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Automatic target recognition has been one of the hottest research in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data processing. Noticing that popular recognition methods cannot utilize multiple features of SAR complex data, a method fused scattering center feature and deep convolutional neural network (CNN) feature is proposed in this letter. This method contains three key parts, namely, scattering center extraction and reconstruction block, CNN feature extraction block, and final feature fusion and classification block. In this process, the scattering center feature and CNN feature are fused at the level of feature maps, which retain the space information of 2-D feature maps. What is more, the proposed half end-to-end strategy realizes the automatic update of weighting parameters in feature extraction network and subnetwork, which promotes a better recognition efficiency. Experimental results on measured SAR data show that the proposed method can achieve better accuracy than other single feature-based methods and feature fusion methods.

With the ability to locate subtle trace objects in the large-scale region, coherent change detection (CCD) has been vital research for a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. Finding the difference between repeat-pass repeat-geometry SAR image pair and extracting impressive trace pixels from difference image, the SAR CCD methods consist of a difference generation module and a difference analysis module. The previous CCD methods mainly pay attention to devising a sophisticated working system or an appropriate statistic model to generalize a well difference image. In this article, we introduce the deep learning method into the CCD algorithm and propose a novel trace detection paradigm, which works by hierarchically fusing the unsupervised coherent statistics model and supervised deep learning model. To be specific, the complex reflectance change detection estimator is introduced to generate a difference image and reduce the false alarm in the low clutter-to-noise region. Since the low correlation in a difference image caused by the natural factors severely affects the detection performance, the multiple statistics based on intensity summation and intensity difference are, respectively, proposed to extract water region and vegetation region and suppress the corresponding false alarm. Then the construction of the coarse-to-fine image makes use of land cover information and trace features while the compressed Unet improves the utilization efficiency of trace samples. Meanwhile, the inductive transfer learning based on unsupervised pretraining and few labeled trace samples helps to train a well detection model. Experiments on measured SAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed methods.

As an important remote sensing means, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has many superiorities to other sensors. How to effectively detect and locate ships in SAR images is also a popular field. In previous ship detection research, most algorithms focus on detecting the horizontal bounding box of ship targets, which ignore the rotation angle of each ships. Thus, too much background noise in the horizontal detection results makes them difficult to describe each ship accurately. Inspired by the powerful feature representation ability of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a novel anchor-free and keypoint-based deep learning method is proposed for oriented ship detection in multiresolution SAR images. Our detector first extracts multilevel features from the input SAR image with a backbone network and feature pyramid network. Next, considering multiscale ships in multiresolution SAR images, we detect different sizes of ships on different levels of feature maps with identical head network structures. In each head network, the classification subnetwork determines each pixel in feature maps as the central pixel of this ship or not, and the regression subnetwork regresses the oriented bounding box for each ship. In the training process, the proposed oriented nonnormalized Gaussian function is used to describe the center point of ship targets, while the nonuniform weighting of the different level loss functions is used to suppress the imbalanced sample distribution. Experimental results on two authoritative SAR-oriented ship detection datasets and two Gaofen-3 images demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed methods.

Face images, as an information carrier, are rich in sensitive information. Direct publication of these images would cause privacy leak, due to their natural weak privacy. Most of the existing privacy protection methods for face images adopt data publication under a non-interactive framework. However, the E-effect under this framework covers the entire image, such that the noise influence is uniform across the image. To solve the problem, this paper proposes region growing publication (RGP), an algorithm for the interactive publication of face images under differential privacy. This innovative algorithm combines the region growing technique with differential privacy technique. The privacy budget E is dynamically allocated, and the Laplace noise is added, according to the similarity between adjacent sub-images. To measure this similarity more effectively, the fusion similarity measurement mechanism (FSMM) was designed, which better adapts to the intrinsic attributes of images. Different from traditional region growing rules, the FSMM fully considers various attributes of images, including brightness, contrast, structure, color, texture, and spatial distribution. To further enhance algorithm feasibility, RGP was extended to atypical region growing publication (ARGP). While RGP limits the region growing direction between adjacent sub-images, ARGP searches for the qualified sub-images across the image, with the aid of the exponential mechanism, thereby expanding the region merging scope of the seed point. The results show that our algorithm can satisfy E-differential privacy, and the denoised image still have a high availability.

Scale and standardization are essential to the prosperity of the breeding industry. During large-scale, standardized breeding, the selective breeding of good livestock breeds hinges on the accurate measurement of body parameters for live animals. However, the complex shooting environment brings several urgent problems, such as the missing of many local data in the point cloud and the difficulty in the automatic acquisition of body data. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a method for parameter measurement of live animals based on the mirror of multiview point cloud. Firstly, the acquisition and stitching principles were given for the multiview point cloud data on body parameters of live animals. Next, the authors presented a way to make up for the data missing areas in the point cloud. Finally, this paper acquires the body mirror data of live animals and scientifically calculates the body parameters. The proposed measurement method was proved effective through experiments.

Dynamic or hybrid configurations for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) are needed when patient physiology or clinical conditions change. Dynamic configurations included configurations converting from veno-arterial (V-A) ECMO or veno-venous (V-V) ECMO to other forms. Hybrid configurations included venous-arteriovenous (V-AV) and venovenous-arterial (VV-A) ECMO. This study retrospectively analyzed a total of 3,814 ECMO cases (3,102 adult cases) reported to the Chinese Society of Extracorporeal Life Support from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019. Eight-three adult patients had dynamic or hybrid ECMO configurations, whose primary diagnoses included cardiogenic shock (33.7%), cardiac arrest (6.0%), acute respiratory failure (39.8%), septic shock (9.6%), multiple trauma (3.6%), pulmonary hypertension (3.6%), and others (3.6%). Configuration changes occurred in 37 patients with the initial configuration of VA (20 to VV, 13 to V-AV, and 4 to VV-A) and 27 with the initial configuration of VV (7 to VA, and 20 to V-AV). A total of 46 (55.4%) patients received hybrid configurations of V-AV and 10 (12.0%) received VV-A. Patients with the initial configuration of VV who converted to other configurations had higher in-hospital mortality (74.1%) than other initial configurations (VA 45.9%, V-AV 76.9%, VV-A 66.7%, P = 0.021). We concluded that dynamic or hybrid ECMO configurations were used in various underlying diseases, in which V-AV was most commonly used. Patients receiving VV ECMO for respiratory support initially, who then converted to other configurations for both respiratory and circulatory support, had significantly worst outcomes among the groups studied. The initial configuration should be selected carefully after thorough assessment of patient condition.

