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Purpose Rapid decompressive craniectomy (DC) was the most effective method for the treatment of hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage (HICH) with cerebral hernia, but the mortality and disability rate is still high. We suspected that hematoma puncture drainage (PD) + DC may improve the therapeutic effect and thus compared the combined surgery with DC alone. Methods From December 2013 to July 2019, patients with HICH from Linzhi, Tibet and Honghe, Yunnan Province were retrospectively analyzed. The selection criteria were as follows: (1) altitude ≥1500 m; (2) HICH patients with cerebral hernia; (3) Glascow coma scale score of 4–8 and time from onset to admission ≤3 h; (4) good liver and kidney function; and (5) complete case data. The included patients were divided into DC group and PD + DC group. The patients were followed up for 6 months. The outcome was assessed by Glasgow outcome scale (GOS) score, Kaplan-Meier survival curve and correlation between time from admission to operation and prognosis. A good outcome was defined as independent (GOS score, 4-5) and poor outcome defined as dependent (GOS score, 3-1). All data analyses were performed using SPSS 19, and comparison between two groups was conducted using separate t-tests or Chi-square tests. Results A total of 65 patients was included. The age ranged 34-90 years (mean, 63.00 ± 14.04 years). Among them, 31 patients had the operation of PD + DC, whereas 34 patients underwent DC. The two groups had no significant difference in the basic characteristics. After 6 months of follow-up, in the PD + DC group there were 8 death, 4 vegetative state, 4 severe disability (GOS score 1-3, poor outcome 51.6 %); 8 moderate disability, and 7 good recovery (GOS score 4-5, good outcome 48.4 %); while in the DC group the result was 15 death, 6 vegetative state, 5 severe disability (poor outcome 76.5 %), 4 moderate disability and 4 good recovery (good outcome 23.5 %). The GOS score and good outcome were significantly less in DC group than in PD + DC group (Z = −1.993, p = 0.046; χ2 = 4.38, p = 0.43). However, there was no significant difference regarding the survival curve between PD + DC group and DC group. The correlation between the time from admission to operation and GOS at 6 months (r = −0.41, R2 = 0.002, p = 0.829) was not significant in the PD + DC group, but significant in the DC group (r = −0.357, R2 = 0.128, p = 0.038). Conclusion PD + DC treatment can improve the good outcomes better than DC treatment for HICH with cerebral hernia at a high altitude.

Resection of high-grade glioma with sodium fluorescein can improve the resection rate of the glioma and improve survival. However, it is unclear whether the yellow fluorescence boundary of the high-grade glioma is consistent with the actual boundary of the tumor. This study explores the yellow fluorescence boundary and the actual tumor boundary in high-grade glioma surgery.This is a retrospective analysis of 10 patients with high-grade gliomas who underwent tumor visualization with sodium fluorescein. After staining of the tumor, random selections of both developed and non-developed yellow fluorescent border tissue at the fluorescence chromogenic boundary were made, followed by pathological examination. Claudin-5, an important component of the tight connections between vascular endothelial cells, was assessed by immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR in the tumor and surrounding tissues in order to determine the tumor cell content of the tissue, blood-brain barrier damage, and vascular proliferation. The yellow fluorescence boundary was compared with the actual tumor boundary and the results analyzed.Tumor cells were still detected outside the yellow fluorescence boundary during high-grade glioma surgery (There is a difference between the yellow fluorescence boundary and the actual boundary of the tumor in high-grade glioma, and there are glioma cell infiltrations in the brain tissue of the undeveloped yellow fluorescent border. To ensure patient recovery and function, it is recommended that tumor resection be expanded based on yellow fluorescence visualization. Claudin-5 is overall up-regulated in high-grade gliomas, but some Claudin-5 expression is disconnected. This Claudin-5 expression pattern may be related to the development of yellow fluorescence.

Yanxiang Shao,1,* Xiang Tu,1,* Yang Liu,1,* Yige Bao,1 Shangqing Ren,1,2 Zhen Yang,1,3 Xu Hu,1 Kan Wu,1 Hao Zeng,1 Qiang Wei,1 Xiang Li1 1Department of Urology, Institute of Urology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China; 2Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences & Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Urology, Chengdu Second People’s Hospital, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xiang LiDepartment of Urology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, 37 GuoXueXiang, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 18980601428Email xiangli87@hotmail.comObjective: To investigate the predictive factors of lymph node metastasis (LNM) and evaluate the usefulness of prediction nomograms.Methods: This study included 300 patients diagnosed with penile squamous cell carcinoma at West China Hospital (WCH) of Sichuan University (Chengdu, China) and 412 cases acquired from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Logistic regression analysis was performed on these cohorts to investigate the predictive factors of LNM. We evaluated a recently developed prediction nomogram for LNM, which was established based on the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Moreover, we developed a novel nomogram using cases from the WCH for the prediction of lymphatic metastasis.Results: Logistic analysis identified that younger age at diagnosis, invasion of the penis body, poorer pT stage, cN stage, nuclear grade and the presence of lymph vascular invasion (LVI) were significantly correlated with LNM in WCH cases; however, only race, poorer T stage and cN stage were significantly associated with LNM among the cases from the SEER. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that younger age, poorer T stage, cN stage and nuclear grade were independent predictors of LNM. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of WCH cases showed that the tumor T stage 8th edition has better area under the curve than 7th stage (0.672 vs 0.636, respectively). Moreover, well AUC was seen in external validation of NCDB nomogram in WCH cohorts and SEER series (0.833 vs 0.795). The new nomogram included the aforementioned independent predictors and the bootstrap-corrected concordance was 0.876.Conclusion: Younger diagnose age, poorer pT stage, cN stage, nuclear grade and LVI were the most important predictors of LNM in patients with penile cancer. 8th T stage performed better than 7th version in predicting LNM. NCDB nomogram has some application values in both WCH and SEER cases, and our novel model further improved the predictive accuracy.Keywords: penile cancer, lymph node metastasis, prediction model, nomogram, SEER

AIM: To evaluate the ocular outcomes and to elucidate possible mechanisms underlying intraocular pressure (IOP) change following the head-down tilt (HDT) test. METHODS: The study included 21 participants at the Department of Ophthalmology of Tongji Hospital. Subjects received the test of I-care tonometry, enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography and heart rate variability (HRV) analysis before and after 15min HDT test. The lumen area of Schlemm’s canal (SCAR), IOP, HRV were calculated. RESULTS: IOP increased significantly after 20° head down position from 14.0±3.0 to 17.0±3.3 mm Hg (P

