Search

Abstract The contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) has been mainly applied to adults to differentiate benign and malignant renal lesions, however, the characteristics of CEUS in pediatric has not been as well studied as in adults. In the present work, the eligible pediatric patients who underwent renal CEUS between March 2016 and February 2023 were retrospectively analyzed. It included 20 lesions (median diameter, 8.4 cm; range, 1.8–18.0 cm) from 20 patients (median age, 28.0 months; range, 3.0–212.0 months; 9 boys) in malignant group and 5 lesions (median diameter, 3.8 cm; range, 1.3–7.5 cm) from 5 patients (median age, 25.0 months; range, 0.7–216.0 months; 2 boys) in benign group. The diagnostic performance was assessed. Nonparametric and Chi-square tests were performed. With hyperenhancement plus wash-out, CEUS showed a sensitivity of 95.0% [95% confidence interval (CI): 75.1%, 99.9%], a specificity of 80.0% (CI: 28.4%, 99.5%), a positive predictive value of 95.0% (CI: 75.1%, 99.9%) and a negative predictive value of 80.0% (CI: 28.4%, 99.5%). It suggested that CEUS is a valuable technique for identifying between malignant and benign renal lesions in children.

In this paper, we study a class of coupled fractional conformable Langevin differential system and inclusion on the circular graph. On the one hand, the existence and uniqueness of solutions of this coupled fractional conformable Langevin differential system are studied by fixed point theorems. On the other hand, in the multivalued case, the existence of at least one solution of the fractional conformable Langevin differential inclusion on the circular graph is discussed and the sufficient conditions are established by using Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative and Covitz–Nadler fixed point theorem.

Abstract Background Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental disorder with heavy disease burden. Females with BD are special populations who suffer a lot from childhood trauma, social support, cognitive deficits, and suicidality. In this study, the relationship among childhood trauma, social support, and clinical symptoms of BD was investigated and the risk factors for suicidality were explored in female patients with BD. Methods This study included 57 drug-naive female BD patients, 64 female BD patients with long-term medication, and 50 age-matched female healthy controls. Childhood trauma, social support, clinical symptoms, cognition, and suicidality (suicide ideation, suicide plan, suicide attempt, suicide frequency) were measured with scales. Results Compared with healthy controls, females with BD showed higher levels of childhood trauma and suicidality, and lower levels of social support and cognitive deficits. In the drug-naïve BD group, social support mediated the relationship between childhood trauma and insomnia symptoms (indirect effect: ab = 0.025). In the BD with long-term medication group, mania symptom was associated with suicide plan (OR = 1.127, p = 0.030), childhood trauma was associated with suicide attempt (OR = 1.088, p = 0.018), and years of education (OR = 0.773, p = 0.028), childhood trauma (OR = 1.059, p = 0.009), and delayed memory (OR= 1.091, p= 0.016) was associated with suicide frequency (OR = 1.091, p = 0.016). Conclusions This study provides initial evidence that social support partially explains the relationship between childhood trauma and clinical symptoms in females with BD. Additionally, mania symptoms, childhood trauma, and delayed memory were risk factors for suicidality. Interventions providing social support and improving cognitive function may be beneficial for females with BD who are exposed to childhood trauma and with high suicide risk.

The study is being applied to a model involving silane and on cyclopentasilane graph. We consider a graph with labeled vertices by 0 or 1 inspired by the molecular structure of cyclopentasilane. In this paper, we first study the existence of solutions to fractional conformable boundary value problem on the cyclopentasilane graph by applying Scheafer and Krasnoselskii fixed point theorems. Furthermore, we investigate different kinds of Ulam stability such as Ulam-Hyers stable, generalized Ulam-Hyers stable, Ulam-Hyers-Rassias stable and generalized Ulam-Hyers-Rassias stable for the given problem. Finally, we give an example to support our important results.

