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The painting process is an essential part of the shipbuilding process. Its quality is directly related to the service life and maintenance cost of the ship. Currently, the design of the painting process relies on the experience of technologists. It is not conducive to scientific management of the painting process and effective control of painting cost. Therefore, an intelligent design algorithm for the ship painting process is proposed in this paper. Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) is used to form categories of painting objects by cluster analysis. The grey wolf optimization (GWO) is introduced to realize the adaptive determination of clustering parameters and avoid the deviation of clustering results. Then, a painting object classification model is constructed based on the random forest (RF). Finally, the recommendation of the painting process is realized based on the multi-objective evaluation function. Effectiveness is verified by taking the outer plate above the waterline of a shipyard H1127/7 as the object. The results show that the performance of DBSCAN is significantly improved. Furthermore, the accurate classification of painting objects by RF is achieved. The experiment proves that the dry film thickness qualification rate obtained by the painting process designed by IDBSCAN-RF is 92.3%, which meets the requirements of the performance standard of protective coatings (PSPC).

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the Chinese herbal medicine formula Guilu Erxian Jiao can improve the T-score in osteoporosis patients and even decrease the fracture rate.Design: This is a retrospective study.Subjects and Setting: Osteoporosis participants were selected from the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH) database from 2000 to 2019.Interventions: The patients were administered Guilu Erxian Jiao pills.Outcome measures: We analyzed the change of T-score and the associated cumulative incidence of fracture.Results: Eighty-five patients administered GEJ met the inclusion criteria. After propensity score matching (1:5), 425 patients who were not administered GEJ were included in the control group. There were no significant differences about the baseline characteristics between the study and control groups. In the study group, GEJ improved the osteoporosis of the lumbar vertebrate and osteopenia of the hip joint but did not improve osteoporosis of the femoral neck. The cumulative rate of fracture between these two groups was not significantly different. Patients who took at least 600 GEJ pills over the treatment period had a decreased risk for fracture at fracture-prone sites.Conclusion:The use of Guilu Erxian Jiao may improve osteoporosis of the lumbar vertebrate and osteopenia of the hip joint. In addition, it may help decrease fractures of the lumbar spine. Administering at least 600 GEJ pills over the treatment period might result in a decreased risk for fracture at fracture-prone sites.

Background: Persistent müllerian duct syndrome (PMDS) is an autosomal recessive congenital abnormality for which müllerian derivatives, uterus, cervix, upper 2/3 vagina and fallopian tubes, persist in an otherwise normally virilized males. Mutations in the AMH gene and AMHR2 gene have been identified as causative. However, there has been no functional experimental analysis of AMHR2 or AMH variants that caused PMDS. We ascertained a Chinese PMDS pedigree. To elucidate the pathogenic mechanisms of variant, we used complementation-based NanoLuciferase Binary Technology (NanoBiT) to examine AMH and AMHR2 variants interaction in vivo. Using an ID-1 luciferase assay, we probed the effect of the two variants on the transcriptional activity of the TGFβ/BMP pathway. Results: Molecular studies revealed two novel variants [c.118G>C/p. Gly40Arg, c.1222G>C/p. Ala408Pro] in the AMHR2 gene of our monozygotic boys. The AMHR2 p. Ala408Pro variants affect a functional domain, result in impaired substrate recognition and affinity. For p.Gly40Arg variant, the arginine residue will disfigure the local backbone and alter function. The AMHR2 p.Gly40Arg variant reduces its ability to bind to AMH, while the p.Ala408Pro variant alters the kinase domain structure. Conclusion: Both variants significantly reduce TGFβ/BMP signaling. This study provides new methods and concepts as to the study of the molecular pathogenic mechanism of PMDS.

In recent years, subacute care units (SCUs) have emerged as alternatives to acute hospitalization for selected emergency department (ED) patients who might benefit from a short period of inpatient stay within a less acute setting. We developed a new protocol to directly admit selected older patients from our acute hospital's (AH) ED to the SCU of a partner community hospital, making use of our ED's short-stay ward as a transit area to overcome administrative, financial, and clinical barriers. The new protocol has removed the need for intervening stays of longer than 24 hours at our AH, reduced overall length of stay across both institutions, decreased hospital admissions, and reduced the number of patient hand-offs.

We examine the effect of managerial characteristics on investment in the stock market by listed firms in China. Our empirical findings suggest that higher levels of cash‐based compensation may increase both the propensity of investing in the stock market and the total amount of investment. On the other hand, managerial holdings discourage managers from investing in stock markets and also lead to a decrease in the amount of investment. This study sheds light on managerial risk‐taking incentives. Moreover, this study fills the gap in the literature by providing evidence for the determinants of listed firms’ stock market investment.

