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Background Herpes zoster presents as clustered blisters on one side of the body, accompanied by nerve pain. This is caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, and it occurs primarily in people with weakened immunity. Tumor and chemotherapy drugs can impair the patient's immune function, induce herpes zoster and prolong the course of disease.In these patients, skin changes can last for months and blisters can recur and cause serious complications such as postherpetic neuralgia.Acupuncture is a common alternative therapy for herpes zoster in East Asia. Case presentation We report a case of an elderly male patient with widespread herpes zoster in the trunk after non-Hodgkin's lymphoma chemotherapy. The patient had received conventional treatment with valaciclovir and mecobalamin within 24 hours of symptom onset. Because neither the clustered blisters nor the nerve pain were improved a week later, acupuncture and related techniques were applied. These included electro-acupuncture, surrounding acupuncture, fire acupuncture, and cupping. The patient recovered 20 days after the herpes zoster attack, and there were no adverse reactions during the treatment process. Conclusions This case suggests that acupuncture and related techniques are effective interventions for this condition.This case report is innovative because it shows that acupuncture as an adjuvant treatment can improve the skin lesions in patients with HZ after tumour chemotherapy, relieve pain, and shorten the course of HZ.

Fluorescence imaging is a noninvasive and dynamic real-time imaging technique; however, it exhibits poor spatial resolution in centimeter-deep tissues because biological tissues are highly scattering media for optical radiation. The recently developed ultrasound-controlled fluorescence (UCF) imaging is a novel imaging technique that can overcome this bottleneck. Previous studies suggested that the effective contrast agent and sensitive imaging system are the two pivotal factors for generating high-resolution UCF images ex vivo and/or in vivo. Here, this review highlights the recent advances (2015–2020) in the design and synthesis of contrast agents and the improvement of imaging systems to realize high-resolution UCF imaging of deep tissues. The imaging performances of various UCF systems, including the signal-to-noise ratio, imaging resolution, and imaging depth, are specifically discussed. In addition, the challenges and prospects are highlighted. With continuously increasing research interest in this field and emerging multidisciplinary applications, UCF imaging with higher spatial resolution and larger imaging depth may be developed shortly, which is expected to have a far-reaching impact on disease surveillance and/or therapy.

In this work, we demonstrate a novel In0.52Al0.48As based top-illuminated avalanche photodiode (APD), designed to circumvent the problem of serious bandwidth degradation under high gain (>100) and high power operation and significantly enhance the dynamic range in the established frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) lidar system. In our APD design, the carriers transiting through the dual multiplication (M-)layers are subjected to a stepped-up electric field profile, so they can be energized by the first step and propagate to the second step to trigger the avalanche processes. Such a cascade avalanche process leads to an ultra-high gain bandwidth product (460 GHz) with a 1 A/W responsivity at unit gain. Compared to the high-performance and commercial p-i-n PD and photo-receiver (PD + trans-impedance amplifier (TIA)) installed in the same lidar test bed, our demonstrated APD receiver (without TIA) has a larger S/N ratio under high operation gain (33 A/W) with less optical local-oscillator (LO) power required (0.25 vs. 0.5 mW), while exhibiting a wider dynamic range in each pixel. These advantages in turn lead to the construction of a better quality of 3-D lidar image by using the demonstrated APD.

Novel microring based optical phase-shifters on Si-photonic platforms for microwave photonic applications are demonstrated. By using an add-drop microring structure in combination with an additional multimode interferometer (MMI), pure phase modulation with an ultrahigh modulation efficiency can be realized. Comparison is made to the reference all-pass ring design with both the same radius (5 m) and coupling coefficient (: ~0.2). The demonstrated structure minimizes the residual amplitude modulation (0.9 vs. 1.8 dB) for nearly 2 phase shifting over a wide optical window (1520 to 1570 nm) at the expense of a larger insertion loss (0.06 dB) due to the additional MMI. The demonstrated phase shifter structure is implemented in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for further study of its dynamic and linearity performance. Under forward bias, it exhibits a low V/I(0.4 V/12.7 mA), fast rise-time (3 ns), low insertion loss (0.2 dB), low residue-amplitude-modulations (

Background:. Obesity and insulin resistance (IR) are common features of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Metformin (MET) increases insulin sensitivity, but it is associated with unsatisfactory weight loss. The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist exenatide has been shown to reduce weight and IR in patients with diabetes. This study aimed to explore the therapeutic effects of exenatide once-weekly (QW) combined with MET on body weight, as well as metabolic and endocrinological parameters in overweight/obese women with PCOS. Methods:. Fifty overweight/obese women with PCOS diagnosed via the Rotterdam criteria were randomized to one of two treatment groups: MET (500 mg three times a day [TID]) or combination treatment (COM) (MET 500 mg TID, exenatide 2 mg QW) for 12 weeks. The primary outcomes were anthropometric changes associated with obesity, and the secondary outcomes included changes in reproductive hormone levels, glucose and lipid metabolism, and C-reactive protein. Results:. Forty (80%) patients completed the study. COM therapy was superior to MET monotherapy in reducing weight (P = 0.045), body mass index (BMI) (P = 0.041), and waist circumference (P = 0.023). Patients in the COM group on an average lost 3.8 ± 2.4 kg compared with 2.1 ± 3.0 kg in the MET group. In the COM group, BMI and waist circumference decreased by 1.4 ± 0.87 kg/m2 and 4.63 ± 4.42 cm compared with 0.77 ± 1.17 kg/m2 and 1.72 ± 3.07 cm in the MET group, respectively. Moreover, levels of fasting glucose, oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) 2-h glucose, and OGTT 2-h insulin were significantly lower with COM therapy than with MET (P