This article combines (k,Θ)-Hilfer fractional calculus with glucose molecular graph, defines fractional differential and inclusion systems on each edge of a glucose molecular graph by the assumption that 0 or 1 marks the vertices, and studies the single-valued and multi-valued (k,Θ)-Hilfer type fractional boundary value problems on the glucose molecular graph. On the one hand, the existence and uniqueness of solutions in the single-valued case are proved by using several fixed point theorems. On the other hand, in the multi-valued case, we consider that the right side of the inclusion has convex valued and non-convex value. By applying Leray-Schauder nonlinear alternative method of multi-valued maps as well as Covitz-Nadler fixed point theorem of multi-valued contractions, two existence results are obtained respectively. On this basis, we also get the topological structure of the solution set, which is a pioneering work for (k,Θ)-Hilfer fractional differential inclusion on the glucose graph. Finally, several examples are provided to verify the reliability of our proposed results.

Abstract Batteries dissolving active materials in liquids possess safety and size advantages compared to solid‐based batteries, yet the intrinsic liquid properties lead to material cross‐over induced self‐discharge both during cycling and idle when the electrolytes are in contact, thus highly efficient and cost‐effective solutions to minimize cross‐over are in high demand. An ultra‐low self‐discharge aqueous|organic membraneless battery using dichloromethane (CH2Cl2) and tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBABr) added to a zinc bromide (ZnBr2) solution as the electrolyte is demonstrated. The polybromide is confined in the organic phase, and bromine (Br2) diffusion‐induced self‐discharge is minimized. At 90% state of charge (SOC), the membraneless ZnBr2|TBABr (Z|T) battery shows an open circuit voltage (OCV) drop of only 42 mV after 120 days, 152 times longer than the ZnBr2 battery, and superior to 102 previous reports from all types of liquid active material batteries. The 120‐day capacity retention of 95.5% is higher than commercial zinc‐nickel (Zn–Ni) batteries and vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB, electrolytes stored separately) and close to lithium‐ion (Li‐ion) batteries. Z|T achieves >500 cycles (2670 h, 0.5 m electrolyte, 250 folds of membraneless ZnBr2 battery) with ≈100% Coulombic efficiency (CE). The simple and cost‐effective design of Z|T provides a conceptual inspiration to regulate material cross‐over in liquid‐based batteries to realize extended operation.

This paper introduces a new concept of Caputo type interval-valued fractional conformable calculus. Based on this, some theorems and properties related to fractional conformable calculus are presented. As an application, this paper attempts to investigate an initial value problem of functional integro-differential equations with Caputo type interval-valued fractional conformable derivatives. We not only prove the existence of at least one solution, the extremal solutions and the unique solution of the above problem, but also establish some monotone iterative sequences converging to the extremal solutions. More meaningful and important, some comparison principles and generalized Gronwall inequality related to the proposed problem are also proved. Two examples are presented to illustrate the main results.We firmly believe that the concept of interval-valued fractional conformable calculus, new comparison principles and generalized Gronwall inequality introduced here can be conveniently applied to qualitative analysis of a variety of new interval-valued fractional conformable biological models, economic models, etc., which will better describe and explain various complex phenomena derived from the real world.

As one of the major energy-intensive industries, petroleum pipelines are facing with huge pressure from carbon-neutral policies. Conforming to green development, the traditional pipeline industry should advance intelligent transition and take the reduction of carbon emissions as a strategic priority. Focusing on effective and low-carbon operation of petroleum pipelines, this review elaborates the challenges and solutions covering four aspects, including the system reform, intelligent monitoring and control, intelligent operation management and integrating with the clean energy transmission network. The related literature and industrial practices have been systematically reviewed to conclude with general guidelines and examples for competitiveness enhancement, energy saving and emission reduction. Future directions are also proposed on the basis of the research gaps.

In this paper, we consider two kinds of nonlinear Schrödinger equations with the fractional Laplacian and Hardy potential (λ|x|s, 0

Pipelines are the essential transportation infrastructure of the energy system, undertaking most transportation tasks of oil and gas on land. In a critical period of the energy transition, it is necessary to comprehensively review the research on pipeline transport capacity management for better planning. This paper adopted the bibliometric analysis method to analyze the related literature quantitatively. Moreover, we found that studies under different market modes have different characteristics through the review of the existing studies. Based on this, the research framework of this issue is constructed. We summarized the general situation and research status of pipeline capacity management for each market mode. Finally, the shortcomings of current research and the direction of future development were discussed.

