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Vascular tree disentanglement and vessel type classification are two crucial steps of the graph-based method for retinal artery-vein (A/V) separation. Existing approaches treat them as two independent tasks and mostly rely on ad hoc rules (e.g. change of vessel directions) and hand-crafted features (e.g. color, thickness) to handle them respectively. However, we argue that the two tasks are highly correlated and should be handled jointly since knowing the A/V type can unravel those highly entangled vascular trees, which in turn helps to infer the types of connected vessels that are hard to classify based on only appearance. Therefore, designing features and models isolatedly for the two tasks often leads to a suboptimal solution of A/V separation. In view of this, this paper proposes a multi-task siamese network which aims to learn the two tasks jointly and thus yields more robust deep features for accurate A/V separation. Specifically, we first introduce Convolution Along Vessel (CAV) to extract the visual features by convolving a fundus image along vessel segments, and the geometric features by tracking the directions of blood flow in vessels. The siamese network is then trained to learn multiple tasks: i) classifying A/V types of vessel segments using visual features only, and ii) estimating the similarity of every two connected segments by comparing their visual and geometric features in order to disentangle the vasculature into individual vessel trees. Finally, the results of two tasks mutually correct each other to accomplish final A/V separation. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can achieve accuracy values of 94.7%, 96.9%, and 94.5% on three major databases (DRIVE, INSPIRE, WIDE) respectively, which outperforms recent state-of-the-arts.

We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of negative pressure wound therapy compared with conventional wound dressings on closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery. A systematic literature search up to October 2021 was done and 12 studies included 3555 subjects with closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery at the start of the study: 1833 of them were provided with negative pressure wound therapy and 1722 were conventional wound dressings. They were reporting relationships about the effect of negative pressure wound therapy compared with conventional wound dressings on closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to assess the effect of negative pressure wound therapy compared with conventional wound dressings on closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery using the dichotomous and continuous methods with a random or fixed-effect model. Negative pressure wound therapy had significantly lower deep surgical site infection (OR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.48-0.88, P = .005), superficial surgical site infection (OR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.11-0.49, P = .31), and wound dehiscence (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.21-0.80, P = .009) compared with conventional wound dressings in subjects with closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery. However, negative pressure wound therapy had no significant effect on the length of hospital stay (MD, 0.29; 95% CI, -2.00- 2.58, P = .80) compared with conventional wound dressings in subjects with closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery. Negative pressure wound therapy had significantly lower deep surgical site infection, superficial surgical site infection, and wound dehiscence; however, negative pressure wound therapy had no beneficial effect on the length of hospital stay compared with conventional wound dressings in subjects with closed incisions in orthopaedic trauma surgery. Further studies are required to validate these findings.

The fast-developing information technology has imposed urgent need for effective solutions to overcome the increasing power density in further scaled electronic devices and systems. The tunnel fiel...

Highlights • We provide the possible methods for psychological crisis intervention during the outbreak period of new coronavirus pneumonia from experience in Shanghai. As we mentioned: an effective PCI surely requires the two-pronged approaches, online and onsite psychotherapy are recommended ., Since the middle of December 2019, human-to-human transmission of novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) has occurred among close contacts. At the same time, greater attention should be paid to psychological crisis intervention (PCI) among affected populations, for the timely prevention of inestimable damage from a secondary psychological crisis. PCI has been initiated via remote (telephone and internet) and onsite medical services to help medical workers, patients, and others affected to overcome any psychological difficulties. This paper outlines experiences based on the work of the Shanghai Medical Team.

AIM FMS-like receptor tyrosine kinase 3 (Flt3) has been reported to be increased in cardiomyocytes responding to ischaemic stress. This study was to determine whether Flt3 activation could ameliorate pressure overload-induced heart hypertrophy and fibrosis, and to elucidate the mechanisms of action. METHODS In vivo cardiac hypertrophy and remodelling experiments were conducted by infusing angiotensin II (Ang II) chronically in male C57BL/6 mice. Flt3-specific ligand (FL) was administered intraperitoneally every two days (5 µg/mouse). In vitro experiments on hypertrophy, apoptosis and autophagy mechanism were performed in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) and H9c2 cells with adenovirus vector-mediated overexpression of Flt3. RESULTS Our results demonstrated that following chronic Ang II infusion for 4 weeks, the mice exhibited heart hypertrophy, fibrosis, apoptosis and contractile dysfunction. Meanwhile, Ang II induced autophagic responses in mouse hearts, as evidenced by increased LC3 II and decreased P62 expression. These pathological alterations in Ang II-treated mice were significantly ameliorated by Flt3 activation with FL administration. In NRCMs and Flt3-overexpressed H9c2 cells, FL attenuated Ang II-induced pathological autophagy and inactivated AMPK/mTORC1/FoxO3a signalling, thereby efficiently mitigating cell hypertrophy and apoptosis. Conversely, the AMPK activator metformin or the mTORC1 inhibitor rapamycin reversed the effects of FL on the alterations of autophagy, hypertrophy and apoptosis in cardiomyocytes induced by Ang II. CONCLUSION Flt3 activation ameliorates cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis and contractile dysfunction in the mouse model of chronic pressure overload, most likely via suppressing AMPK/mTORC1/FoxO3a-mediated autophagy. These results provide new evidence supporting Flt3 as a novel therapeutic target in maladaptive cardiac remodelling.