BACKGROUND: To analyze the effect of early enteral nutrition on serum inflammatory factors and intestinal mucosal permeability in patients with severe acute pancreatitis. METHODS: A total of 55 patients with severe acute pancreatitis were divided into 2 groups: the control group (n = 27), who received routine treatment and the observation group (n = 28), who received early enteral nutrition. The expression of serum inflammatory factors and the permeability of the intestinal mucosa were compared between the 2 groups before and after treatment, and rates of infection and mortality within 30 days were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: The recovery duration of serum and urine amylase and the length of hospital stay in the observation group were shorter than those in the control group. The white blood cell counts, levels of procalcitonin, and the expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in the observation group were lower than those in the control group 7 days after the treatment was commenced, and the differences were statistically significant (P < .05). The concentration of diamine oxidase in the serum and the urinary lactulose to mannitol (L/M) ratio in the observation group were lower than those in the control group 7 days after treatment was commenced. The infection rate in the observation group (21.43%) was lower than that in the control group (51.85%) (P < .05). There was no difference in the 30-day mortality between the 2 groups (P > .05). CONCLUSION: Early enteral nutrition may reduce the expression of serum inflammatory factors, decrease the permeability of the intestinal mucosa, and improve the prognosis of patients with severe acute pancreatitis.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of elastography in the differential diagnosis of benign versus malignant testicular lesions.Methods: The PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases were searched for relevant studies. The diagnostic accuracy of elastography was evaluated using pooled sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratio, post-test probability, diagnostic odds ratio, and by summarizing the area under the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (HSROC) curve.Results: Seven studies with 568 lesions were included. The pooled sensitivity and specificity were 87% (95% confidence interval [CI], 81% to 92%) and 81% (95% CI, 65% to 90%), respectively. The pooled estimates of the positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio were 4.48 (95% CI, 2.37 to 8.47), 0.16 (95% CI, 0.10 to 0.25), and 28.11 (95% CI, 11.39 to 69.36), respectively. The area under the HSROC curve was 90% (95% CI, 88% to 93%).Conclusion: Elastography is useful for assessing the stiffness of testicular lesions and for differentiating benign from malignant lesions. Elastography can be an effective supplement to conventional ultrasonography.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has demonstrated a great potential to provide future-proofed security, especially for 5G and beyond communications. As the critical infrastructure for 5G and beyond communications, optical networks can offer a cost-effective solution to QKD deployment utilizing the existing fiber resources. In particular, measurement-device-independent QKD shows its ability to extend the secure distance with the aid of an untrusted relay. Compared to the trusted relay, the untrusted relay has obviously better security, since it does not rely on any assumption on measurement and even allows to be accessed by an eavesdropper. However, it cannot extend QKD to an arbitrary distance like the trusted relay, such that it is expected to be combined with the trusted relay for large-scale QKD deployment. In this work, we study the hybrid trusted/untrusted relay based QKD deployment over optical backbone networks and focus on cost optimization during the deployment phase. A new network architecture of hybrid trusted/untrusted relay based QKD over optical backbone networks is described, where the node structures of the trusted relay and untrusted relay are elaborated. The corresponding network, cost, and security models are formulated. To optimize the deployment cost, an integer linear programming model and a heuristic algorithm are designed. Numerical simulations verify that the cost-optimized design can significantly outperform the benchmark algorithm in terms of deployment cost and security level. Up to 25% cost saving can be achieved by deploying QKD with the hybrid trusted/untrusted relay scheme while keeping much higher security level relative to the conventional point-to-point QKD protocols that are only with the trusted relays.

Background 46XY partial gonadal dysgenesis (PGD) is a rare subtype of disorder of sex development (DSD). 46YY PGD is a congenital disease with atypical chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomical sex development. The patient in this case report had male and female genitalia simultaneously. We created a flowchart of the differential diagnosis for clinicians. Case presentation A 41-year-old male was admitted to the hospital complaining of lower quadrant abdominal pain for 1 day. Physical examination revealed that his penis size was normal, but a urethral orifice was located in the perineum area between the scrotum and anus. One small testicle was in the left scrotum, but no testicle was present on the right. The patient’s abdomen was bulging, and he had lower abdominal pain. According to the emergency CT scan, a lesion (74*65 mm) was found in the right pelvis between the bladder and rectum. The lesion showed an unclear boundary and hematocele appearance. The lesion was removed by emergency surgery, and the pathology report indicated a mixed germ cell tumor with a seminoma and yolk sac tumors. Conclusion This article is a case report of germ cell tumors in 46XY PGD patients. The literature review summarizes the clinical diagnosis, and a flowchart is provided for physicians in future practice. The importance of this report is that it will help acquaint physicians with this rare disease and make the right initial clinical decision quickly through the use of this flowchart. However, the variants of special subtypes of 46XY DSD are myriad, and all the diagnoses could not be covered in one flowchart.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been an important tool for nanoscale imaging and characterization with atomic and subatomic resolution. Theoretical investigations are getting highly important for the interpretation of AFM images. Researchers have used molecular simulation to examine the AFM imaging mechanism. With a recent flurry of researches applying machine learning to AFM, AFM images obtained from molecular simulation have also been used as training data. However, the simulation is incredibly time consuming. In this paper, we apply super-resolution methods, including compressed sensing and deep learning methods, to reconstruct simulated images and to reduce simulation time. Several molecular simulation energy maps under different conditions are presented to demonstrate the performance of reconstruction algorithms. Through the analysis of reconstructed results, we find that both presented algorithms could complete the reconstruction with good quality and greatly reduce simulation time. Moreover, the super-resolution methods can be used to speed up the generation of training data and vary simulation resolution for AFM machine learning.