In this paper, the authors study a initial boundary value problems (IBVP) for space-time fractional conformable partial differential equation (PDE). Several inequalities of fractional conformable derivatives at extremum points are presented and proved. Based on these inequalities at extremum points, a new maximum principle for the space-time fractional conformable PDE is demonstrated. Moreover, the maximum principle is employed to prove a new comparison principle and estimation of solutions. Beside that, the uniqueness and continuous dependence of the solution of the space-time fractional conformable PDE are demonstrated.

This paper investigates the positive radial solutions of a nonlinear k-Hessian system. ΛSk1/kλD2z1Sk1/kλD2z1=bxφz1,z2, x∈ℝNΛSk1/kλD2z2Sk1/kλD2z2=hxψz1,z2, x∈ℝN, where Λ is a nonlinear operator and b, h, φ, ψ are continuous functions. With the help of Keller–Osserman type conditions and monotone iterative technique, the positive radial solutions of the above problem are given in cases of finite, infinite, and semifinite. Our results complement the work in by Wang, Yang, Zhang, and Baleanu (Radial solutions of a nonlinear k-Hessian system involving a nonlinear operator, Commun. Nonlinear Sci. Numer. Simul. 91(2020), 105396).

Abstract This study establishes some new maximum principle which will help to investigate an IBVP for multi-index Hadamard fractional diffusion equation. With the help of the new maximum principle, this paper ensures that the focused multi-index Hadamard fractional diffusion equation possesses at most one classical solution and that the solution depends continuously on its initial boundary value conditions.

Some oilfields in China encounter operating problems on water injection pipeline networks. Due to the unreasonable planning of the pipeline, water cannot be transported to the end of the pipeline and injected into the wells. Also, a large amount of water is repeated transported. This paper aims to deal with the above issues by proposing a method of using pipeline pumps to pressurise the water injection pipeline network, which can improve the water supply capacity of the pipeline network, and reduce the energy consumption of water injection. The pipeline pump has the characteristics of convenient installation, compact structure, and wide application range. To effectively utilise the pipeline pump in the water injection network, a pipeline pump boosting optimisation model is developed, taking the lowest cost of the pump and operating energy consumption of the water injection system as the objective function, and considering the constraints of water injection, pipeline network hydraulics and pump operation. An oilfield in China is studied as an example, the results show that the proposed model can optimise the pump installation position and operations. The operating cost was reduced by 184 k CNY, and the total annual cost was saved by 154 k CNY. The maximum water injection increment can reach 4,700 m3/d, which improves the water supply capacity of the water injection pipe network, and the needs of oilfield water injection planning can be satisfied.