Planar perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have excellent photoelectric properties and show great commercialization potential. However, there are a lot of crystal defects in the perovskite films prepared by solution method, which reduces the development process of solar cells. In this work, alizarin red s (ARS) was doped into MAPbI3 films to passivate the defect. It was shown that the addition of ARS increased the quality of perovskite film and doped perovskite film exhibited improved light absorption. In addition, it was found that there was a strong interaction between ARS and perovskite, which reduced the density of defect states. The results showed that the passivated perovskite device had improved PL intensity, increased carrier lifetimes and reduced charge recombination. After passivation, the device obtained a higher open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.103 V where the control device was 1.055 V, and the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the doped device was 18.82%, which is 11.36% higher than that of the control device of 16.90%.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common sleep respiratory disease. Previous studies have found that the wakefulness electroencephalogram (EEG) of OSA patients has changed, such as increased EEG power. However, whether the microstates reflecting the transient state of the brain is abnormal is unclear during obstructive hypopnea (OH). We investigated the microstates of sleep EEG in 100 OSA patients. Then correlation analysis was carried out between microstate parameters and EEG markers of sleep disturbance, such as power spectrum, sample entropy and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). OSA_OH patients showed that the microstate C increased presence and the microstate D decreased presence compared to OSA_withoutOH patients and controls. The fifth microstate E appeared during N1-OH, but the probability of other microstates transferring to microstate E was small. According to the correlation analysis, OSA_OH patients in N1-OH showed that the microstate D was positively correlated with delta power, and negatively correlated with beta and alpha power; the transition probability of the microstate B → C and E → C was positively correlated with alpha power. In other sleep stages, the microstate parameters were not correlated with power, sample entropy and FDA. We might interpret that the abnormal transition of brain active areas of OSA patients in N1-OH stage leads to abnormal microstates, which might be related to the change of alpha activity in the cortex.

Background The objective of this report was to highlight the importance of using a dental operating microscope (DOM) to locate supernumerary canals and diagnose variations in root canals using cone-beam computed tomographic (CBCT) images. Case presentation A 35-year-old Chinese female had repeated swelling in the upper right posterior maxilla for 3 months and was referred to evaluate symptomatic apical periodontitis and mesotaurodonts for upper right first permanent molar and upper right second permanent molar. Root canal therapy was proposed and conducted with the use of DOM and CBCT. Conclusions Proper diagnosis and careful clinicoradiological examination are necessary, and it is essential to reinforce the knowledge of the rare morphology of root canals for clinicians.

Unsupervised aspect identification is a challenging task in aspect-based sentiment analysis. Traditional topic models are usually used for this task, but they are not appropriate for short texts such as product reviews. In this work, we propose an aspect identification model based on aspect vector reconstruction. A key of our model is that we make connections between sentence vectors and multi-grained aspect vectors using fuzzy k-means membership function. Furthermore, to make full use of different aspect representations in vector space, we reconstruct sentence vectors based on coarse-grained aspect vectors and fine-grained aspect vectors simultaneously. The resulting model can therefore learn better aspect representations. Experimental results on two datasets from different domains show that our proposed model can outperform a few baselines in terms of aspect identification and topic coherence of the extracted aspect terms.

Palmprint recognition and palm vein recognition are two emerging biometrics technologies. In the past two decades, many traditional methods have been proposed for palmprint recognition and palm vein recognition and have achieved impressive results. In recent years, in the field of artificial intelligence, deep learning has gradually become the mainstream recognition technology because of its excellent recognition performance. Some researchers have tried to use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for palmprint recognition and palm vein recognition. However, the architectures of these CNNs have mostly been developed manually by human experts, which is a time-consuming and error-prone process. In order to overcome some shortcomings of manually designed CNN, neural architecture search (NAS) technology has become an important research direction of deep learning. The significance of NAS is to solve the deep learning model’s parameter adjustment problem, which is a cross-study combining optimization and machine learning. NAS technology represents the future development direction of deep learning. However, up to now, NAS technology has not been well studied for palmprint recognition and palm vein recognition. In this paper, in order to investigate the problem of NAS-based 2D and 3D palmprint recognition and palm vein recognition in-depth, we conduct a performance evaluation of twenty representative NAS methods on five 2D palmprint databases, two palm vein databases, and one 3D palmprint database. Experimental results show that some NAS methods can achieve promising recognition results. Remarkably, among different evaluated NAS methods, ProxylessNAS achieves the best recognition performance.

Objectives. To quantitatively analyze changes in the inner components of the human crystalline lens during accommodation in adults. \ud Methods. Eyes of 23 subjects were sequentially examined using CASIA2 Optical Coherence Tomography under 0D, -3D and -6D accommodation states. The anterior chamber depth (ACD), anterior and posterior crystalline lens radius of the curvature (ALRC and PLRC) were obtained using built-in software. The lens thickness (LT), lenticular nucleus thickness (NT), anterior cortex thickness (ACT), posterior cortex thickness (PCT), anterior and posterior lenticular nucleus radius of the curvature (ANRC and PNRC), anterior and posterior lenticular nucleus vertex (ANV and PNV) were quantified manually with the Image-pro plus software.\ud Results. During accommodation, the ACD became significantly shallower and LT significantly increased. For changes in the lens, the ALRC decreased by an average magnitude （related to accommodative stimuli） 0.44 mm/D and PLRC decreased 0.09 mm/D. There was no difference for the ACT and PCT in different accommodation states. For lenticular nucleus response, NT increased on average by 30μm/D. Both the ANRC and PNRC decreased on average by 212 μm/D and 115 μm/D respectively. The ANV moved forward on average by 0.07mm under -3D accommodative stimuli and 0.16mm for -6D. However, there was no statistically significant difference between different accommodation states in the PNV movement.\ud Conclusion. Under accommodation stimulation, lens thickness changed mainly due to the lenticular nucleus, but not the cortex. For the lenticular nucleus, both the ANRC and PNRC decreased and ANRC changed the most. The anterior surface of the nucleus moved forward while the posterior surface of the nucleus moved backward but only slightly.\ud Keywords: crystalline lens, lenticular nucleus, lenticular cortex, accommodation

Over a millennia, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat various diseases in China. In recent years, more and more Chinese materia medica (CMM) have been studied in scientific research projects, applied in clinical practice, and their extracts have even appeared in some health products. However, the toxicity of some CMM is often overlooked, including hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, neurotoxicity, cardiotoxicity, etc. In this review, the toxic components and their toxicological mechanisms of some toxic CMM were listed according to the chemical structure classification of toxic components. Afterwards, the traditional methods (processing and compatibility) and modern methods (structural modification, biotransformation, etc.) of attenuation of CMM were discussed. Since ancient times, it has been said that “fight fire with fire, fight poison with poison,” and toxic CMM are of great significance in the treatment of difficult and severe diseases. The rational application of toxic CMM and their components in clinical practice was also exemplified in this review. While the pharmacological effects of TCMs have been emphasized, the scientific attenuation and rational application of toxic components should be concerned. We hope this review can provide a reference for future related research.

