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In the built heritage studies, the intricate web of social and selective processes that define heritage is evident. These processes are, in many cases, intertwined with the notion of scale, examplified through the production of heritage sites at the local, national, and transnational scales. While heritage and geography scholars have articulated the role played by scale in heritage-making and argue against a rigid, fixed, and hierarchical understanding of scale, they highlight the constant reproduction of scale. There is, so far, limited explanation of how the perception of scale gets reproduced and how crucial actors manipulate scalar power and resources for heritage making and the reproduction of scale. To fill this gap, this paper delves into mainland China's heritage-making, using the southern Anhui historical villages as an example. Based on intensive 5-month field research, this paper has three findings: 1) The nomination process for a World Heritage Site is notably influenced by politics and selectivity; 2) Diverse stakeholders are pivotal in shaping heritage narratives; 3) Individual contributions to heritage creation directly interact with, and subsequently reshape, 'scale', an entity that is simultaneously discursive and tangible. By integrating the notion of 'scale' into heritage discussions, we illuminate two concurrent processes: creating hierarchies through rule assimilation by interpreting the UNESCO standard internally and evolving socio-spatial dynamics via the manifestation of individual agency with resource manipulation, scale jumping, and reproduction of scale. This approach aligns with the material orientation in human geography and repositions 'scale'. Here, it's not just an epistemological framework but also a tangible force that steers individual perceptions and actions and yields measurable material impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Various surgical techniques have been proposed to manage acetabular fractures involving both columns with posterior wall displacement. However, the optimal surgical approach to achieve satisfactory reduction quality remains controversial. Materials and methods: This retrospective study evaluated 34 patients with fractures who were treated at a single medical institution. The patients were divided into two groups according to the ventral/dorsal surgical approach employed: simultaneous (SI) and sequential (SE). Perioperative parameters, as well as radiological and functional outcomes, were analyzed and compared between the two groups. Results: The SI and SE groups comprised 9 and 23 out of the 34 patients, respectively. The SI group exhibited a significantly shorter surgical time and lower estimated blood loss than the SE group (p = 0.04 and 0.03, respectively). The quality of reductions of the anterior and posterior columns was similar between the two groups; however, superior reduction in the fracture gap of the posterior wall was observed in the SI group, as revealed by axial and coronal computed tomography scans. Conclusions: A simultaneous ventral and dorsal approach through the pararectus and the modified Gibson approach confer clinical advantages in reducing the fracture gap, surgical time, and intraoperative blood loss when managing acetabular fractures involving both columns and a displaced posterior wall. Therefore, these surgical approaches may be considered to be optimal for achieving satisfactory reduction quality in such fractures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melody-conditioned lyrics generation aims to create novel lyrics based on the melodies by learning the relationship between lyrics and melodies, which is an attractive topic in the music field. However, two serious issues, called deficiency of inter-dependency between melody attributes and text degeneration, degrade the quality of the lyrics generation. To solve these issues, this paper proposes a new model called semantic dependency network with two key components: (i) N-gram CNN block is used to compress the information from the single melody attribute and extract the inter-dependency from the multiple melody attributes. (ii) In lyrics, unlikelihood training is exploited to mitigate the syllables mismatching and logic missing and keep the intra-syllable integrity and logic by learning semantic dependency. Extensive evaluation experiments on a large-scale dataset demonstrate that our model can generate higher quality and more harmonic lyrics from the melodies compared with the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normalized subband adaptive filtering algorithm provides fast convergence rate for colored input signals as compared to the normalized least mean square algorithm, but it suffers from a poor convergence issue in the α -stable noise. In light of this, the normalized subband p-norm (NSPN) algorithm, which is based on the least mean p-power error (MPE) criterion, is proposed in this study. This technique is not only robust against impulsive noise samples, but it also maintains a fast convergence rate when colored input signals are used. In addition to this, we develop both the steady-state and the transient models of the NSPN algorithm and provide some insights. Then, in order to solve the problem of making a choice regarding the order p in the NSPN algorithm, we design an autonomous system and come up with the NSPN algorithm with a variable p-norm (VP-NSPN). In addition, we offer the TFC-based VP-NSPN algorithm with a fast convergence rate and low steady-state misadjustment simultaneously by making use of the tap-weights feedback-based convex combination (TFC) scheme. In conclusion, simulation results on system identification and acoustic echo cancellation are undertaken in order to validate the superiority of the proposed algorithms and validate the usefulness of the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The study aimed to explore the clinical and pathological characteristics, survival outcomes, and prognostic factors of colorectal hepatoid adenocarcinoma. Methods: We performed two cases of colorectal hepatoid adenocarcinoma treated at the Oncology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University. We also reviewed literature up to the present and performed a retrospective study of colorectal hepatoid adenocarcinoma. Results: Among the 39 patients included in this study, 28 had primary tumors in the colon, 9 in the rectum, and 2 in the rectosigmoid junction. The median age was 52 years (range 31–75 years); 28 patients (71.8%) were male. Out of the 32 patients for whom survival data were available, 24 patients succumbed to disease-related causes. The median overall survival of 32 patients was 8 months, with 1-year and 2-year overall survival rates of 31.0% and 16.0%, respectively. Univariate analysis revealed that depth of infiltration, presence of liver metastases, TNM stage, and the completeness of surgical resection were significantly associated with the overall survival period of colorectal hepatoid adenocarcinoma. Conclusion: Colorectal hepatoid adenocarcinoma exhibits a high degree of aggressiveness and poor prognosis. The major strategy for early-stage HAC was radical surgery and chemoradiotherapy demonstrates limited efficacy for extending survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's rapidly changing economy, efficient lifestyle has become the current situation of most mobile product users. With the development of performance tools and technologies, a fast lifestyle has brought more wealth and opportunities to users. The slow pace and fluctuating time are indirect income losses, which cause user anxiety to some extent. When the waiting time exceeds the user's waiting threshold, users would experience negative emotions, such as boredom, anxiety and anger, and product satisfaction would drop significantly. Therefore, by analyzing the uniqueness of mobile Internet products and the characteristics of users, this paper studied the reasons and influencing factors of product interactive waiting, and then used machine learning algorithm to analyze the cost function of interactive waiting experience. Finally, the corresponding interactive waiting experience design strategy was proposed. By comparison, the user experience after product interaction optimization design was 8.4% higher than that before product interaction optimization design, and the user frequency was also 14.7% higher