In view of the limited number of extracted sound features, the lack of in-depth analysis of applicable sound features, and the lack of in-depth study of the selection basis and optimization process of classification models in the existing broiler sound classification or recognition research, the author proposes a recognition method for broiler sound signals based on multi-domain sound features and classification models. The implementation process is divided into the training stage and the testing stage. In the training stage, the experimental area is built, and multiple segments of broiler sound signals are collected and filtered. Through sub-frame processing and endpoint detection, the combinations of start frames and end frames of multiple sound types in broiler sound signals are obtained. A total of sixty sound features from four aspects of time domain, frequency domain, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), and sparse representation are extracted from each frame signal to form multiple feature vectors. These feature vectors are labeled manually to build the data set. The min-max standardization method is used to process the data set, and the random forest is used to calculate the importance of sound features. Then, thirty sound features that contribute more to the classification effect of the classification model are retained. On this basis, the classification models based on seven classification algorithms are trained, the best-performing classification model based on k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) is obtained, and its inherent parameters are optimized. Then, the optimal classification model is obtained. The test results show that the average classification accuracy achieved by the decision-tree-based classifier (abbreviated as DT classifier) on the data set before and after min–max standardization processing is improved by 0.6%, the average classification accuracy achieved by the DT classifier on the data set before and after feature selection is improved by 3.1%, the average classification accuracy achieved by the kNN-based classification model before and after parameter optimization is improved by 1.2%, and the highest classification accuracy is 94.16%. In the testing stage, for a segment of the broiler sound signal collected in the broiler captivity area, the combinations of the start frames and end frames of multiple sound types in the broiler sound signal are obtained through signal filtering, sub-frame processing, endpoint detection, and other steps. Thirty sound features are extracted from each frame signal to form the data set to be predicted. The optimal classification model is used to predict the labels of each piece of data in the data set to be predicted. By performing majority voting processing on the predicted labels of the data combination corresponding to each sound type, the common labels are obtained; that is, the predicted types are obtained. On this basis, the definition of recognition accuracy for broiler sound signals is proposed. The test results show that the classification accuracy achieved by the optimal classification model on the data set to be predicted is 93.57%, and the recognition accuracy achieved on the multiple segments of the broiler sound signals is 99.12%.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) could regulate various biological processes. Nervous necrosis virus (NNV) is one of the primary germs of the Humpback grouper (Cromileptes altivelis), a commercial fish of great importance for Asian aquaculture. However, there is limited available information on the host-virus interactions of C. altivelis. miRNAs have been shown to play key roles in the host response to infection by a variety of pathogens. To better understand the regulatory mechanism of miRNAs, we constructed miRNA transcriptomes and identified immune-related miRNAs of C. altivelis spleen in response to NNV infection. Reads from the three libraries were mapped onto the Danio rerio reference genome. As a result, a total of 942 mature miRNAs were determined, with 266 known miRNAs and 676 novel miRNAs. Among them, thirty-two differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRs) were identified compared to the PBS control. These DEmiRs were targeted on 895 genes, respectively, by using miRanda v3.3a. Then, 14 DEmiRs were validated by qRT-PCR and showed consistency with those obtained from high-throughput sequencing. In order to study the relationship between viral infection and host miRNA, a cell line from C. altivelis brain (CAB) was used to examine the expressions of five known DEmiRs (miR-132-3p, miR-194a, miR-155, miR-203b-5p, and miR-146) during NNV infection. The results showed that one miRNA, cal-miRNA-155, displayed significantly increased expression in response to the virus infection. Subsequently, it was proved that overexpression of cal-miR-155 enhanced cell apoptosis with or without NNV infection and inhibited virus replication in CAB cells. Oppositely, the cal-miRNA-155 inhibitor markedly suppressed apoptosis in CAB cells. The results of the apoptosis-related genes mRNA expression also showed the regulation of cal-miR-155 on the apoptosis process in CAB cells. These findings verify that miR-155 might exert a function as a pro-apoptotic factor in reply to NNV stimulation in CAB cells and help us further study the molecular mechanisms of the pathogenesis of NNV in C. altivelis.

This paper studies the existence of extremal solutions for a nonlinear boundary value problem of Bagley–Torvik differential equations involving the Caputo–Fabrizio-type fractional differential operator with a non-singular kernel. With the help of a new inequality with a Caputo–Fabrizio fractional differential operator, the main result is obtained by applying a monotone iterative technique coupled with upper and lower solutions. This paper concludes with an illustrative example.

Abstract By using monotone iterative method, the extremal solutions and the unique solution are obtained for a nonlinear fractional p-Laplacian boundary value problem involving fractional conformable derivatives and nonlocal integral boundary conditions. Comparison theorems related to the proposed study are also proved. The paper concludes with an illustrative example for the main result.

Abstract This paper is devoted to the study of Gronwall–Bellman-type inequalities on an arbitrary time scale T $\mathbb{T}$. We investigate some new explicit bounds of a certain class of nonlinear retarded dynamic inequalities of Gronwall–Bellman type on time scales. These inequalities extend some known dynamic inequalities on time scales. We also generalize and unify some continuous inequalities and their corresponding discrete analogues. To illustrate the benefits of our work, we present some applications of these results. The main results will be proved by using some analysis techniques and a simple consequence of the Keller’s chain rule on time scales.