This meta-analysis aimed to assess the diagnostic efficiency of blood-based septin 9 (SEPT9) methylation assay for the detection of colorectal cancer (CRC). Studies were searched in the Springer, Wiley, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Ovid, Embase, Web of Science, China BioMedicine, Wanfang and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases until July 2017. Methodological quality assessment was performed based on the guidelines of the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies. According to 1/3 and 2/3 algorithms, the meta-analyses for the diagnostic effect of SEPT9 in CRC were compared with healthy subjects and subjects with polyps, adenoma, and non-CRC, respectively. The random effects model was applied and publication bias was evaluated. The included 29 studies comprised 10,486 subjects (3202 patients with CRC and 7284 controls). In comparison with healthy subjects, the pooled sensitivity with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of SEPT9 methylation for the diagnosis of CRC was 0.74 (95% CI: 0.61-0.84) in the 1/3 algorithm group, whereas the specificity was 0.96 (95% CI: 0.95-0.97) in the 2/3 algorithm group. Additionally, positive likelihood ratio was less than 10 and negative likelihood ratio more than 0.1 in the 2/3 algorithm group for patients with CRC vs. polyps and adenoma. The P value of Deeks' funnel plot was 0.36, suggesting that there was no publication bias. SEPT9 methylation can be used to diagnose CRC in healthy individuals under the 2/3 algorithm. The determination of SEPT9 methylation does not distinguish well between CRC and polyps or adenoma.

Under the background of the information age, it is a general trend that popular science reading has shifted from paper to mobile reading. In order to effectively measure and evaluate the factors that affect the user experience of mobile popular science e-journals, a user experience model for mobile popular science e-journals should be constructed to improve the user experience of mobile popular science e-journals.First, the interview method was used to extract the user experience impact factors of mobile popular science e-journals, and the questionnaire survey method was used to obtain the Cronbach α coefficient of each factor and test its reliability; in addition, the evaluation indicators for the user experience of popular science electronic journals on the mobile terminal have been established. Finally, combining the analytic hierarchy process and the Delphi method to calculate the weight value of each factor, a quantitative model of the user experience of mobile popular science electronic journals is constructed. It is concluded that the factors that affect the user experience of mobile popular science e-journals come from the four levels of content, function, interaction and layout, and its weight values are sequentially reduced. Therefore, the design of mobile popular science e-journals generally follows the principles as follows: content is king, content and function being equal, service priority, user-centered and visual attraction being taken into account.The strategies and suggestions for the development of mobile popular science e-journals based on user experience are put forward.

Depth estimation is playing an important role in indoor and outdoor scene understanding, autonomous driving, augmented reality and many other tasks. Vehicles and robotics are able to use active illumination sensors such as LIDAR to receive high precision depth estimation. However, high-resolution LIDARs are usually too expensive, which limits its massive production on various applications. Though single beam LIDAR enjoys the benefits of low cost, one beam depth sensing is not usually sufficient to perceive the surrounding environment in many scenarios. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based framework to explore to replicate similar or even higher performance as costly LIDARs with our designed self-supervised network and a low-cost single-beam LIDAR. After the accurate calibration with a visible camera, the single beam LIDAR can adjust the scale uncertainty of the depth map estimated by the visible camera. The adjusted depth map enjoys the benefits of high resolution and sensing accuracy as high beam LIDAR and maintains low-cost as single beam LIDAR. Thus we can achieve similar sensing effect of high beam LIDAR with more than a 30–100 times cheaper price (e.g., $80000 Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR v.s. $2000 SICK TIM-781 2D LIDAR and normal camera). The proposed approach is verified on our collected dataset and public dataset with superior depth-sensing performance.

Eye gaze estimation can provide critical evidence for people attention, which has extensive applications on cognitive science and computer vision areas, such as human behavior analysis and fake user identification. Existing typical methods mostly place the eye-tracking sensors directly in front of the eyeballs, which is hard to be utilized in the wild. And recent learning-based methods require prior ground truth annotations of gaze vector for training. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised learning-based method for estimating the eye gaze in 3D space. Building on top of the existing unsupervised approach to regress shape parameters and initialize the depth, we propose to apply geometric spectral photometric consistency constraint and spatial consistency constraints across multiple views in video sequences to refine the initial depth values on the detected iris landmark. We demonstrate that our method is able to learn gaze vector in the wild scenes more robust without ground truth gaze annotations or 3D supervision, and show our system leads to a competitive performance compared with existing supervised methods.