after optimization design. In short, user experience plays an important role in product interaction design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's rapidly changing economy, efficient lifestyle has become the current situation of most mobile product users. With the development of performance tools and technologies, a fast lifestyle has brought more wealth and opportunities to users. The slow pace and fluctuating time are indirect income losses, which cause user anxiety to some extent. When the waiting time exceeds the user's waiting threshold, users would experience negative emotions, such as boredom, anxiety and anger, and product satisfaction would drop significantly. Therefore, by analyzing the uniqueness of mobile Internet products and the characteristics of users, this paper studied the reasons and influencing factors of product interactive waiting, and then used machine learning algorithm to analyze the cost function of interactive waiting experience. Finally, the corresponding interactive waiting experience design strategy was proposed. By comparison, the user experience after product interaction optimization design was 8.4% higher than that before product interaction optimization design, and the user frequency was also 14.7% higher after optimization design. In short, user experience plays an important role in product interaction design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-modal audio–visual correlation learning has been an interesting research topic, which aims to capture and understand semantic correspondences between audio and video. We face two challenges during audio–visual correlation learning: (i) audio and visual feature sequences, respectively, belong to different feature spaces, and (ii) semantic mismatch between audio and visual sequences inevitably happens. To solve these challenges, existing works mainly focus on how to efficiently extract discriminative features, while ignoring the abundant granular features of audio and visual modalities. In this work, we introduce the multi-scale network with shared cross-attention (MSNSCA) module for audio–visual correlation learning, a supervised representation learning framework for capturing semantic audio–visual correspondences by integrating a multi-scale feature extraction module with strong cross-attention into an end-to-end trainable deep network. MSNSCA can extract more effective audio–visual particle features with excellent audio–visual semantic matching capability. Experiments on various audio–visual learning tasks, including audio–visual matching and retrieval on benchmark datasets, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MSNSCA model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lyrics-to-melody generation is an interesting and challenging topic in AI music research field. Due to the difficulty of learning the correlations between lyrics and melody, previous methods suffer from low generation quality and lack of controllability. Controllability of generative models enables human interaction with models to generate desired contents, which is especially important in music generation tasks towards human-centered AI that can facilitate musicians in creative activities. To address these issues, we propose a controllable lyrics-to-melody generation network, ConL2M, which is able to generate realistic melodies from lyrics in user-desired musical style. Our work contains three main novelties: (1) to model the dependencies of music attributes cross multiple sequences, inter-branch memory fusion (Memofu) is proposed to enable information flow between multi-branch stacked LSTM architecture; (2) reference style embedding (RSE) is proposed to improve the quality of generation as well as control the musical style of generated melodies; (3) sequence-level statistical loss (SeqLoss) is proposed to help the model learn sequence-level features of melodies given lyrics. Verified by evaluation metrics for music quality and controllability, initial study of controllable lyrics-to-melody generation shows better generation quality and the feasibility of interacting with users to generate the melodies in desired musical styles when given lyrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Osteosynthesis for acetabular fractures with ipsilateral sacroiliac joint (SIJ) injuries remains challenging for orthopedic surgeons, despite the evolution of surgical approaches, such as the pararectus approach, and treatment sequences. The study aimed to describe the details of the treatment of acetabular fracture with ipsilateral SIJ injury by the pararectus approach and to report its surgical outcomes. Methods: We retrospectively assessed patients with acetabular fractures and ipsilateral SIJ injuries undergoing osteosynthesis by the pararectus approach over a three-year period. Evaluation parameters of the quality of reduction of both acetabulum and pelvis injuries were, among others, Matta's criteria, Lefaivre's criteria, inlet/outlet ratios, and maximal gap measured on computed tomography (CT) scans. Results: Ten patients (seven men and three women) were enrolled. Pelvic ring injuries classified as AO B2.3 and acetabular fractures involving two columns were the most common fractures, accounting for 70% and 60%, respectively. Radiological evaluation for pelvic ring injury revealed three excellent and seven good results according to Matta's criteria, as well as five excellent, three good, and one fair results according to Lefaivre's criteria. Inlet and outlet ratios were between 0.84–1.06 and 0.93–1.60, respectively. The distance of the sacroiliac joints significantly improved postoperatively in both axial and coronal views (P = 0.002). Further, the maximal articular gap and step-off of acetabular fractures on axial, coronal, and sagittal view CT scans showed statistically significant improvements after osteosynthesis. Conclusion: Simultaneous reduction and fixation of acetabular fractures with ipsilateral SIJ injuries using the pararectus approach achieved satisfactory radiological outcomes. Level of evidence: IV. Trial registration: Retrospectively registered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the clinicopathological characteristics, survival outcomes, and prognosis of very young gastric cancer (GC). From January 1, 2011 to January 1, 2021, GC patients under 30 years old treated in three tertiary hospitals were enrolled. Clinicopathological characteristics were summarized, prognostic factors and survival outcomes including overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and progression-free survival (PFS) were retrospectively analyzed. One hundred patients were finally included, with a median age of 23 years.73 (73.0%) were female. Most patients had initial symptoms of abdominal pain (66.0%). The most common tumor locations were gastric antrum (38.0%) and gastric body (37.0%). The main histological types were diffuse (81.0%) and poorly differentiated (91.0%). Most patients presented with stage III–IV disease (82.0%) at diagnosis and the common sites of metastasis were ovary (39.5%) and peritoneum (27.6%). The mOS of the whole group was 23.3 months (95% CI 17.2–29.4). Moreover, the mOS of patients at stage I–II was not reached. The mOS of patients at stage III and stage IV was 40.6 months (95% CI 10.2–70.9) and 10.3 months (95% CI 8.9–11.6), respectively. The mDFS of stage I–III patients was 28.5 months (95% CI 14.7–42.3), and the mPFS of the metastatic patients was 4.5 months (95% CI 4.0–5.0). TNM stage (P = 0.005) and radical surgery (P = 0.001) were independent prognostic factors of overall survival. The very young GC were predominantly female, diffuse type, and advanced diagnosis. TNM stage and radical surgery were independent prognosis factors for overall survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Open pelvic fractures have high mortality rates, and survivors may have ongoing functional deficits from severe trauma and invasive life-saving procedures. However, there are limited reports regarding the functional status evaluation following open pelvic fractures. We aimed to report the treatment experiences and short-term functional outcomes of patients with open pelvic fractures. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the data of 19 consecutive patients with pelvic fractures who underwent treatment at a single institute between January 2014 and June 2018. The resuscitation protocol, osteosynthesis strategy, reduction quality of the pelvic ring, and functional outcomes were analyzed. Results: The incidence and mortality rates in patients with open pelvic fractures were 4.9 and 21.6%, respectively. Ten, one, and seven of the open wounds related to the pelvic fractures were located in Faringer zones I, II, and III, respectively. Fractures of four patients were categorized as classes 1 and 2, and those of 11 patients as class 3, according to the Jones–Powell classification. Eleven of 19 (57.9%) and 9 of 19 (47.5%) revealed excellent reduction quality by Matta/Torenetta and Lefaivre criteria, respectively. The Merle d'Aubigné score improved at each evaluation but stagnated after 24 months. The Majeed hip score also improved at the 12-month evaluation but the improvement stopped thereafter. At a 3-year follow-up, the patients with excellent reduction of the pelvic ring showed the highest functional performances. Conclusion: Improvements in functional status of patients with open pelvic fractures can be anticipated based on the reduction quality of the pelvis ring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The pararectus approach is used to treat acetabular fractures; however, it remains unclear whether it can be used to treat pelvic fractures. This study aimed to examine the outcomes of patients with a pelvic ring fracture treated with this approach. Methods: Seven patients with AO B2.2 pelvic fractures treated with the pararectus approach were included. Patients' pain was assessed pre- and postoperatively with a numerical rating scale. Radiological evaluations included inlet and outlet ratios and pelvic symmetry. Functional outcomes, including Merle d'Aubigné and Majeed scores, were also recorded for 12 months. Results: One patient experienced obturator nerve neuropraxia. Pain scores ranged from 2.3–8.0 to 2.0–3.1 points before and after surgery, respectively. Radiological findings revealed satisfactory outcomes. The maximal gap of the affected ilium reduced from 8.6–20.2 to 0–3.4 mm, from 6.8–17.9 to 0–4.4 mm, and from 3.7–20.3 to 0–3.2 mm in the axial, sagittal, and coronal views, respectively. Based on multiple evaluations, functional outcomes were improved for all patients. Conclusion: The pararectus approach can be used safely and satisfactorily to treat AO B 2.2 pelvic fractures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Reasons for the increased use of closed reduction and internal fixation (CRIF) for traumatic sacral fractures (SFs) are unclear in the literature. Therefore, we aimed to report the annual changes in the number of patients, mechanisms of injury, fracture patterns, and fixation methods. Methods: In this retrospective study, we extracted data of 271 patients (mean age, 37.5 years) from the trauma register over an 8-year period. Annual records regarding the number of patients, injury mechanisms, fracture types, and treatment options were statistically analyzed to examine the interactions among these factors. Results: The number of patients with SFs increased significantly each year. The rate of admission to the intensive care unit after resuscitation was high (64.9%). Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthesefragen (AO) type C pelvic ring injury (PRI), Dennis zone II injury, Roy-Camille type 2 injury, and U/H-type injury were the most common fracture types. Trans-iliac trans-sacral screws were mainly used in AO type B PRI, and their use significantly increased each year. For AO type C PRI, open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) with rigid fixation was the main treatment, and the use of CRIF with iliosacral screws decreased each year. Stepwise statistical analysis revealed that the increase in AO type B PRI and ORIF for anterior PRI were the factors contributing to the increased use of CRIF for SFs. Conclusions: While the use of osteosynthesis for SFs is increasing, an increased use of CRIF for traumatic SFs has also been observed in clinical practice. This increase can be attributed to the increase in AO type B PRIs and ORIF for anterior PRIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) accounts for the majority of all stroke, globally the second leading cause of death. Due to its rapid development after onset, its early diagnosis is crucial. Objectives: We aim to identify potential highly reliable blood-based biomarkers for early diagnosis of AIS using quantitative plasma lipid profiling via a machine learning approach. Methods: Lipidomics was used for quantitative plasma lipid profiling, based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Our samples were divided into a discovery and a validation set, each containing 30 AIS patients and 30 health controls (HC). Differentially expressed lipid metabolites were screened based on the criteria VIP > 1, p < 0.05, and fold change > 1.5 or < 0.67. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and random forest algorithms in machine learning were used to select differential lipid metabolites as potential biomarkers. Results: Three key differential lipid metabolites, CarnitineC10:1, CarnitineC10:1-OH and Cer(d18:0/16:0), were identified as potential biomarkers for early diagnosis of AIS. The former two, associated with thermogenesis, were down-regulated, whereas the latter, associated with necroptosis and sphingolipd metabolism, was upregulated. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions showed that these three lipid metabolites and the resulting diagnostic model exhibited a strong ability in discriminating between AIS patients and HCs in both the discovery and validation sets, with an area under the curve above 0.9. Conclusions: Our work provides valuable information on the pathophysiology of AIS and constitutes an important step toward clinical application of blood-based biomarkers for diagnosing AIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the insertion process of cochlear implant (CI) electrode array (EA) is important to ensure successful, sufficient, and safe implantation. A three-dimensional finite element (FE) model was developed to simulate the insertion process. The cochlear structures were reconstructed from an average statistical shape model (SSM) of human cochlea. The electrode is simplified as a long and tapered beam of homogeneous elastic materials, contacting and interacting with the stiff cochlear structures. A quasi-static insertion simulation was conducted, the insertion force and the contact pressure between the electrode and the cochlear wall, were calculated to evaluate the smoothness of insertion and the risk of potential cochlear trauma. Based on this model, different EA designs were analyzed, including the Young's modulus, the straight or bended shape, the normal or a more tapped section size. The influence of the insertion angle was also discussed. Our simulations indicate that reducing the EA Young's modulus, tapering and pre-bending are effective ways to ensure safe and successful EA implantation. This model is beneficial for optimizing EA designs and is potentially useful for designing patient-specific CI surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heart failure is the final destination of most cardiovascular diseases, and its complex molecular mechanisms remain largely uncertain. This study aimed to systematically investigate the underlying molecular mechanisms and diagnostic and therapeutic targets of heart failure using bioinformatics. We obtained 8 healthy samples and 8 heart failure samples from GSE8331 and GSE76701. After removing the batch effect, we performed a differential analysis on it and obtained 185 differentially expressed ID. The results of enrichment analysis showed that the molecular mechanisms of heart failure were mostly related to immune, inflammation, and metabolism-related pathways. Immune cell infiltration analysis showed that the degree of infiltration of Tgd cells and Neurons was significantly enriched in heart failure samples, whereas pDCs and NKTs were in healthy tissue samples. We obtained Hub genes including EGR1, EGR2, FOS and FOSB by PPI network analysis. We established a 4-gene diagnostic model with Hub gene, and validated it in GSE21610 and GSE57338, and evaluated the discriminative ability of Hub gene by ROC curve. The 4-gene diagnostic model has an AUC value of 0.775 in GSE21610 and 0.877 in GSE57338. In conclusion, we explored the underlying molecular mechanisms of heart failure and the immune cell infiltration environment of failing myocardium