CT images scanned in arterial and venous phases have been demonstrated to provide complementary information for accurate pancreas segmentation. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-phase and multi-level selective feature fusion network (MMNet) with a core component named adaptive cross refinement (ACR) module. Specifically, MMNet adopts two parallel encoders to extract features of the two phases respectively, which are then fused by ACR to excel each complementarity advantage. Unlike most existing fusion methods which only exchange and combine features of a single level with the same resolution between two phases/modalities, ACR module intelligently aggregates features of all levels in one phase as a multi-level prior, and then adaptively selects the most effective information from the multi-level prior to refine features at each level of the other phase. Such multi-phase, multi-level selective feature exchange and fusion strategy is bi-directional to mutually benefit segmentation of both phases. Experimental results on 141 cases of our private dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our ACR module and superior performance to the state-of-the-art fusion methods.

Background. The cross-sectional study is aimed at investigating the relationship between cortisol, testosterone, and metabolic characteristics among male schizophrenics. Methods. 174 patients were grouped based on their risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) into the non-MetS, high-risk-MetS (HR-MetS), or MetS groups. Metabolic indices (body mass index (BMI), mean arterial pressure (MAP), cholesterol, triglyceride, and fasting blood glucose (FBG)) were associated with cortisol and testosterone levels using correlation analysis. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to associate the correlations between the WHO Quality of Life–BREF (WHOQOL–BREF) score and the five metabolic indices. Results. The WHOQOL–BREF score for the non-MetS group significantly differed from the scores of the HR-MetS and MetS groups. The triglyceride level was positively correlated with the cortisol level, while all five metabolic indices were negatively correlated with testosterone level. Stepwise regression analysis produced a model predicting WHOQOL–BREF scores with four variables including MAP, intelligence quotient (IQ), FBG, and age. The correlation analysis then showed that there was a weak linear correlation between the testosterone level and all five metabolic indices. Conclusions. Among the five metabolic indices, the risks of hypertension and hyperglycemia are correlated with the quality of life in male schizophrenics rather than those of obesity or hyperlipidemia.

TiO2 compact layer (c-TiO2) is generally applied for high-efficiencies perovskite solar cells (MPSCs), but it shows a relatively low electron mobility, which may restrict some performance of the MPSCs. Herein, we demonstrated SnO2 compact layer (c-SnO2), which prepared by spray pyrolysis using a solution of dibutyltin bisacetylacetonate in ethanol, could be an excellent alternative compact layer for efficient hole-conductor-free printable MPSCs. The best device with such a c-SnO2 has achieved an efficiency of 13.77%, which is very comparable to that obtained by the device based on c-TiO2. Furthermore, the device with c-SnO2 showed less pronounced hysteresis effect, probably because of the higher electron mobility of SnO2 and less charge accumulation at the interfaces. The simple preparation process and improved hysteretic behavior pave the way for industrialization of PSCs.

A printing process for the fabrication of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) exhibits promising future application in the photovoltaic industry due to its low-cost and eco-friendly preparation. In mesoscopic carbon-based PSCs, however, compared to conventional ones, the hole-transport-layer-free PSCs often lead to inefficient hole extraction. Here, we used liquid metal (LM, Galinstan) as an interface modifier material in combination with a carbon electrode. Considering the high conductivity and room-temperature fluidity, it is found that LMs are superior in improving hole extraction and, more importantly, LMs tend to be reserved at the interface between ZrO2 and carbon for enhancing the contact property. Correspondingly, the carrier transfer resistance was decreased at the carbon/perovskite interface. As optimized content, the triple mesoscopic PSCs based on mixed-cation perovskite with a power conversion efficiency of 13.51% was achieved, involving a 26% increase compared to those without LMs. This work opens...

The prefrontal cortex is the superlative structure of brain that needs the longest developmental and maturational duration that highlights the region of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in neuroimaging studies. Prefrontal cortex functions generate enormously complex and its abundant feedback neurocircuitries with subcortical structures such as striatum and thalamus established through dual neural fibers. These microneurocircuitries are called corticostriatothalamocortical (CSTC) circuits. The CSTC circuits paly an essential role in flexible behaviors. The impaired circuits increase the risk of behavioral and psychological symptoms. ADHD is an especial developmental stage of paediatric disease. It has been reported that the CSTC circuits dysfunctions in ADHD are related to homologous symptoms. This study aimed to review the symptoms of ADHD and discuss the recent advances on the effects of the disease as well as the new progress of treatments with each circuit.