Background: Predicting the risk of recurrence during hospitalization in patients with minor ischemic stroke (MIS) is of great significance for clinical and treatment. Compared with early models and prognostic scores, nomogram is a better visualization tool for predicting clinical outcomes. It combines different factors to develop a graphical continuous scoring system, and accurately calculates the risk probability of adverse outcomes based on individual characteristics. Our goal is to develop and validate a nomogram for individualized prediction of hospitalization recurrence in patients with mild ischemic stroke in the Chinese population.Methods: Based on retrospective collection, a single center study was conducted in the first affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University from January 2014 to December 2019. The subjects were stroke patients with NIHSS≤5.In order to generate the nomogram, age, systolic blood pressure,previous heart disease, serum total bilirubin, ferritin and smoking were integrated into the model. The predictive accuracy of the nomogram model to predict the probability of unfavorable outcome was assessed by calculation of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC–ROC). Calibration of the risk prediction model was assessed by the plot comparing the observed probability of unfavorable outcome against the predicted, and by using the Hosmer–Lemeshow test.Results: Age at admission (OR,0.946; 95% CI,-0.002 to 0.048), SBP (OR,0.012,95%CI,0.000 to 0.024), previous heart disease (OR,0.867,95%CI, 0.084 to 1.651), UA (OR,-0.003,95%CI,-0.006 to 0.001), serum total bilirubin (OR,-0.022,95%CI,-0.036 to -0.008), ferritin (OR,0.004,95%CI, 0.002 to 0.005), smoking (OR,0.494,95%CI,-0.115 to 1.103) are significant predictors of in-hospital recurrence in Chinese patients with minor ischemic stroke.The model shows good discrimination, the AUC-ROC value is 0.737 (95%CI:0.676-0.798), and has perfect calibration performance. Calibration was good (p=0.1457 for the Hosmer-Lemesshow test), which could predict the risk of recurrence of MIS patients during hospitalization.Conclusion: The nomogram developed and validated in this study can provide individualized, intuitive and accurate prediction of recurrence in Chinese patients with minor ischemic stroke during hospitalization.

Rice stem borer, Chilo suppressalis, is a common and major serious pest of rice, maize, and wheat crops across Asia, Europe, and Oceania countries. Its sex pheromone consists of three analogously compounds, i.e., (Z)-hexadec-11-enal (1), (Z)-octadec-13-enal (2), and (Z)-hexadec-9-enal (3), as long-chain aliphatic internal cis-alkenyl aldehydes. In order to perform an economic and widespread pest control management of rice stem borer, a versatile and efficient synthetic strategy is required. A versatile and efficient synthesis using a common synthetic route for cis-alkenals with high overall yields is described. Commercially available inexpensive aliphatic diols were chosen as starting materials. Two key steps were employed to synthesize the long-chain aliphatic internal cis-alkenes in excellent yields, including the alkylation of terminal alkynes without the utilization of a highly polar aprotic cosolvent and the versatile cis-selective semihydrogenation for the reduction of internal alkynes with excellent stereoselectivity. The results of field tests showed that the synthetic sex pheromone blend was highly effective for the capture of rice stem borer.

Improving of K-TIG welding process with a cusp magnetic field was experimentally tested. A cusp magnetic field setup was designed with water-cooled permanent magnetic poles. Stationary welding experiments were carried out to test the influence of magnetic field to the arc shape. Bead-on-plate welding processes were carried out to test the influence of magnetic field to the arc voltage and weld shape. Keyhole exit image sequence was captured with a vision system. It was found that, in the magnetic-enhanced K-TIG welding process, (1) the arc was constrained and changed into oval shape; (2) arc voltage was increased, front weld was narrowed and backside weld was widened; (3) keyhole exit shape also changed; (4) threshold current for fully penetrated keyhole was decreased and (5) the stainless steel weld microstructure experienced invisible change. The results show that the cusp magnetic field is feasible to improve the K-TIG arc behaviour and reduce the heat input.

As the threats posed by climate change clearer and greater, issues related to geoengineering have received increasing attention. The potential impact of geoengineering, as well as its associated risks, is central to research in this area. In this chapter, we focus on a key geoengineering technology, solar radiation management, and take disasters caused by extreme precipitation as an example for our study. Here, we estimate and analyze the changes in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme precipitation events in China under the influence of geoengineering measures between the years 2020 and 2100, and evaluate the spatial pattern of its risk characteristics and of the dynamic changes in such risk. We also share some reflections on the risk management by means of geoengineering in China.

We propose a method to estimate the 3D gaze of the observer onto the scene using a portable eye tracker with a monocular camera. We reconstruct the 3D scene using Structure from Motion (SfM) and use camera pose and 3D reconstruction information of the scene to localize the position and pose of the observer in the 3D reconstructed space. Along with the position, we can obtain the 2D gaze of the observer using an eye-tracker. Each person may have a different perspective of the same 3D object in the scene, observing it from different positions. We use this information to fuse these multiple perspectives in 3D space to get a better understanding of how differently each observer perceives the same scene, compared to others. In the entire system, we developed a convo-lutional neural network to detect and track eye movement and a camera re-localization method to localize the camera in 3D environment. Based on our novel eye tracking and camera re-localization methods, we can accurately localize the gaze in the 3D reconstructed environment.

