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In order to research the characteristics of minitype neutron reference radiation field regulated by ISO 8529 series standards, Monte Carlo simulation method was applied to calculate the ratio of room-scattered neutron response to the direct neutron response, neutron fluence and energy spectra in the radiation field. Firstly, the characteristics of the field were investigated from the four physical factors as shielding materials, field sizes, shielding thicknesses and borated polyethylene with different boron contents. Secondly, the response of sphere instrument with different diameters in the field and the influence of instrument on the field were analyzed. The results showed that minitype neutron reference radiation field with a size of 2 m × 2 m × 2 m, a shielding material of 5 % borated polyethylene and a shielding thickness of 10 cm was expected to be used for the calibration of neutron measuring instrument.

Summary: Fibrosis disrupts tissue balance and links to severe illnesses, impairing organ function and, in some cases, even fatality. The interaction between M2 macrophages and fibroblasts is vital for tissue equilibrium. Transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) released by M2 macrophages plays a central role in fibrosis, regulating fibroblast activity and extracellular matrix metabolism. Targeting TGF-β1 is key to fibrosis treatment. In our study using three fibroblast cell lines, we reveal that the M2 macrophage transcription factor SP1 enhances binding to the TGF-β1 promoter motif, promoting TGF-β1 transcription and activating fibroblasts (This process does not involve changes in DNA methylation levels surrounding the motif sequence). The zinc fingers in SP1’s DNA-binding domain 3 are crucial for this binding. In vivo, targeting SP1 in rat ligaments significantly reduces extracellular matrix accumulation. Our findings highlight SP1 as a promising target for regulating tissue extracellular matrix and combating fibrosis.

Abstract Background Postoperative patients with lung cancer mostly experience different degrees of dyspnea and decreased activity tolerance, and these symptoms all significantly affect postoperative quality of life. The concept of pulmonary rehabilitation applicable to patients with chronic respiratory diseases is also applicable to patients with postoperative lung cancer. The current application of postoperative pulmonary rehabilitation for lung cancer is inconsistent, and reliable guidelines are lacking. The purpose of this study was to further verify the efficacy and feasibility of postoperative pulmonary rehabilitation for lung cancer patients, and to find a suitable local pulmonary rehabilitation program for postoperative patients with lung cancer that is clinically promoted in our department through this study. Methods We collected the clinical data of patients undergoing video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) wedge resection or lobectomy. The patients were divided into rehabilitation group (using three-ball breathing apparatus after discharge) and control group (routine follow-up after discharge) according to whether the patients were trained with three-ball breathing apparatus after operation. The detailed method using three-ball apparatus is as follows. To begin with, patients are required to put themselves in a comfortable position. Then, after the three-ball breathing apparatus put on the same plane of their eyes, patients hold the tube in their mouth closely and control their breath slowly. When patients inhale to their largest extent, the balls will rise up accordingly. Then they exhale. The evaluation results of pulmonary function, activity tolerance, anxiety scores and others were collected. All data was gathered at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. The effects of pulmonary rehabilitation training on wedge resection and lobectomy were compared. Results A total of 210 patients were included in this study, including 126 patients with VATS wedge resection and 84 patients with VATS lobectomies. No discrepancy was noticed when FEV1 loss between two groups were compared in the wedge resection patients, and the same results were also shown in patients undergoing lobectomy (12.8% ± 2.0% vs. 12.7% ± 1.9%, P = 0.84, wedge resection; 12.6% ± 2.9% vs. 12.1% ± 1.8%, P = 0.37, lobectomy). The loss of FVC in the control group was greater than that in the rehabilitation group for patients undergoing lobectomy (11.7% ± 5.2%, vs. 17.1% ± 5.6%, P

With the development of biometric identification technology, finger vein identification has received more and more widespread attention for its security, efficiency, and stability. However, because of the performance of the current standard finger vein image acquisition device and the complex internal organization of the finger, the acquired images are often heavily degraded and have lost their texture characteristics. This makes the topology of the finger veins inconspicuous or even difficult to distinguish, greatly affecting the identification accuracy. Therefore, this paper proposes a finger vein image recovery and enhancement algorithm using atmospheric scattering theory. Firstly, to normalize the local over-bright and over-dark regions of finger vein images within a certain threshold, the Gamma transform method is improved in this paper to correct and measure the gray value of a given image. Then, we reconstruct the image based on atmospheric scattering theory and design a pixel mutation filter to segment the venous and non-venous contact zones. Finally, the degraded finger vein images are recovered and enhanced by global image gray value normalization. Experiments on SDUMLA-HMT and ZJ-UVM datasets show that our proposed method effectively achieves the recovery and enhancement of degraded finger vein images. The image restoration and enhancement algorithm proposed in this paper performs well in finger vein recognition using traditional methods, machine learning, and deep learning. The recognition accuracy of the processed image is improved by more than 10% compared to the original image.

