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In this paper, an effective solution is presented for efficient robotic object search by leveraging metric-topological map. Based on the reference of objects, we construct a novel metric-topological map that is particularly suitable for object search, where the topological nodes represent the object-related locations in the environment. To effectively determine the creation of nodes on the map, a rapid adjustment method of the robot viewing angle is introduced. Compared with traditional maps, the map built in this paper not only removes redundant nodes irrelevant to objects, but also facilitates the mobile robot to locate the target object. Besides, inspired by human search behavior, a search strategy is proposed by considering the tradeoff between the current position of the robot and the distance from the robot to the promising location of finding the target object, in order to further improve the search efficiency. The effectiveness and efficiency of our solution is verified through comparative experiments in both simulation and real-world environments. Results show that the presented approach always allows the mobile robot to find the target object efficiently and reliably, while achieving human-like search behavior.

The key challenges of scene recognition for service robots in various family environments are the view shortage of holistic scenes and poor adaptation. To address these problems, a family scene recognition mechanism for the service robot is proposed in this paper. A comprehensive application of fish-eye, pinhole, and depth cameras is provided to guarantee the sufficient view of robot. A selective CNN features fusion for the recognition of fish-eye scene images is designed to improve the training efficiency and the recognition accuracy. The mechanism is deployed in a designed hybrid cloud including public and private clouds. The proposed family scene recognition model is trained by large-scale datasets in the public cloud and runs in the private cloud. Besides, the recognition skill can be reinforced and increased by matching human guidance and CNN features to help the robot learn new scenes and improve the adaptation in different family environments. Extensive experiments are implemented to evaluate the proposed method using real scene images from six families. The experiment results show the validity and good performance of our method for the service robot scene recognition in various family environments.

Objective To explore the association between depression and semen quality and the mediating role of oxidative stress. Design Cross-sectional study with repeated measures of semen quality. Setting Human Sperm Bank of Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China. Patient(s) From April 2017 to July 2018, we recruited 1,000 potential sperm donors who completed the Beck Depression Inventory questionnaire and had measures of oxidative stress biomarkers. Intervention(s) None. Main Outcome Measure(s) Severity of depression was evaluated by the Beck Depression Inventory scores (0–4, no depression; 5–13, mild depression; 14–20, moderate depression; and 21 or greater, severe depression). The urinary concentrations of 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine, 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal-mercapturic acid, and 8-iso-prostaglandin F2α (8-isoPGF2α) were measured to reflect oxidative stress status. Repeated semen quality parameters (n = 5,880) were examined by trained professional technicians according to the World Health Organization laboratory manual. Associations between depression, oxidative stress, and repeated measures of semen quality parameters were evaluated using linear or mixed-effects models with adjustment for potential confounders. Mediation analysis was performed to test the potential mediating role of oxidative stress. Result(s) A total of 391 (39.1%) men were classified as mild depression, 67 (6.7%) as moderate depression, and 19 (1.9%) as severe depression. Inverse dose–response relationships between severity of depression and semen quality parameters were found. Compared with men without depression (n = 523), those with severe depression had a 25.26% (95% confidence interval, −38.65%, −8.93%) lower semen volume, 37.04% (−55.37%, −11.20%) lower total sperm count, 13.57% (−23.17%, −2.78%) lower total motility, and 15.08% (−25.09%, −3.72%) lower progressive motility; men with moderate depression also had a 12.28% (−21.16%, −2.40%) lower semen volume and 23.56% (−36.50%, −7.97%) lower total sperm count. We found a positive dose–response relationship between severity of depression and urinary 8-isoPGF2α concentrations. However, we found no evidence that the associations between depression status and semen quality were mediated by oxidative stress markers. Conclusion(s) In the study of Chinese male sperm donors, men with depression had worse semen quality parameters, including semen volume, sperm concentration, total sperm count, total motility, and progressive motility. Although depression was positively associated with urinary 8-isoPGF2α concentrations, depression–semen quality associations were not mediated by oxidative stress.

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) has been widely used in biomedical image segmentation (BIS) tasks for its remarkable feature representation capability, and most of existing CNN-based segmentation networks leverage a down-sampling operation to achieve larger acceptance domain. However, down-sampling operations could inevitably loss the detailed information of images which is very important for the BIS task. In this paper, we propose a full-resolution biomedical image segmentation network(FRNet) that could maintain the integrated detailed information of image while keeping sufficient semantic information and large receptive field. Specifically, the basic semantic feature and non-destructive feature are employed to represent the semantic and detailed information of images, respectively. A backbone network and a new full-feature extraction branch are conducted to extract those two kinds of complementary features. Furthermore, a novel feature fusion module is designed to integrate those complementary features to achieve non-destructive description of images. Finally, in order to further improve the description ability of the integrated feature, a Densely connected Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling(DenseASPP) module is arranged at the end of our proposed FRNet to extract the multiscale information of images. Thorough experimental results on several available databases demonstrate the effectiveness and advancement of FRNet.

It is a challenging task to produce recipes from images, due to the difficulty in bridging the gap from intuitive, static images to sequential, dynamic recipes. In this paper, we propose a novel recipe generation system for producing effective recipes from images. As medium steps, ingredient generation is introduced to guide recipe generation in our system. With potential information in ingredient lists, ingredient selection and ingredient sequence, the system is taught to generate effective recipes. For information representation, a hierarchical attention mechanism is designed to extract effective features for ingredient production and recipe generation. In order to guarantee the comprehensiveness and logic in recipes, a specific and explicit criterion around ingredients is designed under the framework of reinforcement learning. In ingredient generation, the system is required to generate ingredients with correct sequence in cooking procedures. And in recipe generation, ingredients in recipes are required to be consistent with produced ingredients. In experiments, the proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods to evaluate the feasibility. The results indicate that the proposed system achieves a better performance than other methods on both aspects of producing proper ingredients and effective recipes.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, offline programmes of universities in China had to be rescheduled, classes were moved online based on the government’s requirements. The paper investigated how an online learning environment–especially massive open online course (MOOC) platforms–introduced a sense of social presence in students’ lives to help them better deal with trauma and changed circumstances. To this end, the author conducted a questionnaire-based survey of 5,000 students and 620 teachers at Communication University of China from May 2020 to June 2020 and analysed the respondents’ attitudes towards online community learning during the outbreak and the associated trauma period. The survey reveals that the mimicked social networking environment ensures that students perceive social presence and makes the trauma more bearable. By applying social presence theory to the ongoing crisis and conducting a case study of online education adopted by a Chinese university, this research deepens the understanding of technical reality and social networking environment creation described by the theory. Meanwhile, by analysing co-presence, immediacy, and intimacy in community learning, this study paints a more nuanced picture of the mental state of traumatised groups in a virtual environment. © AMIC/WKWSCI-NTU 2021.