Background The world is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this comprehensive review, we discuss the potential protective effects of (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a major constituent of green tea, against COVID-19. Scope and approach Information from literature of clinical symptoms and molecular pathology of COVID-19 as well as relevant publications in which EGCG shows potential protective activities against COVID-19 is integrated and evaluated. Key findings and conclusions EGCG, via activating Nrf2, can suppress ACE2 (a cellular receptor for SARS-CoV-2) and TMPRSS2, which mediate cell entry of the virus. Through inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 main protease, EGCG may inhibit viral reproduction. EGCG via its broad antioxidant activity may protect against SARS-CoV-2 evoked mitochondrial ROS (which promote SARS-CoV-2 replication) and against ROS burst inflicted by neutrophil extracellular traps. By suppressing ER-resident GRP78 activity and expression, EGCG can potentially inhibit SARS-CoV-2 life cycle. EGCG also shows protective effects against 1) cytokine storm-associated acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome, 2) thrombosis via suppressing tissue factors and activating platelets, 3) sepsis by inactivating redox-sensitive HMGB1, and 4) lung fibrosis through augmenting Nrf2 and suppressing NF-κB. These activities remain to be further substantiated in animals and humans. The possible concerted actions of EGCG suggest the importance of further studies on the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in humans. These results also call for epidemiological studies on potential preventive effects of green tea drinking on COVID-19.

The femoral artery/vein are commonly used for vascular access in clinical practice. The position, adjoining relationship, and anatomic variation of the femoral artery/vein may affect the success rate of catheterization. Clinically, we found a proportion of anatomic variations in the common position of the femoral artery catheterization. We intended to determine the positioning data of the femoral artery/vein to provide a partial clinical basis for catheterization by ultrasound. At the common femoral artery catheterization site, we used ultrasound to collect data on the femoral artery/vein of 208 samples. We found that the distance from the midpoint of the pubic symphysis to the surface position of the femoral artery, the distance between the central points of the femoral artery/vein, and the inner diameter of the femoral artery were significantly correlated with height, weight, and gender, and were not correlated with age, shock, hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. If branching of the femoral artery was higher than the inguinal ligament, the inner diameter of the femoral artery at the catheterization site was significantly reduced. We believe that height, weight, gender, and anatomic variation are important factors influencing the adjoining relationship and the inner diameter of the femoral artery. During extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) catheterization, if an arterial branch is found at the femoral artery catheterization site, it is recommended to adjust the catheterization protocol.

Measuring the temperature and deformation synchronously at elevated temperatures is technically challenging and has become a major concern in the evaluation of mechanical properties. In this study, a simple, easy-to-implement, yet effective monochromatic pyrometry is established for non-contact and full-field temperature measurements, which can significantly reduce the error caused by the camera’s channel crosstalk that commonly occurs in the existing improved two-color method. In addition, high-temperature digital image correlation, combined with band-pass filtering and monochromatic illumination, is applied for deformation measurement. Subsequently, an experimental system was set up to validate the accuracy of the proposed method, which consists of a CCD camera for image capturing, a blue bandpass filter for radiation suppression, blue light irradiation for light compensation, and an infrared pyrometer for temperature recording. The results of the thermal heating experiment on the C/SiC sample proved that the selection of camera channel R in monochromatic pyrometry can reduce the error by channel crosstalk, and the proposed method is applicable for synchronous measurement of temperature and deformation.

Objective: To study the correlation between the mean arterial pressure (MAP) level in the first 6 hours of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) and patients’ neurological outcomes. Methods: Sex, age, basic comorbidities, the time from the first cardiac arrest to the start of CPR, the time from the first cardiac arrest to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), standardized ECMO flow, and the pH value at the beginning of ECMO and after 6 hours were recorded. MAP was recorded every 2 hours during the first 6 hours, and the average was calculated. The lactic acid clearance rate of the first 6 hours was calculated. Evaluated the neurological prognosis of patients at discharge. Then the patients were divided into groups according to their average MAP, and the above variables were compared in groups. Results: Enrolled 63 adult ECPR patients. There were no statistically significant differences in sex, age, basic comorbidities, the time from the first cardiac arrest to the start of conventional CPR, the time from the first cardiac arrest to the start of ECMO, standardized ECMO flow, 6-hour lactic acid clearance rate, pH value at the sixth hour of operation between two groups. The pH value at the start of ECMO, survival rate, and good prognosis rate in low average MAP group were significantly lower. Low average MAP was associated with poor neurological outcomes (relative risk (RR) 1.50, 95% CI 1.17, 1.92). The RR of good neurological outcome for patients with average MAP ⩾65 mmHg was 5.91 (95% CI 1.45, 24.06), and the RR for average MAP ⩾100 mmHg was 1.18 (95% CI 0.19, 7.52). Conclusion: For ECPR patients, average MAP

Yuan Ning,1 Yushuang Shao,1 Jiangyue Zhao,1 Jinsong Zhang,1 Mingwu Wang,2 Yu Qin1 1Department of Ophthalmology, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Eye Hospital of China Medical University, Key Lens Research Laboratory of Liaoning Province, Shenyang, 110005, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, The University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, Arizona, 85711-1824, USACorrespondence: Yu QinDepartment of Ophthalmology, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Eye Hospital of China Medical University, Key Lens Research Laboratory of Liaoning Province, No. 11 Xinhua Road, Heping District, Shenyang, 110005, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 24 62035015Fax +86 24 62035015Email yuqin_3620@163.comObjective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the stability of four different types of aspheric intraocular lenses (IOLs) after implantation.Methods: This retrospective study included 124 eyes implanted with four different types of aspheric IOLs including a one-piece four-loop fixed hydrophilic acrylic IOL, a one-piece flat fixed acrylic IOL, a one-piece two-loop fixed acrylic IOL, and a three-piece two-loop fixed silicone IOL. IOL decentration, tilt, and ocular coma‐like aberration (coma) at one-week, one-month, three-month, and one-year time points were evaluated postoperatively.Results: IOL decentration, tilt, and coma in the AO, 36A, IQ, and KS-AiN implantation groups were statistically significantly different one week and one year postoperatively (p < 0.01). There were significant differences between each of the pairs of groups (p < 0.01), except for coma between the AO and 36A implantation groups one week postoperatively (p > 0.05). When comparing the different time points (ie, one week, one month, three months, and one year postoperatively), IOL decentration, tilt, and coma were significantly different in each group (p < 0.05). IOL decentration, tilt, and coma in each group increased over the period from one week to one year postoperatively. A positive linear correlation was observed between IOL decentration or tilt and coma one year postoperatively (p < 0.01).Conclusion: One-piece multi-point fixed acrylic IOLs demonstrate better stability when compared with three-piece two-point fixed silicone IOLs. IOL decentration, tilt, and coma increase gradually over time. Ocular coma‐like aberrations are influenced by the stability of IOLs.Keywords: stability, aspheric intraocular lens, IOL, decentration, tilt, coma