BACKGROUND: 5-Alpha-reductase inhibitors (5-ARIs) have been suggested as potential chemopreventive agents for prostate cancer (PCa). This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of 5-ARIs on the incidence and mortality of PCa. METHODS: The PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library databases were searched comprehensively from database inception to October 2019. The clinical outcomes included the incidence of overall PCa, high-grade (Gleason8-10) PCa, metastatic PCa, overall survival (OS), and cancer-specific survival (CSS). RESULTS: Overall, 23 studies were included in the present study, representing 11 cohort studies, 5 case-control studies, and 8 randomized controlled trials. The use of 5-ARIs was associated with a decreased risk of overall PCa [relative risk (RR) =0.77; 95% CI: 0.67–0.88; P

Purpose As a well-known cardioprotective factor, the relevance of adiponectin (APN) to heart function following sepsis remains largely unknown. The present study evaluated the effects of plasma APN levels on heart function and 28-day mortality in sepsis patients. Materials and methods This was a prospective study that was performed with 98 patients with sepsis and 32 controls. Left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) was defined as a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) ≤ 45% based on echocardiography. The effects of APN on the development of sepsis-related LVSD and prediction of 28-day mortality were evaluated. Results Plasma APN levels significantly decreased in sepsis patients compared with controls, with rising severity of illness, and positively correlated with the LVEF and stroke volume index. Sepsis patients with LVSD had lower APN levels than patients without LVSD. According to the receiver operating characteristic curve, plasma APN levels had the comparable value in prediction of LVSD incidence than those conditional factors, including brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and highly sensitive cardiac troponin T (hsTnT). Twenty-three of the 98 sepsis patients (23.47%) died at 28 days. Adiponectin levels were an independent predictive factor for 28-day mortality. Conclusions Low APN levels were associated with the incidence of LVSD and 28-day mortality in sepsis patients. Adiponectin may be a novel factor that may be useful for the diagnosis of LVSD.

Objective To evaluate the diagnostic yield of the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for the diagnosis of purulent meningitis (PM) in children. Methods PM was diagnosed according to the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases guideline (2016). Patients with PM between May 2015 and October 2018 were included. The multiplex PCR method was used to detect eight common identified bacteria in PM. Its sensitivity and specificity were compared with bacteria culture. Results A total of 106 cases were enrolled. Pathogenic bacteria were identified in 27 (25.5%) cases by culture and in 37 (34.9%) cases by multiplex PCR assay. The top three bacteria were Streptococcus pneumoniae, Escherichia coli K1, and Streptococcus agalactiae. When using culture as the gold standard, the multiplex PCR assay showed a sensitivity of 100, 88.9, and 75.0% for S. agalactiae, S. pneumoniae, and E. coli K1, respectively, and a specificity of more than 91.3% for all three bacteria. For detectable bacteria, the positive rate of the multiplex PCR assay (36.6%, 37/101) was significantly higher than that of the bacteria culture (21.8%, 22/101). When combining the two methods, etiology was identified in 42.5% (45/106) of the patients. Conclusion Streptococcus pneumoniae, E. coli K1, and S. agalactiae were the predominant pathogens causing pediatric PM. As a rapid method with high sensitivity and specificity, the multiplex PCR assay in CSF could be used as an adjunctive approach with bacteria culture for the pathogen identification of PM.

Xu Hu,1,* Zhi-Qiang Yang,1,* Wei-Chao Dou,1,* Yan-Xiang Shao,1 Yao-Hui Wang,1 Thongher Lia,1 Xiang Li2 1West China School of Medicine/West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Urology, West China Hospital, West China Medical School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xiang Li Email hx_uro@sina.comPurpose: Several studies have revealed that albumin-to-alkaline phosphatase ratio (AAPR) was correlated to the survival of several cancers. To explore the impact of AAPR on the survival of non-metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients following nephrectomy, the present study was conducted.Patients and Methods: A total of 648 patients were enrolled in the present study. The cut-off value of AAPR was determined based on the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Univariate and multivariate analyses were applied to identify prognostic factors. The discrimination and calibration of models for survival outcomes were evaluated based on the concordance index (C-index), ROC analysis and calibration curve.Results: The low AAPR (≤ 0.5) was associated with older age (P< 0.001), higher T stage (P=0.002), larger tumor size (P=0.014) and tumor necrosis (P=0.003). A high AAPR was significantly correlated to better OS (hazard ratio, HR=0.61; P=0.038) and CSS (HR=0.52; P=0.013) based on multivariate analysis. Integrating AAPR with UISS or SSIGN, the C-indexes of nomogram for OS (UISS: 0.790 vs 0.765; SSIGN: 0.861 vs 0.850) and CSS (UISS: 0.832 vs 0.805; SSIGN: 0.905 vs 0.896) increased. Moreover, the nomogram for OS and CSS was established based on the multivariate analysis. The C-indexes of nomogram for OS and CSS were 0.834 (95% CI 0.794– 0.874) and 0.867 (95% CI 0.830– 0.904), respectively.Conclusion: In conclusion, the high preoperative AAPR was a favorable prognostic factor for surgically treated non-metastatic RCC patients. AAPR also could improve the predictive value of well-established models. The nomogram that incorporatesAAPR had a good performance. More prospective studies with a large scale are essential to validate our findings.Keywords: albumin-to-alkaline phosphatase ratio, non-metastatic renal cell carcinoma, prognostic impact, nephrectomy

It is urgent to find a catalyst with high selectivity and efficiency for the reduction of CO2 by renewable electric energy, which is the important means to reduce the greenhouse effect. In this wor...