Background Recent studies highlight the regulatory role of arachidonate lipoxygenase5 (Alox5) and its metabolite 5‐hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (5‐HETE) in cancer tumorigenesis and progression. In this study, we analyzed the expression, biological function and the downstream signaling of Alox5 in gastric cancer. Methods Alox5 protein levels were measured using IHC and ELISA. Growth, migration and survival assays were performed. Phosphorylation of molecules involved in growth and survival signaling were analyzed by WB. Analysis of variance and t‐test were used for statistic analysis. Results Alox5 and 5‐HETE levels were upregulated in gastric cancer patients. ALOX5 overexpression or 5‐HETE addition activates gastric cancer cells and reduces chemotherapy’s efficacy. In contrast, ALOX5 inhibition via genetic and pharmacological approaches suppresses gastric cancer cells and enhances chemotherapy’s efficacy. In addition, Alox5 inhibition led to suppression of ERK‐mediated signaling pathways whereas ALOX5‐5‐HETE activates ERK‐mediated signaling in gastric cancer cells. Conclusions Our work demonstrates the critical role of ALOX5‐5‐HETE in gastric cancer and provides pre‐clinical evidence to initialize clinical trial using zileuton in combination with chemotherapy for treating gastric cancer., Our work demonstrates that the ALOX5‐5‐HETE axis promotes gastric cancer growth and alleviates chemotherapy toxicity via MEK/ERK activation and provides pre‐clinical evidence to initialize clinical trials using zileuton in combination with chemotherapy for the treatment of gastric cancer.

Objectives A case of H7N9 influenza virus infection was first identified in China in 2013. This virus is considered to have high pandemic potential. Here we developed an H7N9 influenza vaccine containing an aluminium adjuvant and evaluated the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine. Methods From October 2017 through August 2018 we conducted a randomized, double-blinded, single-centre phase I clinical trial in China among 360 participants aged ≥12 years. All participants received two doses of the vaccine (7.5, 15 or 30 μg haemagglutinin antigen) or placebo at an interval of 21 days. Adverse event data were collected for 30 days after vaccination. Serum samples were collected on days 0, 21 and 42 for the haemagglutinin inhibition (HI) antibody assay. Results A total of 347 participants (347/360, 96.4%) completed the study. The proportions of vaccine-related adverse events after one injection were 56.7% (34/60) in the 7.5-μg group, 86.7% (52/60) in the 15-μg group and 86.7% (52/60) in the 30-μg group. The proportions of adverse events after two injections were less than those reported after the first dose. None of the serious adverse events were related to the vaccine. After receiving two doses of the 7.5-μg vaccine, the proportion of participants achieving an HI titre of ≥40 was 98.2% (55/56, 95%CI 72.3~100.0%), with a geometric mean titre (GMT) of 192.6 (95%CI 162.9~227.8). Conclusions The alum-adjuvanted H7N9 whole-virion inactivated vaccine was safe and strongly immunogenic in a population aged ≥12 years.

Purpose To investigate the change in muscle volume around the hip in patients with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) after arthroscopy and evaluate other factors related to muscle change. Methods We performed a retrospective review of magnetic resonance imaging data of patients with FAI who underwent hip arthroscopy. Magnetic resonance imaging was obtained pre- and postoperatively. The cross-sectional area (CSA) of muscles were determined on axial images. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine the differences between pre- and postoperative hip muscle CSA. The correlations of change in muscle CSA with age, sex, body mass index, pain level, preoperative symptom duration, follow-up time, and multiple validated patient-reported outcomes were also analyzed with a Spearman rank correlation test. Results Fifty-one patients with a mean age of 36.5 ± 5.6 years were included and analyzed. The follow-up was 26.6 ± 0.5 months (range, 24-40 months), and 27 (52.9%) were women. Patients with FAI showed increased hip muscle CSA of gluteus maximus (P = .002) and gluteus minimus (P = .001). Post- compared with preoperative, the value for the change in medius CSA was underpowered, and no differences in other hip muscle CSAs were observed. The increased muscle CSA of the gluteus maximus was significantly correlated with the improvement of modified Harris Hip Score (ρ = 0.404; P = .003). The increased muscle CSA of the gluteus minimus was significantly correlated with the improvement of pain Visual Analog Scale (ρ = 0.452; P = .001). Age, body mass index, sex, symptom duration, and follow-up time were not significantly correlated with change in muscle CSA. Conclusions Patients with FAI have a significantly increased postoperative muscle CSA of the gluteus maximus (7.8%) and the gluteus minimus (11.6%) compared with preoperative values. The increased muscle CSA of the gluteus maximus and gluteus minimus was significantly correlated with improvement in modified Harris Hip Score and pain Visual Analog Scale, respectively. The increase of muscle volume may be associated with the improvement of subjective function and pain relief. Levels of Evidence Level IV, therapeutic case series.