Nan Chen, Jin-Song Zhang, Tian-Xiao Zhang, Yu-Shuang Shao, Fan Zhang Department of Ophthalmology, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Ophthalmological Center of China Medical University, Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, China Medical University, Shenyang, 110005, Liaoning, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Fan ZhangDepartment of Ophthalmology, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Ophthalmological Center of China Medical University, Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, China Medical University, Shenyang, 110005, Liaoning, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 18704088002Email zhangfan66_nn@163.comObjective: The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of the artificial tear drop administration time on the regularity of the corneal surface in patients with dry eye.Methods: Patients with cataract who were admitted to the hospital from January 2018 to December 2018 were divided into four groups (A, B, C, and D) based on their grade of noninvasive tear break-up time (NIBUT) and the concentration of the eye drops used. Groups A and C were classified as NIBUT grade 1 (NIBUTf of 6– 9 s and NIBUTav of 8– 13 s), and groups B and D were classified as NIBUT grade 2 (NIBUTf of < 5 s and NIBUTav of ≤ 7 s). Groups A and B received 0.1% sodium hyaluronate eye drops, and groups C and D received 0.3% sodium hyaluronate eye drops.Results: In group A, there was a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the surface regularity index (SRI) and the surface asymmetry index (SAI) measured 1 s after eye drop administration. In group B, there was a significant decrease (p < 0.05) in the SRI and the SAI measured 1 s and 5 and 10 min after eye drop administration. In group C, there was a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the astigmatism degree, SRI, SAI, and irregular astigmatism index (IAI) measured 1 s after eye drop administration. There was a significant decrease (p < 0.05) in potential visual acuity (PVA). In group D, there was a significant increase in the IAI and Q value (parameters of aspheric characteristics of cornea, corneal Q value) measured 1 s after eye drop administration as well as a significant decrease in PVA (p < 0.05).Conclusion: The use of 0.1% sodium hyaluronate eye drops in patients with dry eye aid the temporary recovery of corneal surface regularity and the stability of tear film. The 0.1% sodium hyaluronate had a significant effect for the first 10 min after treatment.Keywords: dry eye, corneal topography, corneal surface regularity, tear film, sodium hyaluronate

The active recognition of interesting targets has been a vital issue for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. The SAR recognition methods are mainly grouped as follows: extracting image features from the target amplitude image or matching the testing samples with the template ones according to the scattering centers extracted from the target complex data. For amplitude image-based methods, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieve nearly the highest accuracy for images acquired under standard operating conditions (SOCs), while scattering center feature-based methods achieve steady performance for images acquired under extended operating conditions (EOCs). To achieve target recognition with good performance under both SOCs and EOCs, a feature fusion framework (FEC) based on scattering center features and deep CNN features is proposed for the first time. For the scattering center features, we first extract the attributed scattering centers (ASCs) from the input SAR complex data, then we construct a bag of visual words from these scattering centers, and finally, we transform the extracted parameter sets into feature vectors with the $k$ -means. For the CNN, we propose a modified VGGNet, which can not only extract powerful features from amplitude images but also achieve state-of-the-art recognition accuracy. For the feature fusion, discrimination correlation analysis (DCA) is introduced to the FEC framework, which not only maximizes the correlation between the CNN and ASCs but also decorrelates the features belonging to different categories within each feature set. Experiments on Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition and Recognition (MSTAR) database demonstrate that the proposed FEC achieves superior effectiveness and robustness under both SOCs and EOCs.

Aim. To observe the clinical efficacy and safety of phacoemulsification surgery combined with intravitreal injection of conbercept in cataract patients with DME. Methods. This is a prospective clinical cohort study. Thirty-five cataract patients (49 eyes) with DME were divided into two groups. The observation group (23 eyes) underwent a cataract phacoemulsification surgery combined with intravitreal injection of conbercept 0.5 mg; the control group (26 eyes) underwent a cataract phacoemulsification surgery only. The visual acuity, central macular thickness (CMT), IOP, and anterior chamber flare were examined before surgery and 1 week and one month after surgery. Results. The UCVA and BCVA in Log MAR in the observation group were lower than those in the control group at 1 week ( p = 0.032 ; p = 0.041 ) and 1 month ( p = 0.035 ; p = 0.039 ), respectively, after the surgery. The CMT of the observation group changed from 492.7 ± 32.2 μm before surgery to 341.6 ± 59.9 μm one week after surgery and 374.8 ± 48.3 μm one month after surgery. The CMT of control group increased after surgery. There was no significant difference in IOP and flare between the two groups at all following times. Conclusion. In patients with DME, undergoing a cataract surgery combined with intravitreal injection of conbercept is safe and effective for visual improvement and CMT declination with relatively fewer IOP and flare fluctuation.

Fluid resuscitation after hemorrhagic shock is a model of systemic ischemia/reperfusion injury (SI/RI), and the liver is one of the main target organs. Ischemic preconditioning (IPC) can reduce hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (I/RI) via autophagy. However, whether remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) can alleviate the liver injury that is secondary to hemorrhagic shock and the role of autophagy in this process remain unclear. Thus, we constructed a hemorrhagic shock model in rats with or without RIPC to monitor mean arterial pressure (MAP) and investigate liver secondary injury levels via serum aminotransferase, ultrasound, HE staining and TUNEL fluorescence staining. We also detected levels of serum inflammatory factors including tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin 1β (IL-1β) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELLSA), observed autophagosomes by Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and analyzed LC3, Beclin-1, p62 protein expression levels by immunohistochemical (IHC) and western blot (WB). We found that RIPC increased blood pressure adaptability, decreased lactate (Lac) and aminotransferase levels, and delayed the decrease in liver density. Levels of inflammatory factors TNF-α, IL-1β and apoptosis were attenuated, autophagosomes was increased in the RIPC group compared with controls. IHC and WB both revealed increased LC3 and Beclin-1 but decreased p62 protein expression levels in the RIPC group. Together, our data suggest that RIPC-activated autophagy could play a protective role against secondary liver injury following hemorrhagic shock.

The water body detection in high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is a challenging task due to the changing interference caused by multiple imaging conditions and complex land backgrounds. Inspired by the excellent adaptability of deep neural networks (DNNs) and the structured modeling capabilities of probabilistic graphical models, the cascaded fully-convolutional network (CFCN) is proposed to improve the performance of water body detection in high-resolution SAR images. First, for the resolution loss caused by convolutions with large stride in traditional convolutional neural network (CNN), the fully-convolutional upsampling pyramid networks (UPNs) are proposed to suppress this loss and realize pixel-wise water body detection. Then considering blurred water boundary, the fully-convolutional conditional random fields (FC-CRFs) are introduced to UPNs, which reduce computational complexity and lead to the automatic learning of Gaussian kernels in CRFs and the higher boundary accuracy. Furthermore, to eliminate the inefficient training caused by imbalanced categorical distribution in the training data set, a novel variable focal loss (VFL) function is proposed, which replaces the constant weighting factor of focal loss with the frequency-dependent factor. The proposed methods can not only improve the pixel accuracy and boundary accuracy but also perform well in detection robustness and speed. Results of GaoFen-3 SAR images are presented to validate the proposed approaches.

With the strong promotion of Chinese government, the number of electric vehicles is growing rapidly. Meanwhile, the development of corresponding charging infrastructure has to keep up. However, infrastructure construction is not a one-off investment, but a multi-period plan. A multi-period location and capacity expansion model of charging stations is built. A forecasting method is proposed to develop the model for estimating the parameters of electric vehicle quantities at each period. The forecasting tool is feed forward neural network based on Bayesian regularization backpropagation learning. The model also introduce the congestion rate to ensure the service quality. Then two kinds of greedy algorithms are proposed. A large number of experiments show that the two algorithms have some complementarity. Finally, the performance of our method is illustrated by a case study of Cixi city.