Background A novel systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), based on the neutrophils, lymphocytes and platelet counts, is associated with the prognosis of several cancers. The present study evaluates the prognostic significance of SII in non-metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Method The present study retrospectively reviewed the medical record of patients with non-metastatic RCC who underwent nephrectomy between 2010 and 2013. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to identify the optimal cut-off value. In addition, the propensity score matching (PSM) was performed with a matching ratio of 1:1. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models were used to identify the prognostic factors. The results were reported by hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results A total of 646 patients were included in the final analysis. High SII group (> 529) was significantly associated with older age (P = 0.014), larger tumor (P Conclusion In conclusion, preoperative SII is associated with adverse factors for RCC. Furthermore, higher preoperative SII is an independent predictor of poor OS and CSS in surgically treated patients with non-metastatic RCC. More prospective and large scale studies are warranted to validate our findings.

Histopathology image segmentation is an important area in the field of computer aided diagnosis using image processing. The segmentation of Multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions from MR images can establish the basis for subsequent lesion reconstruction, volume estimation, and course evaluation. This study proposes a method for automatically segmenting MS lesions based on 3D convolutional neural network (CNN). The method is divided into two stages, each of which includes two convolution layers and two pooling layers. The alternative lesion voxels are selected in the first stage, while in the second stage, the final lesion voxels are segmented from the lesion voxels which are obtained in the first stage by restricting the conditions. The method has been tested on the MICCAI 2008 and 2016 datasets and compared to the other baseline methods. The experiment results show that the method has better performance than the other baseline methods on different evaluation indicators, including dice similarity coefficient, absolute difference in lesion volume, true positive rate, false positive rate, and predictive positivity value.

The ongoing outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly throughout China and other countries, and has been characterized as a pandemic. With the strict prevention and control measures implemented by the Chinese government, the spread of the epidemic in China has come under preliminary control by the end of February, 2020, whereas the situation of some countries outside China is not optimistic and raises great public concern. In fighting COVID-19, radiologic examinations played a critical role in the early diagnosis of COVID-19, and could also help assess disease course and severity. There is an urgent need to share useful experience and effective measures internationally. This article outlines the collaborative actions and efforts by the Chinese radiology field and the situation of front-line health care workers in radiology departments to present the world with experiences and examples of Chinese radiology during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Open surgery remains the preferred surgical treatment of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), while the role of minimally invasive adrenalectomy surgery (MIS) in ACC is still controversial. The present study was conducted to compare MIS with open adrenalectomy (OA) in ACC. The Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane Library databases were comprehensively searched. The weighted mean difference (WMD), relative risk (RR), and hazard ratio (HR) were pooled. A total of 15 studies incorporating 2207 patients were included in the present study. MIS approaches were likely to have a comparable operation time (WMD − 17.77; p = 0.150) and postoperative complications (RR 0.74; p = 0.091) compared with OA, and were significantly associated with less blood loss (WMD − 1761.96; p = 0.016) and shorter length of stay (WMD − 2.96; p

Objectives: To explore the clinical surgical methods for the treatment of tensile effusion in postoperative cavity after glioma resection. Methods: Clinical data of 26 cases of tensile effusion in postoperative cavity after glioma resection were analyzed retrospectively. All 26 patients underwent surgical treatment, including 16 cases who underwent puncture and drainage (P&D), and 10 cases who underwent craniotomy decompression (CD). Among the cases of P&D, postoperative cavity in 7 cases were punctured through the burr hole for creating the skull flap for intraoperative resection of glioma, and postoperative cavities in 9 cases were punctured through a burr hole for the dura mater suspended under the skull flap. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was used to evaluate the consciousness status of the two groups of patients before and after surgery. Moreover, time of operation, intraoperative blood loss, postoperative hospital duration, and postoperative complications were also adopted for evaluation of the merits of the two methods for treatment of tensile effusion in postoperative cavity after glioma resection. Results: The consciousness of the patients in both groups improved within 24 hours after the operation, and there were no death cases. In the P&D group, the GCS score within 24 hours after surgery was (14.38±0.20), the time of operation time was (7.81±0.64) mins, intraoperative blood loss was (6.25±0.56) ml, and postoperative hospital duration was (6.69±0.54) days. There were 3 cases with postoperative complications (1 case of puncture tract hemorrhage, 1 case of subdural hematoma and 1 case of intracranial infection) in the P&D group. All of the puncture tract hemorrhage and subdural hematoma did not require surgical treatment, and the intracranial infection was cured after antibiotic treatment and lumbar puncture for cerebrospinal fluid replacement. In the CD group, the GCS score within 24 hours after surgery was (13.70±0.21), the time of operation was (124.10±8.96) mins, intraoperative blood loss was (260±30.55) ml, and postoperative hospital duration was (11.30±0.60) days. There were 2 cases with postoperative complications (both of them were with subdural hematoma), none of which required surgical treatment. The GCS score, time of operation, intraoperative blood loss and postoperative hospital duration in the P&D group were better than those in the CD group (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative complications between the two groups (P >0.05). Conclusion: The P&D and CD for tensile effusion in postoperative cavity after glioma resection can both achieve ideal results, but P&D in line with the concept of micro-invasive neurosurgery was better than CD in terms of postoperative GCS score within 24 hours, duration of operative, intraoperative blood loss, and postoperative hospital duration.

Background Recently, the De Ritis (AST/ALT) ratio has been considered as a prognostic biomarker for various malignancies. We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to explore the prognostic value of preoperative De Ritis ratio in patients after surgery for urothelial carcinoma. Methods We searched the online database Embase, PubMed and Cochrane Library up to October 2019. The hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were extracted from the studies. Results A total of 8 studies incorporating 3949 patients were included in the quantitative synthesis. We observed that elevated preoperative De Ritis ratio is associated with inferior OS (HR = 1.97; 95% CI 1.70–2.28; P Conclusion The elevated preoperative De Ritis ratio is an unfavorable factor for patients with urothelial carcinoma. In patients with BC and UTUC, the elevated preoperative De Ritis ratio is also associated with poor prognosis. But De Ritis ratio must be validated in large, independent cohorts before it can be applied widely.