PurposeThe Chinese Children’s Cancer Group developed the CCCG-NB-2014 study to formulate optimal treatment strategies for high-risk (HR) neuroblastoma (NB). The safety and efficacy of this protocol were evaluated.MethodPatients with newly diagnosed neuroblastoma and defined as HR according to the Children’s Oncology Group study were included. They were treated with a combination of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy. The treatment-related toxicities, response rate, 3-year progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS) were analyzed.ResultsOf 159 patients enrolled between 2014 and 2018, 80 were eligible, including 19 girls and 61 boys, with a median age of 3.9 years (range 0.9–11). After a median follow-up of 24 months (range 3–40), the median OS was 31.8 months, and 3-year OS was 83.8%. In multivariate analyses, the OS was affected by N-MYC amplification (hazard ratio 0.212, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.049–0.910; p = 0.037) and giant tumor mass (hazard ratio 0.197, 95% CI 0.071–0.552; p = 0.002). The median 3-year PFS was 25.8 months, and 3-year PFS was 57.5%. The univariate analysis showed that only the giant tumor mass was associated with the outcome. Of the 13 deaths, 11 died from the rapid progression of the disease and two from treatment-related toxicities. The most common adverse reaction was chemotherapy-induced hematological toxicity.ConclusionThe PFS and OS reported in our study were similar to Western countries. The CCCG-NB-2014 protocol proved to be an efficient regimen with tolerable side-effect for the treatment of pediatric HR-NB.

Measurement of qubits plays a key role in quantum computation. In superconducting multiqubit quantum processors, a multiplexed readout scheme is widely used. In such a scheme, measurement of a qubit state may be influenced by the state of neighboring qubits, due to various crosstalk effects, which will degrade the readout fidelity. To reduce the impact of crosstalk, we model the digital signal processing system used in measurements as a shallow neural network and train it to become a state discriminator. Applying our method to a six-qubit superconducting quantum chip, we see an overall improved readout performance compared with a contemporary qubit-state discriminator. The readout crosstalk is decreased by more than $80\mathrm{%}$. The training and optimization process of the neural network consumes only about 10 s.

Zhi Yang,1,* Xiaoyang Lou,1,2,* Jie Zhang,1,3,* Ronghui Nie,1,3 Jiang Liu,1 Ping Tu,1 Peng Duan1 1Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, The Third Hospital of Nanchang, Nanchang, 330000, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China; 2Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, 330004, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China; 3Jiangxi Medical College of Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330036, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Peng DuanDepartment of Endocrinology and Metabolism, The Third Hospital of Nanchang, Nanchang, 330000, Jiangxi, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 13479111177Email 13479111177@163.comObjective: Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) are both common chronic complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). The aim of this study was to examine whether some markers of early renal injury were associated with DPN.Methods: Retrospective hospitalization data from 471 patients with T2DM were analyzed. Subjects were divided into DPN group and non-DPN group according to clinical history, symptoms, signs and nerve conduction study. Markers of glomerular injury [urinary albumin/creatinine ratio (UACR) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)] and tubular injury [urinary N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase/creatinine ratio (NAG/Cr) and urinary β 2 microglobulin (β 2-MG)] were innovatively combined to assess the association with DPN. Staging of chronic kidney disease (CKD) was classified as G1, G2, G3a, G3b, G4 based on eGFR categories of ≥ 90, 60– 89, 45– 59, 30– 44, 15– 29 mL/min/1.73m2.Results: DPN was detected in 71.1% of our population. Subjects in DPN group suffered from older age, longer duration of diabetes and worse blood glucose control compared with non-DPN group. The levels of UACR, NAG/Cr and β 2-MG were significantly increased in DPN group than those in non-DPN group, while eGFR was decreased. The prevalence of DPN increased gradually in G1, G2 and G3– 4 of CKD, which were 66.3%, 73.2% and 82.7% (P = 0.014). After adjusting for confounding factors, NAG/Cr > 1.41 U/mmol (the highest tertile) was a consistently independent risk factor for DPN [odds ratio, OR (95% confidence interval, CI) = 1.86 (1.04– 3.33)]. However, UACR, eGFR and β 2-MG did not significantly affect the risk of DPN.Conclusion: When T2DM patients suffer from CKD, DPN will be more likely to appear, accelerate or deteriorate. Some easily available urinary markers of glomerular and tubular damage can be used for early prediction of DPN, in which increased NAG/Cr is an independent risk factor for DPN.Keywords: renal injury, peripheral neuropathy, type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background: A growing body of evidence has found links between endocrine disruptor phthalates and male reproductive disorders, but the mechanisms underlying these relationships are poorly known. Seminal plasma metabolomes may mediate associations of phthalate exposure with impaired semen quality. Objective: To identify seminal plasma metabolomes associated with poor semen quality and evaluate their associations with urinary phthalate metabolites among 660 Chinese adult men. Method: The seminal plasma metabolic profiles were acquired using an untargeted approach based on liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry. We explored the differences in seminal plasma metabolites between participants with poor and good semen quality and evaluated cross-sectional associations between discriminatory metabolic biomarkers and urinary phthalate metabolites. Results: Differences between poor and good semen quality groups were observed in relation to 25 seminal plasma metabolites, mostly related to the metabolism of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and acylcarnitine (all p

Human motion recognition based on computer vision plays an important role in many fields, such as video surveillance, virtual reality, and medical care. To solve the inaccurate multi-person pose estimation problem and improve the generalizability of the extracted features, this paper proposes a multi-person pose estimation method based on a deep convolutional neural network. This method mainly relies on a top-down structure which includes two stages. In the first stage, the bounding boxes that are likely to contain people are first detected by an improved faster R-CNN. Individuals in the complex scenario are then tailored by box cropping. In the second stage, we combine heatmap detection with coordinate regression to address the single person pose estimation problem. Specially, a deep convolutional ResNet is employed to produce heatmaps of human body. The precise location of each joint is achieved by the fully connected conditional random field. Experimental results demonstrate our method achieves comparable performance with the state-of-the-art ones.