To observe the clinical efficacy of Yi Jin Jing (Sinew-transforming Qigong Exercises) for primary osteoporosis in the elderly. Eighty old patients with primary osteoporosis were randomized into a Yi Jin Jing group and a medication group, 40 cases in each group. The Yi Jin Jing group was intervened by Yi Jin Jing (Sinew-transforming Qigong Exercises) training, while the medication group was intervened by oral administration of alendronate sodium tablet. Prior to and after 6-month intervention, the bone mineral density (BMD) of the proximal femur, visual analog scale (VAS) and activities of daily living (ADL) were estimated. There were no significant differences in the BMD of the proximal femur, and VAS and ADL scores between the two groups before the intervention (P>0.05). After 6-month intervention, the above items all improved significantly in both groups (both P 0.05). Practice of Yi Jin Jing (Sinew-transforming Qigong Exercises) can effectively ameliorate the BMD in the elderly with primary osteoporosis, and it can reduce the pain and improve ADL, with a better general effect compared to oral administration of alendronate sodium tablet.

Hypoxia preconditioning protects Ca2+-ATPase activation of intestinal mucosal cells against R/I injury in a rat liver transplantation model

Objective Insulin resistance (IR) is a key defect in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); therefore, effective means of ameliorating IR are sought. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study of 154 patients with T2DM and 39 with pre-diabetes (pre-DM). The effects of IR and a high concentration of FFA on gene expression were determined using microarray analysis and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) in patients with T2DM or pre-DM. Results Serum FFA concentration and homeostasis model assessment of IR (HOMA-IR) were significantly higher in patients with T2DM but no obesity and in those with pre-DM than in controls. HOMA-IR was significantly associated with T2DM. RT-qPCR showed that the expression of FBJ murine osteosarcoma viral oncogene homolog ( FOS) and AE binding protein 1 ( AEBP1) was much lower in the circulation of participants with obesity and diabetes. RT-qPCR showed that the expression of docking protein 1 ( DOK1) was significantly lower in the blood of participants with diabetes but no obesity and in those with pre-DM than in controls. Conclusions FFA and DOK1 are associated with IR in patients with T2DM but no obesity or pre-DM. The downregulation of DOK1 might inhibit lipid synthesis and induce lipolysis, inducing or worsening IR.

This work is concerned with identification and nonlinear predictive control method for MIMO Hammerstein systems with constraints. Firstly, an identification method based on steady-state responses and sub-model method is introduced to MIMO Hammerstein system. A modified version of artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed to improve the prediction ability of Hammerstein model. Next, a computationally efficient nonlinear model predictive control algorithm (MGPC) is developed to deal with constrained problem of MIMO system. The identification process and performance of MGPC are shown. Numerical results about a polymerization reactor validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and the comparisons show that MGPC has a better performance than QDMC and basic GPC.

In this paper, we address the challenging unconstrained set-based face recognition problem where each subject face is instantiated by a set of media (images and videos) instead of a single image. Naively aggregating information from all the media within a set would suffer from the large intra-set variance caused by heterogeneous factors (e.g., varying media modalities, poses and illumination) and fail to learn discriminative face representations. A novel Multi-Prototype Network (MP- Net) model is thus proposed to learn multiple prototype face representations adaptively from the media sets. Each learned prototype is representative for the subject face under certain condition in terms of pose, illumination and media modality. Instead of handcrafting the set partition for prototype learn- ing, MPNet introduces a Dense SubGraph (DSG) learning sub-net that implicitly untangles inconsistent media and learns a number of representative prototypes. Qualitative and quantitative experiments clearly demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model over state-of-the-arts.

Hot carriers in hybrid perovskite have been proven to have eminent properties with long carrier cooling time and long carrier migration distance. The invention of the internally photoemitted hot carrier (IPHC) solar cell recently makes it possible to utilize the hot electrons in CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite and capture their excess energies under steady state illumination. How to further improve the efficiency of IPHC cells is challenging and crucial to demonstrate their effectiveness. In this work, sodium iodide (NaI) is added into the CH3NH3PbI3 precursor solution for inducing a P-type doping and downshifting its Fermi level. The lowered energy barrier at the interface of Au/doped CH3NH3PbI3 promotes the hot electron extraction, thereby enhancing the power conversion efficiency of IPHC devices. The FTO/TiO2/Au/Na+-doped MAPbI3 construction with considerable photocurrent would be an alternative approach for light-to-electricity conversion.