This paper proposes a novel saliency model that reveals the long-term info to boost detection accuracy. The saliency estimation of conventional methods heavily depends on the locally revealed short-term info, and they could easily be trapped into imperfect configurations. In contrast, our method can take full consideration of common consistency of those reliable low-level predictions from the perspective of the entire video sequence. Meanwhile, we adopt a newly designed self-learning strategy which is guided by the low-rank analysis to adaptively reveal the long-term spatial-temporal video coherency. To avoid the error accumulations, we also propose a novel non-local descriptor to enhance the discriminative power of the feature space. Thus, the newly revealed the long-term info can be directly regarded as a trustful indicator to sustain additional low-rank analysis, which would serve as the basis toward selective fusion and significantly enhance the detection accuracy.

Hadamard fractional calculus theory has made many scholars enthusiastic and excited because of its special logarithmic function integral kernel. In this paper, we focus on a class of Caputo-Hadamard-type fractional turbulent flow model involving $p(t)$ -Laplacian operator and Erdélyi-Kober fractional integral operator. The $p(t)$ -Laplacian operator involved in our model is the non-standard growth operator which arises in many fields such as elasticity theory, physics, nonlinear electrorheological fluids, ect. It is the first paper that studies a Caputo-Hadamard-type fractional turbulent flow model involving $p(t)$ -Laplacian operator and Erdélyi-Kober fractional integral operator. Different from the constant growth operator, The non-standard growth characteristics of $p(t)$ -Laplacian operator bring great difficulties and challenges. In order to achieve a good survey result, we take advantage of the popular mixed monotonic iterative technique. With the help of this approach, we obtain the uniqueness of positive solution for the new Caputo-Hadamard-type fractional turbulent flow model. In the end, an example is also given to illustrate the main results.

By developing the direct method of moving planes, we study the radial symmetry of nonnegative solutions for a fractional Laplacian system with different negative powers: (−Δ)α2u(x)+u−γ(x)+v−q(x)=0,x∈RN, (−Δ)β2v(x)+v−σ(x)+u−p(x)=0,x∈RN, u(x)≳|x|a,v(x)≳|x|bas|x|→∞, where α,β∈(0,2), and a,b>0 are constants. We study the decay at infinity and narrow region principle for the fractional Laplacian system with different negative powers. The same results hold for nonlinear Hénon-type fractional Laplacian systems with different negative powers.

In this paper, we investigate a class of nonlinear Schrödinger systems containing a nonlinear operator under Osgood-type conditions. By employing the iterative technique, the existence conditions for entire positive radial solutions of the above problem are given under the cases where components μ and ν are bounded, μ and ν are blow-up, and one of the components is bounded, while the other is blow-up. Finally, we present two examples to verify our results.

Existing material identification for loose particles inside sealed relays focuses on the selection and optimization of classification algorithms, which ignores the features in the material dataset. In this paper, we propose a feature optimization method of material identification for loose particles inside sealed relays. First, for the missing value problem, multiple methods were used to process the material dataset. By comparing the identification accuracy achieved by a Random-Forest-based classifier (RF classifier) on the different processed datasets, the optimal direct-discarding method was obtained. Second, for the uneven data distribution problem, multiple methods were used to process the material dataset. By comparing the achieved identification accuracy, the optimal min–max standardization method was obtained. Then, for the feature selection problem, an innovative multi-index–fusion feature selection method was designed, and its superiority was verified through several tests. Test results show that the identification accuracy achieved by RF classifier on the dataset was improved from 59.63% to 63.60%. Test results of ten material verification datasets show that the identification accuracies achieved by RF classifier were greatly improved, with an average improvement of 3.01%. This strongly promotes research progress in loose particle material identification and is an important supplement to existing loose particle detection research. This is also the highest loose particle material identification accuracy achieved to in aerospace engineering, which has important practical value for improving the reliability of aerospace systems. Theoretically, it can be applied to feature optimization in machine learning.