Hierarchical models have shown their effectiveness for action recognition. However, most of the existing hierarchy construction methods fail to model the complex motion patterns in videos, and thus are vulnerable to the interference of the inevitable noise in action videos. Therefore, we propose a Dynamic Hierarchical Tree (DHT) model to characterize such complex motion for better recognition performance. First, a minimum maximum DTW (mmDTW) is developed to produce more stable atomic actions by limiting the minimum and maximum lengths of atomic actions. Then an aggregation method is utilized to construct a DHT for each video by merging atomic actions from bottom to top. Not only the similarity between frames but also the compatibility of dynamic evolution between frames and segments is exploited for the mmDTW and the aggregation process, making the DHTs more suitable for modeling actions in videos. Finally, a k-Nearest Neighbors Edge Pairs (kNNEP) kernel is proposed to compare two DHTs by using the mean similarity of k nearest neighbors edge pairs.

Blood trihalomethanes (THMs) and urinary haloacetic acids (HAAs) are the leading candidate biomarkers for disinfection byproduct (DBP) exposure. However, no studies have assessed the exposure profiles, temporal variability, and potential predictors of these biomarkers during pregnancy. Here we collected blood (n = 4304) and urine samples (n = 4165) from 1760 Chinese pregnant women during early, mid-, and late pregnancy, which were separately analyzed for 4 THMs and 2 HAAs. We calculated the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to assess the variability of these biomarkers and estimated their correlations with sociodemographic, water-use behavioral, dietary and sample collection factors using mixed models. The median concentrations of TCM, BDCM, Br-THMs [sum of BDCM, dibromochloromethane (DBCM), bromoform (TBM)], total THMs (TTHMs, sum of TCM and Br-THMs), DCAA and TCAA in the water distribution system were 4.2 μg/L, 1.7 μg/L, 2.9 μg/L, 7.1 μg/L, 3.4 μg/L and 8.2 μg/L, respectively. Chloroform (TCM), bromodichloromethane (BDCM), dichloroacetic acid (DCAA) and trichloroacetic acid (TCAA) were detected in > 75% of the biospecimens. Repeated measurements of blood TCM, BDCM, Br-THMs and TTHMs and urinary DCAA and TCAA uniformly exhibited high variability (ICCs = 0.01–0.13); the use of a single measurement to classify gestational average exposure resulted in a high degree of exposure misclassification. The sampling season was a strong predictor of all analyzed DBPs. Additionally, we detected a positive association of blood TCM and BDCM with household income, urinary DCAA with age, and urinary TCAA with tap water usage, education level and amount of tap water consumed. Inverse associations were found between blood BDCM and vegetable consumption, and between blood Br-THM and TTHM and time interval since the last bathing/showering. Afternoon samples had lower DCAA concentrations than did early morning samples. Our results indicate that blood THM and urinary HAA concentrations vary greatly over the course of pregnancy and are affected by sampling season, time of day of blood/urine collection, sociodemographic factors, recent water-use activities and dietary intake.

A FPGA implementation for a model‐based state of charge (SOC) estimation is described in this paper. A Thevenin equivalent circuit model is designed for SOC estimation. The extended Kalman...

Distributed assembly permutation flowshop scheduling problem (DAPFSP) has important applications in modern assembly systems. In this paper, we present three variants of the discrete invasive weed optimization (DIWO) for the DAPFSP with total flowtime criterion. For solving such a problem, we present a two-level representation that consists of a product permutation and a number of job sequences. We introduce neighbourhood operators for both the product permutation and job sequences. We design effective local search procedures respectively for product-permutation-based neighbourhood and job-sequence-based neighbourhood. By combining the problem-specific knowledge and the idea of invasive weed optimization, we present three DIWO-based algorithms: a two-level discrete invasive weed optimization (TDIWO), a discrete invasive weed optimization with hybrid search operators (HDIWO), and a HDIWO with selection probability. The algorithms explore the two neighbourhoods in quite a different way. We calibrate the presented DIWO algorithms by means of the design of experimental method, and carry out a comprehensive computational campaign based on the 810 benchmark instances in the literature. The numerical experiments show that the presented DIWO algorithms perform significantly better than the other competing algorithms in the literature. Among the proposed algorithms, HDIWO is the best one.

This article combines the most fierce concept "Internet Plus" in modern era, From the perspective of "Internet Plus", it discusses the protection mode, tries to explore the key points for the new model to construct “Internet + intangible cultural heritage protection”, provides reasonable practical guidance, and finally creates innovative ideas and methods for the protection of intangible cultural heritage. Simultaneously it makes academic contributions to the innovation and inheritance of Chinese intangible cultural heritage.

The present study aimed to explore the clinical effects of percutaneous endoscopic transforaminal discectomy using a transforaminal endoscopic spine system (TESSYS) technique for the treatment of L5-S1 lumbar disc herniation and to analyse the influence of iliac crest height on these clinical effects. The clinical data of 76 patients with L5-S1 single-segment disc herniation treated with TESSYS at The Second Affiliated Hospital and Third Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University between January and December 2016 were retrospectively analysed. Patients were divided into the following three groups according to the positional relation between the highest point of the iliac crest and the L4 and L5 pedicles in the lateral lumbar, as determined by X-ray: Group I, iliac crest height below the upper edge horizontal line of the L5 pedicle (n=42); group II, iliac crest height between the lower edge horizontal line of the L4 pedicle and the upper edge horizontal line of the L5 pedicle (n=29) and group III, iliac crest height above the lower edge horizontal line of the L4 pedicle (n=5). Changes in the postoperative visual analogue scale (VAS) pain score and Oswestry disability index (ODI) of the lower back and lower limbs were observed, and the effects were compared among the three groups. The mean operating time was 86.5±13.5 min. A single patient experienced cerebrospinal fluid leakage due to a mild tear of the dura mater during the operation, which improved after symptomatic treatment. The same operation was repeated in one patient due to the recurrence of disc herniation. In all patients, the VAS pain score and ODI of the lower back and lower limbs at 1 week and 1, 3 and 12 months following the operation were significantly lower than those before the operation (all P