by performing bioinformatic analysis of the GEO dataset. In addition, we identified EGR1, EGR2, FOS and FOSB as potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for heart failure. More importantly, a diagnostic model of heart failure based on these 4 genes was developed, which leads to a new understanding of the pathogenesis of heart failure and may be an interesting target for future in-depth research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditional sequence generation aims to instruct the generation procedure by conditioning the model with additional context information, which is an interesting research issue in AI and machine learning. Unfortunately, current state-of-the-art generative models for music fail to generate good melodies due to the discrete-valued property of music attributes. In this paper, we propose a novel conditional hybrid GAN (C-Hybrid-GAN) for melody generation from lyrics. Three discrete sequences corresponding to music attributes, namely pitch, duration, and rest, are separately generated by melody generation model conditioned on the same lyrics. Gumbel-Softmax is used to approximate the distribution of discrete-valued samples so as to directly generate discrete melody attributes. Most importantly, a hybrid structure is proposed, which contains three independent branches (each for one melody attribute) in the generator and one branch for distinguishing concatenated attributes in the discriminator. Relational memory core is exploited to model not only the dependency inside each sequence of attribute during the training of the generator, but also the consistency among three sequences of attributes during the training of the discriminator. Through extensive experiments using evaluation metrics, e.g., maximum mean discrepancy, average rest value, and MIDI number transition, we demonstrate that the proposed C-Hybrid-GAN outperforms the existing methods in melody generation from lyrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In the setting of acetabular dysplasia, the increased translational motion of the femur may damage the labrum and cartilage, as well as stretch the capsule. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between the acetabular coverage and the capsular stiffness by assessing the distension of anterior and posterior joint recesses on the hip computed tomography arthrography. Methods: One hundred thirty-three patients (138 hips) with a median age of 36 years (range 18–50 years) who received the computed tomography arthrography for evaluation of nonarthritic hip pain in our institute between 2015 and 2017 were retrospectively reviewed. The maximal distance between the anterior/posterior capsule and the anterior femoral head–neck junction/posterior femoral head on the axial imaging of computed tomography arthrography was defined as the width of anterior/posterior joint recess. The width of anterior/posterior joint recess was adjusted with the diameter of the femoral head and was then compared between acetabular dysplasia (lateral center–edge angle < 25°), normal acetabulum (lateral center–edge angle between 25 and 39°), and deep acetabulum (lateral center–edge angle > 39°). In addition, the standard univariate linear regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between the adjusted width of anterior/posterior joint recess and anterior/posterior coverage of the hip, determined by the anterior/posterior wall index. Results: The adjusted width of posterior joint recess was significantly greater in the acetabular dysplasia group than the normal acetabulum and deep acetabulum groups (p < 0.01 and p = 0.02, respectively). There was no significant difference of the adjusted width of anterior joint recess between the groups (n.s.). The adjusted width of posterior joint recess had a significant but weak negative correlation with the anterior wall index (r = − 0.25, p < 0.001), and no correlation with the posterior wall index (r = − 0.0004, n.s.). There was no significant correlation between the adjusted width of anterior joint recess and the anterior/posterior wall index (r = 0.05, n.s./r = 0.07, n.s.). Conclusions: The distension of posterior capsule on the computed tomography arthrography was significantly greater in acetabular dysplasia. In addition, there was a significant but weak negative correlation between the distension of posterior capsule and the anterior coverage of the hip. It indicated a looser posterior capsule was observed in a dysplastic hip. The relevance of posterior capsular laxity to clinical outcomes warrants further investigation. Given the fact that the distension of anterior capsule was not significantly higher in acetabular dysplasia, the need of anterior capsular plication in a dysplastic hip should be carefully evaluated. Level of evidence: Level III. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normalized least mean M-estimate (NLMM) algorithm exhibits good robustness in impulsive noises, but it suffers from the trade-off between convergence rate and steady-state misadjustment. In response to this problem, this paper proposes a switching step-sizes NLMM (SSS-NLMM) algorithm, which selects the optimal step-size at each iteration by comparing the mean square deviation (MSD) values of the algorithm with different step-sizes. Furthermore, to improve the convergence of the algorithm in the transition stage, we embed a feedback mechanism on the minimum MSD. Simulations in various environments have verified that the proposed SSS-NLMM algorithm has better performance than its counterparts in terms of convergence rate and steady-state misadjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While raw images possess distinct advantages over sRGB images, e.g., linearity and fine-grained quantization levels, they are not widely adopted by general users due to their substantial storage requirements. Very recent studies propose to compress raw images by designing sampling masks within the pixel space of the raw image. However, these approaches often leave space for pursuing more effective image representations and compact metadata. In this work, we propose a novel framework that learns a compact representation in the latent space, serving as metadata, in an end-to-end manner. Compared with lossy image compression, we analyze the intrinsic difference of the raw image reconstruction task caused by rich information from the sRGB image. Based on the analysis, a novel design of the backbone with asymmetric and hybrid spatial feature resolutions is proposed, which significantly improves the rate-distortion performance. Besides, we propose a novel design of the sRGB-guided context model, which can better predict the order masks of encoding/decoding based on both the sRGB image and the the masks of already processed features. Benefited from the better modeling of the correlation between order masks, the already processed information can be better utilized. Moreover, a novel sRGB-guided adaptive quantization precision strategy, which dynamically assigns varying levels of quantization precision to different regions, further enhances the representation ability of the model. Finally, based on the iterative properties of the proposed context model, we propose a novel strategy to achieve variable bit rates using a single model. This strategy allows for the continuous convergence of a wide range of bit rates. We demonstrate how our raw image compression scheme effectively allocates more bits to image regions that hold greater global importance. Extensive experimental results validate the superior performance of the proposed method, achieving high-quality raw image reconstruction with a smaller metadata size, compared with existing SOTA methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "Retraction Note: A Mixed-Ligand Co(II)-Coordination Polymer: Biological Activity on Early Brain Injury after Subarachnoid Hemorrhage by Regulating TRAF6 Expression" has been retracted by the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher of the Journal of Cluster Science. The retraction was prompted by evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication process, including issues with citations, phrasing, figures, and ethics approval statements. The Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of the article. The authors have not responded to correspondence regarding the retraction. Springer Nature, the publisher, remains neutral in terms of jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