This paper first introduces a generalized fractional p-Laplacian operator (–Δ)sF;p. By using the direct method of moving planes, with the help of two lemmas, namely decay at infinity and narrow region principle involving the generalized fractional p-Laplacian, we study the monotonicity and radial symmetry of positive solutions of a generalized fractional p-Laplacian equation with negative power. In addition, a similar conclusion is also given for a generalized Hénon-type nonlinear fractional p-Laplacian equation.

This paper considers the initial boundary value problem for the time-space fractional delayed diffusion equation with fractional Laplacian. By using the semigroup theory of operators and the monotone iterative technique, the existence and uniqueness of mild solutions for the abstract time-space evolution equation with delay under some quasimonotone conditions are obtained. Finally, the abstract results are applied to the time-space fractional delayed diffusion equation with fractional Laplacian operator, which improve and generalize the recent results of this issue.

Purpose: To compare the reliability and performance of Supersonic shear wave elastography (S-SWE) and Toshiba shear wave elastography (T-SWE) in the diagnosis of biliary atresia (BA) and assessment of liver fibrosis among jaundiced infants suspected of BA. Material and Methods: A total of 35 patients with suspected BA who underwent both S-SWE and T-SWE examinations were prospectively included. Diagnostic performances of S-SWE and T-SWE in identifying BA were evaluated. The correlation between two types of SWE values and histological liver fibrosis stages by Metavir scores were investigated in 21 patients with pathology results. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated in 16 patients for inter- and intra-observer agreement. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) analysis was compared using a DeLong test. Results: There were 22 patients with BA and 13 patients without BA. The diagnostic performance of S-SWE was comparable to that of T-SWE (AUC 0.895 vs. 0.822, p = 0.071) in diagnosing BA. The AUCs of S-SWE in predicting liver fibrosis stages were from 0.676 to 1.000 and showed no statistical differences from that of T-SWE (from 0.704 to 1.000, all p > 0.05). T-SWE provided higher inter-operator agreement (ICC 0.990) and intra-operator agreement (ICCs 0.966–0.993), compared with that of S-SWE in a previous study (ICC 0.980 for inter-operator and 0.930–0.960 for intra-operator). Conclusions: For infants suspected of BA, T-SWE had good performances in the diagnosis of BA and the assessment of liver fibrosis compared with S-SWE. Furthermore, T-SWE showed higher measurement reproducibility than S-SWE.

This paper considers a class of Schrödinger elliptic system involving a nonlinear operator. Firstly, under the simple condition on and ', we prove the existence of the entire positive bounded radial solutions. Secondly, by using the iterative technique and the method of contradiction, we prove the existence and nonexistence of the entire positive blow-up radial solutions. Our results extend the previous existence and nonexistence results for both the single equation and systems. In the end, we give two examples to illustrate our results.

In this paper, the authors consider a IBVP for the time-space fractional PDE with the fractional conformable derivative and the fractional Laplace operator. A fractional conformable extremum principle is presented and proved. Based on the extremum principle, a maximum principle for the fractional conformable Laplace system is established. Furthermore, the maximum principle is applied to the linear space-time fractional Laplace conformable differential system to obtain a new comparison theorem. Besides that, the uniqueness and continuous dependence of the solution of the above system are also proved.

Abstract In this article, we first create a new comparison principle for a nonlinear impulsive boundary problem involving different deviating arguments. Then we employ the new result and iterative method to study the existence of the max-minimal solution of a second-order impulsive functional integro-differential equation. The results achieved in this paper are more general and complement many previously known results.

In this article, a family of nonlinear diffusion equations involving multi-term Caputo-Fabrizio time fractional derivative is investigated. Some maximum principles are obtained. We also demonstrate the application of the obtained results by deriving some estimation for solution to reaction-diffusion equations.