The location of the electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) is the important link in the construction of the EVCS. The optimal location of the electric vehicle directly affects the operating efficiency of the charging station and the satisfaction of the electric vehicle user, site selection play an important part throughout whole life cycle, which is deemed to be multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) issue involving many experts and many conflicting attributes. In practical MAGDM issues, the information of uncertain and fuzzy cognitive decision is well-depicted by uncertain linguistic term sets (ULTSs). These ULTSs could be simply shifted into the probabilistic uncertain linguistic sets (PULTSs). In such paper, we design some novel probabilistic uncertain linguistic weighted Dice similarity measures (PULWDSM) and the probabilistic uncertain linguistic weighted generalized Dice similarity measures (PULWGDSM). Subsequently, the PULWGDSM-based MAGDM methods are presented under PULTSs. In the end, a practical case which concerns about the location planning of electric vehicle charging stations is offered to demonstrate the proposed PULWGDSM’s applicability and advantages.

In the past, knowledge in the fields of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries mainly come from experiences and are documented in hard copies or specific electronic databases. In order to make use of this knowledge, a lot of studies have focused on retrieving and storing this knowledge in a systematic and accessible way. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology proves to be a valuable media in extracting data because it provides physical and functional digital models for all the facilities within the life-cycle of the project. Therefore, the combination of the knowledge science with BIM shows great potential in constructing the knowledge map in the field of the AEC industry. Based on literature reviews, this article summarizes the latest achievements in the fields of knowledge science and BIM, in the aspects of (1) knowledge description, (2) knowledge discovery, (3) knowledge storage and management, (4) knowledge inference and (5) knowledge application, to show the state-of-arts and suggests the future directions in the application of knowledge science and BIM technology in the fields of AEC industries. The review indicates that BIM is capable of providing information for knowledge extraction and discovery, by adopting semantic network, knowledge graph and some other related methods. It also illustrates that the knowledge is helpful in the design, construction, operation and maintenance periods of the AEC industry, but now it is only at the beginning stage.

Background To describe the diagnostic criteria used and their application accuracy in the practice of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) caring among obstetricians and gynaecologists across China. Methods This was an Online cross-sectional survey of Obstetricians and gynecologists involved in PCOS caring conducted via the largest continuing education platform of obstetrics and gynecology across China from September 2019 to November 2019. Results A total of 2,328 respondents were eligible for the final analysis. Of these, 94.5 % were general obstetricians and gynaecologists (Ge-ObGyn), and 5.5 % were reproductive endocrinologists (Re-ObGyn). Overall, the most frequently used criteria were the Androgen Excess and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Society (AE-PCOS) criteria (48.2 %), followed by the Rotterdam criteria (35.7 %) and NIH criteria (12.1 %). Of the respondents, 31.3 % used their diagnostic criteria in their clinical practice. More respondents who chose the Rotterdam criteria could accurately apply the diagnostic criteria than those who chose the AE-PCOS criteria (41.2 % vs. 32.1 %, P P P Conclusions Less than one-third of obstetricians and gynaecologists across China could accurately use the diagnostic criteria they choose to diagnose PCOS. There is an urgent need to train obstetricians and gynaecologists on PCOS diagnosis in an effort to improve the medical care quality of patients with PCOS.

Ulcerative Colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammation disease, and the incidence of UC is increasing recently. Both clinical trials and animal experiments show that moxibustion is a complementary and alternative treatment for UC. Previous studies showed that moxibustion can improve UC by regulating the balance of Tregs and Th17 (Sun et al., 2017). Treg cells is one subset of CD4[Formula: see text] T cells that exert the immunosuppressive function. CD39 and CD73, expressed on the surface of Tregs, hydrolyze ATP to AMP and are further involved in the immunosuppressive function of Tregs. In this study, we investigated the effect of moxibustion on CD39[Formula: see text] Tregs and CD73[Formula: see text] Tregs in dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induced UC mice. The A2a receptor (A2aR), one of the targets of adenosine, was also detected. The results showed that moxibustion could increase the expression of CD39, CD73, and A2aR in colonic tissue and improve the proportion of CD39[Formula: see text] Tregs and CD73[Formula: see text] Tregs in peripheral blood, inguinal draining lymph nodes and spleen in the UC model. Additionally, A2aR agonists enhanced the cell viability of colonic epithelial cells and inhibit the production of cytokines IL-6 and TNF-[Formula: see text] in vitro, which may further influence the pathway of ATP purine signal metabolism and alleviates the gut inflammation of UC mice. Taken together, this study provides supplemental evidence to reveal the immune related mechanism of moxibustion in the treatment of UC.

Site planning and building design results are generally managed in Geographic Information System (GIS) and Building Information Modeling/Model (BIM) separately. The incompatibility of data has brought potential challenges for the assessment and delivery of the results. A data integration and simplification framework for improving site planning and building design is proposed in this paper. A BIM-GIS integrated model with a multi-scale data structure is developed to link the results of site planning and building design together. Geometric optimization algorithms are then designed to generate simplified building models with different levels of details (LODs) based on the information required at each scale. This paper provides a feasible way to integrate planning and design data from different sources to enhance the evaluation and delivery of the results. The proposed approach is validated by a village construction project in east China, and results show that the method is capable to integrate site planning and building design results from different platforms and support seamless visualization of multi-scale geometric data. It is also found that a seamless database facilitates understanding of planning and design results and improves communication efficiency. Currently, the main limitation of this paper is the limited access to 3D real-world data, and data collection techniques like point cloud are expected to solve the problem.