Directed networks appear in an expanding array of applications, for example, the world wide web, social networks, transaction networks, and citation networks. A critical task in analyzing directed networks is clustering, where the goal is partitioning the network's nodes based on their similarities while accounting for the direction of relationships between nodes. Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and its variations have been used to cluster the nodes in directed networks by approximating their adjacency matrices efficaciously. The differences between the corresponding entries of the actual and approximate adjacency matrices are considered as errors, which are assumed to follow Gaussian distributions. However, these errors could deviate from Gaussian distributions in various real-world networks. In this work, we propose a robust asymmetric non-negative matrix factorization method to cluster the nodes in directed networks. Recognizing that the errors do not follow Gaussian distributions in real-world networks, the proposed method assumes that the errors follow a Cauchy distribution, which resembles the Gaussian distribution but has heavier tails. Experiments using real-world as well as artificial networks show that the proposed method outperforms existing NMF methods and other representative work in clustering in various settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a fiber sensor based on a Silicon core fiber incorporated with a fused silica grating design. The proposed structure has a high sensitivity in refractive index and temperature variation through theoretical calculation and finite element method simulation. The sensitivities of the refractive index in different polarization directions are 1838.7 and 1949.8 nm/RIU, respectively, within the index range from 1.28 to 1.38 RIU. The temperature range within 15–40 °C has the sensitivity up to 1.6 nm/°C by using ethanol analyte. The proposed fiber sensor can provide a method or a solution for intelligent sensing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T-cells have been demonstrated to modulate ischemia–reperfusion injury (IRI) in the kidney, lung, liver, and intestine. Whereas most T-cell subpopulations contribute primarily to the antigen-specific effector and memory phases of immunity, γδ-T-cells combine adaptive features with rapid, innate-like responses that can place them in the initiation phase of immune reactions. Therefore, we aimed to clarify the role of γδ-T-cells in intestinal IRI. Adult wild-type (WT) and γδ-T-cell-deficient mice were subjected to acute intestinal IRI. Gene expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and influx of leukocyte subpopulations in the gut were assessed by qPCR and flow cytometry. Serum transaminases were measured as an indicator of distant organ IRI. Intestinal IRI led to increased influx of neutrophils, pro-inflammatory cytokine expression and LDH/ALT/AST elevation. Selective deficiency of γδ-T-cells significantly decreased pro-inflammatory cytokine levels and neutrophil infiltration in the gut following IRI compared to controls. Furthermore, γδ-T-cell deficiency resulted in decreased LDH and transaminases levels in sera, indicating amelioration of distant organ injury. Increasing evidence demonstrates a key role of T-cell subpopulations in IRI. We demonstrate that γδ-T-cell deficiency ameliorated pro-inflammatory cytokine production, neutrophil recruitment and distant organ injury. Thus, γδ-T-cells may be considered as mediators contributing to the inflammatory response in the acute phase of intestinal IRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides the normal hearing pathway known as air conduction (AC), sound can also transmit to the cochlea through the skull, known as bone conduction (BC). During BC stimulation, the cochlear walls demonstrate rigid body motion (RBM) and compressional motion (CPM), both inducing the basilar membrane traveling wave (TW). Despite numerous measuring and modeling efforts for the TW phenomenon, the mechanism remains unclear, especially in the case of BC. This paper proposes a 3D finite element cochlea model mimicking the TW under BC. The model uses a traditional "box model" form, but in a spiral shape, with two fluid chambers separated by the long and flexible BM. The cochlear fluid was enclosed by bony walls, the oval and round window membranes. Contingent boundary conditions and stimulations are introduced according to the physical basis of AC and BC. Particularly for BC, both RBM and CPM of the cochlea walls are simulated. Harmonic numerical solutions are obtained at multiple frequencies among the hearing range. The BM vibration amplitude ( U BM ) and its relation with volume displacement difference between the oval and round windows (Δ Vol) , as well as the pressure difference at the base of the cochlea ( P SV 0 - P ST 0 ), are analyzed. The simulated BM response at 12 mm from the base is peaked at about 3 k Hz, which is consistent with published experimental data. The TW properties under AC and BC are the same and have a common mechanism. (1) U BM is proportional to Δ V o l at low frequencies. (2) U BM is also proportional to P SV 0 - P ST 0 , within 5 dB error at high frequencies such as 16 k Hz. This study partly reveals the common quantitative relations between the TW and related factors under AC and BC hearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bulk amorphous polymers become stretched and parallel-aligned under loading stress, and their intermolecular cooperation slows down the subsequent stress relaxation process. By means of dynamic Monte Carlo simulations, we employed the linear viscoelastic Maxwell model for stress relaxation of single polymers and investigated their intermolecular cooperation in the stress relaxation process of stretched and parallel-aligned bulk amorphous polymers. We carried out thermal fluctuation analysis on the reproduced Debye relaxation and Arrhenius fluid behaviors of bulk polymers. We found a transient state with stretch-coil coexistence among polymers in the stress relaxation process. Further structure analysis revealed a scenario of local jamming at the transient state, resulting in an entropy barrier for stretch-coil transition of partial polymers. The microscopic mechanism of intermolecular cooperation appears as unique to polymer stress relaxation, which interprets the hydrodynamic interactions as one of essential factors raising a high viscosity in bulk amorphous polymers. Our simulations set up a platform of molecular modeling in the study of polymer stress relaxation, which brought new insights into polymer dynamics and the related mechanical/rheological properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

None of the authors have responded to any further correspondence from the Publisher regarding this retraction note. Retraction Note: A Heterometallic MOF for Highly Selective Al3 + Ion Detection and Protective Effect Against Periodontitis by Reducing P. Gingivalis CFU and Inflammatory Cytokines Levels Further checks by the Publisher identified a number of irrelevant references, text overlap with an earlier article from different authors [[1]], and mismatch between the institution that approved the animal experiments and the authors' affiliation. [Extracted from the article]