Broiler sounds can provide feedback on their own body condition, to a certain extent. Aiming at the noise in the sound signals collected in broiler farms, research on evaluating the filtering methods for broiler sound signals from multiple perspectives is proposed, and the best performer can be obtained for broiler sound signal filtering. Multiple perspectives include the signal angle and the recognition angle, which are embodied in three indicators: signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), root mean square error (RMSE), and prediction accuracy. The signal filtering methods used in this study include Basic Spectral Subtraction, Improved Spectral Subtraction based on multi-taper spectrum estimation, Wiener filtering and Sparse Decomposition using both thirty atoms and fifty atoms. In analysis of the signal angle, Improved Spectral Subtraction based on multi-taper spectrum estimation achieved the highest average SNR of 5.5145 and achieved the smallest average RMSE of 0.0508. In analysis of the recognition angle, the kNN classifier and Random Forest classifier achieved the highest average prediction accuracy on the data set established from the sound signals filtered by Wiener filtering, which were 88.83% and 88.69%, respectively. These are significantly higher than those obtained by classifiers on data sets established from sound signals filtered by other methods. Further research shows that after removing the starting noise in the sound signal, Wiener filtering achieved the highest average SNR of 5.6108 and a new RMSE of 0.0551. Finally, in comprehensive analysis of both the signal angle and the recognition angle, this research determined that Wiener filtering is the best broiler sound signal filtering method. This research lays the foundation for follow-up research on extracting classification features from high-quality broiler sound signals to realize broiler health monitoring. At the same time, the research results can be popularized and applied to studies on the detection and processing of livestock and poultry sound signals, which has extremely important reference and practical value.

Objective: The objective of our study was to investigate the potential association between the occurrence of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) and saccular dysfunction using cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMP) testing.Methods: The databases including Pubmed, Embase, and CENTRAL were systemically searched for case-control literatures investigating saccular dysfunction using cVEMP testing in BPPV patients compared with healthy controls. The literatures were published up to 16 April 2019 and were limited to the English language. All statistical processes were carried out using software Review Manager, version 5.3. Subgroup analysis and sensitive analysis were performed simultaneously.Results: Of the 12 case-control studies confirmed for meta-analysis, p13 latency of cVEMP was assessed in 8 studies, n23 latency in 6 studies, amplitude in 5 studies, asymmetry ratio (AR) in 3 studies, proportion of absent response in 9 studies, and abnormal cVEMP in 8 studies. Compared with healthy controls, the p13 mean latency of cVEMP was longer (MD = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.64–1.12, p < 0.00001), the mean amplitude was lower (SMD = −0.60, 95% CI = −0.80 to −0.41, p < 0.00001), and the proportions of absent response (OR = 8.76, 95% CI = 2.28–33.61, p = 0.002), and abnormal cVEMP (OR = 7.47, 95% CI = 4.65–12.01, p < 0.00001) were higher in BPPV patients. But there was no significant difference in the n23 mean latency (MD = 0.37, 95% CI = −0.23–0.98, p = 0.22) and the AR of cVEMP (MD = 3.95, 95% CI = −4.75–12.65, p = 0.37) between BPPV patients and healthy controls. In the sub-group analysis based on age, only the result of the proportion of absent response of cVEMP indicated a significant difference existed (p = 0.002) between the studies with age-matched controls (OR = 2.78, 95% CI = 1.09–7.10, p = 0.03) and the studies without age-matched controls (OR = 53.85, 95% CI = 10.09–287.13, p < 0.00001). In the sub-group analysis of the proportion of abnormal cVEMP according to the diagnostic criteria of abnormal cVEMP, the result indicated no significant difference existed between the four groups (p = 0.61, I2 = 0%). In the sensitivity analysis, we obtained the consistent results after removing each study sequentially.Conclusion: The meta-analysis reveals that saccular dysfunction may be associated with BPPV occurrence, and neural degeneration in the saccular macula may be a potential pathogenesis for BPPV.

In this paper, we concern a Hadamard-type fractional-order turbulent flow model with deviating arguments. By using some standard fixed point theorems, the uniqueness, existence and nonexistence of solutions of the fractional turbulent flow model are investigated. Our results are new and are well illustrated with the aid of three examples.

In this article, by the use of the lower and upper solutions method, we prove the existence of a positive solution for a Riemann−Liouville fractional boundary value problem. Furthermore, the uniqueness of the positive solution is given. To demonstrate the serviceability of the main results, some examples are presented.