In this work, we demonstrate the high-power and high-responsivity performance of the dual multiplication (M-) layers in In0.52Al0.48As based avalanche photodiode (APD). The dual M-layer design in our APD structure effectively constrains the multiplication process to a thin high-field region rather than the whole thick M-layer. It thus minimizes the space charge effect (SCE) within and avoids increasing the tunneling dark current for the case of directly shrinking M-layer thickness in APD. Furthermore, by combining the specially designed mesa shape with this dual M-layer structure, the edge breakdown can be well suppressed. These benefits lead to an ultra-high gain-bandwidth product (450 GHz; 1 A/W at unit gain) and a high saturation current (>12 mA) can be simultaneously achieved in our device. By nonlinearly driving a wavelength sweeping laser in the self-heterodyne lidar setup, it can generate an optical pulse train-like waveform, providing an effective optical modulation depth of 200% to feed into our demonstrated APD at the receiver-end. Under such scheme, the photo-generated RF (1 GHz) power from our APD with a 6.3 A/W responsivity can be as high as +6.95 dBm at a high (7 mA) output photocurrent. Such high-power and high-responsivity characteristics of our APD can further improve the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and dynamic range performances in each pixel of the lidar image. A high-quality 3-dimensional (D) FMCW lidar image is constructed based on our APD, without the integration of any electrical amplifier at the receiver end.

Accurate fire load (combustible objects) information is crucial for safety design and resilience assessment of buildings. Traditional fire load acquisition methods, such as fire load survey, which are time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone, failed to adapt to dynamic changed indoor scenes. As a starting point of automatic fire load estimation, fast recognition and detection of indoor fire load are important. Thus, this research proposes a computer vision-based method to automatically detect indoor fire loads using deep learning-based instance segmentation. First, indoor elements are classified into different categories according to their material composition. Next, an image dataset of indoor scenes with instance annotations is developed. Finally, a deep learning model, based on Mask R-CNN, is developed and trained using transfer learning to detect fire loads in images. Experimental results show that our model achieves promising accuracy, as measured by an average precision (AP) of 40.5% and AP50 of 59.2%, for instance segmentation on the dataset. A comparison with manual detection demonstrates the method’s high efficiency as it can detect fire load 1200 times faster than humans. This research contributes to the body of knowledge 1) a novel method of high accuracy and efficiency for automated fire load recognition in indoor environments based on instance segmentation; 2) training techniques for a deep learning model in a relatively small dataset of indoor images which includes complex scenes and a variety of instances; and 3) an image dataset with annotations of indoor fire loads. Although instance segmentation has been applied for several years, this is a pioneering research on using it for automated indoor fire load recognition, which paves the foundation for automatic fire load estimation and resilience assessment for the built environment.

Chronic pain is a significant public health problem with emotional and disabling factors, which may not completely respond to current medical treatments such as opioids. The systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the effectiveness and safety of MBCT for patients with chronic pain. Database searches of PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus and CINAHL up to 15 October 2019. Included studies assessed with the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. Eight RCTs involved 433 patients, including chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis and mix etiology. MBCT intervention demonstrated a short-term improvement on depression mood [standardized mean difference -0.72; 95% confidence interval = -1.22 to -0.22, p = 0.005] compared with usual care and was associated with short-term improvement in mindfulness compared with non-MBCT [SMD 0.51; 95% CI = 0.01 to 1.01, p = 0.04]. Between-group differences in pain intensity, pain inference and pain acceptance were not significant at short- or long-term follow-up. Compared to active treatments, MBCT intervention not found significant differences in either short- or long-term outcomes. MBCT showed short-term efficacious on depressed mood and mindfulness of chronic pain patients. Longer follow-ups, large sample and rigorous RCTs that can be best understand remaining uncertainties needed.

Objectives To develop a new Chinese medicine (CM)-based drug and to evaluate its safety and effect for suppressing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in COVID-19 patients. Methods A putative ARDS-suppressing drug Keguan-1 was first developed and then evaluated by a randomized, controlled two-arm trial. The two arms of the trial consist of a control therapy (alpha interferon inhalation, 50 µg twice daily; and lopinavir/ritonavir, 400 and 100 mg twice daily, respectively) and a testing therapy (control therapy plus Keguan-1 19.4 g twice daily) by random number table at 1:1 ratio with 24 cases each group. After 2-week treatment, adverse events, time to fever resolution, ARDS development, and lung injury on newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients were assessed. Results An analysis of the data from the first 30 participants showed that the control arm and the testing arm did not exhibit any significant differences in terms of adverse events. Based on this result, the study was expanded to include a total of 48 participants (24 cases each arm). The results show that compared with the control arm, the testing arm exhibited a significant improvement in time to fever resolution (P=0.035), and a significant reduction in the development of ARDS (P=0.048). Conclusions Keguan-1-based integrative therapy was safe and superior to the standard therapy in suppressing the development of ARDS in COVID-19 patients. (Trial registration No. NCT 04251871 at www.clinicaltrials.gov) Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s11655-020-3426-7.