Background Mucus production is a process involved in the pathogenesis of Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The study is to determine Mucin 5B (MUC5B) protein concentration and its proportion in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of CAP patients and evaluate its value to help assess disease severity. Methods A total of 118 patients were enrolled in this cross-sectional study, including 45 with severe CAP (SCAP) and 73 with non-severe CAP (NSCAP). MUC5B concentration in BALF were determined by immunoblotting analysis. Total protein concentration of BALF was detected by Pierce BCA kit. Cytokines IL6, IL10, IFNγ, IL13, and IL17 in BALF were measured using commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Spearman’s correlation analysis was applied to evaluate the relationships between MUC5B concentration or MUC5B/total protein ratio and the CURB-65 score, as well as cytokines. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify the independent factors associated with severe CAP. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the assessment value of MUC5B/total protein ratio and other indexes for CAP severity. Results MUC5B concentration in the BALF of NSCAP group was higher than that in SCAP group [NSCAP 13.56 µg/ml (IQR 5.92–25.79) vs. SCAP 8.20 µg/ml (IQR 4.97–14.03), p = 0.011]. The total protein concentration in the BALF of NSCAP group was lower than that in SCAP group [NSCAP 0.38 mg/ml (IQR 0.15–1.10) vs. SCAP 0.68 mg/ml (IQR 0.46–1.69), p = 0.002]. The MUC5B/total protein ratio was remarkably higher in NSCAP group than that in SCAP groups [NSCAP 3.66% (IQR 1.50–5.56%) vs. SCAP 1.38% (IQR 0.73–1.76%), p s = − 0.576, p s = − 0.312, p = 0.001), IL10 (rs = − 0.228, p = 0.013), IL13 (rs = − 0.183, p = 0.048), IL17 (rs = − 0.282, p = 0.002) and CURB-65 score (rs = − 0.239, p = 0.009). Logistic regression identified that MUC5B/total protein ratio, IL6 level and CURB-65 score as independent variables related to CAP severity. ROC curve demonstrated best assessment value of MUC5B/total protein ratio for SCAP (AUC 0.803, p Conclusions Respiratory MUC5B disproportion is related to CAP severity. MUC5B/total protein ratio may serve as an assessment marker and a potential therapeutic target for severe CAP.

In aerospace and related fields, simulation tests in the high-temperature wind tunnel have been playing an important role in evaluating and optimizing the thermal performance of key materials/structures of the aircraft. Based on the characteristics of the test environment, the development of machine vision system for the high-temperature wind tunnel can obtain the wide ranging and comprehensive process information of the tests, which is of great significance to the development of high-temperature ground simulation tests. Thus, this paper reviews the theoretical principles, key technologies and equipment design of the machine vision system for high-temperature wind tunnel. Meanwhile, several application examples are also introduced along with the relevant research results of our research group in this field. Finally, the development direction and application prospects of the machine vision system for the high-temperature wind tunnel are also forecasted with the future-oriented needs of the simulation tests.

Background The philtrum represents an essential feature in the architecture of the upper lip and over all facial appearance. A missing philtral ridge and dimple after cleft lip repair is associated with aesthetic impairment. The authors therefore developed a novel strategy for philtrum reconstruction using a triangular-frame conchae cartilage. The authors herein describe the surgical procedure and evaluate the postoperative outcomes. Method In this study, 32 patients with a deficiency of the philtrum due to unilateral or bilateral cleft lip underwent reconstructive surgery based on a triangular-frame conchae cartilage graft. Preoperative and postoperative assessment of the convexity of the philtral ridge and dimpling was performed at rest and while puckering by standard patient photography and video technology. Postoperative outcome and complications were recorded during follow-up including a patient satisfaction survey. Results The follow-up period after philtrum reconstruction ranged from 6 months to 5.3 years. Postoperative evaluation showed satisfactory and stable results with an aesthetic philtral ridge and dimpling, even in the long term. The vast majority (31 patients) were satisfied with the postoperative outcome. Complications included acute infection (1 case), temporary stiffness of smile (1 case), and reddening of the scar (1 case). No systemic complications occurred. Conclusion The authors here propose a simple, effective, and reliable surgical technique for secondary philtrum reconstruction in cleft lip deformity patients using a triangular-frame auricular cartilage graft. Level of evidence 4.

Background Various techniques for the aesthetic correction of short noses have been described, but the selection of the adequate graft material remains controversial. Previous reports have mainly focused on the application of septal cartilage or alloplastic materials for short nose elongation, but the lengthening effect is often unsatisfactory for severe short noses. We propose costal cartilage as an alternative treatment for short noses, describe the technique, and discuss outcomes, patient selection, and complications based on our 15-year experience. Methods From February 2004 to December 2018, 611 patients with varying degrees of short noses were included in this retrospective study. All patients underwent nose elongation surgery using a costal cartilage graft. Nasal length before and after surgery was measured based on a 3-dimensional simulation technology. Outcomes and complications including possible underlying reasons were analyzed. Patient satisfaction was evaluated using a self-assessment survey. Results Nasal elongation using costal cartilage was successfully achieved, with a mean increase in nasal length of 4.06 ±0.79 mm. Patients were followed up for a period of 8.5 months on average, ranging from 6 months to 8 years. Follow-up examinations demonstrated stable results. The overall complication rate was 3.8%. Complications included infection, implant extrusion, migration, deviation, visibility, prominence, and reddening of the nasal skin. Most patients (95.2%) rated their outcome as improved and much improved. Conclusion Nasal elongation using costal cartilage grafting is an effective therapeutic approach for patients with severe short noses. Reliable outcomes and the use of autologous tissue along with minimal donor site morbidity contribute to the high patient acceptance. Meticulous surgical technique and careful patient selection are prerequisites for successful results.

Treating neuropathic pain is challenging and novel non-opioid-based medicines are needed. Using unbiased receptomics, transcriptomic analyses, immunofluorescence, and in situ hybridization, we found that the expression of the orphan GPCR Gpr160 and GPR160 increased in the rodent dorsal horn of the spinal cord following traumatic nerve injury. Genetic and immunopharmacological approaches demonstrated that GPR160 inhibition in the spinal cord prevented and reversed neuropathic pain in male and female rodents without altering normal pain response. GPR160 inhibition in the spinal cord attenuated sensory processing in the thalamus, a key relay in the sensory discriminative pathways of pain. We also identified cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript peptide (CARTp) as a GPR160 ligand. Inhibiting endogenous CARTp signaling in spinal cord attenuated neuropathic pain, whereas exogenous intrathecal CARTp evoked painful hypersensitivity through GPR160-dependent ERK and cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB). Our findings de-orphanize GPR160, identify it as a determinant of neuropathic pain and potential therapeutic target, and provide insights into its signaling pathways. CARTp is involved in many diseases including depression and reward and addiction; de-orphanization of GPR160 is a major step forward understanding the role of CARTp signaling in health and disease.

