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Spontaneous low-frequency oscillations (LFO) have been widely studied in cerebrovascular disease, but little is known about their role in Moyamoya disease (MMD). The objective of this study was to assess the value of spontaneous LFO in MMD based on wavelet analysis of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signals.Sixty-four consecutive idiopathic adult patients were prospectively enrolled. The regional tissue oxygenation index (TOI) obtained from continuous NIRS signals. Five frequency intervals of spontaneous LFO (I, 0.0095-0.02 Hz; II, 0.02-0.06 Hz; III, 0.06-0.15 Hz; IV, 0.15-0.40 Hz; and V, 0.40-2.00 Hz) were extracted based on wavelet analysis. The data were compared between the patients and healthy control groups. Clinical features, cognitive function, and disease progression of MMD were analyzed using TOI and frequency interval data.Compared with the healthy control group, patients with MMD had a higher cerebral TOI in both hemispheres. Based on wavelet analysis, the spontaneous LFO of TOI was found to be significantly lower for patients with MMD in frequency intervals II to IV than that for the controls. The spontaneous LFO of TOI is also related to the Suzuki stages in intervals II to IV, stroke in interval III, and cognitive impairment in intervals III to Ⅳ.There were significant differences in spontaneous LFO between patients with MMD and healthy controls. The change in spontaneous LFO in MMD is related to Suzuki stage, cerebral infarction, and cognitive impairment. This might be an effective method for evaluating the severity and monitoring the progression of MMD.

Early death is a major factor of treatment failure in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), however, the recent trends in the incidence of early death based on the population-level are not clear. Hence, this study is aimed at describing the incidence, recent trends, causes and characteristics of early death in APL based on the real world.APL patients diagnosed from 1986 to 2015 in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) dataset were enrolled, and categorized based on gender, age, year of diagnosis, race, marital status, resident county and socioeconomic status (SES). The risk factors for all-cause and acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) specific early death were determined by univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses, and stratified analysis was conducted by age.Overall, 3212 APL patients were included in analysis between 1986 and 2015, of which a total of 683 (21.3%) patients were noted for early death. Significant differences were recognized for patient distribution by age, year of diagnosis, marital status, and SES. The early death rate of APL patients diagnosed during 2006-2015 was significantly lower than that of the early stage, but this trend was not evident in juvenile patients. At the same time, older age, and lower SES score were independent risk factors for early death in the multivariate analysis.We established that the early death trend in APL has decreased over the past few years, but the early death rate remains high, especially in older patients and those with lower SES.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of lidocaine for patient controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) in patients who underwent open hepatectomy.A retrospective analysis.A total of 281 patients who underwent open hepatectomy from July 2018 to December 2018 were included. All patients were assigned into two groups: the lidocaine group (PCIA consisted of lidocaine, sufentanil, tramadol and granisetron) and the control group (PCIA consisted of sufentanil, tramadol and granisetron). The postoperative visual analogue scale (VAS) and complications (including respiratory depression, hypotension, nausea and vomiting, pruritus, numbness of the corners of the mouth, dizziness) between the groups were compared.There were no significant differences between the characteristics, duration of surgery and anesthesia, and recovery of postoperative activity between the two groups. In the first 3 days after the operation, the postoperative VAS score of the lidocaine group was lower than that of the control group at resting state, while after activity, the postoperative VAS contrast results were completely opposite. In particularly, the resting state at 48 hours (h) (1.05 ± 1.25 vs 1.57 ± 1.54) after surgery and the activity state at 72 h (3.02 ± 1.51 vs 2.2 ± 1.66) after surgery (P0.05). The incidence of mouth numbness and dizziness were significantly increased in the lidocaine group (P0.05).The addition of lidocaine in PCIA was not beneficial to improve the pain during activities and increased the incidence of perioral numbness and dizziness.