In the construction area, visuals such as drawings, photos, videos, and 3D models, play a significant role in the design, build and maintenance of a facility, bringing efficiency to generate, transfer, and store information. Advanced visual computing techniques facilitate the understanding of design contents, work plans, and other types of information shared in the construction industry. Automatic visual data collection and analysis provide many possibilities to the construction industry and a large number of works have investigated how visual computing can improve construction management processes and other problems in the construction area. However, a comprehensive literature review is needed. This study uses bibliometric approaches to review the works published to date, and analyses the development of knowledge, significant research results, and trends. The purpose of this study is to help newcomers to this research field understand knowledge structure and formulate research directions, thereby enhancing knowledge development. From this study, it can be concluded that computer vision is a key axis of improvement. Moreover, building information modeling, laser scanning, and other visualization-related techniques are also important in advancing the construction area.

BACKGROUND: The first case of pneumonia subsequently attributed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province on December 8, 2019. The symptoms included fever, coughing, and breathing difficulties. A few patients with this infection may only have atypical symptoms, which could lead to a misdiagnosis and subsequently further facilitate the spread of the virus. CASE SUMMARY: A 74-year-old female patient complained of severe diarrhea. She did not have fever, coughing, or breathing difficulties. A physical examination revealed no obvious positive signs. The patient had been hypertensive for more than 10 years. Her blood pressure was well controlled. On January 9, 2020, the patient’s son visited a colleague who was later confirmed positive for SARS-CoV-2 and his first close contact with our patient was on January 17. The patient was first diagnosed with gastrointestinal dysfunction. However, considering her indirect contact with a SARS-CoV-2-infected individual, we suggested that an atypical pneumonia virus infection should be ruled out. A computed tomography scan was performed on January 26, and showed ground-glass nodules scattered along the two lungs, suggestive of viral pneumonia. Given the clinical characteristics, epidemiological history, and examination, the patient was diagnosed with coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). CONCLUSION: Our patient had atypical symptoms of COVID-19. Careful acquisition of an epidemiological history is necessary to make a correct diagnosis and strategize a treatment plan.

We demonstrate a novel optical phase shifter with a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) type of device structure based on the silicon photonics foundry platform. By operating such a device in saturation mode, we obtain measured output IEC-VEC characteristics very similar to those of an ideal diode, which has a nearly zero turn-on voltage and an extremely small differential resistance. The huge amount of injected current under a small voltage swing (0.1 V) in the operation window makes it possible to obtain significant plasma induced change of the refractive index in the optical waveguide with an extremely small driving-voltage. The device has a small foot-print (500 μm in length), but exhibits small static power consumption for the π phase-shift (Pπ: 4.1 mW), reasonable propagation loss (0.02 dB/μm), small driving-voltage (Vπ: 0.12 V), fast switching time (rise/fall

Objective: This study assessed whether Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) combined with probiotics/synbiotics for irritable bowel syndrome - diarrhea (IBS-D) was more effective and safer than probiotics/synbiotics alone. Methods: Ten databases were searched for randomized control trials (RCTs) of IBS-D as diagnosed by Manning or Rome criteria. Trials comparing probiotics and probiotics with CHM were included. The Cochrane risk of bias (ROB) was evaluated for each trial. RevMan 5.3 was used to conduct a meta-analysis. Results: Twenty-six RCTs were included (25 Chinese, 1 English), involving 2045 participants. Meta-analysis was conducted on two outcomes: overall symptom improvement and relapse. CHM combined with live Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus preparations reduced relapse rate (RR 0.28, 95%CI 0.15–0.52, 3 trials, n = 205) compared with probiotics alone. The subgroup analysis showed the benefit of CHM prescriptions based on soothing liver and invigorating spleen (1.28, 1.14–1.44, 3, 244), invigorating spleen and resolving dampness (1.20, 1.03–1.41, 2, 128), or warming and invigorating spleen and kidney formulae (1.27, 1.09–1.46, 2, 210) combined with triple Bifidobacterium preparations than the same probiotics alone which improved overall symptoms for IBS-D. There was unclear bias in almost domains of ROB. Most studies had a high risk of bias due to lack of blinding of investigator and participants, and selective reporting. Conclusions: This study showed that CHM combined with probiotics may reduce relapse rate by 72%, and improve overall symptoms of IBS-D (as diagnosed by Rome II and III) compared to probiotics alone. From the limited subgroup analysis, only soothing liver and invigorating spleen formulae, represented by Tongxie Yaofang, added to triple Bifidobacterium preparations may be superior to the single preparations in terms of overall symptoms. However, due to the poor methodological quality and small sample size of the trials, these findings must be interpreted with caution. Keywords: Chinese herbal medicine, Probiotic, Synbiotic, Irritable bowel syndrome, Randomized controlled trials, Systematic review, Meta-analysis

Single-shot images are the standard readout of experiments with ultracold atoms -- the tarnished looking glass into their many-body physics. The efficient extraction of observables from single-shot images is thus crucial. Here, we demonstrate how artificial neural networks can optimize this extraction. In contrast to standard averaging approaches, machine learning allows both one- and two-particle densities to be accurately obtained from a drastically reduced number of single-shot images. Quantum fluctuations and correlations are directly harnessed to obtain physical observables for bosons in a tilted double-well potential at an unprecedented accuracy. Strikingly, machine learning also enables a reliable extraction of momentum-space observables from real-space single-shot images and vice versa. This obviates the need for a reconfiguration of the experimental setup between in-situ and time-of-flight imaging, thus potentially granting an outstanding reduction in resources., 7+8 pages, 3+8 figures, software available at http://ultracold.org

Machine learning (ML) plays an important role in atmospheric environment prediction, having been widely applied in atmospheric science with significant progress in algorithms and hardware. In this paper, we present a brief overview of the development of ML models as well as their application to atmospheric environment studies. ML model performance is then compared based on the main air pollutants (i.e., PM2.5, O3, and NO2) and model type. Moreover, we identify the key driving variables for ML models in predicting particulate matter (PM) pollutants by quantitative statistics. Additionally, a case study for wet nitrogen deposition estimation is carried out based on ML models. Finally, the prospects of ML for atmospheric prediction are discussed.