Aim To investigate how signals from lens regulate retinal vascular development and neovascularization. Methods Le-Cre transgenic mouse line was employed to inactivate Smad4 in the surface ectoderm selectively. Standard histological and whole-mount retina staining were employed to reveal morphological changes of retinal vasculature in Smad4 defective eye. cDNA microarray and subsequent analyses were conducted to investigate the molecular mechanism underlying the vascular phenotype. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was carried out to verify the microarrays results. Results We found that inactivation of Smad4 specifically on surface ectoderm leads to a variety of retinal vasculature anomalies. Microarray analyses and qPCR revealed that Sema3c, Sema3e, Nrp1, Tie1, Sox7, Sox17, and Sox18 are significantly affected in the knockout retinas at different developmental stages, suggesting that ocular surface ectoderm-derived Smad4 can signal to the retina and regulates various angiogenic signaling in the retina. Conclusion Our data suggest that the cross-talk between ocular surface ectoderm and retina is important for retinal vasculature development, and Smad4 regulates various signaling associated with sprouting angiogenesis, vascular remodeling and maturation in the retina of mice.

The trajectory data of vessel AIS (automatic identification system) has important theoretical and application value for information supporting decisions. However, large sizes lead to difficulties in storing, querying, and processing. To solve the problems of high compression ratio and longtime consumption of the existing online trajectory compression algorithm, an SPM (scan-pick-move) trajectory data compression algorithm added sliding window is proposed. In order to better compress vessel trajectory data regarding compression efficiency, the sliding window is added to the classical SPM algorithm. In order to reduce trajectory data storage space, the maximum offset distance reference trajectory point is used as the criterion of whether the current trajectory point can be compressed. In this paper, the multi-dimensional space-time characteristics of trajectory data, such as distance error, compression ratio and compression time, are selected to evaluate the trajectory compression method from three levels: geometric characteristics, motion characteristics and compression efficiency. Compared with the existing SPM trajectory data compression algorithm, parallel experiments are conducted based on AIS data gathered over the duration of a month in the Japan Osaka Bay. The SPM trajectory compression algorithm added sliding window can significantly reduce the compression time and outperforms other existing trajectory compression algorithms in term of average compression error at high compression strengths. Also, the proposed method has high compression efficiency in the range of commonly used compression thresholds.

We demonstrate adiabatic couplers (ADCs) with design-intended splitting ratios (SRs) for the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The operational principle, numerical simulations, and experimental results on the designed ADC are presented. In the operational principle, we derive the analytical relationship between the SR and the effective index-difference, based on which we calculate the corresponding SRs under various output waveguide width-differences at a central wavelength of 1310 nm. For the simulation process, a segmented optimization method is employed to analyze the adiabatic transition process through the ADC. From the experiment results, broadband ADCs with design-intended power SRs, from 7%/93% to 50%/50%, are fabricated and then tested over a bandwidth of 100 nm, i.e., from 1260 to 1360 nm for the fundamental transverse electric (TE) mode. Furthermore, the thermal stability of the ADC is investigated. When increasing the stage temperature from 20 $^\circ$ C to 50 $^\circ$ C, the variances of the SRs for different wavelengths across O band are within 1.3%, which makes the design a potential candidate for performance robustness against temperature variations.

We design and experimentally demonstrate an ultra-broadband and compact two-mode multiplexer based on subwavelength-grating-slot-assisted adiabatic coupler for the silicon-on-insulator platform. The introduction of subwavelength-grating slot effectively increases the refractive index of the gap region between two strip waveguides and enhances the coupling between them, leading to high modal transmission over a short mode-evolution region, particularly at the short-wavelength regime. As a result, our two-mode multiplexer has a compact design footprint, with a mode-evolution region length of only 25 $\mu$ m and an entire device length of only 55 $\mu$ m. Simulation shows that the mode-division multiplexing (MDM) link formed by the designed two-mode multiplexers has a record bandwidth of 740 nm spanning from 1260 nm to 2000 nm, where the crosstalk is lower than −18.5 dB and the insertion loss (IL) is lower than 0.32 dB. The MDM link has been fabricated using electron beam lithography and achieves measured crosstalk lower than −18.8 dB and IL lower than 2.6 dB, over a 100 nm bandwidth from 1260 nm to 1360 nm that covers the O-band and a 130 nm bandwidth from 1500 nm to 1630 nm that covers the C-band and the L-band.

Background: Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) is the most commonly used serum biomarker for chronic liver diseases (CLDs) but may not accurately reflect hepatic disorders and easily underestimates hepatic fibrosis. The previously revised upper limit of normal (ULN) of ALT (19 U/L for women and 30 U/L for men) increases its sensitivity but yields higher numbers of false-positives. Moreover, CLDs patients with ALT lower than the revised ULN may nonetheless have progression of disease. Therefore there is a need of novel biomarkers to complement the use of ALT. Here we have evaluated measurements of serum dithiothreitol-oxidizing capacity (DOC) in cohorts of chronic hepatitis B patients with different stages of disease as an exploratory pilot study for this purpose. Methods: Serum samples obtained from healthy persons and from chronic hepatitis B patients with normal ALT values were used for sensitivity evaluation. The hepatitis B patients encompassed end-stage liver diseases (ELD), chronic hepatitis B (CHB), CHB with persistently normal ALT (CHB-P) and inactive carriers (ICs). Sensitivity was also evaluated with samples from patients with other diseases. The study period was March 2018 to December 2020. Findings: DOC was found to be a robust biomarker that may become complementary to ALT measurements, especially in patients displaying low ALT levels. ROC analyses indicated that the AUC values of DOC reached 0.983 and 0.956 in ELD and CHB patients exhibiting normal ALT levels, respectively. Importantly, the AUC values of DOC reached 0.852 and 0.844 in CHB-P patients and ICs, respectively. Such AUC values permit screening and continued monitoring, corresponding to over 30% and 50% sensitivity with 99% and 95% specificity for CHB-P and ICs, respectively. DOC was also significantly correlated with indicators for fibrosis, assessing both APRI (Pearson r = 0.4905, P < 0.0001) and FIB-4 (Pearson r = 0.4421, P < 0.0001). Surprisingly, the AUC values of DOC in the hepatitis B patients with ALT levels lower than the revised ULN were not compromised. In examined non-liver diseases, DOC was low and normal, including in patients with acute myocardial infection displaying increased ALT levels. Interpretations: The results suggest that DOC can be promising as a complementary biomarker used in addition to ALT for monitoring of disease in chronic hepatitis B patients, especially when ALT levels are normal. DOC should be further evaluated for possible clinical use as biomarker also in other CLDs. Funding: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers: 31771971 and 32001013).

Synchronous measurement of temperature and deformation at elevated temperatures is highly critical, yet challenging in evaluating mechanical properties of thermal protection systems. An ultraviolet (UV) imaging system is proposed to obtain noncontact, in situ, synchronous, and full-field temperature and deformation. The established system consists of a monochromatic UV illumination with a bandpass filter for radiation suppressing, a UV CCD camera for image capturing, and an infrared pyrometer for temperature recording. Additionally, an improved monochromatic radiation pyrometry method is proposed, while a deformation measuring method using the UV digital image correlation (UV-DIC) and natural textures-generated speckle is introduced. Furthermore, through camera calibration at room temperature and real-time exposure time adjusted at elevated temperatures, the influence of reflection on radiation pyrometry and unfiltered radiation on DIC analysis is eliminated. Synchronous temperature and deformation fields of C/SiC subjected to flame heating are experimentally measured with a temperature range of 500°C–1500°C, and results demonstrate the efficacy and potential of the proposed system and method. Finally, the importance of exposure time on balancing the light intensity of radiation and reflection is also discussed.