Three-dimensional (3D) microdisplacement monitoring plays a crucial role in the assembly of large aircraft. This paper presents a broadly applicable high-precision online 3D microdisplacement monitoring method and system based on proximity sensors as well as a corresponding in situ calibration method, which can be applied under various extreme working conditions encountered in the aircraft assembly process, such as compact and obstructed spaces. A 3D monitoring model is first established to achieve 3D microdisplacement monitoring based only on the one-dimensional distances measured by proximity sensors, which concerns the extrinsic sensor parameters, such as the probe base point (PBP) and the unit displacement vector (UDV). Then, a calibration method is employed to obtain these extrinsic parameters with high precision by combining spatial transformation principles and weighted optimization. Finally, calibration and monitoring experiments performed for a tailplane assembly process are reported. The calibration precision for the PBP is better than ±10 μm in the X and Y directions and ±2 μm in the Z direction, and the calibration precision for the UDV is better than 0.07°. Moreover, the accuracy of the 3D microdisplacement monitoring system can reach ±15 μm. In general, this paper provides new insights into the modeling and calibration of 3D microdisplacement monitoring based on proximity sensors and a precise, efficient, and low-cost technical means for performing related measurements in compact spaces during the aircraft assembly process.

Accuracy and robust trajectory tracking for electro-hydraulic servo systems in the presence of load disturbances and model uncertainties are of great importance in many fields. In this work, a new adaptive sliding mode control method based on the RBF neural networks (SMC-RBF) is proposed to improve the performances of a robotic excavator. Model uncertainties and load disturbances of the electro-hydraulic servo system are approximated and compensated using the RBF neural networks. Adaptive mechanisms are designed to adjust the connection weights of the RBF neural networks in real time to guarantee the stability. A nonlinear term is introduced into the sliding mode to design an adaptive terminal sliding mode control structure to improve dynamic performances and the convergence speed. Moreover, a sliding mode chattering reduction method is proposed to suppress the chattering phenomenon. Three types of step, ramp and sine signals are used as the simulation reference trajectories to compare different controllers on a co-simulation platform. Experiments with leveling and triangle conditions are presented on a robotic excavator. Results show that the proposed SMC-RBF controller is superior to existing proportional integral derivative (PID) and sliding mode controller (SMC) in terms of tracking accuracy and disturbance rejection.

Remote ischemic postconditioning (RIPostC) is a protective procedure for brain damage caused by ischemia/reperfusion (IR), yet the mechanism of this treatment remains to be elucidated. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are endogenous non-coding RNAs that have recently been recognized to play vital roles in ischemic brain injury. The aim of this study was to explore the role of circRNAs in the protective mechanism of RIPostC and to analyze the circRNA-microRNA (miRNA) regulation network in RIPostC. Nine rats were assigned randomly into three groups (three rats per group): sham, IR, and RIPostC. Their brain tissues were extracted for next-generation RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis was performed for two comparisons: sham vs. IR and IR vs. RIPostC. The expression patterns of selected circRNAs and miRNAs were validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). We detected 82 upregulated and 51 downregulated circRNAs and 137 upregulated and 127 downregulated miRNAs in the IR group compared with the sham group, and 41 upregulated and 100 downregulated circRNAs and 45 upregulated and 64 downregulated miRNAs in the RIPostC group compared with the IR group. The proposed competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network, which included 24 circRNAs, 20 miRNAs, and 145 mRNAs, indicated that the dysregulated circRNAs played important roles in brain IR injury. On the basis of the expression patterns of selected circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs obtained by qPCR, we proposed a circRNA_0002286-miR-124-3p-VLCAD pathway. In PC12 cell, the expression level of miR-124-3p was significantly upregulated when the expression of circRNA_0002286 was repressed and the expression level of VLCAD (very-long chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase) was significantly downregulated, which suggested that circRNA_0002286 may act as a miRNA sponge for miR-124-3p to regulate the expression of VLCAD. We found that upregulation of circRNA_0002286 attenuated IR injury and was associated with downregulation of miR-124-3p and upregulation of VLCAD. This is the first time that circRNAs have been shown to be closely related to brain IR injury and RIPostC and suggests that targeting the circRNA_0002286-miR-124-3p-VLCAD pathway might attenuate brain IR injury.

Multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections, which have become a global threat, lack effective treatments. The discoveries of non-antibiotics with different modes of antibacterial action, such as methylsulfonylmethane (MSM), are a promising new treatment for multi-drug-resistant pathogens.We constructed a mouse peritonitis infection model to evaluate the effects of MSM against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. The time-kill kinetics of MSM against MRSA and the effect of MSM on the integrity of bacterial cell membrane were measured. Viability effects of MSM on THP1 cells were performed by CCK-8 cytotoxicity assay. Systematic inflammatory factor levels of mice were detected using ELISA. The immune response of peritoneal macrophages during MRSA-infection was evaluated using RNA sequencing. Gene Ontology function, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analyses, and correlation analyses were applied to analysis RNA sequencing data. RT-qPCR, western blotting and flow cytometry were performed to analysis the gene and protein expression levels of macrophages.In in vitro experiments, MSM did not show significant killing effects on the growth of MRSA directly and did not destroy bacterial membrane integrity. MSM also displayed no significant effects on the proliferative capacity of THP1 cells. However, MSM treatment protected mice against a lethal dose MRSA-infection and decreased systemic inflammation. MSM upregulated metabolic pathway in peritoneal macrophages, especial glycolysis, during MRSA infection. MSM increased the expression of M2 markers (such as Arg1), promoted phosphorylation of STAT3 (which regulates M2 polarization), and decreased the expression of M1 markers in peritoneal macrophages. Additionally, MSM treatment increased the expression of H3K18 lactylation specific target genes, including Arg1. GNE-140, the LDHA-specific inhibitor of glycolysis, blocked the MSM-induced Arg1 expression in this disease model.MSM protects against MRSA infection through immunomodulation. MSM promotes the expression of Arg1 by lactate-H3K18la pathway to control macrophage to M2 polarization; it firstly provides therapeutic potential for drug-resistant infections and sepsis.

Plant factories have a great potential for mitigating the contradiction between the world’s growing population and food scarcity. During the process of its automatic production, machine vision plays a significant role. This technique almost covers every production link from raising seedlings, transplanting, management, and harvesting to fruit grading. To provide references and a starting point for those who are committed to studying this issue. In this paper, the application prospects of machine vision in plant factories were analyzed, and the present researches were summarized from the fields of plant growth monitoring, robot operation assistance, and fruit grading. The results found that although the existing methods have solved some practical problems at low cost, high efficiency and precision, some challenges still are faced by machine vision. Firstly, the changing lighting, complex backgrounds, and color similarity within plant different parts cause the commonly used image segmentation algorithms to fail. The shortage of standard agricultural datasets also keeps deep learning and unsupervised classification algorithms from making progress. Secondly, there are some theoretical knowledge gaps for machine vision application in a particular environment of plant factories, which seriously contains its application effect. Thirdly, the lack of special image acquisition devices and supporting facilities resulted in poor image quality. All these factors hinder machine vision application in plant factories. Nevertheless, it is still a powerful tool and irreplaceable at present. We believed that this technique would promote plant factory development greatly with more robust, efficient, and reliable algorithms are developed in the future.

Inspired by the biological use of a combination of precision and self-assembly to achieve exquisite control and diversity from 20 natural amino acids, there is considerable scope for the development of synthetic precision materials with complex architecture that can access advanced function for biomedical applications. Single cyclic polymers (SCPs) have been shown to offer different and often better performance compared to their linear analogues. Because multicyclic topology in nature offers enhanced effects relative to single cyclization, we hypothesize that multicyclic polymers (MCPs) would access unique features compared to SCPs. However, there are currently quite limited ways to efficiently synthesize MCPs and to precisely modulate the valency of cyclic units. In this work, we report for the first time a straightforward and robust strategy to synthesize MCPs with controllable valency via facile one-pot statistical reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) copolymerization. We use this strategy to synthesize biocompatible MCPs based on the most classic and important biocompatible polymers of oligo (ethylene glycol) (OEG) and cyclic poly(ε-caprolactone) (cPCL), which can further self-assemble into well-defined nanostructures. We then apply these MCP-based formulations as drug delivery vehicles and demonstrate greater colloidal stability with a low critical micelle concentration (CMC) of 80.3 nM, larger drug loading capacity, higher cellular uptake efficiency, more tumor accumulation, and increased anti-tumor efficacy in murine tumor models compared to SCP-based analogues. We believe this cumulative work demonstrating facile synthesis of MCPs and demonstration of multicyclic topology-enhanced anti-cancer efficiency in vivo provides key technologies and concepts to the burgeoning field of cyclic topology-derived biomaterials.

In history, semiconductor-metal-semiconductor transistor (SMST) was proposed for frequency improvement. However, a general fabrication method is still missing due to the unsolved technological problem of deposition of a general crystalline semiconductor on metal, and a thinner metal base is also difficult to be fabricated with high quality. Recently, due to the atomic thickness of graphene, the concept of semiconductor-graphene-semiconductor transistor (SGST) has emerged which leads to the renaissance of SMST, however the experimental study is in its infancy. In this letter, SMST and SGST are fabricated using Si membrane transfer. It is found the common base current gain can be improved from about 0.5% in a Si-Au-Si transistor to about 1% in a Si-Gr-Ge one, and to above 10% in a Si-Gr-Si one, which is attributed to both the ultra-thin thickness and the quantum capacitance effect of graphene.