Minimally invasive surgical (MIS) approaches to radical cystectomy (RC) develop well in the past decades. We performed the present study to compare the perioperative outcomes, pathological outcomes, and oncologic outcomes between MIS approaches and open radical cystectomy (ORC) for bladder cancer.We conducted a comprehensive study search up to March 2019, searching the online database Embase, PubMed and Cochrane Library.A total of 8 randomized controlled trials comprising 805 patients were included. We observed that MIS approaches were significantly associated with lower estimated blood loss (WMD = -343.21; 95%CI -431.34 to -255.08; P 0.001), shorter length of stay (WMD = -0.76; 95%CI -1.28 to -0.24; P = 0.004), shorter time to flatus and diet (WMD = -0.46; 95%CI -0.64 to -0.27; P 0.001; WMD = -0.92; 95%CI -1.58 to -0.28; P = 0.005; respectively), longer operation time (WMD = 61.38; 95%CI 34.89 to 87.88; P 0.001), fewer 30-day overall complication (OR = 0.36; 95%CI 0.17 to 0.75; P = 0.007). And we did not detect significant difference in terms of 30-day (P = 0.278) and 90-day major complication (P = 0.899), positive surgical margins (P = 0.986), lymph node yield (P = 0.711), OS (P = 0.473), CSS (P = 0.778), RFS (P = 0.880), PFS (P = 0.324) between MIS approaches and ORC.In the present studies, we demonstrated that MIS approaches improved perioperative outcomes and had similar pathological and oncological outcomes compared with ORC. Stratified by type of MIS approaches, the results are similar. In conclusion, MIS approaches could serve as an alternative choice in patients with bladder cancer. However, long-term clinical outcomes highlight the need for future studies.

Differential Code Bias (DCB) is an essential correction that must be provided to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) users for precise position determination. With the continuous deployment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, DCB estimation using observations from GNSS receivers onboard the LEO satellites is drawing increasing interests in order to meet the growing demands on high-quality DCB products from LEO-based applications, such as LEO-based GNSS signal augmentation and space weather research. Previous studies on LEO-based DCB estimation are usually using the geometry-free combination of GNSS observations, and it may suffer from significant leveling errors due to non-zero mean of multipath errors and short-term variations of receiver code and phase biases. In this study, we utilize the uncombined Precise Point Positioning (PPP) model for LEO DCB estimation. The models for uncombined PPP-based LEO DCB estimation are presented and GPS observations acquired from receivers onboard three identical Swarm satellites from February 1 to 28, 2019 are used for the validation. The results show that the average Root Mean Square errors (RMS) of the GPS satellite DCBs estimated with onboard data from each of the three Swarm satellites using the uncombined PPP model are less than 0.18 ns when compared to the GPS satellite DCBs obtained from IGS final daily Global Ionospheric Map (GIM) products. Meanwhile, the corresponding average RMS of GPS satellite DCBs estimated with the conventional geometry-free model are 0.290, 0.210, 0.281 ns, respectively, which are significantly larger than those obtained with the uncombined PPP model. It is also noted that the estimated GPS satellite DCBs by Swarm A and C satellites are highly correlated, likely attributed to their similar orbit type and space environment. On the other hand, the Swarm receiver DCBs estimated with uncombined PPP model, with Standard Deviation (STD) of 0.065, 0.037 and 0.071 ns, are more stable than those obtained from the official Swarm Level 2 products with corresponding STD values of 0.115, 0.101, and 0.109 ns, respectively. The above indicates that high-quality DCB products can be estimated based on uncombined PPP with LEO onboard observations.

Objectives To investigate the survival characteristics of postoperative nonmetastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients, and the predictive value of a prognostic model. Materials and Methods We retrospectively evaluated data from 1202 postoperative nonmetastatic RCC patients who were treated between 1999 and 2012 at West China Hospital, Sichuan University (Chengdu, China). In addition, we also evaluated data relating to 53 205 cases acquired from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Survival analysis was performed on the cases, and subgroups, using the Kaplan‐Meier and Cox regression methods. The concordance index of the Stage Size Grade Necrosis (SSIGN), Leibovich, and the UCLA integrated staging system, scores was determined to evaluate the accuracy of these outcome prediction models. Results The 5‐year overall survival rate for RCC cases in West China Hospital was 87.6%; this was higher than that observed for SEER cases. Survival analysis identified several factors that exerted significant influence over prognosis, including the time of surgery, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, tumor stage, size, nuclear differentiation, pathological subtypes, along with necrotic and sarcomatoid differentiation. Moreover tumor stage, size, and nuclear grade were all identified as independent predictors for both our cases and those from the SEER program. Patient groups with advanced RCC, and poorly differentiated RCC subgroups, were both determined to have a poor prognosis. The SSIGN model yielded the best predictive value as a prognostic model, followed by the Leibovich, and UCLA integrated staging system; this was the case for our patients, and for sub‐groups with a poor prognosis. Conclusion The prognosis of RCC was mostly influenced by tumor stage, size, and nuclear differentiation. SSIGN may represent the most suitable prognostic model for the Chinese population., In our study, we aimed to investigate the survival characteristics of postoperative non‐metastatic renal cell carcinoma patients, and the predictive value of prognostic models. We retrospectively reviewed 1 202 postoperative RCC cases at the West China Hospital, Sichuan University (Chengdu, China), with 53 205 cases from the SEER database also reviewed as reference. Prognostic factors of renal cell carcinoma were analyzed in detail, and the prediction accuracy of the prognostic models was validated.

This study aimed to investigate changes in Schlemm’s canal, intraocular pressure and ocular blood circulation following the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Twenty healthy volunteers were enrolled in this study. The cold pressor test (CPT) was adopted. Cross-sectional area of Schlemm’s canal (SCAR), superficial and deep retinal vessel densities (s-RVD;d-RVD), pupil diameter (PD), intraocular pressure (IOP), mean ocular perfusion pressure (MOPP) and heart rate variability (HRV) were measured at three time-points: baseline (T0) and 5 min (T1) and 10 min (T2) after the CPT. After cold stimulation, LF/HF index (the ratio of low frenquency and high frenquency) increased significantly. IOP decreased from 16.9 ± 1.9 mmHg at baseline to 16.4 ± 2.7 mmHg at T1 and to 15.2 ± 2.7 mmHg at T2. The nasal cross-sectional area of SCAR (SCAR-n) increased from 6283.9 ± 2696.2 µm2 at baseline to 8392.9 ± 3258.7 µm2 at T1 and to 10422.0 ± 3643.8 µm2 at T2. The temporal cross-sectional area of SCAR (SCAR-t) increased from 6414.5 ± 2218.7 µm2 at baseline to 8610.8 ± 2317.1 µm2 at T1 and to 11544.0 ± 4129.2 µm2 at T2. The expansion of Schlemm’s canal was observed after the CPT might be caused by sympathetic nerve stimulation, subsequently leading to decreased IOP.