OBJECTIVENosocomial outbreaks caused by Salmonella are rare. We describe the investigation and control of a cluster of novel extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) Salmonella enterica serotype Isangi in a hospital in southeastern Michigan.METHODSAn epidemiologic investigation, including case-control study, assessment of infection control practices and environmental cultures, was performed to identify modes of transmission. Healthcare workers (HCWs) exposed to case patients were screened. Strain relatedness was determined using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE); ESBL confirmation was conducted using real-time PCR. Control measures were implemented to prevent further transmission.RESULTSBetween September 2 and October 22, 2015, 19 surgical patients, including 10 organ transplant recipients and 1 HCW, had positive S. Isangi cultures. Of these case patients and HCW, 13 had gastroenteritis, 2 had bacteremia, 1 had surgical-site infection, and 4 were asymptomatic. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) showed 89.5% similarity among the isolates in these cases. Isolates with resistant-phenotypes possessed plasmid-mediated CTX-M15 ESBL. A total of 19 case patients were compared with 57 control participants. Case patients had significantly higher odds of exposure to an intraoperative transesophageal (TEE) probe (adjusted odds ratio 9.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.12–72.60; P=.02). Possible cross-transmission occurred in the HCW and 2 patients. Cultures of TEE probes and the environment were negative. The outbreak ended after removal of TEE probes, modification of reprocessing procedures, implementation of strict infection control practices, and enhanced environmental cleaning.CONCLUSIONSWe report the first nosocomial ESBL S. Isangi outbreak in the United States. Multiple control measures were necessary to interrupt transmission of this gastrointestinal pathogen. Exposure to possibly contaminated TEE probes was associated with transmission. Periodic monitoring of reprocessing procedures of TEE probes may be required to ensure optimal disinfection.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2016;37:954–961

Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are heterogeneous immature cells and natural inhibitors of adaptive immunity. In this study, the MDSC population was evaluated in adult patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), where cell-mediated immune mechanisms are involved in platelet destruction. Our data demonstrated that both the numbers and suppressive functions of MDSCs were impaired in the peripheral blood and spleens of patients with ITP compared with healthy control patients. High-dose dexamethasone (HD-DXM) treatment rescued MDSC numbers in patients with ITP. And DXM modulation promoted the suppressive function of MDSCs induced in vitro. Moreover, the expression of interleukin 10 and transforming growth factor β was significantly upregulated in DXM-modulated MDSCs compared with the unmodulated cultures. DXM-modulated MDSCs inhibited autologous CD4(+)T-cell proliferation and significantly attenuated cytotoxic T lymphocyte-mediated platelet lysis, further indicating enhanced control over T-cell responses. Elevated expression of the transcription factor Ets1 was identified in DXM-modulated MDSCs. Transfection of Ets-1 small interfering RNA efficiently blocked regulatory effects of MDSCs, which almost offset the augmentation of MDSC function by DXM. Meanwhile, splenocytes from CD61 knockout mice immunized with CD61(+)platelets were transferred into severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mouse recipients (C57/B6 background) to induce a murine model of severe ITP. We passively transferred the DXM-modulated MDSCs induced from bone marrow of wild-type C57/B6 mice into the SCID mouse recipients, which significantly increased platelet counts in vivo compared with those receiving splenocyte engraftment alone. These findings suggested that impaired MDSCs are involved in the pathogenesis of ITP, and that HD-DXM corrected MDSC functions via a mechanism underlying glucocorticoid action and Ets1.

Acute myocardial infarction complicated by bleeding colon tumor is problematic with regard to management, and appropriate balance of antiplatelet or anticoagulation therapy and hemostasis or surgery is crucial for effective treatment. Here, we present a case of concomitant acute myocardial infarction and bleeding tumor in the transverse colon, and share our experience of successfully balancing anticoagulation therapy and hemostasis.

We investigated the effects of perioperative blood transfusion in the prognosis of hereditary and sporadic colon cancer. There are 1075 colon cancer patients, including 936 sporadic colon cancer and 139 with hereditary colon cancer undergoing surgery at our hospital. All patients underwent 10 years of follow-up. In the sporadic group, mortality, local recurrence rate and distant metastases rate of transfused patients were significantly higher than non-transfused patients. The 10-year survival rates were significantly lower in patients receiving blood transfusions compared to non-transfused patients. In the hereditary group, mortality was higher in transfused patients compared to non-transfused patients.

Human leukocyte antigen-G is a non-classical major histocompatibility complex class I antigen with potent immune-inhibitory function. Human leukocyte antigen-G benefit patients in allotransplantation and autoimmune diseases by interacting with its receptors, immunoglobulin-like transcripts. Here we observed significantly less human leukocyte antigen-G in plasma from immune thrombocytopenia patients positive for anti-platelet autoantibodies compared with autoantibodies-negative patients or healthy controls. Besides, human leukocyte antigen-G is positively correlated with platelet counts in both patients and healthy controls. We also found less membrane-bound human leukocyte antigen-G and immunoglobulin-like transcripts on CD4+ and CD14+ cells in patients. Recombinant human leukocyte antigen-G upregulated immunoglobulin-like transcript 2 expression on CD4+ and immunoglobulin-like transcript 4 on CD14+ cells. Human leukocyte antigen-G upregulated IL-4 and IL-10, and downregulated tumor necrosis factor-α, IL-12 and IL-17 secreted by patient peripheral blood mononuclear cells, suggesting a stimulation of Th2 differentiation and downregulation of Th1 and Th17 immune response. Human leukocyte antigen-G-modulated dendritic cells from immune thrombocytopenia patients showed decreased expression of CD80 and CD86, and suppressed CD4+ T-cell proliferation compared to unmodulated cells. Moreover, human leukocyte antigen-G modulated cells from patients induced less platelet apoptosis. Human leukocyte antigen-G administration also significantly alleviated thrombocytopenia in a murine model of ITP. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that impaired expression of human leukocyte antigen-G and immunoglobulin-like transcripts is involved in the pathogenesis of immune thrombocytopenia; Recombinant human leukocyte antigen-G can correct this abnormality via upregulation of immunoglobulin-like transcripts, indicating that human leukocyte antigen-G can be a diagnostic marker and a therapeutic option for immune thrombocytopenia.