Radiomic features extracted from segmented tumor regions have shown great power in gene mutation prediction, while deep learning–based (DL-based) segmentation helps to address the inherent limitations of manual segmentation. We therefore investigated whether deep learning–based segmentation is feasible in predicting KRAS/NRAS/BRAF mutations of rectal cancer using MR-based radiomics. In this study, we proposed DL-based segmentation models with 3D V-net architecture. One hundred and eight patients’ images (T2WI and DWI) were collected for training, and another 94 patients’ images were collected for validation. We evaluated the DL-based segmentation manner and compared it with the manual-based segmentation manner through comparing the gene prediction performance of six radiomics-based models on the test set. The performance of the DL-based segmentation was evaluated by Dice coefficients, which are 0.878 ± 0.214 and 0.955 ± 0.055 for T2WI and DWI, respectively. The performance of the radiomics-based model in gene prediction based on DL-segmented VOI was evaluated by AUCs (0.714 for T2WI, 0.816 for DWI, and 0.887 for T2WI+DWI), which were comparable to that of corresponding manual-based VOI (0.637 for T2WI, P=0.188; 0.872 for DWI, P=0.181; and 0.906 for T2WI+DWI, P=0.676). The results showed that 3D V-Net architecture could conduct reliable rectal cancer segmentation on T2WI and DWI images. All-relevant radiomics-based models presented similar performances in KRAS/NRAS/BRAF prediction between the two segmentation manners.

OBJECTIVES To establish and validate a prognostic scoring model in a Chinese population to predict the neurological outcome among comatose survivors of cardiac arrest (CA). METHODS 159 CA patients between January 2016 and November 2020 were recruited in this retrospective study. In the derivation cohort, prognostic factors available from arrest circumstances and early in-hospital indicators were measured. The Cardiac Arrest Neurological Prognosis (CANP) score was then constructed to predict unfavorable outcomes at 30 days after CA. The assessment of predictive effectiveness of this scoring model was conducted in both derivation and validation cohorts. RESULTS Witnessed status, bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation, initial rhythm, duration of resuscitation, Glasgow Coma Scale motor score, pupillary/corneal reflex, gray-white matter ratio and neuron-specific enolase exhibit strong correlations with the neurological outcomes in the derivation cohort (all p

Infantile hemangioma (IH) is a common disease, and drug therapy is the most common treatment method. Clinically, steroids have long been used as first-line drugs, but in recent years, some doctors have begun to use propranolol to treat infantile hemangiomas (IHs). The present study performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the clinical effects of propranolol in comparison with steroids in the treatment of infantile hemangiomas. A detailed review of the literature on PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase and Web of Science was performed prior to March 31, 2020. All literatures were compared with the clinical effects of propranolol and steroids in the treatment of infantile hemangiomas. A total of two researchers independently screened the literature according to the selection criteria, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias for the included studies. Review Manager 5.3 was used to meta-analyze all the included studies. According to the selection criteria, nine articles were included in the present study. The meta-analysis revealed that the effective rate of propranolol was greater than that of steroids in treating infantile hemangiomas [odds ratio (OR), 3.96, 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.47-6.37; P

The neural functions of adropin, a secreted peptide highly expressed in the brain, have not been investigated. In humans, adropin is highly expressed in astrocytes and peaks during critical postnatal periods of brain development. Gene enrichment analysis of transcripts correlating with adropin expression suggests processes relevance to aging-related neurodegenerative diseases that vary with age and dementia state, possibly indicating survivor bias. In people aged 75y) diagnosed with dementia, adropin correlates positively with genes involved in mitochondrial processes. In the ‘old-old’ without dementia adropin expression correlates positively with morphogenesis and synapse function. Potent neurotrophic responses in primary cultured neurons are consistent with adropin supporting the development and function of neural networks. Adropin expression in the ‘old-old’ also correlates positively with protein markers of tau-related neuropathologies and inflammation, particularly in those without dementia. How variation in brain adropin expression affects neurological aging was investigated using old (18- month) C57BL/6J mice. In mice adropin is expressed in neurons, oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, oligodendrocytes, and microglia and shows correlative relationships with groups of genes involved in neurodegeneration and cellular metabolism. Increasing adropin expression using transgenesis improved spatial learning and memory, novel object recognition, resilience to exposure to new environments, and reduced mRNA markers of inflammation in old mice. Treatment with synthetic adropin peptide also reversed age-related declines of cognitive functions and affected expression of genes involved in morphogenesis and cellular metabolism. Collectively, these results establish a link between adropin expression and neural energy metabolism and indicate a potential novel therapy against neurological aging.

Most computer vision research focuses on narrow angle lenses and is not adapted to super-wide-angle (aka spherical) lenses. This is mainly because current neural networks are not designed or trained to interpret the significant barrel distortion that is introduced in the captured image by such wide angle lenses. As these lenses capture a half-sphere or a section of sphere on the object space, barrel distortion appears when the image is projected on a 2D flat image sensor. By controlling this distortion at the lens design stage, camera designers can create some areas with augmented resolution [26]. In this work, we present an analysis of the impact of such augmented resolution on computer vision algorithm accuracy, using the problem of single image depth estimation as a case study. To this end, 360° panorama datasets are warped to simulate different wide-angle lens datasets, which are then used to train identical neural networks. Each lens presents specific areas of the image with augmented resolution using spatially-varying non-linear distortion. We show that this property leads to better local accuracy in depth estimation. We also demonstrate that considering lens manufacturing improves performance when tested on realistic lenses, especially in the area of augmented resolution. We further show that this property helps to locally come closer to performances obtained on perspective images without cropping the field of view.

We were very pleased that our finding of an association between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outcome in China and selenium status (1) was endorsed by Seale and colleagues, based on their understanding of the likely mechanism by which severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) interacts with the selenoprotein, cytosolic glutathione peroxidase (GPX1) (2).

Chronic inflammation and progressive bone damage in joints are two main pathological features of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We have synthesized a gold cluster with glutathione (Au29SG27) (named GA) that can effectively suppress both inflammation and bone damage in collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) in rats. Thus, gold clusters showed great potential for the therapy of RA. However, the optimal therapeutic dose remaining has to be determined. Therapeutic effect and safety are largely relying on drug dosage. Specifying the dose-dependent effects of GA on both therapy and biosafety can facilitate its clinical transformation research. Therefore, in this study, we comprehensively evaluated the dose-dependent efficacy of GA on the 30-day toxicity and RA treatment in rats. Results showed that continuous intraperitoneal injection of GA at a dose of 15 mg/kg (Au content) for 30 days resulted in slight hematological abnormalities and increases on organ coefficients of kidney and adrenal gland, while 10 mg Au/kg did not cause any obvious toxicity and side effects. In the treatment of CIA rats, only when the dose of GA reached 5 mg Au/kg, the symptoms of RA could be significantly improved. With regard to the histopathological analysis, although a lower dose of GA can suppress inflammation and bone damage to some extent, only the 5 mg Au/kg treatment could restore them to a state close to the normal control group. Therefore, we infer that 5 mg Au/kg is the optimal dose of GA for RA therapy in rats, which provides a theoretical basis for further preclinical research.