Evidence has demonstrated that the gut microbiota, which consists of probiotics and pathogenic microorganisms, is involved in the initiation of ulcerative colitis (UC) via the dysregulation of intestinal microflora and normal immune interactions, which ultimately leads to intestinal mucosal dysfunction. Irisin is released from muscle cells and displays anti-inflammatory effects; however, the mechanisms underlying irisin-mediated anti-inflammatory effects in UC have not been previously reported. In the present study, mice were divided into the following four groups: i) Control; ii) irisin; iii) dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) salt; and iv) DSS + irisin. Subsequently, the effects of irisin were investigated by observing alterations in intestinal microbes. Irisin significantly reduced the degree of inflammation in UC by reversing alterations to the macroscopic score, histological score, number of CD64+ cells and inflammatory cytokine alterations (P

Tailoring optical properties in photocatalysts by nanostructuring them can help increase solar light harvesting efficiencies in a wide range of materials. Whereas plasmon resonances are widely employed in metallic catalysts for this purpose, latest advances of nonradiative, dielectric nanophotonics also enable light confinement and enhanced visible light absorption in semiconductors. Here, a design procedure for large-scale nanofabrication of semiconductor photoelectrodes using imprint lithography is developed. Anapole excitations and metasurface lattice resonances are combined to enhance the absorption of the model material, amorphous gallium phosphide (a-GaP), over the visible spectrum. It is shown that cost-effective, high sample throughput is achieved while retaining the precise signature of the engineered photonic states. Photoelectrochemical measurements under hydrogen evolution reaction conditions and sunlight illumination reveal the contributions of the respective resonances and demonstrate an overall photocurrent enhancement of 5.7, compared to a planar film. These results are supported by optical and numerical analysis of single nanodisks and of the upscaled metasurface.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202102877

Background Obesity is associated with the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and contributes substantially to metabolic abnormalities in women with PCOS. The study aimed to describe and compare the practices of physicians in the diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of obesity in patients with PCOS. Methods Reproductive endocrinologists (Repro-Endo) and obstetrician-gynecologists (non-reproductive medicine specialty, OB-Gyn) in China participated in a survey, and their responses were analyzed using χ2 tests, Fisher exact tests, and multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results The study analyzed 1318 survey responses (85.8% OB-Gyn; 97.3% women). Body mass index was the most common diagnostic criterion for obesity; only 1.3% of participants measured waist circumference to identify abdominal obesity. More Repro-Endo participants (25% of all participants) enquired about the psychological problems of patients with obesity than OB-Gyn participants, and 42.5% of participants reported ordering both a lipid profile and oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) for patients with obesity and PCOS. Multivariable analysis, that included physician’s specialty, age, hospital grade, and number of patients with PCOS seen annually, revealed that OB-Gyn participants were less likely to order OGTT (OR, 0.3; 95% CI, 0.2–0.4) and lipid profile (OR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1–0.3) than Repro-Endo participants. The most common treatments for patients with PCOS were lifestyle modification (> 95%) and metformin (> 80%). More Repro-Endo participants prescribed metformin at a dose of 1.5 g/day compared with OB-Gyn (47.6% vs. 26.3%), and more OB-Gyn participants reported being unclear about the appropriate dosage of metformin for patients with obesity and PCOS (8.9% vs. 1.6%). Conclusion Our survey identified knowledge gaps in metabolic screening for patients with obesity and PCOS and a disparity in the evaluation and treatment of obesity in PCOS among different specialties. Similarly, it highlights the need to improve obesity management education for physicians caring for women with PCOS.

Purpose Although increasing lines of evidence showed associations between serum uric acid (UA) levels and schizophrenia, the causality and the direction of the associations remain uncertain. Thus, we aimed to assess whether the relationships between serum UA levels and schizophrenia are causal and to determine the direction of the association. Patients and methods Two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses and various sensitivity analyses were performed utilizing the summary data from genome-wide association studies within the Global Urate Genetics Consortium and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Secondary MR analyses in both directions were conducted within summary data using genetic risk scores (GRSs) as instrumental variables. Results Three MR methods provided no causal relationship between serum UA and schizophrenia. Furthermore, GRS approach showed similar results in the three MR methods after adjustment for heterogeneity. By contrast, inverse variance weighted method, weighted median and GRS approach suggested a causal effect of schizophrenia risk on serum UA after adjustment for heterogeneity (per 10-symmetric percentage increase in schizophrenia risk, beta: -0.039, standard error (SE): 0.013, P = 0.003; beta: -0.036, SE: 0.018, P = 0.043; beta: -0.039, SE: 0.013, P = 0.002; respectively). Moreover, in both directions' analyses, the heterogeneity and sensitivity tests suggested no strong evidence of bias due to pleiotropy. Conclusion Schizophrenia may causally affect serum UA levels, whereas the causal role of serum UA concentrations in schizophrenia was not supported by our MR analyses. These findings suggest that UA may be a useful potential biomarker for monitoring treatment or diagnosis of schizophrenia rather than a therapeutic target for schizophrenia.