In this work, the stability of a reinforced tunnel face is examined by combining the homogenization method with the kinematic approach of limit analysis. A three-dimensional (3D) heterogen...

Objective To explore the effects of the quinoa diet on glycolipid metabolism and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in an obese mouse model. Methods Six-week-old C57BL/6J female mice have received a high-fat diet (HFD) to induce obesity and subsequently were treated with a quinoa diet for 12 weeks. During this period, fasting blood glucose, body fat and insulin resistance were measured regularly. At the end of the experiment, mouse serum and liver tissue were collected. The differences in glucose and lipid metabolism were analyzed, and liver tissue pathological morphology, liver endoplasmic reticulum stress-related mRNA and protein levels, and serum oxidative stress levels were measured. Results Quinoa diet could significantly reduce the level of blood glucose, triglyceride, cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, improve glucose tolerance, as well as improve histological changes of liver tissues in obese mice (P P P Conclusions Quinoa supplementation can improve glycolipid metabolism, regulate ER stress, and alleviate obesity in HFD-induced mice.

The level of triglyceride (TG) ≥ 2. 3 mmol/L is suggestive of marked hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) and requires treatment with a triglyceride-lowering agent in high-risk and very high-risk patients as recommended by the 2019 ESC/EAS guidelines for the management of dyslipidemia. However, the optimal cutoff value required to diagnose non-fasting HTG that corresponds to the fasting goal level of 2.3 mmol/L in Chinese subjects is unknown. This study enrolled 602 cardiology inpatients. Blood lipid levels, including calculated non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) and remnant cholesterol (RC), were measured at 0, 2, and 4 h after a daily Chinese breakfast. Of these, 482 inpatients had TG levels of p < 0.05). The optimal cutoff value of TG at 4 h, which corresponds to fasting TG of ≥2.3 mmol/L, that can be used to predict HTG, was 2.66 mmol/L. According to the new non-fasting cutoff value, the incidence of non-fasting HTG is close to its fasting level. In summary, this is the first study to determine the non-fasting cutoff value that corresponds to a fasting TG of ≥2.3 mmol/L in Chinese patients. Additionally, 2.66 mmol/l at 4 h after a daily meal could be an appropriate cutoff value that can be used to detect non-fasting marked HTG in Chinese subjects.

Background: Xuezhikang, an extract of red yeast rice, effectively lowers fasting blood lipid levels. However, the influence of Xuezhikang on the nonfasting levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) has not been explored in Chinese patients with coronary heart disease (CHD).Methods: Fifty CHD patients were enrolled and randomly divided into two groups (n = 25 each) to receive 1200 mg/d of Xuezhikang or a placebo for six weeks as routine therapy. Blood lipids were repeatedly measured before and after six weeks of treatment at 0, 2, 4 and 6 hour (h) after a standard breakfast containing 800 kcal and 50 g of fat.Results: The serum LDL-C levels significantly decreased, from a fasting level of 3.88 mmol/L to nonfasting levels of 2.99, 2.83 and 3.23 mmol/L at 2, 4 and 6 h, respectively, after breakfast (P < 0.05). However, no significant difference was found in the total cholesterol (TC) levels between the fasting value and values at any nonfasting time points. The serum non-HDL-C level slightly increased from a fasting level of 4.29 mmol/L to nonfasting levels of 4.32, 4.38 and 4.34 mmol/L at 2, 4 and 6 h postprandially, respectively, and the difference reached statistical significance only at 4 and 6 h after breakfast (P < 0.05). No difference was observed in the fasting and nonfasting blood lipids between the two groups at baseline. After six weeks of Xuezhikang treatment, the patients had significantly lower fasting and nonfasting serum levels of LDL-C and non-HDL-C (P < 0.05) than at pretreatment. The LDL-C levels were reduced by 27.8%, 28.1%, 26.2% and 25.3% at 0, 2, 4 and 6 h, respectively, and the non-HDL-C levels were reduced by 27.6%, 28.7%, 29.0% and 28.0% at 0, 2, 4 and 6 h, respectively, after breakfast. No significant difference was found in the percent reductions in the LDL-C and non-HDL-C levels among the four different time points.Conclusions: Six weeks of Xuezhikang treatment significantly decreased LDL-C and non-HDL-C levels, with similar percent reductions in the fasting and nonfasting states in CHD patients, indicating that the percent change in nonfasting LDL-C or non-HDL-C could replace that in the fasting state for evaluation of the efficacy of cholesterol control in CHD patients who are unwilling or unable to fast.

Ozone pollution adversely affects human health. In recent years, ozone pollution has become an important research topic and a challenge. By combining differential absorption lidar (DIAL), meteorological gradient tower data, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and the backward trajectories model, changes in vertical ozone concentration, the influencing factors on ozone vertical distribution, and ozone sources were analyzed in Shenzhen from September 20 to 30, 2019. Results indicated that from September 25 to 30, there was obvious residual ozone and transport at night. The analysis of ozone concentration and meteorological factors shows that the temperatures of 291.3–301.8 K and the humidity of 19.4%–71.6% were conducive to ozone formation. As height increased from less than 0.1–0.3 km, the average ozone concentration increased, and the average NO2 concentration decreased. The analysis of potential ozone sources showed that ozone was mainly transported from the northeast of China and that the highest concentration of ozone mainly comes from southeast of Jiangxi province in southeastern China.

Background: With the extensive development of endoscopic sinus surgery, iatrogenic medial rectus muscle injury should be treated with caution. Traditional methods to repair a ruptured medial rectus need an anterior orbitotomy approach, with more injury and difficulty in finding the posterior end of the ruptured medial rectus. Objective: To explore a new method to repair a ruptured medial rectus. Methods: Eight cases of iatrogenic medial rectus rupture after endoscopic sinus surgery were reviewed from July 2015 to January 2019. Assisted by image-guided navigation, the ruptured medial rectus was sutured under an endoscopic endonasal orbital approach. Two methods were designed to suture the ruptured medial rectus. Optic nerve and orbital decompression were performed in 5 cases with visual impairment. The extent of exotropia and diplopia were followed up for 5 to 33 months after surgery. Results: With the help of image guidance, the posterior and anterior ends of the ruptured medial rectus of all patients were pinpointed, and operations using medial rectus anastomosis were successfully completed in 7 patients. The exotropia of these patients was corrected, and they have recovered. The vision of 2 patients recovered. There were no minor or major complications intraoperatively or postoperatively. Conclusion: Assisted by image-guided navigation, medial rectus anastomosis under an endoscopic endonasal orbital approach is a feasible method. The key to preventing orbital complications is strict professional training, including identification of the Onodi air cell and correct application of powered instrumentation.