Aim To study whether specific anesthetic drugs or tear layer evaporation was primarily responsible for the acute cataract and what the change of lens structure is in anesthetized mice. Methods Five groups were set up in the experiment: Group A (topicamide and phenylephrine mixed eye drop+ chloral hydrate), Group B (tropicamide and phenylephrine mixed eye drop+sevoflurane), Group C (tropicamide and phenylephrine mixed eye drop), Group D (topicamide and phenylephrine mixed eye drop+chloral hydrate, carbomer eye drop in the right eyes), and Group E (tropicamide and phenylephrine mixed eye drop+sevoflurane, carbomer eye drop in the right eyes). A simple classification system was used to assess the severity of lens opacity. And a numerical value from 0 to 3 to each grade was assigned for the cataract index calculation and data analysis. The gross appearance and time course of development of lens opacity were assessed. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was used to observe the lens structure changes in the reversible cataract. Results Tropicamide did not induce lens opacification in mice. Lens opacity caused by inhaled sevoflurane was similar to injected cholral hydrate. Both inhaled-anesthetic-induced lens opacity and injected-anesthetic-induced lens opacity could be prevented by carbomer eye drop. In the severe opacity lens, a wide range of lens fiber cell structure had disordered. The fiber cells became uneven thickness. Conclusion The acute reversible lens opacity can unilaterally develop or be induced by a local cause. The structure of lens fiber cells changed in the lens opacity which may influence the permanent connection of the lens fiber cells. This study was not only of practical significance to help maintain lens transparency for eye research, but also of the deeper consideration about the reversible lens opacification phenomenon.

As fast growth of Electric Vehicle(EV) and lag of charging station construction in China, this paper introduces an optimization model of charging stations design, where the parameters of EV number are forecasted by data analysis with Nonlinear Auto-Regressive neural network. Firstly, the procedure of EV forecasting is introduced. Secondly, the mathematical model is proposed to optimize the layout of EV stations and the number of equipment, with consideration of balance service that includes idle rate and waiting time limits. In the model, each station is simulated as a queuing system. Then, as the model is a NP-hard problem, a hybrid heuristic algorithm that combines Genetic Algorithm and Binary Particle Swarm Optimization is proposed. Through a large scale of computational examples, the algorithm is proved to be more efficient than Genetic Algorithm. Finally, the performance of the method is illustrated by a case study.

To assess the effects of posterior sclera reinforcement (PSR) in refractive outcomes, choroidal thickness (CT), and retinal thickness (RT) during a 3-year follow-up in eyes with pathological myopia. Thirty-eight eyes of 26 adults with pathological myopia who underwent PSR (the PSR group) and 30 eyes of 18 adults with matched age and myopia who did not receive PSR treatment (the control group) were followed up with measurements of axial length (AL), spherical equivalent (SE), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), CT, and RT at baseline, 1 and 3 months, and 1, 2, and 3 years postoperatively. Data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance and independent-samples t test. In the PSR group, AL, SE, BCVA, and CT were tending to be relatively stable and no statistically significant changes were found during the follow-up (all P > 0.05). In contrast, in the control group, compared with the measurements taken at baseline, AL, SE, BCVA, and CT altered gradually from 1 month onward to 3 years postoperatively. At 2-year and 3-year follow-ups, significant differences in AL, SE, BCVA, and CT were noted between the PSR group and the control group (all P

Internal migration and urbanization are occurring on a global scale. Although the risk of exposure to stress/lead/low selenium is assumed to be high among migrant pregnant women, population-based evidence is limited. This study aims to explore the association of internal-migration status with maternal exposure to lead, low selenium, and stress among pregnant women. A total of 1931 pregnant women were investigated in 2010. The internal-migration status was grouped based on their hukou (registered residence) and length-of-residency in Shanghai. Maternal blood lead and serum selenium concentrations were assessed. Life event stress and emotional stress were evaluated using “Event-Stress-Scale-for-Pregnant-Women” and “Symptom-Checklist-90-R-Scale” (SCL-90-R), respectively. Logistic regression and general linear models were used to evaluate associations between migration status and lead/stress/low selenium exposure. Compared with the local (with Shanghai hukou and length-of-residency ≥ 5 years), new migrants (without Shanghai hukou and length-of-residency

Background Endothelial glycocalyx (EG) abnormal degradation were widely found in critical illness. However, data of EG degradation in multiple traumas is limited. We performed a study to assess the EG degradation and the correlation between the degradation and organ functions in polytrauma patients. Methods A prospective observational study was conducted to enroll health participants (control group) and polytrauma patients (trauma group) at a University affiliated hospital between Feb 2020 and Oct 2020. Syndecan1 (SDC1) and heparin sulfate (HS) were detected in serum sample of both groups. In trauma group, injury severity scores (ISS) and sequential organ failure assessments (SOFA) were calculated. Occurrences of acute kidney injury (AKI), trauma-induced coagulopathy (TIC) within 48 h and 28-day all-cause mortality in trauma group were recorded. Serum SDC1 and HS levels were compared between two groups. Correlations between SDC1/HS and the indicators of organ systems in the trauma group were analyzed. ROC analyses were performed to assess the predictive value of SDC1 and HS for AKI, TIC within 48 h, and 28-day mortality in trauma group. Results There were 45 polytrauma patients and 15 healthy participants were collected, totally. SDC1 and HS were significantly higher in trauma group than in control group (69.39 [54.18–130.80] vs. 24.15 [13.89–32.36], 38.92 [30.47–67.96] vs. 15.55 [11.89–23.24], P CI: 0.720–0.957), 0.700 (95%CI: 0.514–0.885) and 0.764 (95%CI: 0.543–0.984), respectively. Conclusions EG degradation was elevated significantly in polytrauma patients, and the degradation was correlated with impaired respiratory, kidney, coagulation and metabolic systems in early stage. Serum SDC1 is a valuable predictive indicator of early onset of AKI, TIC, and 28-day mortality in polytrauma patients.

The International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA) recommended a method to measure the ultraviolet (UV) output of monochromatic (254 nm) UV lamps. In that method, the lamp is operated in open...