Directly-modulated laser (DML) is widely employed in intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD) system due to its low cost and high output power. However, the corresponding frequency chirp is regarded as one of the main disadvantages for its application in passive optical networks (PONs). In this paper, we theoretically analyze the frequency response evolution of DML based system under different chirp and dispersion conditions, proving that the system bandwidth can be improved by interactions between negative dispersion and DML chirp. Based on this concept, we experimentally demonstrated downstream 50 Gb/s PAM4 signal transmission over 20 km single-mode fiber (SMF) access based on the 10 Gb/s DML operating at 1310 nm and avalanche photodiode (APD). A dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) providing -150 ps/nm dispersion at 1310 nm in the optical line terminal (OLT) is used to pre-equalize the frequency response of bandwidth-limited directly modulated signals in the optical domain. Thanks to our proposed dispersion-supported equalization (DSE) technique, the system bandwidth can be improved by 5 GHz. Feed-forward equalization (FFE), decision feedback equalization (DFE) and Volterra filter are employed to evaluate the signal performance improvement, respectively. By evaluating the receiver sensitivity, the DSE combined with FFE scheme shows 2 dB improvement than the complex Volterra algorithm, indicating its potential to reduce the complexity of digital signal processing (DSP) and therefore a lower cost and power consumption in PON.

With the continuously growing popularity of cloud services, the traffic volume inside the data centers is dramatically increasing. As a result, a scalable and efficient infrastructure for data center networks (DCNs) is required. The current optical DCNs using either individual fibers or fiber ribbons are costly, bulky, hard to manage, and not scalable. Spatial division multiplexing (SDM) based on multicore or multimode (few-mode) fibers is recognized as a promising technology to increase the spatial efficiency for optical DCNs, which opens a new way towards high capacity and scalability. This tutorial provides an overview of the components, transmission options, and interconnect architectures for SDM-based DCNs, as well as potential technical challenges and future directions. It also covers the co-existence of SDM and other multiplexing techniques, such as wavelength-division multiplexing and flexible spectrum multiplexing, in optical DCNs.

In the previous researches, researchers mainly focus on the single cell which is far away from the practical application. In this paper, shut-down process is studied in a 5-cell stack with segment technology. In the unprotected group, the hydrogen/air boundary is observed, and the output voltage performance degrades greatly after 300 start-stop cycles. A 2-phase auxiliary load strategy is proposed to avoid the hydrogen/air boundary. The lifetime is extended. But a serious local starvation is observed during the shut-down process. And corrosion happened in the inlet region. To avoid the starvation, the second strategy is designed, which combines 2-phase auxiliary and air purge (2-phase load& air purge strategy). With the new strategy, the degradation of the stack after 1500 cycles is acceptable, and the carbon corrosion in the inlet is effectively reduced. It could conclude that the hydrogen/air boundary is the main cause of the degradation of fuel cell during an unprotected shut-down process. And a strategy only with auxiliary load may suffer from the local starvation. The purge process can avoid the vacuum effect in the fuel cell caused by the auxiliary load. Therefore, adding an air purge during the shut-down process is promising in vehicle fuel cell.

As an essential way to ensure success of construction projects, on-site inspection involves intensive paperwork, while generating large amounts of textual data. Lack of understanding of information hidden in text-based inspection records always leads to overlooking of important issues and deferred decisions. Therefore, a novel text mining approach based on keyword extraction and topic modeling is introduced to identify key concerns and their dynamics of on-site issues for better decision-making process. Then, the proposed approach was demonstrated in a real world project and tested with 7250 issue records. Results showed that the proposed method could successfully extract key concerns hidden in texts and identify their changes with time, thereby enabling a more efficient on-site inspection and data-centric decision-making process. This research contributes: (1) to the body of knowledge a new framework for discovering key concerns and their changes with time in texts, and (2) to the state of practice by providing insights on hot topics and their changes with time to reduce on-site issues and make decisions efficiently.

Nonwovens are widely applied in the air filtration field for their multi-layered fibrous structures and interconnected pores. Despite their intensive use, conventional microfiber nonwovens usually suffer from low filtration efficiencies due to their large pore size, while most nanofiber nonwovens are still confined within the laboratory due to the difficulties of reconciling the comprehensive requirements (such as low pressure drop, high fluffiness, strength and long-term reliability) raised from practical applications. Herein, we report a simple and scalable method that can generate more nanofibrils in a para-aramid microfiber nonwoven without interfering with the three-dimensional nonwoven structure. The success of this method relies on treating the whole nonwoven, rather than individual fibers, with phosphoric acid to trigger a surface fibrillation process of para-aramid microfibers. The structural reinforcement from microfibers, in combination with the enlarged surface area and the reduced pore size brought by nanofibrils, improves the filtration efficiency of the fibrillated nonwoven by 84.7% and maintains the pressure drop at an ultralow value of 3.5 Pa. Further synthesis and loading of a novel catalyst (CuO–CeO2) onto the nonwoven demonstrates a higher catalyst-loading capacity after fibrillation. The resulting nonwoven filter shows high elimination rates against a variety of solid and gaseous pollutants (including particulate matter, carbon monoxide and toluene), and is applicable at both room and elevated temperatures. We believe that the generation of nanofibrils in microfiber nonwovens and the subsequent loading of catalysts will find extensive utility in the purification of industrial emissions, automobile exhausts and indoor air.