Ahead of Print article withdrawn by publisher.

This paper presents the development of an Indigenous On-Board Diagnostic Kit and a remote on-line diagnostic system for Euro standard vehicles using On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) and GSM technology. The different parts of the system are indigenous developed OBD Kit, Communication Module and GUI for main server. The vehicles are equipped with OBD kits and communication modules with GSM, The Electronic Control Unit (ECU) of the equipped vehicles can be reached from a remote location and the response from ECU can be transmitted back to remote server. The server then diagnosis the problem & send instructions to rectify it.

Multi-point forming process has been developed to shape the sheet metal with bidirectional curvature. However, the forming force usually climbs too high so that the dimension of the forming machine should be designed to meet it. To solve this problem, the multi-point incremental forming (MPIF) process was proposed in this paper. First, the principle of this new forming process was introduced. Then, the experimental device was designed. Next, the MPIF process was simulated by a finite element model. The forming effects including displacements, thickness, and curvatures were visualized and discussed in detail. It was found that there is no obvious thickness change during the forming process. The advantage of this forming process is that the shape of the sheet metals adaptable and controllable with small forming force.

This paper studies the adaptive fuzzy fault-tolerant control (FTC) problem for a class of nonlinear systems with mismatched uncertainties and actuator faults. Two control schemes are designed to compensate for the actuator faults including outage, stuck and loss of effectiveness. The fuzzy logic systems are applied to approximate the bound of unknown nonlinear functions without knowing the information about the upper bound of mismatched uncertainties. By using projection modification algorithm and the improved adaptation law with $$\sigma $$ -modification, the adaptive fuzzy FTC scheme is designed. It is shown that the system states can converge asymptotically to zero even in the presence of actuator faults. However, the chattering phenomenon may occur. To overcome the undesirable chattering phenomenon, a continuous-state feedback control strategy is adopted for the control design so that the required assumption can be removed. It is shown that all the signals in the resulting closed-loop system are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control methods.

In order to conduct a further investigation of the causes of damages in large longitudinal slope of asphalt road pavement under actual heavy load, a three-dimensional finite element model was established by ANSYS finite element software. Through applying impulsive load in this model, the variation of the strains of large longitudinal slope of asphalt road pavement under different conditions was obtained and the influence of gradient on the dynamic response of large longitudinal slope of asphalt road pavement was analyzed. The results show that the strains of large longitudinal slope of asphalt road pavement increased with the increase of load times. Flexure tensile strain and shear strain were similitude with the change tendency of the increase of overloading rate but the data increased significantly. The transversal shear strain increased with the increase of gradient.

At present the majority of association rule mining algorithm only uses support and confidence to evaluate association rules, association rules which may contain a large number of redundant, meaningless, Introducing the concepts of hyper-graph and system and exploring to construct the hyper-graph on the model of three-dimensional matrix. According to the characteristics of Big Data, the new hyper-edge definition method is adopted combining the concept of system, thus improving the processing capacity.

Vehicle detection is an essential task of environment perception. We proposed a vehicle detection method using the fusion of LIDAR and video for current traffic conditions. First, joint calibration of LIDAR and camera are introduced, the target area obtained by clustering of laser scanning data is projected into the image to get the region of interest (ROI). According to the analysis of vehicle symmetry, vertical edge statistics and template matching based on Hausdorff distance, the transitable area is distinguished. Vehicle detection algorithm is implemented in the united simulation condition of PreScan and Matlab/Simulink. Detection results show that the detection algorithm is robust and reliable.