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) seriously affects the people's life and health in China. This study aimed to investigate the effect of circRNA circ-ITCH on improving DN by regulating the miR-33a-5p/SIRT6 axis and the possible mechanism of action. High glucose (HG)-induced rat mesangial cells (RMCs) were used to simulate the DN in vitro. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and western blot analysis were conducted to detect the gene or protein expression. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) and wound healing assays were performed to estimate the cell viability and migration capability. Immunofluorescence and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were used to detect the α-Smooth Muscle Actin (α-SMA) expression and levels of inflammatory factors. The potential associations between circ-ITCH and miR-33a-5p, miR-33a-5p and SIRT6 in RMCs were measured via dual-luciferase reporter assay. Streptozotocin (STZ) was used to induce the diabetic mice. Blood glucose and serum insulin of mice were determined by corresponding kits, and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine (SCr) were measured using an automatic biochemical analyzer. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining and periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) staining were applied to observe the degree of pathological injury and fibrosis of renal tissues. The results of the present study revealed that circ-ITCH expression was obviously decreased in HG-induced RMCs. In addition, circ-ITCH overexpression inhibited the viability, migration, fibrosis and inflammatory response of HG-induced RMCs. Further experiments confirmed that miR-33a-5p may be a direct target of circ-ITCH and SIRT6 may be a direct target of miR-33a-5p. Notably, the miR-33a-5p mimic or shRNA-SIRT6 were discovered to reverse the inhibitory effects of circ-ITCH on the proliferation, migration, fibrosis and inflammatory response of HG-induced RMCs. Furthermore, circ-ITCH overexpression ameliorated renal inflammation and fibrosis in STZ-induced diabetic mice. In conclusion, circ-ITCH alleviated renal inflammation and fibrosis in STZ-induced diabetic mice by regulating the miR-33a-5p/SIRT6 axis.Author names: Please confirm if the author names are presented accurately and in the correct sequence (given name, middle name/initial, family name). Author 1 Given name: [ChunYang] Last name [Xu]. Author 2 Given name: [DingBo] Last name [Xu]. Author 3 Given name: [YongHua] Last name [Liu]. Author 4 Given name: [Juanjuan] Last name [Jiang]. Also, kindly confirm the details in the metadata are correct.ok

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that can lead to several organ failures including kidney. In this study, we investigated the roles of GAS5 and miR-579-3p in regulating cell pyroptosis in the sepsis-induced renal injury model. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) treatment or cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) surgery was used to create the in vitro and in vivo sepsis-induced renal injury model. The interactions between GAS5 and miR-579-3p, miR-579-3p and SIRT1 were determined by bioinformatic prediction, luciferase reporter assay and RIP assay. In vitro cell pyroptosis was examined by flow cytometry marked with active caspase-1 and PI. The protein levels of IL-1β and IL-18 induced by cell pyroptosis were quantified using ELISA assay. In vivo renal injuries were evaluated with HE and TUNEL stainings, bacterial load in serum and creatinine and blood urea nitrogen content analyses. Expression levels of GAS5, miR-579-3p, pyroptosis and SIRT1/PGC-1a/Nrf2 pathway-related molecules were evaluated by qRT-PCR or western blot. GAS5 and SIRT1 were downregulated while miR-579-3p was upregulated in in vitro and in vivo sepsis-induced renal injury models. GAS5 negatively and directly regulated miR-579-3p to reduce cell pyroptosis via activation of SIRT1/PGC-1a/Nrf2 pathway. In addition, miR-579-3p suppressed PGC-1a/Nrf2 pathway to induce cell pyroptosis by directly targeting SIRT1. What's more, overexpression of GAS5, or knockdown of miR-579-3p, enhanced SIRT1 expression that led to the improved survival rate, reduced the weight loss, and relieved renal injuries in septic mice. Overexpression of GAS5 demonstrated protective effects against sepsis-induced renal injury via downregulating miR-579-3p and activating SIRT1/PGC-1α/Nrf2 pathway to inhibit cell pyroptosis.

1) To assess the possible relationship between the morphology of femur or acetabulum and the gluteus medius pathology. 2) To analyze the outcome of isolated arthroscopic treatment of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) for patients with radiographic gluteus medius tear.We performed a retrospective study of FAI patients who underwent arthroscopy between January 2016 to December 2019. Demographic data, such as sex, age, body mass index (BMI), symptom duration, were collected. Radiographic parameters, including alpha angle, lateral center-edge angle (LCEa), femur neck-shaft angle (NSa), gluteus medius pathology, were also collected. Exclusion criteria were previous hip conditions, such as osteoarthritis (Tönnis grade1), rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, snapping hip, previous surgery on the ipsilateral hip, or incomplete data. We followed up these patients with radiographic gluteus medius tear. No surgical procedure for gluteus medius was performed. The minimum follow-up period was 13 months. Patient-reported outcomes, such as modified Harris Hip score (mHHS), visual analog scale (VAS), and patient acceptable symptom state (PASS), as well as physical examination data, including tenderness at the greater trochanter, abductor weakness, limping gait, and positive Trendelenburg sign or test, were gathered preoperatively and postoperatively.A total of 569 hips (314, 55.2% male) were collected eventually, with a mean age of 36.5 ± 10.4 years (range: 13.0 to ∼65.0). Gluteus medius pathology was found in 209 (36.7%) hips, including 41 (7.2%) partial-thickness tears and 10 (1.8%) complete tears. The NSa of the normal, tendinosis, partial tear, and complete tear groups was 133.8 ± 4.7°, 130.6 ± 3.8°, 129.4 ± 3.9°, and 129.6 ± 3.4°, respectively (P.001). The LCEa of each group was 31.7 ± 35.7°, 33.3 ± 6.5°, 34.9 ± 6.8°, and 33.7 ± 8.1°, respectively (P = .004). On multivariable logistic regression analysis, lower NSa and higher LCEa were identified as risk factors for developing gluteus medius pathology (P.001). For patients with gluteus medius tear, two cases were lost to follow-up and two cases had incomplete data. The mean follow-up period of the remaining 47 hips was 29.5 ± 12.9 (range: 13 to 59) months. The mHHS improved from 54.8 ± 19.1 to 90.1 ± 6.7 points (P.001), and VAS decreased from 6.8 ± 1.6 to 3.0 ± 1.6 points (P.001). Forty-two cases met the threshold of PASS, with a rate of 89%. The abductor strength increased from 4.1 ± 1.00 to 4.6 ± .7 grades (P = .002). However, for patients with a completely torn gluteus medius, improvement of abductor strength was not significant statistically (3.4 ± .9 to 3.9 ± .9, P = .234).There was a correlation between lower NSa/higher LCEa and gluteus medius pathology. Isolated arthroscopic treatment of FAI for patients with radiographic gluteus medius tear can gain satisfactory patient-reported outcomes.Therapeutic case series, IV.