A three-port optical phase-shifter and Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) based on PNP-type bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is demonstrated. Significant plasma (injected carrier) induced changes of the refractive index for the optical waveguide become possible with an extremely small driving-voltage and a compact device size during operation of this BJT between the saturation and forward active modes. Devices with a standard MZM structure and a small foot-print (0.5 mm) exhibit a moderate optical insertion loss (2 dB), extremely small Vπ (0.18V) and Pπ (0.21mW), fast rise/fall time (~1ns), and a residue-amplitudemodulation (RAM) as small as 0.18 dB. Furthermore, thanks to the ultra-high modulation efficiency characteristic of our device, a +4.0 dB net RF-linking gain can be obtained under dynamic operation. Compared to 2-port (base-collector) forward bias operation, under three-port operation, the extra bias current from the base-emitter junction provides a lower Vπ (0.18 vs. 0.22 V), a smaller RAM (0.18 vs. 0.6 dB), and a larger RF-linking gain (+4 vs. -3.2 dB). The superior performances of the three-port to two-port operations can be attributed to the additional forward bias B-E junction being able to provide more injected carriers to induce stronger plasma effects for optical phase-shifting.

In this work, we demonstrate a novel top-illuminated avalanche photodiode (APD) with high-speed and wide dynamic range performance for coherent lidar applications, which needs simultaneous processing of weak light reflections from the object and a strong optical local-oscillator (LO) signal at the receiving end. By taking advantage of a partially depleted p-type In0.53Ga0.47As absorbing layer and a thin In0.52Al0.48As multiplication layer (88 nm), the demonstrated APDs exhibit a wide optical-to-electrical bandwidth (16 GHz) and high responsivity (2.5 A/W at 0.9 Vbr) near the saturation output current which is as high as >8 mA. Furthermore, the measured low excess noise (k = 0.14) characteristics of this device ensure its wide dynamic range performance. In addition, it should be noted that the measured nonlinear behaviors of these APDs are quite different from those of typical fast p-i-n photodiodes (PDs), which always show serious degradation in their O-E bandwidths at their saturation output. On the other hand, the measured bias dependent 3-dB O-E bandwidth of the demonstrated APDs can be pinned at 16 GHz without any degradation at around the saturation current output. Such distinct nonlinear APD behaviors can be attributed to the space-charge-screening effect induced gain reduction under high-power operation.

Except for various properties, accurate and intuitive 3D representations of building elements and spaces are embedded in Building Information Models (BIMs). Thus, better understanding of spatial features of building elements and spaces is possible, which brings new opportunity in code compliance checking, indoor navigation, visualization, etc. With large amount of fine-grained 3D spatial data collected quickly and continuously, there is an urgent need for new methods to overcome problems like improper spatial expression, insufficient mining and utilization of information that exist in traditional methods. This research reviews state-of-the-art of related research and provides a summary of achievements and challenges in this area. Then, a framework consists of management, analysis, and application of 3D spatial data of BIM and a detailed discussion of each part are proposed, which would give the readers an overview of relevant methods, technologies, and tools. Moreover, potential research directions and open issues for future work are also discussed. The paper enables researchers to get a comprehensive understanding of 3D spatial data analytics of BIM as well as suggestions for future work, and thus makes a solid contribution in this area.

Augmented reality (AR) based visualization of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation on mobile devices is important for the understanding and discussion of indoor thermal environments in the design process. However, utilizing AR-based mobile device for indoor thermal environment understanding still encounters problems due to limited computational power and lack of efficient interaction methods. To improve the performance of AR-based CFD visualization on a mobile device and provide the users with intuitive interaction with indoor environment, an integrated approach based on client-server framework is established. Within the approach, a new mobile friendly data format (cfd4a) with low computational complexity is proposed for CFD simulation results representation. Server-side data pre-processing method is also introduced to reduce the computational power and time needed on the client side. Furthermore, interactive section view selection and time-step animation methods are proposed for intuitive interaction with the AR environment. Then, a prototype system is developed with Unity3D engine and Tango Tablet. Demonstration in some typical scenarios shows that the proposed method and prototype system provide an intuitive and fluent AR-based environment for interactive indoor thermal environment visualization. Comparing to the widely used vtk format, a data compression ratio of 63.4% and a loading time saving ratio of 89.3% are achieved in the performance test with the proposed method. The proposed approach also shows good flexibility and extensibility in supporting different AR devices through exposing standard web services and utilizing the widely used Unity3D engine. Source code of the developed prototype and relevant testing data are also shared through github, enabling other researchers to compare our work with theirs. It is also suggested that stability of AR-based mobile devices, new interaction methods and integration with cloud computing still need further investigation and improvement.

The machine vision-based quality evaluation of colored rice is an important component of achieving automatic rice production and processing. This study took red indica rice as the research object and developed a machine vision system for inspecting flawed rice kernels that are broken, chalky, damaged or spotted. Near infrared images of colored rice samples were collected by the machine vision system. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier, with the input of the invariant moment ellipse major axis, was applied to identify the broken rice kernels in the images. Then, the head rice images were obtained, and another SVM performed the gray-level segmentation. The segmented areas were doubly examined using the centroid distance constraint and the pixel search positioning method, which allowed the chalky areas to be accurately extracted. Finally, the damaged and the spotted areas on the rice kernels were detected by using edge detection and morphological methods. The experimental results show that the recognition accuracy for broken kernels, chalkiness, and damaged and spotted areas reached 99.3%, 96.3% and 93.6%, respectively. In addition, the average running time of the proposed method was 0.15 s, with four types of defects detected at one-time. Hence, it was concluded that the proposed method has significant potential to be applied for rapid and accurate colored rice quality detection and to provide technical support for the machine vision-based inspection of the automated grading of rice.