Strain imaging in medical ultrasound is the imaging modality of elastic properties of biological tissue. In general, strain image will suffer from artifacts noise, which degrades lesion detectability and increases the likelihood of misdiagnosis. How to both suppress artifacts effectively and preserve the structure is vital for diagnosis and also for image post-processing. The bilateral filtering can reduce artifact noise and, at the same time, maintain the tissue structure. However, the balance between noise suppression and edge preservation often makes the threshold selection difficult. This paper is to solve the problem of difficult threshold selection in bilateral filtering. The probability distribution function of amplitude modulation noise in this paper is derived from the statistics of uncompressed speckle. The statistical model of artifact formation is useful for designing an adaptive fast bilateral filter for artifact reduction in ultrasound strain imaging. Both simulation and phantom testing show that the proposed method can improve the quality of ultrasonic strain imaging. Furthermore, the elastographic signal-to-noise ratio was increased by 129.91% and 52.36% for simulated and phantom strain images. The elastographic contrast-to-noise ratio was increased by 521.42% and 218.07% for simulated and phantom strain images, respectively. As indicated by the profiles, the proposed method produces a better result for the purpose of visualization.

This paper presents an improved (t, s, k, n)-scalable essential secret image sharing based on Lagrange interpolation. In the proposed scheme, an image is shared to n participants in which s are essential. Any set of k or more shadows including a least t essential shadows can obtain the low-quality image, any set of k or more shadows including a least t essential shadows can recover the high-quality image. The more essential shadows to participate in the recovery, the more information of the secret image is obtained. While t = s, the entire secret image can be completely recovered. Even if the essential participants do not cooperate to recovery, k non-essential participants can also collaborate to obtain the low-quality image. Moreover, when an essential shadow is lost or destroyed, only the high-quality image recovery is influenced, meanwhile the low-quality image is still obtained. Compared with the previous similar literatures that some parts of the image cannot be recovered if one of the shadows is accidentally lost or maliciously attacked, our scheme is more suitable for the practical application.

Background LDL-C level can be measured by direct methods (LDL-CM) or calculated by Friedewald formula (LDL-CC). The aim of this study was to investigate the difference between LDL-CM and LDL-CC after a daily breakfast in Chinese patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods Three hundred and three inpatients, including 203 CHD patients (CHD group) and 100 non-CHD controls (CON group), were enrolled in this study. Serum levels of blood lipid parameters, including LDL-CC and LDL-CM, at 0, 2 and 4 h (h) were monitored after a daily breakfast in all subjects. Results LDL-CM was significantly higher than LDL-CC in fasting state in each group and at 4 h postprandially in CHD group (P Conclusions It indicated that the clinical monitoring of non-fasting LDL-C level in CHD patients could be relatively complex, and the judgement may depend not only on the method to acquire LDL-C level, but also on the evaluation method.

Objective The modified Glasgow prognostic score (mGPS), a combination of C-reactive protein (CRP) and albumin levels, reflects systemic inflammation and nutritional status. This score has been shown to have prognosis value for various tumors. In the present study, we evaluated the prognostic value of mGPS for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Methods Literature search was conducted based on PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials up to December 2018. We pooled HRs and 95% CIs to evaluate the correlation between mGPS and survival in patients with RCC. Results Twelve studies comprising 2,391 patients were included in the present study for quantitative synthesis. Our studies demonstrated that higher mGPS was significantly correlated to poor overall survival (HR=4.31; 95%CI, 2.78-6.68; P

Cancer‐related fatigue (CRF) is subjective and has wide inter‐individual variability. Given that leptin is commonly associated with fatigue syndrome, its use as a potential biomarker for CRF is being investigated. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the association between leptin and CRF in early‐stage breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. In a prospective cohort study, patients completed assessments at baseline (T1), during chemotherapy (T2) and after chemotherapy (T3). Levels of plasma leptin and adipokines were measured using a Luminex bead‐immunoassay and CRF was measured using the Multi‐Dimensional Fatigue Symptom Inventory‐Short Form (MFSI‐SF). Data were analysed longitudinally using a generalised estimating equation incorporating clinically relevant parameters and pro‐inflammatory adipokines. The analysis included 136 patients (mean age ± SD = 51.5 ± 8.8 years; 69.1% receiving anthracycline‐based chemotherapy). More patients experienced CRF at T3 (23.8%) than at T2 (13.8%) compared to baseline. An increase was observed in the median plasma leptin level at T2, followed by a decrease at T3 (T1: 4.07 ng/mL, T2: 4.95 ng/mL and T3: 3.96 ng/mL). In the multivariate model, the change in leptin levels over time was significantly associated with the total MFSI‐SF score (β = −0.15, P = 0.003) after adjusting for the tumour necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) level, anxiety, depression, insomnia, age, menopausal status and type of chemotherapy. This is the first study to report leptin as a biomarker that predicts the onset of CRF over time. Future studies are required to validate the findings.

Ultrasound (US) image segmentation plays a very important role in diagnostic imaging. In order to extract special tissues from images, this study proposes a new method for segmentation of US images. The proposed method uses multilevel threshold segmentation which is based on Otsu and differential search algorithm. Testing in simulation US images shows that the proposed algorithm has a better result of segmentation than the three existing methods, including region growing, the active contour model and k-means technique. The proposed method gets the highest F m values and the smallest area errors in experiments. Vivo US images are also tested by the proposed method and it achieves a good segmentation result.