Aims Type 2 diabetes is considered to be one of the essential risks of adverse outcomes in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).1 Metformin and insulin were suggested to affect the outcomes. However, divergent views are still expressed. We aim to gain further insight into metformin and insulin in both pre-admission and in-hospital usage in COVID-19 patients with pre-existed type 2 diabetes. Main methods This is a multicentral retrospective study of the hospital confirmed COVID-19 patients between January 19 to April 09, 2020, who admitted to 3 main hospitals in Xiangyang city, China. The effect of type 2 diabetes, metformin, and insulin on COVID-19 were analyzed, respectively. Clinical characteristics, blood laboratory indices, clinical observational indices, and outcomes of these cases were collected. Key findings A total of 407 confirmed COVID-19 patients (including 50 pre-existed type 2 diabetes) were eligible in our study. COVID-19 patients with type 2 diabetes had more adverse outcomes than non-diabetes (OR2: mortality: 1.46 [95% CI3 1.11, 1.93]; P, Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image

Background: Functional heterogeneity among TP53 mutations necessitates a need to dissect the prognostic potential of TP53 mutations at different sites or against different molecular background. Methods: The information of TP53 mutations and overall survival time among 7572 patients with metastatic cancers in the MSK-IMPACT clinical sequencing cohort were collected. The effects of TP53 mutations on survival were conducted using the Kaplan-Meier approach, log-rank test and Cox regression model in pan-cancer, and in major subtypes of lung, breast, and colon cancers. Findings: Mutations in exons 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10, p.R342*, p.Y220C, and p.G245S were identified as potential pan-cancer poor prognosticators (p < 0.05 for all). R213* was identified as a significant poor prognosticator only in metastatic lung adenocarcinoma (p = 0.01). The negative prognostic effect of mutated TP53 was statistically significant in lung adenocarcinoma patients harboring EGFR p.L858R (p = 0.002), but not in those with exon 19 deletion (p = 0.173). Compared with wild-type TP53, higher risk of death correlated with TP53 mutational status located in exon 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 among patients with metastatic breast invasive ductal carcinoma. In addition, p.R282W substitution was significantly associated with poor prognosis in metastatic colon adenocarcinoma (mCOAD), while TP53 mutation was also significantly negative associated with poor survival in COAD patients carrying driving mutations (KRAS or RAS/RAF). Interpretation: The prognostic values of TP53 mutation depended on cancer type and concurrent genomic abnormality. Our results may facilitate prognosis, patient identification for further investigation, and development of TP53 -targeted anti-cancer therapy. Funding: This work was supported by the Logistics Support Department of PLA [grant number 19BJZ03, 2019], Military Medicine Fund of Changzheng Hospital [grant number 2019CZJS208-1, 2019], Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality [grant number17511103403, 2017], Medical Innovation Research Project of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission (grant number 20Y11914400, 2020), Chinese National Natural Science Funding [grant number 82002522, 2020]and State Key Program for Chronic non- communicable Disease Prevention and Control of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China (grant number 2017YFC1309202, 2017). Declaration of Interest: All authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The modulation measurement profilometry encoding the spatial distribution information of specimen surface into the fringe defocus can realize the reconstruction of the specimen with complex surface shape. For this technique, the imaging axis of the CCD camera is coaxial with the projecting direction thanks to the application of a beam splitter mounting in the projection optical path. Without doing the phase unwrapping operation, it can accomplish shadow-free measurement for the specimen by extracting modulation values of the fringe pattern. The paper makes a comparison of the modulation retrieval in the conditions of fringe patterns with different surface profiles. Two Fourier transform methods are implemented in our computer simulation and practical experiment to show their performance in demodulating the modulation information from fringe patterns in optical 3D shape measurement.

Ferroptosis is a newly described regulated form of cell death that contributes to the progression of non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs). MicroRNA-302a-3p (miR-302a-3p) plays critical roles in the tumorigenicity of different cancers; however, its function and underlying mechanism in ferroptosis and NSCLCs remain unclear. Human NSCLCs cells were incubated with miR-302a-3pmimic or inhibitor in the presence or absence of erastin or RSL3. Cell viability, colony numbers, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) releases, lipid peroxidation and intracellular iron level were measured. Besides, the synergistic effects of cisplatin and paclitaxel with miR-302a-3p were determined. miR-302a-3p level was reduced in human NSCLCs cells and tissues. ThemiR-302a-3p mimic induced lipid peroxidation, iron overload and ferroptosis, thereby inhibiting cell growth and colony formation of NSCLCs cells. Conversely, the miR-302a-3p inhibitor block ederastin- or RSL3-related ferroptosis and tumor suppression. Additionally, we found that miR-302a-3p directly bound to the 3���-untranslational region of ferroportin to decrease its protein expression, and that ferroportin overexpression significantly prevented miR-302a-3p mimic-induced ferroptosis and tumor inhibition. Moreover, the miR-302a-3p mimic sensitized NSCLCs cells to cisplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy. miR-302a-3p functions as a tumor inhibitor, at least partly, via targeting ferroportin to induce ferroptosis of NSCLCs.

The construction of 5G network, data center and other new infrastructure, marks the opening of new infrastructure in China, which is also an inevitable measure to serve the transformation of new and old kinetic energy and inject new vitality into economic development in the information age. How to implement the new infrastructure solidly and effectively and how to promote the high-quality development of the new infrastructure are the key research directions in the next step. This article will take the university laboratory information construction as the breakthrough point, to explore how the new infrastructure technology reasonably integrates into the existing mode, how to innovate the existing mode, and try to provide a reasonable reference for improving the university laboratory information construction level and constructing the diversified management mode.