More than 100,000 dams have been built in China and their safety conditions have drawn more attention to the stakeholders due to large socioeconomic effects, such as economic losses and casualties caused by dam incidents. Dam safety assessment was closely related to the safety conditions of various indicators and associated weights. However, traditional methods tended to adopt either the subjective weighting method (SWM) or the objective weighting method (OWM) to assess the weights of indicators, leading to an unreliable assessment of dam safety. To this end, this study proposed the game theory (GT)-based dam safety performance measure (DSPM) method to evaluate the safety level of dams. To assess the weights of all associated indicators of dams, the GT method that was used to capture the advantages of both the SWM and OWM was developed. The weights of each indicator were considered as variables and their values were obtained based on MATLAB. The DSPM that followed the form of the power-exponential function was proposed to assess dam safety. The whole method was exemplified by the five dams and the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by comparing it with the code-based method (i.e., SL 258-2017). The results showed that the weights of indicators based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and the CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method were different. The maximum and minimum percentage differences between the weights based on AHP and CRITIC methods were 107.4% and 3.1%, respectively, revealing that the weights obtained from only one method were unreliable. The proposed GT method was suitable for assessing the weights. Obtained superiority and inferiority rankings (SIRs) based on the GT-based DSPM and the code-based methods were consistent, which showed the effectiveness of the GT-based DSPM method. The code-based method concerning the dam safety levels was too rough to capture the dam performance accurately; the proposed method gave a more detailed classification, which provided important information on wise investments for the stakeholders when enhancing the performance of deficient dams.

In the document "Curriculum Standard of General Senior High School Curriculum and Biology (2017 ed.)" published in 2018, developing students' core literacy as the fundamental task and value pursuit of current educational and teaching curriculum reform in China. Life concept is the key element of the core literacy of biology in senior high school. This paper expounds the position and value of life concept in the biology curriculum of senior high school, and analyses the connotation of life concept, which will provide an important reference for the effective cultivation of the life concept of senior high school students in the future.

In order to effectively investigate the current situation of biology teachers in Southern Henan, this study used the method of interviews and questionnaires to investigate and analyze the current situation of biology teachers in Southern Henan from their living status and professional development. The survey results show that: (1) The overall satisfaction of biology special post teachers in southern Henan is general, the office conditions can meet the teaching needs, the salary and housing conditions need to be improved, and the spare-time and family life needs of biology special post teachers attract attention; (2) Professional development is generally satisfactory. Specialized biology teachers in Southern Henan are willing to participate in educational and teaching reform, but their participation in teaching and research activities needs to be further strengthened. Specialized biology teachers have a large workload and high labor intensity. In view of the above findings, this paper puts forward some countermeasures for the development of biology special post teachers in Southern Henan, with a view to providing theoretical reference for the follow-up research on biology special post teachers, as well as providing important information for improving the living status of specialty post teachers, promoting professional development and improving the quality of education and teaching.

Background Smart bracelets are increasingly used in chronic disease management, which help improve patient adherence and motivation to exercise interventions, but more evidence for their long-term effectiveness in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the community needs to be explored. Objective To develop an intervention model for community-dwelling type 2 diabetes patients using smart bracelets, and to assess its long-term effectiveness in these patients. Methods From July to August 2018, this study selected 11 community health institutions from 11 districts of Guangzhou (one from each district) as study settings. And from each setting, 10-15 T2DM patients were selected (intervention group), and were compared to sex-matched and age-matched (+/- two years) T2DM patients (control group). The intervention was carried out from September 2018 to August 2019 in two groups, both received standardized health management services provided by the family physician team and underwent the exercise prescribed by an exercise prescriber. The intervention group additionally received health monitoring and management via wearing a smart bracelet, and set personalized exercise challenge goals under the guidance of an exercise prescriber. The score of the Chinese version of Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Measure (SDSCA-C), comprehensive assessment indicators, and attainment rates of key glycemic indicators were compared between the two groups before and after the intervention. Results Ninety-two patients in the control group and 144 patients in the intervention group completed one-year intervention and follow-up. After the intervention, the subscale scores of dietary management and foot care management and the total score of SDSCA-C increased notably in the intervention group (P0.05). Two groups had no statistically significant differences in all comprehensive assessment indicators at baseline (P>0.05). After one year of intervention, besides a decrease was found in total cholesterol, apolipoprotein A1 and apolipoprotein B in both groups, a reduction was found in waist circumference in the intervention group, and in fasting plasma glucose (FPG), triacylglycerol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in the control group (P

Abstract Large deformability and high sensitivity is difficult to be realized simultaneously in flexible sensors. Herein, taking advantage of the high permittivity and highly active surfaces of the ultrasmall barium titanate nanoparticles (BT NPs) and the high stretchability of the p(BA‐GMA) elastomer matrix, we propose a high‐performance soft stretchable sensor. The addition of the ultrasmall BT NPs can not only increase the permittivity and capacitance of polyacrylate‐matrix composite dielectric material to obtain a high sensitivity, but also basically maintains the excellent mechanical properties of the polymer matrix. The dielectric constants of the composite films increase from 5.68 to 13.13 at 10 kHz with the increase of BT NPs content from 0 to 15 vol.%, which results in a high capacitance of 236.16 pF for 15 vol.% BT/p(BA‐GMA) sensor. Combining the high permittivity and the large deformability (a maximal deformation of 87.2%), the 15 vol.% BT/p(BA‐GMA) sensor has high sensitivity and shows high linearity and stable output even if under dynamic measurement. The dual‐mode sensor that utilizes the orthogonality of capacitance‐resistance is designed, which shows excellent performance in monitoring human body movements and noncontact measurement. The results present that the BT/p(BA‐GMA)‐based sensor has high stability and reliability not exceed 65°C, which can meet the application requirements in dynamic monitoring.