Most of the current word segmentation methods are rule-based and traditional machine learning methods. Universal word segmentation tools do not work well in the field such as metallurgy. Domain-specific Chinese word segmentation is rarely studied. In recent years, with the development of deep learning, the neural network has been proved to be effective in Chinese word segmentation. However, this promising performance relies on large-scale training data. Neural networks with conventional architectures cannot achieve the desired results in low-resource datasets due to the lack of labeled training data. This paper takes the field of metallurgy as an example and proposes a domain-specific Chinese word segmentation based on Bi-directional long-short term memory (Bi-directional LSTM) model in the metallurgical field. First, the word segmentation model is obtained by using the Bi-directional LSTM model to train the internal and external domain knowledge. Then, a series of tuning parameters are carried out and the label probability of the word is combined with the weight. Finally, the result of word segmentation is obtained by label inference layer. The experimental results show that the proposed method can create a better word segmentation effect in the field of metallurgy.

Road pavement could be damaged due to various reasons, causing damages such as cracks and pits. These damages cause potential dangers in traffic safety. It is necessary for road maintenance departments to find damages in time before maintenance. At present, maintenance departments of some high-level roads are equipped with specialized detection vehicles such as laser scanning vehicles to detect road damages. These kinds of devices can get good detection performance, but the economic cost is very high. In this paper, we use a road damage image dataset to train an object detection model based on deep convolutional neural network and deploy it on a low-cost embedded platform to form an embedded system. The system uses a common camera mounted on windshield of a common vehicle as sensor to detect road damages. The embedded system consumes about 352 ms to process one frame of image and can achieve a recall rate of about 76% which is higher than some previous related works. The recall rate of this scheme using common cameras is less than that of high-level specialized detectors, but the economic cost is much lower than them. After subsequent development, the road maintenance department with limited funds can consider about schemes like this.

In the past decades, the ensemble systems have been shown as an efficient method to increase the accuracy and stability of classification algorithms. However, how to get a valid combination of multiple base-classifiers is still an open question to be solved. In this paper, based on the genetic algorithm, a new self-adaptive stacking ensemble model (called SSEM) is proposed. Different from other ensemble learning classification algorithms, SSEM selectively integrates different base-classifiers, and automatically selects the optimal base-classifier combination and hyper-parameters of base-classifiers via the genetic algorithm. It is noted that all of machine learning methods can be the components of SSEM. In this work, based on two base-classifier selection principles (low complexity of base-classifier and high diversity between different base-classifiers), we select five state-of-art classifiers including Naïve Bayes (NB), Extremely Randomized trees (ERT), Logistic, Random Forest (RF) and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) as the base-classifiers of SSEM. To demonstrate the efficiency of SSEM, we have applied it to nine different datasets. Compared with other 11 state-of-art classifiers (NB, ERT, Logistic, RF, CART, Back Propagation Network (BPN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), AdaBoost, Bagging, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Deep neural network (DNN)), SSEM always performs the best under the five evaluation indexes (Accuracy, Recall, AUC, F1-score and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC)). Moreover, the significance test result shows that SSEM can achieve highly competitive performance against the other 11 state-of-art classifiers. Altogether, it is evident that SSEM can be a useful framework for classification.

Multi-modality image fusion provides more comprehensive and sophisticated information in modern medical diagnosis, remote sensing, video surveillance, and so on. This paper presents a novel multi-modality medical image fusion method based on phase congruency and local Laplacian energy. In the proposed method, the non-subsampled contourlet transform is performed on medical image pairs to decompose the source images into high-pass and low-pass subbands. The high-pass subbands are integrated by a phase congruency-based fusion rule that can enhance the detailed features of the fused image for medical diagnosis. A local Laplacian energy-based fusion rule is proposed for low-pass subbands. The local Laplacian energy consists of weighted local energy and the weighted sum of Laplacian coefficients that describe the structured information and the detailed features of source image pairs, respectively. Thus, the proposed fusion rule can simultaneously integrate two key components for the fusion of low-pass subbands. The fused high-pass and low-pass subbands are inversely transformed to obtain the fused image. In the comparative experiments, three categories of multi-modality medical image pairs are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experiment results show that the proposed method achieves competitive performance in both the image quantity and computational costs.

Interfacial engineering plays a very significant role in suppressing charge recombination and improving the photovoltaic performance in solar cells. The introduction of a buffer or passivation layer is an effective way to modify interfacial behaviours. In this paper, a new approach involving the deposition of a MnS passivation layer was studied to improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) of CdS/CdSe quantum dot co-sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs). Compared to the pure CdS/CdSe co-sensitized solar cells, the introduction of the MnS passivation layer can not only modify the surface defects of the quantum dots and suppress charge recombination at the photoelectrode/electrolyte interface, but also enhance the light harvesting capability in terms of both the absorbance intensity and absorption range. This work may provide inspiration for future studies on the interfacial modification of QDSSCs. The best device performance with a ZnO photoanode could be achieved when the MnS passivation layer was deposited for 1 min for each of two successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) cycles. The PCE, open circuit voltage (Voc), short circuit current density (Jsc), and fill factor (FF) were 3.70%, 0.60 V, 13.74 mA cm−2, and 0.44, respectively.

Objective To investigate the predictive factors of lymph node metastasis (LNM) and evaluate the usefulness of prediction nomograms. Methods This study analyzed data of 300 patients diagnosed with penile squamous cell carcinoma at West China Hospital (WCH) of Sichuan University (Chengdu, China) and 412 cases acquired from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Logistic regression analysis was performed on these cohorts to investigate the predictive factors of LNM. We evaluated a recently developed prediction nomogram for LNM, which was established based on the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Moreover, we developed a novel nomogram using cases from the WCH for the prediction of lymphatic metastasis. Results Logistic analysis identified that younger age at diagnosis, invasion of the penis body, poorer pT stage, cN stage, nuclear grade and the presence of lymph vascular invasion (LVI) were significantly correlated with LNM in WCH cases; however, only race, poorer T stage and cN stage were significantly associated with LNM among the cases from the SEER. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that younger age, poorer T stage, cN stage and nuclear grade were independent predictors of LNM. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of WCH cases showed that the tumor T stage 8th edition has better area under the curve than 7th stage (0.672 vs 0.636, respectively). Moreover, well AUC were seen in external validation of NCDB nomogram in WCH cohorts and SEER series (0.833 vs 0.795). The new nomogram included the aforementioned independent predictors and the bootstrap-corrected concordance was 0.876. Conclusion Younger diagnose age, poorer pT stage, cN stage, nuclear grade and LVI were the most important predictors of LNM in patients with penile cancer. 8th T stage performed better than 7th version in predicting LNM. NCDB nomogram have some application value in both WCH and SEER cases, and our novel model further improved the predictive accuracy.