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Background The principal objective of this project was to investigate the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) gene mutation characteristics of lung cancer patients, which can provide a molecular basis for explaining the clinicopathological features, epidemiology and use of targeted therapy in lung cancer patients in the coal-producing areas of East Yunnan. Methodology We collected 864 pathologically confirmed lung cancer patients’ specimens in First People’s Hospital of Qujing City of Yunnan Province from September 2016 to September 2021. We thereafter employed Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology to detect all exons present in the EGFR gene. Results The overall mutation frequency of the EGFR gene was 47.22%. The frequency of EGFR gene mutations in the tissue, plasma, and cytology samples were found to be 53.40%, 23.33%, and 62.50%, respectively. Univariate analysis indicated that the coal-producing areas and Fuyuan county origin were significantly associated with relatively low EGFR gene mutation frequency. Female, non-smoking history, adenocarcinoma, non-brain metastasis, and tissue specimens were found to be related to high EGFR gene mutation frequency. Multivariate logistic regression analysis suggested the lung cancer patients in the central area of Qujing City, stage Ia, non-coal-producing areas, non-Fuyuan origin, and non-Xuanwei origin were more likely to develop EGFR gene mutations. The most common mutations were L858R point mutation (33.09%) and exon 19 deletion (19-del) (21.32%). Interestingly, the mutation frequency of G719X (p = 0.001) and G719X + S768I (p = 0.000) in the coal-producing areas were noted to be more significant than those in non-coal-producing regions. Conclusion This findings of this study might be important in establishing the correlation between routine using NGS for EGFR gene mutation diagnosis and clinical practice in the lung cancer patients.

Air quenched basic oxygen furnace steel slag (BOF-SS) is processed at very high cooling rate, which is expected to have different cementitious properties from conventional slowly cooled BOF-SS. For this purpose, the strength activity indexes of air quenched and slowly cooled BOF-SS are investigated. The results reveal that, under the specific surface area (S) of 490 m 2 /kg, the compressive strength activity index reaches 1. 24 after 28 days with replacement of 15% air quenched BOF-SS and reaches 1.05 after 28 days with replacement of 20% air quenched BOF-SS and 30% granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS). The cementitious activity of air quenched BOF-SS is obviously higher than that of slowly cooled BOF-SS, mainly because it contains more C 3 S and glassy phases.

To change the undesirable present situation of recovering and using converter gas in steel plants in China, the basic approaches to improving the converter gas recovery rate were analyzed theoretically along with the change curves of the converter gas component content, based on the converter gas recovery system of Baosteel No. 2 steel-making plant. The effects of converter device, raw material, air imbibed quantity, recovery restricted condition, and intensity of oxygen blowing on the converter gas recovery rate were studied. Among these, the effects of the air imbibed quantity, recovery restricted condition, and intensity of oxygen blowing are remarkable. Comprehensive measures were put forward for improving the converter gas recovery from the point of devices, etc., and good results were achieved.

This paper presents a design approach for a 34 GHz λ/2 resonator micormachined bandpass filter by using the artificial neural network (ANN) modeling technique. Three important dimensions of the filter layout are used to capture critical input-output relationships in the ANN model. Once fully developed, the ANN model has been shown to be as accurate as an EM simulator and much more efficient computationally in the design optimization of the filter.