To cope with the problem caused by inadequate training data, many person re-identification (re-id) methods exploited generative adversarial networks (GAN) for data augmentation, where the training of GAN is typically independent of that of the re-id model. The coupling relation between them which probably brings in a performance gain of re-id is thus ignored. In this work, we propose a general framework to jointly train GAN and the re-id model. It can simultaneously achieve the optima of both the generator and the re-id model, where the training is guided by each other through a discriminator. The re-id model is boosted for two reasons: 1) The adversarial training that encourages it to fool the discriminator; 2) The generated samples that augment the training data. Extensive results on benchmark datasets show that for the re-id model trained with the identification loss as well as the triplet loss, the proposed joint training framework outperforms existing methods with separated training and achieves state-of-the-art re-id performance.

Canal clay pottery is one of the important intangible cultural heritages of the Zaozhuang section of the canal. It germinates due to the canal gene nurturing and develops with the canal culture. The craftsmanship is exquisite, and it has the aesthetic thinking of "creating an image to fulfill its meaning. In the era of the Internet and the Internet of Things, information interaction design is an innovative channel where technology and art complement each other, providing new ideas for the inheritance of canal pottery. This article will specifically discuss the implementation path and method based on this idea

Background: COVID-19 with high infectivity and high concealment has been widely spread around the world. This major public health event has caused anxiety among the public, including pregnant women. The aim of this study was to assess the incidence of anxiety symptoms in pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic and its influencing factors.Methods: Using an ongoing prospective pregnancy registry, we performed a single center cross-sectional analysis to investigate the overall prevalence of anxiety symptoms among pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic. Online questionnaires were used to collect information including sociodemographic data, physical activity and economic situations. The Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) was used to assess anxiety symptoms. The univariate regression analysis was performed to detect factors potentially influencing anxiety symptoms among pregnant women. The multivariate regression analysis was also conducted to analyze the association of physical exercise and economic burden with anxiety symptoms by adjusting for other variables.Results: A total of 1,517 pregnant women entered the analysis. The study reported that 31.64% of the respondents had anxiety symptoms. Those with bank loans were at higher odds of suffering from anxiety symptoms compared to those without bank loans [(adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1.494, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.181~1.889]. Those who took 2,000~5,000 steps/day (aOR 0.825, 95% CI 0.603~0.875) and >5,000 steps/day (aOR 0.924, 95% CI 0.439~0.945) were at lower odds of suffering from anxiety symptoms compared to those who took Conclusions: Three in ten pregnant women experienced anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, and anxiety symptoms showed association with bank loans and physical exercise. To prevent anxiety of pregnant women, the promotion of healthy lifestyles, improvement of mental health services, and expansion of social support should be implemented during epidemics. In parallel, the integration of psycho-educational interventions with mental health services among public health centers is required to minimize anxiety symptoms in pregnancy women.

The outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a major pandemic threat worldwide. Such a public health emergency can greatly impact various aspects of people's health and lives. This paper focuses on its potential risks for reproductive health, including the reproductive system and its functioning, as well as gamete and embryo development, which could be affected by the virus itself, drug treatments, chemical disinfectants and psychological effects related to panic during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Background Angiotensin II stimulates epithelial Na + channel (ENaC) by aldosterone‐independent mechanism. We now test the effect of angiotensin II on ENaC in the distal convoluted tubule (DCT) and cortical collecting duct (CCD) of wild‐type (WT) and kidney‐specific mineralocorticoid receptor knockout mice (KS‐MR‐KO). Methods and Results We used electrophysiological, immunoblotting and renal‐clearance methods to examine the effect of angiotensin II on ENaC in KS‐MR‐KO and wild‐type mice. High K + intake stimulated ENaC in the late DCT/early connecting tubule (DCT2/CNT) and in the CCD whereas low sodium intake stimulated ENaC in the CCD but not in the DCT2/CNT. The deletion of MR abolished the stimulatory effect of high K + and low sodium intake on ENaC, partially inhibited ENaC in DCT2/CNT but almost abolished ENaC activity in the CCD. Application of losartan inhibited ENaC only in DCT2/CNT of both wild‐type and KS‐MR‐KO mice but not in the CCD. Angiotensin II infusion for 3 days has a larger stimulatory effect on ENaC in the DCT2/CNT than in the CCD. Three lines of evidence indicate that angiotensin II can stimulate ENaC by MR‐independent mechanism: (1) angiotensin II perfusion augmented ENaC expression in KS‐MR‐KO mice; (2) angiotensin II stimulated ENaC in the DCT2/CNT but to a lesser degree in the CCD in KS‐MR‐KO mice; (3) angiotensin II infusion augmented benzamil‐induced natriuresis, increased the renal K + excretion and corrected hyperkalemia of KS‐MR‐KO mice. Conclusions Angiotensin II‐induced stimulation of ENaC occurs mainly in the DCT2/CNT and to a lesser degree in the CCD and MR plays a dominant role in determining ENaC activity in the CCD but to a lesser degree in the DCT2/CNT.

Following the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, a system of a newspaper industry centred around party newspapers was established, the core of which is party-controlled media or party principles. In other words, as public institutions, news media were primarily responsible for the publicity of the party and served as its mouthpieces. Meanwhile, the system of centrally managed revenue and expenditure, fiscal subsidies, government-supported subscription and post-office publication was introduced.

The news industry is the lighthouse of contemporary society; it is at the core of the contemporary mass communication system. Intelligent technology has also been widely used in the news industry. We first observe the revolutionary changes of the news industry from the holistic perspective, and then analyse the impact of intelligent technology on the news industry from the four links of news collection, news production, news distribution and news consumption.

The commercialization of 5G has greatly accelerated the mobile Internet and has led to disruptive changes in the new concepts, models and practices of communication and media.