Objectives: Medialization thyroplasty (MT) using various implants has been employed as a corrective procedure for unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP). A newly developed APrevent® vocal implant system (VOIS) offers an innovative solution with a finely adjustable design. This study aimed to investigate the long-term functional voice outcomes and benefits of postoperative adjustments in patients receiving MT using the VOIS-implant. Methods: This is a prospective case series study at single tertiary medical center. Fourteen adult patients diagnosed with UVFP received MT with the VOIS implant and were followed up for more than 1 year. Implant adjustment procedure by injecting 0.9% physiological saline solution was performed both during and after the surgery to optimize glottal closure and voice quality. Objective voice outcomes and acoustic parameters were assessed preoperatively and postoperatively at various timepoints. Results: Thirteen patients (93%) received intraoperative balloon adjustment, ranging from 0.05to 0.12 ml. Four patients underwent adjustments postoperatively and exhibited a positive trend towards immediately improving acoustic voice quality. Our long-term results demonstrated a notable improvement after the surgery in voice quality, with significant decreases in VHI-30 and improvements in perceptual parameters of GRBAS scale, acoustic measures such as jitter and signal-to-noise ratio (p < 0.001) and cepstral peak prominence smoothed in sustained vowel and short sentences. The voice outcomes remained stable more than 1 year follow-up. Conclusions: Overall, MT with VOIS implantation provides a favorable long-term outcomes and stability in voice quality for patients with UVFP and also an effective tool for postoperative adjustment without major revision surgeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheat contains the largest number of miR396 family with 17 miR396 in Poaceae. MiR396 regulatory network underlying wheat grain development has not comprehensively been explored. Our results showed that precursor miR396 family in Poaceae exhibited not only conservativeness but also diversification especially in wheat. Five haplotypes were detected in Poaceae species, while 4 haplotypes in wheat with Hap-4 (miR396a) and Hap-5 (miR396n) unique to wheat. GO enrichment analysis of target genes showed that the first 20 enrichment functions of miR396a and miR396n are completely different from each other, and also completely different from miR396(b–g), miR396(h–m), and miR396(o–q). Functional annotation on the 18 target genes shared by miR396(b–g), miR396(h–m), and miR396(o–q) found that 11 of the 18 target genes are growth-regulating factor (GRF) genes. Our results indicated that, during the grain filling stage of wheat, miR396 is involved in the development of grains by regulating the expression of GRF genes (GRF1, GRF6, and GRF9). Although the enrichment function of miR396(b–g), miR396(h–m), and miR396(o–q) is the same, the gene functional networks they formed differ greatly. Our results indicated that polyploidization enriches not only the diversity of miR396 family and its target genes but also gene functional networks in wheat. These results laid foundation for further elucidating function of miR396 gene family underlying wheat grain development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employment of an amide-functionalized tetracarboxylic ligand 5,5′-(carbonylbis(azanediyl))-diisophthalic acid (H4cbab), a new polyhedral metal–organic framework (MOF) with the chemical formula of {[InZn2(cbda)2(H2O)2](NMF)3}n (1, NMF = N-methylformamide) has been synthesized under the solvothermal reaction condition. The structural feature was studied via the single crystal X-ray diffraction along with ultimate analysis. This as-prepared MOF shows excellent luminescence performance which can be able to detect Al3+ ions selectively. In aqueous solutions, the detection limitation for Al3+ ion is 0.56 µM, which is significantly below the highest standard of 7.41 µM for Al3+ ion in drinking water that is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). The protective effect of compound against periodontitis was further explored. The viable cell counts (CFU) number was counted to evaluate the inhibitory effect of compound on bacterial growth. The enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was carried on in order to measure accurately the proportion of inflammatory cytokines in gingival fluid around the implant. The potential binding modes of the synthesized compounds as well as the targeted protein was explored by calculating docking with high accuracy as well as pose scoring process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed the effects of rice straw biochar (RSBC) and swine manure biochar (SMBC) on N2O emission from paddy soil. The biochars were added to soil at the rates of 1% and 5% (w/w), and N2O emission, soil properties and soil enzyme activities were determined at the elongation, heading and maturation stages of rice growth. The N2O flux started within 2 h of adding the biochar, and decreased significantly thereafter during the three growth stages. The cumulative N2O emission was suppressed by 45.14–73.96% following biochar application, and 5% SMBC resulted in the lowest cumulative emission. In addition, biochar application significantly increased soil pH, soil organic carbon (SOC), NO3− levels and urease activity, and decreased soil NH4+ and nitrate reductase activity. Regression analysis indicated that cumulative N2O emission was correlated positively to NH4+, and negatively to soil pH, SOC and NO3−. SEM further revealed that biochar application weakened the denitrification process, and the NH4+ level had the most significant impact on N2O emission. Taken together, RSBC and SMBC regulated the nitrogen cycle in paddy soil and mitigated N2O emission by increasing soil pH, decreasing nitrate reductase activity and NH4+ content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the performance of the diffusion Huber-based normalized least mean square algorithm in the presence of impulsive noise, this paper proposes a distributed recursion scheme to adjust the thresholds. Because of the decreasing characteristic of the thresholds, the proposed algorithm can also be interpreted as a robust diffusion normalized least mean square algorithm with variable step sizes so that it has not only fast convergence but also small steady-state estimation error. Based on the contaminated Gaussian model, we analyze the mean square behavior of the algorithm in impulsive noise. Moreover, to ensure good tracking capability of the algorithm for the sudden change of parameters of interest, a control strategy is given that resets the thresholds with their initial values. Simulations in various noise scenarios show that the proposed algorithm performs better than many existing diffusion algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and hypothesis: Women who have intraspinal anesthesia for delivery are more likely to experience postpartum urinary retention (PUR), which, if not recognized and treated promptly, can result in long-term urinary dysfunction. Many factors influencing PUR have been proposed, but no study has been conducted to investigate the relationship between them. This study is aimed at determining the influencing factors of PUR and to explore the relationship between them. Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional survey using self-made questionnaires was conducted among 372 puerperae in a Grade A hospital in Guangzhou, China, from April to September 2022. SPSS25.0 and AMOS24.0 were used for data analysis, and a path analysis model was established to determine the relationship between the influencing factors. Results: The incidence of PUR was 49.85%. Residence, the level of postpartum pain, and the change of postnatal urination position had a direct effect on PUR. Episiotomy and analgesic duration have both direct and indirect effects on PUR. Forceps delivery, perineal edema and oxytocin had an indirect effect on PUR. Variables could influence the occurrence of PUR by mediating the analgesic duration, episiotomy, postpartum pain level, and postnatal urination position changes. Conclusions: This study provides an empirical model to illustrate the relationship between PUR and related factors in women who delivered under intraspinal anesthesia. In future management, more attention should be paid to women who live in cities, have higher levels of postpartum pain, longer analgesic duration, higher grade of perineal edema, and received episiotomy, forceps delivery, and oxytocin during labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer context is a pivotal social process shaping adolescent health behavior. Using a representative youth cohort, we aimed to characterize the dynamics in friendship networks among Taiwanese adolescents, and further examined the reciprocal effects between substance use and delinquent behaviors that we hypothesized to manifest via the impacts of dynamic changes of the friendship network. The data were retrieved from the Taiwan Youth Project (N = 2,566; 51% boys; Mage at baseline = 12.3 ± 0.48 years). Participants were requested to nominate their best friends at school and to report their substance use, delinquent behaviors, and pubertal development. Stochastic actor-based modeling was used for the networking analyses. While taking their network structure into account, adolescents select friends based on similarity in class at school (β = 0.929 [standard error = 