Objective To explore the influences of digital media use on the core symptoms, emotional state, life events, learning motivation, executive function (EF) and family environment of children and adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Method A total of 192 participants aged 8–16 years who met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD were included in the study. Children scoring higher than predetermined cut-off point in self-rating questionnaires for problematic mobile phone use (SQPMPU) or Young’s internet addiction test (IAT), were defined as ADHD with problematic digital media use (PDMU), otherwise were defined as ADHD without PDMU. The differences between the two groups in ADHD symptoms, EF, anxiety and depression, stress from life events, learning motivation and family environment were compared respectively. Results When compared with ADHD group without PDMU, the group with PDMU showed significant worse symptoms of inattention, oppositional defiant, behavior and emotional problems by Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham Rating Scale (SNAP), more self-reported anxiety by screening child anxiety-related emotional disorders (SCARED) and depression by depression self-rating scale for children (DSRSC), more severe EF deficits by behavior rating scale of executive function (BRIEF), more stress from life events by adolescent self-rating life events checklist (ASLEC), lower learning motivation by students learning motivation scale (SLMS), and more impairment on cohesion by Chinese version of family environment scale (FES-CV). The ADHD with PDMU group spent significantly more time on both video game and social media with significantly less time spend on physical exercise as compared to the ADHD without PDMU group. Conclusion The ADHD children with PDMU suffered from more severe core symptoms, negative emotions, EF deficits, damage on family environment, pressure from life events, and a lower motivation to learn. Supervision of digital media usage, especially video game and social media, along with increased physical exercise, is essential to the management of core symptoms and associated problems encountered with ADHD.

BACKGROUND: Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have shown therapeutic potential for cerebral ischemic diseases. However, the mechanisms by which BMSC-derived sEVs (BMSC-sEVs) protect neurons against cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury remain unclear. In this study, we explored the neuroprotective effects of BMSC-sEVs in the primary culture of rat cortical neurons exposed to oxygen-glucose deprivation and reperfusion (OGD/R) injury. METHODS: The primary cortical neuron OGD/R model was established to simulate the process of cerebral I/R in vitro. Based on this model, we examined whether the mechanism through which BMSC-sEVs could rescue OGD/R-induced neuronal injury. RESULTS: BMSC-sEVs (20 μg/mL, 40 μg/mL) significantly decreased the reactive oxygen species (ROS) productions, and increased the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx). Additionally, BMSC-sEVs prevented OGD/R-induced neuronal apoptosis in vivo, as indicated by increased cell viability, reduced lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) leakage, decreased terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining-positive cells, down-regulated cleaved caspase-3, and up-regulated Bcl-2/Bax ratio. Furthermore, Western blot and flow cytometry analysis indicated that BMSC-sEV treatment decreased the expression of phosphorylated calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (p-CaMK II)/CaMK II, suppressed the increase of intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)) caused by OGD/R in neurons. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that BMSC-sEVs have significant neuroprotective effects against OGD/R-induced cell injury by suppressing oxidative stress and apoptosis, and Ca(2+)/CaMK II signaling pathways may be involved in this process.

Automatic phonetic segmentation is a fundamental task for many applications. Segmentation systems highly rely upon the acoustic-phonetic relationship. However, the phonemes’ realization varies in continuous speech. As a consequence, segmentation systems usually suffer from such variation, which includes the intra-phone dissimilarity and the inter-phone similarity in terms of acoustic properties. In this paper, We conducted experiments following the classic GMM-HMM framework to address these issues. In the baseline setup, we found the top error comes from diphthong /oy/ and boundary of glide-to-vowel respectively, which suggested the influence of the above variation on segmentation results. Here, we present our approaches to improve automatic phonetic segmentation performance. First, we modeled the intra-phone dissimilarity using GMM with model selection at the state-level. Second, we utilized the context-dependent models to handle the inter-phone similarity due to coarticulation effect. The two approaches are coupled with the objective to improve segmentation accuracy. Experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness for the aforementioned top error. In addition, we also took the phones’ duration into account for the HMM topology design. The segmentation accuracy was further improved to 91.32% within 20ms on the TIMIT corpus after combining the above refinements, which has a relative error reduction of 3.34% compared to the raw GMM-HMM segmentation in [1].

Background: A new type of pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) appeared in Wuhan, China. However, the risk factors and characteristics related to the severity of the disease and its outcomes need to be further explored.Methods: In this retrospective study, we evaluated COVID-19 patients with severe disease and those who were critically ill, as diagnosed at Jinyintan Hospital (Wuhan, China). The demographic information, clinical characteristics, complications, and laboratory results for the patients were evaluated. Multivariate logistic regression methods were used to analyze risk factors related to hospital deaths.Results: The 235 COVID-19 patients included were divided into a severe group of 183 (78%) and a critical group of 52 (22%). Of these patients, 185 (79%) were discharged, and 50 (21%) died during hospitalization. In multivariate logistic analyses, age (OR=1.07, 95% CI 1.02-1.14, P=0.009), critical disease (OR=48.23, 95% CI 10.91-323.13, PConclusions: The results show that advanced age (> 64 years), critical illness, low lymphocyte levels, and elevated IL-6 and AST were factors for the risk of death for COVID-19 patients who had severe disease and those who were critically ill.

In this work, we evaluate the impact of non-linear distortion on learning based approaches for depth estimation. We use real wide angle images with locally increased resolutions to see how it compares with perspective images.

In this study, a bionic nonsmooth drag-reducing surface design method was proposed; a mathematical model was developed to obtain the relationship between the altitude of the nonsmooth drag-reducing surface bulges and the spacing of two bulges, as well as the speed of movement, based on which two subsoiler shovel tips were designed and verified on field experiments. The mechanism of nonsmooth surface drag reduction in soil was analyzed, inspired by the efficient digging patterns of antlions. The nonsmooth surface morphology of the antlion was acquired by scanning electron microscopy, and a movement model of the nonsmooth surface in soil was developed, deriving that the altitude of the nonsmooth drag-reducing surface bulge is proportional to the square of the distance between two bulges and inversely proportional to the square of the movement speed. A flat subsoiler shovel tip and a curved tip were designed by applying this model, and the smooth subsoiler shovel tips and the pangolin scale bionic tips were used as controls, respectively. The effect of the model-designed subsoilers on drag reduction was verified by subsoiling experiments in the field. The results showed that the resistance of the model-designed curved subsoiler was the lowest, the resistance of the pangolin scale bionic subsoiler was moderate, and the resistance of the smooth surface subsoiler was the highest; the resistance of the curved subsoiler was less than the flat subsoilers; the resistance reduction rate of the model-designed curved subsoiler was 24.6% to 33.7% at different depths. The nonsmooth drag reduction model established in this study can be applied not only to the design of subsoilers but also to the design of nonsmooth drag reduction surfaces of other soil contacting parts.

Agricultural issues are of great concern in China. Agricultural products have been criticized for large price fluctuation, food safety and low efficiency of agricultural products production enterprises. Effective supply chain management can improve the management efficiency of production-oriented enterprises and bring about the growth of enterprise performance. Based on the perspective of commitment to resources, the existing agricultural products supply chain management, supply chain, supply chain contract behavior and the paper summarizes the research of supply chain performance, to explore the role of supply chain contract on supply chain behavior and supply chain performance, supply chain behavior influence on supply chain performance, and the regulation of resource commitment. Using SPSS21.0, AMOS and other empirical analysis tools, it is concluded that supply chain contract has a significant impact on supply chain behavior and supply chain performance. Supply chain behavior has a significant influence on supply performance. Supply chain behavior plays a part in a mediating role in supply chain contract and supply chain performance. Resource commitment plays a moderating role in the mediation model.