The platform is not only a popular concept in the Internet economy but has also become the key to the current social transformation. It uses smart technology to build new communication mechanisms and social ecologies that have an overall impact.

Background: Trihalomethanes (THMs) have demonstrated adverse effects on male reproductive systems in experimental animals, but human evidence has been inconsistent. Prior researches have been limited by small sample sizes and inadequate exposure assessment. Objectives: To investigate the association between blood THMs and repeated measurements of semen quality parameters among 1199 healthy men screened as potential sperm donors. Methods: We recruited healthy men presenting to the Hubei Province Human Sperm Bank from April to December 2017. At study entry, each participant provided a spot blood sample which was used to quantify blood concentrations of four THMs: chloroform (TCM), bromodichloromethane (BDCM), dibromochloromethane (DBCM) and bromoform (TBM). The summary measures of exposure for brominated THMs (Br-THMs; molar sum of BDCM, DBCM and TBM) and total THMs (TTHMs; molar sum of TCM and Br-THMs) were also calculated. We used multivariable linear regression models to estimate the cross-sectional associations of tertiles of blood THM concentrations with semen quality parameters measured at study entry, and mixed-effect models to estimate the longitudinal associations accounting for repeated measures of semen quality, adjusting for relevant confounding factors. Results: In the cross-sectional analysis, several inverse dose-response relationships were observed across tertiles of blood TCM concentrations and sperm count, total motility and progressive motility, and between blood DBCM, and Br-THMs, and TTHMs and sperm count and concentration. The inverse associations of blood TCM, DBCM, Br-THMs and TTHMs with sperm count were confirmed in the longitudinal, repeated measure analysis. Conclusion: Our results suggest that exposure to THMs from drinking water may be related to decreased semen quality in young healthy men. Keywords: Blood samples, Disinfection by-products, Trihalomethanes, Semen quality, Epidemiology

Human beings are social animals, and social interaction is the most basic human activity. With the help of communication media, humans form social networks. In the contemporary Internet world, social networking platforms are the most popular and they are becoming increasingly intelligent.

Today, the superior position of conventional media in the relationship between communicators and communicatees has been overturned, and the all-round convergence of conventional and emerging media has become the trend of development, making media transition a matter of great urgency. Meanwhile, new communication forms such as “one man, one media” and “all-space and -time communication” are slowly taking shape. Convergence, development and innovation have become the synonyms of media convergence. Against such media background, how to encourage the prompt transformation of the conventional media industry has become a common problem facing media workers.

The U.K. was among the first Western countries to introduce media convergence. Back in 2009, the British government proposed the strategy of “Digital Britain”. The strategy has become the guiding principle for British media convergence, and its goal is to turn the U.K. into a global digital capital with the championing of media infrastructure renewal and the adoption of emerging digital technology.

The trend is for artificial intelligence and communications media to become deeply intertwined. Where is the future heading?

This paper studies the problem of multiple automatic guided vehicles (multi-AGVs) dispatching in a matrix manufacturing workshop. The goal is to minimize the transportation cost that includes the cost of travelling distance, the cost of penalty time and the cost of AGVs. For the purpose, a mixed integer linear programming model is set up and an improved iterated greedy (IIG) algorithm is proposed. In the algorithm, an AGV route merging strategy and a workshop partition strategy are designed to reduce the cost of AGVs and travelling distance. Two rules are designed to quickly identify impossible solutions to save the operation time. A nearest neighbor heuristic is used to generate an initial solution with high quality. In the local search stage, four effective operators are used to improve the quality of the solution. A repair strategy is proposed to avoid the algorithm falling into local optima. Finally, we use 110 real instances to test the IIG and the other six algorithms in the literature. The comparative experiments show that the proposed algorithm and strategies have much better performance for solving this problem.

The objective of this study was to develop pediatric physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models for pantoprazole and esomeprazole. Pediatric PBPK models were developed by Simcyp version 15 by incorporating cytochrome P450 (CYP)2C19 maturation and auto‐inhibition. The predicted‐to‐observed pantoprazole clearance (CL) ratio ranged from 0.96–1.35 in children 1–17 years of age and 0.43–0.70 in term infants. The predicted‐to‐observed esomeprazole CL ratio ranged from 1.08–1.50 for children 6–17 years of age, and 0.15–0.33 for infants. The prediction was markedly improved by assuming no auto‐inhibition of esomeprazole in infants in the PBPK model. Our results suggested that the CYP2C19 auto‐inhibition model was appropriate for esomeprazole in adults and older children but could not be directly extended to infants. A better understanding of the complex interplay of enzyme maturation, inhibition, and compensatory mechanisms for CYP2C19 is necessary for PBPK modeling in infants.

The large amount of data among billions of devices deployed for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) cause a massive energy consumption. Driven by the pursuit of green communication, this paper presents a space-reserved cooperative caching scheme for IIoT in the fifth generation mobile heterogeneous networks, where the cache space in a base station is divided into two parts, one is used to store the prefetched data from the servers ahead of the device request time and the other is reserved to store the temporarily buffering data in the wireless transmission queue at the device request time. With the constraint that the quality of service is guaranteed, we propose an algorithm to obtain the optimal proportion between the two parts of the cache space for the purpose of reducing the average energy consumption. Simulation results verified that the proposed caching scheme is more efficient than the conventional one with respect to the average energy consumption.

The non-uniform flowrate distribution along the axis direction will affect the aerodynamic performance of the multi-blade centrifugal fan. In this article, the bevel cutting design on the blade is adopted. Using this method, the inlet structure is changed and the deviation of the inlet flow of the centrifugal fan is improved. The changed inlet structure reduces the friction and the inlet obstruction, which leads to a more uniform flow distribution, and reduces the impact loss, vortex loss and the drag loss. This paper is focused on the effect of bevel cutting blade on the aerodynamic performance and the flow behaviors of the centrifugal fan, and the bevel cutting area moves along the radial direction and axis direction are also investigated based on the CFD simulation, respectively.