0.088], p < 0.001) and gender (β = 1.787 [0.188], p < 0.001), but not in their externalizing behaviors. In the behavior dynamics submodel, affiliation with male friends (β = 0.452 [0.178], p = 0.005) and peer substance use status (β = 0.613 [0.124], p = 0.004) were associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in delinquent behavior. Our findings highlight the influence of peers on the co-development of substance use and delinquent behavior in adolescents. Workers in healthcare and the public health sector should be aware of this and formulate prevention policies accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two laser crystals of Er3+:KLu(WO4)2 and Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 were successfully grown using the top-seeded solution growth technique with K2W2O7 as flux. Segregation coefficients of Er3+ ions in Er3+:KLu(WO4)2 and Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystals were 0.664 and 0.9, respectively. The density of the Pr3+ ions in the Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystal was 1.19 × 1019 cm−3, and the segregation coefficient was 0.18. The absorption and fluorescence spectra of the two crystals with Y-oriented polarization (parallel to the b axis) light were recorded. Judd-Ofelt (J-O) theory was adapted to analyze the main parameters and they were crucial for evaluating the potential of laser crystals with output wavelength of 2.7 µm. Results showed that the Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystal had good J-O intensity parameter Ωt (t = 2, 4, 6) and relatively large emission cross section at 2.7 µm. The lifetimes of the 4I11/2 state in the Er3+:KLu(WO4)2 and Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystals were fitted to be 87.13 ms and 79.36 ms, respectively. The lifetime of 4I13/2 state decreased sharply from 5.59 s in Er3+:KLu(WO4)2 to 53.19 ms with co-doping of Er3+ ions and Pr3+ ions. Laser oscillation was accomplished at 2.7 µm wavelength using a b-cut Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystal sample with size of 4 × 4 × 10 mm3. Finally, a continuous-wave (CW) laser was realized with the highest slope of 15.94%. The center wavelength of the laser output was 2740 nm, and its FWHM was approximately 1.8 nm. Therefore, the Er3+/Pr3+:KLu(WO4)2 crystal has remarkable potential for generating 2.7 µm lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mango (Mangifera indica) is a widely enjoyed tropical fruit that is rich in numerous nutrients, but it is also a common allergenic fruit that can induce anaphylactic shock in some mango-sensitized individuals. To protect allergic consumers, a TaqMan real-time PCR is developed herein by targeting the major mango allergen GAPDH gene to identify mango in foods. To prevent interference by other ingredients in the foods, an internal amplification control (IAC) is established and incorporated into the developed qPCR. Under the optimized assay conditions, the developed assay can detect mango genomic DNA down to 10 pg/μL and effectively differentiate mango from 21 other fruits and vegetables. In the incurred assay, the developed qPCR has a limit of detection (LOD) of 10 μg/g and 330 μg/g of mango powder in juice and cookie, respectively. The assay exhibits a board spectrum, successfully detecting six mango cultivars, and has good accuracy and precision as calculated intra- and inter-assay CV values < 10%. Forty commercial processed foods were simultaneously analyzed using the developed method and a qPCR method that is officially recognized by the Taiwan FDA. The sensitivity and specificity of this assay were estimated to be 85% and 100%, respectively, based on the ingredient labeling of these products. Hence, this developed qPCR is an effective method for screening mango in processed foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The I Sonchus i genus in the family Compositae comprises 50 species, spread over Europe, Africa, and Asia [[1]]. As one part of our work on bioactive metabolites from the plant kingdom [[9]], the chemical constituents of I S. brachyotus i were studied and 17 compounds were isolated and characterized. The structures of the isolated compounds were identified on the basis of spectroscopic analyses, including SP 1 sp H and SP 13 sp C NMR spectroscopy. Compounds B 2 b , B 4 b - B 10 b , and B 12 b - B 16 b were first separated from I Sonchus i genus, and all of the compounds were isolated from I S. brachyotus i for the first time. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, two arctangent-based normalized subband adaptive filter (Arc-NSAF) algorithms are proposed, which are derived from two different forms of arctangent cost function and their difference is the order of the arctangent computation and the summation operation of the normalized subband error signal. Benefiting from the excellent property of the arctangent function for suppressing impulsive interferences, the proposed Arc-NSAF algorithms not only possess good robustness against impulsive interferences, but also obtain faster convergence rate for the colored input signals. To further improve the convergence performance of the Arc-NSAFs when identifying sparse system, the proportionate versions of the Arc-NSAF algorithms are also proposed. Simulation results have demonstrated the superiority of the proposed algorithms in impulsive interferences environments as compared to their respective competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing work of XML keyword search focus on how to find relevant and meaningful data fragments for a query, assuming each keyword is intended as part of it. However, in XML keyword search, user queries usually contain irrelevant or mismatched terms, typos etc, which may easily lead to empty or meaningless results. In this paper, we introduce the problem of content-aware XML keyword query refinement, where the search engine should judiciously decide whether a user query Q needs to be refined during the processing of Q, and find a list of promising refined query candidates which guarantee to have meaningful matching results over the XML data, without any user interaction or a second try. To achieve this goal, we build a novel content-aware XML keyword query refinement framework consisting of two core parts: (1) we build a query ranking model to evaluate the quality of a refined query RQ, which captures the morphological/semantical similarity between Q and RQ and the dependency of keywords of RQ over the XML data; (2) we integrate the exploration of RQ candidates and the generation of their matching results as a single problem, which is fulfilled within a one-time scan of the related keyword inverted lists optimally. Finally, an extensive empirical study verifies the efficiency and effectiveness of our framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel normalized subband adaptive filter algorithm with combined step size is proposed for acoustic echo cancellation, which is derived by utilizing a variable mixing parameter to combine a large step size and a small one, thus providing fast convergence rate and small steady-state error. The mixing parameter is indirectly updated by utilizing the stochastic gradient method which minimizes the sum of squared subband errors. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of the convergence rate and steady-state error as compared to other algorithms mentioned in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the robustness of subband adaptive filter (SAF) against impulsive interferences, we propose two modified SAF algorithms with an individual scale function for each subband, which are derived by maximizing correntropy-based cost function and minimizing logarithm-based cost function, respectively, called MCC-SAF and LC-SAF. Whenever the impulsive interference happens, the subband scale functions can sharply drop the step size, which eliminate the influence of outliers on the tap-weight vector update. Therefore, the proposed algorithms are robust against impulsive interferences and exhibit the faster convergence rate and better tracking capability than the sign SAF (SSAF) algorithm. Besides, in impulse-free interference environments, the proposed algorithms achieve similar convergence performance as the normalized SAF (NSAF) algorithm. Simulation results have demonstrated the performance of our proposed algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Pr:KLu(WO) crystal with dimension of 30 × 30 × 15 mm was grown in the KWO flux. A slice was cut from the crystal, and the polarized absorption and fluorescence spectra were measured at room temperature. Based on the J-O theory, the oscillator intensity parameters Ω ( t = 2, 4, 6), spontaneous emission probabilities and branch ratios were estimated and good results had been obtained. Furthermore, the crystal has a relatively large emission cross-section in the region of 615-630 nm with the highest value of 14.5 × 10 cm, which indicates that the crystal is good for the application in red emission laser. The emission decay time for D and P multiplets was discussed. By adapting the I-H model to fit the emission decay curves, the lifetime for D at 607 nm and P at 615 nm are 19.72 μs and 8.95 μs, respectively. Then the corresponding fluorescence quantum efficiencies of the two multiplets reach 83.7 % and 87.9 %, respectively. All the studies illustrate that this crystal is potential in red emission laser application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new compound, 2-(3-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-3-methoxypropyl)-5-methoxycyclohexa-2,5-diene-1,4-dione ( 1), was isolated from the heartwood of Dalbergia cochinchinensis along with 15 known compounds, 2,4-dihydroxy-5-methoxybenzophenone ( 2), 3,5-dimethoxy-4′ -hydroxy-trans-stilbene ( 3), 7,8-dihydroxyflavanone ( 4), 2,3-dimethoxyxanthone ( 5), medicarpin ( 6), galangin ( 7), 5,7-dihydroxy-2′,3′,4′- trimethoxyisoflavanone ( 8), 6-hydroxy-2-(2-hydroxy-4-methoxyphenyl)-benzofuran ( 9), 3′-O-methylviolanone ( 10), 2′,5,7-trihydroxy-4′-methoxyisoflavone ( 11), 7-hydroxy-6-methoxyflavone ( 12), formononetin ( 13), pterocarpol ( 14), 2′-hydroxyformonetin ( 15), and naringenin ( 16). Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic means and comparison with published data. Compounds 1-5, 7-9, and 11 were isolated from Dalbergia L. for the first time, and compounds 1-11, 13, 15, and 16 were isolated from D. cochinchinensis for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposed is a novel variable step size normalized subband adaptive filter algorithm, which assigns an individual step size for each subband by minimizing the mean square of the noise-free a posterior subband error. Furthermore, a noniterative shrinkage method is used to recover the noise-free priori subband error from the noisy subband error signal. Simulation results using the colored input signals have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm not only has better tracking capability than the existing subband adaptive filter algorithms, but also exhibits lower steady-state error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is known for its lymph node metastasis and outstanding morbidity and mortality. Thus, improvement in the current knowledge regarding the molecular mechanism of GC is urgently needed to discover novel biomarkers involved in its progression and prognosis. Several long, non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in gastric tumorigenesis and metastasis. However, the signature of lncRNA-associated metastasis in GC is not fully clarified.Methods: We determined the lncRNA and mRNA expression profiles correlating to GC with or without lymph node-metastasis based on microarray analysis. Twelve differentially expressed lncRNAs and six differentially expressed mRNAs were validated by real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay.Results: The relationships between the aberrantly expressed lncRNAs XLOC_010235 or RP11-789C1.1 and lymph node metastasis, pathologic metastasis status, distal metastasis and TNM (tumour, node, and metastasis) stage were found to be significantly different. Via survival analysis, patients who had high-expressed XLOC_010235 or low-expressed RP11-789C1.1 showed significantly worse survival than patients with inverse-expressed XLOC_010235 or RP11-789C1.1.Conclusion: In summary, this current study highlights some evidence regarding the potential role of lncRNAs in GC and posits that specific lncRNAs can be identified as novel, poor prognostic biomarkers in GC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have studied the vortex dynamics of the Tl KFeSe single crystal through the measurements of temperature and magnetic field dependencies of electrical resistivity. Due to the existence of intra-layer Fe-site vacancy and inter-layer Josephson coupling, it is found that the pinning of vortices is very strong, which hinders the flux flow. A very high upper critical field H value and a moderate anisotropy parameter γ are obtained, similar to those found in YBaCuO superconductor. These results suggest that the Tl KFeSe superconductor has a good sustainability under high magnetic field, indicating a good potential for application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce the steady-state misalignment of real-coefficient proportionate affine projection sign algorithm (RP-APSA) for sparse impulse responses, a memory RP-APSA is proposed in this paper by exploiting the historical values of proportionate factors, called MP-APSA. Further, to improve the robustness of MP-APSA and the recently proposed memory-improved RP-APSA (MIP-APSA) for impulse responses with mutative sparseness, two sparseness-controlled algorithms (SC-MP-APSA and SC-MIP-APSA) are developed by estimating the sparseness of the impulse response at each iteration. Simulation results in the context of acoustic echo cancellation show that the proposed algorithms retain good robustness against impulsive interferences. More importantly, the proposed sparseness-controlled algorithms can not only obtain low steady-state misalignment in both the sparse and dispersive situations, but also adapt to the variations in the sparseness of the impulse response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data/timing formatter is a key module in automatic electronics test equipment; it formats the test data to the desired wave shape and places the timing edges at the designated locations. In this work, we investigate the design and implementation of the FPGA-based data/timing formatter. Compared to its ASIC counterpart, the FPGA-based formatter is more flexible because it can be reconfigured to best fit the target test specifications. However, routing uncertainty and limited types of available logic and interconnect resources also pose great challenges. This work proposes a formatter design that is suitable for FPGA implementation. Several high-linearity FPGA-based programmable delay lines are developed. According to its characteristics, each type of delay lines is assigned a different role in the formatter. The formatter is also equipped with a calibration unit to further improve the edge placement resolution and accuracy. A 100-Msps FPGA-based data/timing formatter with 20-ps edge placement resolution has been implemented on an FPGA development board to validate our ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roles of ionotropic purinergic (P2X) receptors in chronic pain have been intensively investigated. However, the contribution of metabotropic purinergic (P2Y) receptors to pathological pain is controversial. In the present study, using single cell RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) and single cell nested-PCR techniques, we examined the expression of P2X, P2X, P2Y and P2Y mRNA transcripts in retrogradely labeled cutaneous sensory neurons from mouse lumber dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) following peripheral inflammation. The percentage of cutaneous sensory neurons expressing P2Y mRNA transcripts increased after complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) treatment. Particularly, the P2Y mRNA transcripts were more frequently detected in small-diameter cutaneous neurons from CFA-treated mice than those from control mice. Coexpression of P2Y and P2X (P2X or P2X) mRNAs was more frequently observed in cutaneous sensory neurons from CFA-treated mice relative to controls. Pain behavioral tests showed that the blockade of P2Y receptors by suramin attenuated mechanical allodynia evoked either by CFA or uridine triphosphate (UTP), an endogenous P2Y and P2Y agonist. These results suggest that chronic inflammatory pain enhances expression of P2Y receptor in peripheral sensory neurons that innervate the injured tissue and the activation of P2Y receptors contributes to mechanical allodynia following inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]