Background De Qi is a special sensational response upon acupuncture needling. According to traditional acupuncture theory, the treatment is “effective only after Qi arrival”; that is, De Qi is an important indicator of therapeutic efficacy and good prognosis. However, it is still disputable whether De Qi improves the efficacy of acupuncture therapy. This prospective, randomized controlled trial aims to explore the influence of De Qi induced by acupuncture on immediate and accumulated analgesic effects in patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Methods/design Eighty-eight patients with KOA will be recruited and randomly assigned to the De Qi group (enhanced stimulation to evoke De Qi) and the control group (weak stimulation to avoid De Qi) in the Department of Acupuncture and Physical Therapy, Beijing Luhe Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University. Each patient will receive three 30-minute sessions per week for 4 consecutive weeks and undergo a 1 month follow-up. The severity of knee pain, as measured on a 100-mm visual analog scale (where 0 indicates no pain and 100 indicates intolerable pain) will be used as the primary outcome, and the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score will be used as the secondary outcome. Both indexes will be measured before and after the 1st (for evaluating the immediate analgesic effects), 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th (for evaluating the accumulated analgesic effects) treatments and at the end of the follow-up. The intensity of the De Qi sensation will be assessed by the Chinese-Modified Massachusetts General Hospital Acupuncture Sensation Scale at the end of each treatment. Side effects during the treatments will be recorded and analyzed as well. The comparisons between the De Qi group and the control group will be done by using both an intention-to-treat analysis and a per-protocol analysis. Discussion This prospective randomized controlled study will be helpful in enhancing our understanding of the analgesic effect of De Qi on patients with KOA and may provide a clinical basis for further investigation of the relationship between De Qi and the therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture, thereby offering some evidence for the role of De Qi in an efficacious acupuncture therapy. Trial registration Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR-IIR-16008972. Registered on 4 August 2016 Additional file 2. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13063-017-1975-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

With the further development of higher education management system reform, most of the universities and colleges have been incorporated into local government management system or government and industry co-management system from their originally belonging to the industry. These systems made the local universities and colleges lost their industry features and there emerged many problems. The paper re-examines the problems, introduces the necessity and advantages of transition development of the local universities and colleges by relying on industry, and proposes thinking on the transition from government level, industry level and school level.

Circumference radial preload due to the interference fit is of a great significant influence on rolling frictional power loss of bearing and service life of machinery. In this article, an analytical method where circumference radial preload is first involved is presented for determining the value of rolling friction power loss of ball bearing (SKF-6205). The experiments under different operating conditions for the bearing were carried out which verify the validity of our proposal. The work described in this article can be regarded as a foundation for the accuracy thermal modeling and friction power loss analysis of the deep-groove ball bearings in machinery.

Essentials M1/M2 imbalance is involved in many autoimmune diseases, and could be restored. The expressions and functions of M1 and M2 were investigated in an in vitro culture system. A preferred M1 polarization is involved in the pathogenesis of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). High-dose dexamethasone or all-trans-retinoic acid restores M1/M2 balance in ITP patients. SummaryBackground Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disorder. Deficiency of immune tolerance in antigen-presenting cells and cross-communication between antigen-presenting cells and T cells are involved in the pathogenesis of ITP. Macrophages can polarize into proinflammatory M1 or anti-inflammatory M2 phenotypes in response to different environmental stimuli, and have diverse immunologic functions. Objectives To investigate the M1/M2 imbalance in ITP and whether high-dose dexamethasone (HD-DXM) or all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) could restore this imbalance. Methods The numbers of M1 and M2 macrophages in the spleens of ITP patients and patients with traumatic spleen rupture were analyzed by immunofluorescence. Monocyte-derived macrophages were cultured and induced with cytokines and drugs. The expression of M1 and M2 markers and functions of M1 and M2 macrophages before and after modulation by HD-DXM or ATRA were evaluated with flow cytometry and ELISA. Results There was preferred M1 polarization in ITP spleens as compared with healthy controls. Monocyte-derived macrophages from ITP patients had increased expression of M1 markers and impaired immunosuppressive functions. Either HD-DXM or ATRA corrected this imbalance by decreasing the expression of M1 markers and increasing the expression of M2 markers. Moreover, HD-DXM-modulated or ATRA-modulated macrophages suppressed both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell proliferation and expanded CD4+CD49+LAG3+ type 1 T-regulatory cells. HD-DXM or ATRA modulated macrophages to shift the T-cell cytokine profile towards Th2. Treating patients with HD-DXM or ATRA revealed that macrophages induced from responders showed a predominant M2-like phenotype and immunosuppressive function. Conclusions Aberrant macrophage polarization is involved in the pathogenesis of ITP. Either HD-DXM or ATRA is able to correct this imbalance.

Neural models with minimal feature engineering have achieved competitive performance against traditional methods for the task of Chinese word segmentation. However, both training and working procedures of the current neural models are computationally inefficient. This paper presents a greedy neural word segmenter with balanced word and character embedding inputs to alleviate the existing drawbacks. Our segmenter is truly end-to-end, capable of performing segmentation much faster and even more accurate than state-of-the-art neural models on Chinese benchmark datasets., Comment: To appear in ACL2017

For measurement and communication interrupt between earth station and reentry vehicle in blackout area, we analyze electromagnetic environment characteristic of plasma sheath. Methods of changing electrical characteristic of plasma medium or changing measurement and communication equipments are researched based on the analysis. Also technology of trajectory reconstruction is presented by using limited measurement data of target. The paper introduces technology status of measurement and communication for blackout area reentry vehicle. Also we analyze properties of common methods and propose key questions to research. It provides reference for related researchers.

