have since been recommended for use in clinical trials. The Discussion section of the original publication previously said:Furthermore, PSAAD was developed to meet regulatory guidance and - unlike POEM, Itch Numeric Rating Scale (v2.0), Skin Pain Numeric Rating Scale (v2.0b), and Peak Pruritus Numerical Rating Scale - to be included in product-labelling claims in the USA and Europe. [Extracted from the article]

This paper addresses the feedback stabilization problem for Markov jump linear systems with quantized control input. A simple but powerful input controller for eliminating the input quantization in Markov jump linear systems is used. The proposed mode-dependent input controller comprises two parts: the linear part and the nonlinear part, where the linear part determines the fundamental characteristics of the systems, and the nonlinear part eliminates the effect of the input quantization. The stability is analyzed in detail for both the discrete-time and continuous-time Markov jump linear systems with input quantization. The sufficient conditions and the specific mode-dependent input controller to guarantee the stability of the systems are obtained. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In approaches of HPLC coupled with diode array detector tandem multiple mass spectrometry ( HPLC-DAD-ESI-MS/MS) and GC-MS techniques, efficient comparative methods were developed to profile the chemical constituents in flower bud, leaf and stem parts of Lonicera japonica Thunb. ( LJT). 22 polar compounds of various chemical structures and 19 volatile or semi-volatile compounds were tentatively identified from aerial parts of the plant. A number of common composition groups in three separate parts of the plant were proposed, including phenolic acids, flavonoids, iridoids, alkanes, olefins and sterols, the leaf showing higher similarity with the flower bud part via their chemical constituents. Considering the fact that the leaf part has a lot of similar components with the flower bud, this study indicates the leaf part of LJT can be expected to be used as an alternative medicinal resource to the flower bud and stem of the plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gastrointestinal tract transmits feeding-regulatory signals to the brain via neuronal and hormonal pathways. Here we studied the interaction between the orexigenic gastric peptide, ghrelin, and the anorectic intestinal peptide, glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), in terms of feeding regulation via the vagal afferents. GLP-1 preadministration 30 min before ghrelin administration to rats and mice abolished ghrelin-induced food intake, while ghrelin preadministration abolished the anorectic effect of GLP-1. Ghrelin preadministration suppressed GLP-1-induced Fos expression in the nodose ganglia (NG). Electrophysiological assessment confirmed that the initially administered peptide abolished the vagal afferent electrical alteration induced by the subsequently administered peptide. Both the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR) and the GLP-1 receptor (GLP-1R) are co-localised in a major proportion of NG neurons that innervate the stomach. In these Ghsr+Glp1r+ neurons, ghrelin preadministration abolished the GLP-1-induced calcium response. Ghrelin generated a hyperpolarising current and GLP-1 generated a depolarising current in isolated NG neurons in a patch-clamp experiment. Ghrelin and GLP-1 potently influenced each other in terms of vagally mediated feeding regulation. This peptidergic interaction allows for fine control of the electrophysiological properties of NG neurons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merrillianoid (1), a racemic neolignan possessing the characteristic benzo-2,7-dioxabicyclo[3.2.1]octane moiety, was isolated from the branches and leaves of Illicium merrillianum. Chiral separation of 1 gave two enantiomers (+)−1 and (−)−1. The structure of 1 was established by comprehensive spectroscopic analysis and single crystal X-ray diffraction. The absolute configurations of enantiomers were determined by quantum mechanical calculation. Compound (+)−1 exhibited a better neurotrophic activity than racemate 1 by promoting nerve growth factor (NGF) induced PC12 cell neurite outgrowth, while (−)−1 showed a distinctive inhibitory effect. Furthermore, a mechanism study indicated that the two enantiomers influenced NGF-induced neurite outgrowth of PC12 cells possibly by interacting with the trkA receptor, and extracellular signal regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK) in Ras/ERK signal cascade. But the phosphorylation level of serine/threonine kinase Akt1 and Akt2 in PI3K/Akt signal pathway showed no significant difference between (+)−1 and (−)−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Targeted inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) proliferation and metastasis. We previously reported the cytotoxicity of a series of synthetic phenyl-substituted polyoxygenated xanthone derivatives against human HCC. In the current study, the most potent natural product, isojacareubin (ISJ), was synthesized, and its cellular-level antihepatoma activities were evaluated. ISJ significantly inhibited cell proliferation and was highly selective for HCC cells in comparison to nonmalignant QSG-7701 hepatocytes. Moreover, ISJ exhibited pro-apoptotic effects on HepG2 hepatoma cells, as well as impaired HepG2 cell migration and invasion. Furthermore, ISJ was a potent inhibitor of PKC, with differential actions against various PKC isotypes. ISJ selectively inhibited the expression of aPKC (PKCζ) in the cytosol and the translocation of cytosolic PKCζ to membrane site. ISJ also directly interacted with cPKC (PKCα) and nPKC (PKCδ, PKCε and PKCμ) and thereby inhibited the early response of major MAPK phosphorylation and the late response of HCC cell invasion and proliferation. In a hepatoma xenograft model, ISJ pretreatment resulted in significant antihepatoma activity in vivo. These findings identify ISJ as a promising lead compound for the development of new antihepatoma agents and may guide the search for additional selective PKC inhibitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Most patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments that measure atopic dermatitis (AD) symptoms do not have sufficient documented evidence of content validity to satisfy regulatory agency guidance for inclusion in product-labelling claims in the USA or Europe. The objective of this study was to develop a PRO instrument in accordance with regulatory agency guidance to assess daily AD symptoms during the course of therapy and to establish its content validity and psychometric properties.The Pruritus and Symptoms Assessment for Atopic Dermatitis (PSAAD) daily diary was developed based on qualitative interviews with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD. Content validity, test–retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, clinically important difference, clinically important responder, convergent validity, and known-group validity were evaluated using correlational and regression methods from phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD who were treated with abrocitinib.Patient interviews conducted with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD identified 11 relevant symptoms (itch, dryness, redness, flaking, discolouration, pain, bleeding, cracking, bumps, swelling, and weeping/oozing) for inclusion in the PSAAD instrument. All PSAAD psychometric parameters were acceptable based on phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD. Convergent validity and known-group validity were confirmed by significant correlations between PSAAD and six other PRO measures (r = 0.24–0.91, all p ≤ 0.01) and Dermatology Life Quality Index category (p ≤ 0.0001), respectively.Evidence supports the PSAAD instrument validity, reliability, responsiveness and definitions of clinically important changes/differences for adults with moderate-to-severe AD.Methods: Most patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments that measure atopic dermatitis (AD) symptoms do not have sufficient documented evidence of content validity to satisfy regulatory agency guidance for inclusion in product-labelling claims in the USA or Europe. The objective of this study was to develop a PRO instrument in accordance with regulatory agency guidance to assess daily AD symptoms during the course of therapy and to establish its content validity and psychometric properties.The Pruritus and Symptoms Assessment for Atopic Dermatitis (PSAAD) daily diary was developed based on qualitative interviews with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD. Content validity, test–retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, clinically important difference, clinically important responder, convergent validity, and known-group validity were evaluated using correlational and regression methods from phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD who were treated with abrocitinib.Patient interviews conducted with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD identified 11 relevant symptoms (itch, dryness, redness, flaking, discolouration, pain, bleeding, cracking, bumps, swelling, and weeping/oozing) for inclusion in the PSAAD instrument. All PSAAD psychometric parameters were acceptable based on phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD. Convergent validity and known-group validity were confirmed by significant correlations between PSAAD and six other PRO measures (r = 0.24–0.91, all p ≤ 0.01) and Dermatology Life Quality Index category (p ≤ 0.0001), respectively.Evidence supports the PSAAD instrument validity, reliability, responsiveness and definitions of clinically important changes/differences for adults with moderate-to-severe AD.Results: Most patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments that measure atopic dermatitis (AD) symptoms do not have sufficient documented evidence of content validity to satisfy regulatory agency guidance for inclusion in product-labelling claims in the USA or Europe. The objective of this study was to develop a PRO instrument in accordance with regulatory agency guidance to assess daily AD symptoms during the course of therapy and to establish its content validity and psychometric properties.The Pruritus and Symptoms Assessment for Atopic Dermatitis (PSAAD) daily diary was developed based on qualitative interviews with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD. Content validity, test–retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, clinically important difference, clinically important responder, convergent validity, and known-group validity were evaluated using correlational and regression methods from phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD who were treated with abrocitinib.Patient interviews conducted with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD identified 11 relevant symptoms (itch, dryness, redness, flaking, discolouration, pain, bleeding, cracking, bumps, swelling, and weeping/oozing) for inclusion in the PSAAD instrument. All PSAAD psychometric parameters were acceptable based on phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD. Convergent validity and known-group validity were confirmed by significant correlations between PSAAD and six other PRO measures (r = 0.24–0.91, all p ≤ 0.01) and Dermatology Life Quality Index category (p ≤ 0.0001), respectively.Evidence supports the PSAAD instrument validity, reliability, responsiveness and definitions of clinically important changes/differences for adults with moderate-to-severe AD.Conclusions: Most patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments that measure atopic dermatitis (AD) symptoms do not have sufficient documented evidence of content validity to satisfy regulatory agency guidance for inclusion in product-labelling claims in the USA or Europe. The objective of this study was to develop a PRO instrument in accordance with regulatory agency guidance to assess daily AD symptoms during the course of therapy and to establish its content validity and psychometric properties.The Pruritus and Symptoms Assessment for Atopic Dermatitis (PSAAD) daily diary was developed based on qualitative interviews with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD. Content validity, test–retest reliability, internal consistency reliability, clinically important difference, clinically important responder, convergent validity, and known-group validity were evaluated using correlational and regression methods from phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD who were treated with abrocitinib.Patient interviews conducted with US adolescents and adults with mild-to-severe AD identified 11 relevant symptoms (itch, dryness, redness, flaking, discolouration, pain, bleeding, cracking, bumps, swelling, and weeping/oozing) for inclusion in the PSAAD instrument. All PSAAD psychometric parameters were acceptable based on phase 2b data from US adults with moderate-to-severe AD. Convergent validity and known-group validity were confirmed by significant correlations between PSAAD and six other PRO measures (r = 0.24–0.91, all p ≤ 0.01) and Dermatology Life Quality Index category (p ≤ 0.0001), respectively.Evidence supports the PSAAD instrument validity, reliability, responsiveness and definitions of clinically important changes/differences for adults with moderate-to-severe AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-gap light emission is reported in n-type unipolar GaN/AlN double-barrier heterostructure diodes at room temperature. Three different designs were grown on semi-insulating bulk GaN substrates using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). All samples displayed a single electroluminescent spectral peak at 360 nm with full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) values no greater than 16 nm and an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of ≈0.0074% at 18.8 mA. In contrast to traditional GaN light emitters, p-type doping and p-contacts are completely avoided, and instead, holes are created in the GaN on the emitter side of the tunneling structure by direct interband (that is, Zener) tunneling from the valence band to the conduction band on the collector side. The Zener tunneling is enhanced by the high electric fields (~5 × 10 6  V cm -1 ) created by the notably large polarization-induced sheet charge at the interfaces between the AlN and GaN., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.