Facile fabrication of the ultra-high-performance adsorbent can effectively ameliorate the Cr(VI)-pollution elimination in sewage control. Herein, a simple synthesis strategy is proposed to tap a versatile chelating resin poly(pyrogallol-tetraethylene pentamine) (PPTA) with respect to Cr(VI) removal from solution. Multiple changing factors which affect the adsorption behavior of PPTA are explored sequentially, such as initial pH, adsorbate concentration, adsorbent dosage, temperature, foreign ions etc. The microstructure and functional mechanism of synthetic adsorbent are investigated systematically by means of various characterizations including TEM, EDS, FT-IR, XPS, etc. Consequently, as-prepared PPTA-3 microsphere by the reactant ratio of 1: 1 represents a brilliant synergistic adsorption and reduction result for Cr(VI) by the drastic electrostatic interaction of -NH3+ and -OH2+ groups, including satisfactory removal efficiency which closes to 100 % in low concentration, favorable specificity for the influence from coexistent ions (Mo(VI), Mn(VII), Cl-, Cr(III), etc), and passable recyclability. Following the surpassingly fitting with Langmuir isotherm model, its maximum capacity reaches 714.29 mg g-1 at 30 °C. The removal performance is essentially in agreement with the pseudo-second-order kinetics, simultaneously, suffers the rate-limiting impact depending on intra-particle diffusion process. In brief, this newly developed chelating resin presents an effective means with regard to the Cr(VI)-wastewater treatment or other uses in the future.

Assisting end users to identify desired results from a large dataset is an important problem for multi-criteria decision making. To address this problem, top-k and skyline queries have been widely adopted, but they both have inherent drawbacks, i.e., the user either has to provide a specific utility function or faces many results. The k-regret minimization query is proposed, which integrates the merits of top-k and skyline queries. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, the k-regret minimization query is time consuming and the greedy framework is widely adopted. However, formal theoretical analysis of the greedy approaches for the quality of the returned results is still lacking. In this paper, we first fill this gap by conducting a nontrivial theoretical analysis of the approximation ratio of the returned results. To speed up query processing, a sampling-based method, S toc P res G reed , is developed to reduce the evaluation cost. In addition, a theoretical analysis of the required sample size is conducted to bound the quality of the returned results. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted on both real and synthetic datasets to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed methods.

The expedited consumption of fossil fuels has triggered broad interest in the fabrication of novel catalysts for electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Especially, single-atom catalysts (SACs) have attracted more attention owing to their high specific surface areas and abundant active centers. This review summarizes recent synthetic strategies to fabricate SACs with different metal loadings on various supports, and the structural influence of supports on metal loading. Then, the functions of SACs are illustrated on electronic structure and electrocatalysis; the isolated SACs with an unsaturated coordination environment generally accelerate the electrocatalytic process and promote the selectivity. The applications of SACs to some typical electrocatalytic reactions are also introduced in detail, as well as to electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems. Finally, the challenges and the perspectives of SACs are discussed for future exploration.

In this study, porous calcium silicate (CS) ceramics with oriented arrangement of lamellar macropore structure were prepared by directional freeze casting method. The lamellar macropores were connected by the micropores on the pore wall, which had good pore interconnectivity. The effects of solid loading of the slurry, freezing temperature, sintering additive content, and sintering temperature on the microstructures and compressive strength of the synthesized porous materials were investigated systematically. The results showed that with the increase of solid loading (≤20 vol%) and sintering additive content, the sizes of lamellar pores and pore walls increased gradually, the open porosity decreased and the compressive strength increased. The sintering temperature had little effect on the pore size of the ceramics, but increasing the sintering temperature (≤1050 °C) promoted the densification of the pore wall, reduced the porosity, and improved the strength. The decrease of freezing temperature had little effect on porosity, but it reduced the size of lamellar pore and pore wall, so as to improve the strength. Finally, porous CS ceramics with lamellar macropores of about 300–600 μm and 2–10 μm micropores on the pore wall were obtained. The porous CS ceramics had high pore interconnectivity, an open porosity of 66.25% and a compressive strength of 5.47 MPa, which was expected to be used in bone tissue engineering.