This paper builds a model of QT4 for WinCE 5.0 development platform based on Visual Studio 2008 environment. It offers the campus tour navigation interface which is designed by using Qt Creator tools and code, and implements the transplantation of application in GEC S5PV210 development board which is applied to the actual project successfully.

Sink mobility has been viewed as an important technique to improve network performance for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) such as energy consumption and balancing, network lifetime, throughput, end-to-end delay etc. Also, it can largely mitigate the hot spots near sink node as sink node moves randomly or autonomously. In many applications of WSNs, sensors are deployed in areas accessed by laid roads and sinks can be assembled on mobile devices like bus or handcart. In this paper, we propose a Global Best Path (GBP) data gathering algorithm based on wireless Sensor Networks with single Mobile Sink (GBP-MSSN). It aims at determining the best position for the single mobile sink and further using global sensors information to generate the best scheme to gather data from specified node. Generating of best scheme is conducted by GBP algorithm which can balance energy consumption among whole sensor networks and further prolong the network lifetime. Simulation results show that our GBP-MSSN algorithm outperforms conventional algorithms like LEACH, GAF, etc.

INTRODUCTION Recently, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) indicated that rs7216389 polymorphism on chromosome 17q21 was associated with paediatric asthma risk. However, the results remained controversial. Therefore, a meta-analysis was performed. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION A comprehensive literature retrieve was performed on PubMed, Embase and Science Direct databases up to Feb 20, 2016. The strength of association between 17q21 locus rs7216389 polymorphism and pediatric asthma risk was assessed by computing odds ratio (OR) with its corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS A total of 10 studies with 7797 cases and 38757 controls were included. A statistically significant association of rs7216389 polymorphism and pediatric asthma risk was found (OR=1.41, 95%CI=1.34-1.49, P

// Yuan-xin Sun 1 , Hui Li 2 , Qi Feng 1 , Xin Li 1 , Ying-yi Yu 1 , Li-wei Zhou 1 , Yan Gao 1 , Guo-sheng Li 3 , Juan Ren 4 , Chun-hong Ma 5 , Cheng-jiang Gao 5 , Jun Peng 1, 6 1 Department of Hematology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China 2 Department of Rheumatology, People’s Hospital of Bao’an, Shenzhen, China 3 Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Immunohematology, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China 4 Department of Hematology, First Affiliated Hospital, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China 5 Department of Immunology, Shandong University School of Medicine, Jinan, China 6 Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Remodeling and Function Research, Chinese Ministry of Education and Chinese Ministry of Health, Jinan, China Correspondence to: Jun Peng, email: junpeng88@sina.com.cn Keywords: aplastic anemia, miR34a, diacylglycerol kinase ζ, T cells Received: November 18, 2016 Accepted: December 13, 2016 Published: December 20, 2016 ABSTRACT Acquired aplastic anemia is an idiopathic paradigm of human bone marrow failure syndrome, which involves active destruction of hematopoietic stem cells and progenitors by cytotoxic T cells in the bone marrow. Aberrant expression of microRNAs in T cells has been shown to lead to development of certain autoimmune diseases. In the present study, we performed a microarray analysis of miRNA expression in bone marrow CD3 + T cells from patients with aplastic anemia and healthy controls. Overexpression of miR34a and underexpression of its target gene diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) ζ in bone marrow mononuclear cells were validated in 41 patients and associated with the severity of aplastic anemia. Further, the level of miR34a was higher in naive T cells from patients than from controls. The role of miR34a and DGKζ in aplastic anemia was investigated in a murine model of immune-mediated bone marrow failure using miR34a -/- mice. After T-cell receptor stimulation in vitro , lymph node T cells from miR34a -/- mice demonstrated reduced activation and proliferation accompanied with a less profound down-regulation of DGKζ expression and decreased ERK phosphorylation compared to those from wild-type C57BL6 control mice. Infusion of 5 × 10 6 miR34a -/- lymph node T cells into sublethally irradiated CB6F1 recipients led to increased Lin - Sca1 + CD117 + cells and less vigorous expansion of CD8 + T cells than injection of same number of wild-type lymph node cells. Our study demonstrates that the miR34a/DGKζ dysregulation enhances T-cell activation in aplastic anemia and targeting miR34a may represent a novel molecular therapeutic approach for patients with aplastic anemia.

In this paper, we propose a high-performance method to suppress global electromagnetic noise coupling in 3D through silicon via (TSV) system in package (SiP). This technique needs to form a periodic shielding structure in 3D SiP, which consists of contact arrays, grid ground planes and ground TSV array. Contact arrays and grid ground planes can suppress noise coupling in the shallow substrate and ground TSV array suppresses noise coupling in the deep substrate. This method is practical for noise suppression in 3D SiP with heterogeneous integration. Results show that it has a better performance when it is compared to the guard ring method even the working frequency reaches 50 GHz.