This article studies the generalized Mittag−Leffler stability of Hilfer fractional nonautonomous system by using the Lyapunov direct method. A new Hilfer type fractional comparison principle is also proved. The novelty of this article is the fractional Lyapunov direct method combined with the Hilfer type fractional comparison principle. Finally, our main results are explained by some examples.

In this paper, we investigate nonlinear fractional differential equations of arbitrary order with advanced arguments \begin{equation*}\left\{\begin {array}{ll} D^\alpha_{0^+} u(t) +a(t)f(u(\theta(t)))=0,&03\,\, (n\in\mathbb{N}),~D^\alpha_{0^+}$ is the standard Riemann-Liouville fractional derivative of order $\alpha,$ $f: [0,\infty)\to [0,\infty),$ $a: [0,1]\to (0,\infty)$ and $\theta: (0,1)\to (0,1]$ are continuous functions. By applying fixed point index theory and Leggett-Williams fixed point theorem, sufficient conditions for the existence of multiple positive solutions to the above boundary value problem are established.

In this paper, we prove the existence of solutions for an anti-periodic boundary value problem of nonlinear impulsive fractional differential equations by applying some known fixed point theorems. Some examples are presented to illustrate the main results.

In this paper, we investigate the existence and uniqueness of positive solutions to arbitrary order nonlinear fractional differential equations with advanced arguments. By applying some known fixed point theorems, sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of positive solutions are established.

In this paper, we discuss the existence of solutions for nonlinear qdifference equations with nonlocal q-integral boundary conditions. The first part of the paper deals with some existence and uniqueness results obtained by means of standard tools of fixed point theory. In the second part, sufficient conditions for the existence of extremal solutions for the given problem are established. The results are well illustrated with the aid of examples.

By employing the monotone iterative method, this paper not only establishes the existence of the minimal and maximal positive solutions for multipoint fractional boundary value problem on an unbounded domain, but also develops two computable explicit monotone iterative sequences for approximating the two positive solutions. An example is given for the illustration of the main result.

A new impulsive multi-orders fractional differential equation is studied. The existence and uniqueness results are obtained for a nonlinear problem with fractional integral boundary conditions by applying standard fixed point theorems. An example for the illustration of the main result is presented.

We show the existence and uniqueness of solutions for an antiperiodic boundary value problem of nonlinear impulsive qk-difference equations by applying some well-known fixed point theorems. An example is presented to illustrate the main results.

By employing known Guo-Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem, we investigate the eigenvalue interval for the existence and nonexistence of at least one positive solution of nonlinear fractional differential equation with integral boundary conditions.

We first obtain that subdifferentials of set-valued mapping from finite-dimensional spaces to finite-dimensional possess certain relaxed compactness. Then using this weak compactness, we establish gap functions for generalized Stampacchia vector variational-like inequalities which are defined by means of subdifferentials. Finally, an existence result of generalized weakly efficient solutions for vector optimization problem involving a subdifferentiable and preinvex set-valued mapping is established by exploiting the existence of a solution for the weak formulation of the generalized Stampacchia vector variational-like inequality via a Fan-KKM lemma.

A nonlinear impulsive integrodifference equation within the frame of qk-quantum calculus is investigated by applying using fixed point theorems. The conditions for existence and uniqueness of solutions are obtained.

This paper investigates the existence of nonnegative solutions for nonlinear fractional differential equations with nonlocal fractional integrodifferential boundary conditions on an unbounded domain by means of Leray-Schauder nonlinear alternative theorem. An example is discussed for the illustration of the main work.

We investigate the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the nonlocal boundary value problem for nonlinear impulsive fractional differential equations of order α∈(2,3]. By using some well-known fixed point theorems, sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions are established. Some examples are presented to illustrate the main results.

We study nonlinear impulsive differential equations of fractional order with irregular boundary conditions. Some existence and uniqueness results are obtained by applying standard fixed-point theorems. For illustration of the results, some examples are discussed.

This paper investigates the existence of solutions for a coupled system of nonlinear fractional differential equations with m-point fractional boundary conditions on an unbounded domain. Some standard fixed point theorems are applied to obtain the main results. The paper concludes with two illustrative examples.