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Accurate and robust time delay estimation is crucial for synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imaging. A two‐step time delay estimation method based on displaced phase centre antenna (DPCA) micronavigation has been widely applied in motion estimation and compensation of SASs. However, the existing methods for time delay estimation are not sufficiently robust, which reduces the performance of SAS motion estimation. Deep learning is currently one of the cutting‐edge techniques and has brought about a remarkable progress in the field of underwater acoustic signal processing. In this study, a deep learning‐based time delay estimation method is introduced to SAS motion estimation and compensation. The subband processing is first applied to obtain ambiguous time delays between adjacent pings from phases of SAS echoes. Then, a lightweight neural network is utilised to construct phase unwrapping. The model of the employed neural network is trained with simulation data and applied to real SAS data. The results of time delay estimation and motion compensation demonstrate that the proposed neural network‐based method has much better performance than the two‐step and joint‐subband methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles the task of goal-conditioned dynamic manipulation of deformable objects. This task is highly challenging due to its complex dynamics (introduced by object deformation and high-speed action) and strict task requirements (defined by a precise goal specification). To address these challenges, we present Iterative Residual Policy (IRP), a general learning framework applicable to repeatable tasks with complex dynamics. IRP learns an implicit policy via delta dynamics—instead of modeling the entire dynamical system and inferring actions from that model, IRP learns delta dynamics that predict the effects of delta action on the previously observed trajectory. When combined with adaptive action sampling, the system can quickly optimize its actions online to reach a specified goal. We demonstrate the effectiveness of IRP on two tasks: whipping a rope to hit a target point and swinging a cloth to reach a target pose. Despite being trained only in simulation on a fixed robot setup, IRP is able to efficiently generalize to noisy real-world dynamics, new objects with unseen physical properties, and even different robot hardware embodiments, demonstrating its excellent generalization capability relative to alternative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore how e-textbooks with emotional design affect students' emotion, cognitive load and learning achievement. There were 147 freshman students in total: the experimental group I, II and control group consisted of 49, 47 and 51 students, using e-textbooks with emotional design, without emotional design and traditional paper textbooks. The results reveal the following: Students' emotion after using e-textbooks with emotional design is more positive than those using e-textbooks without emotional design and paper textbooks. Students' cognitive load after using e-textbooks with emotional design is significantly lower than those using etextbooks without emotional design. Students' learning achievement after using two types of e-textbooks is better than after using paper textbooks. Comparing all types of textbooks altogether, emotion has a significantly positive correlation with learning achievement, and both emotion and learnng achievement are significantly and negatively correlated with cognitive load. For the three types of textbooks, the relationship between emotion and learning achievement all becomes not significantly correlated. For two types of e-textbooks, cognitive load and learning achievement become not significantly correlated, disturbed by the digitalization of textbooks. Instructors are suggested to firstly adopt e-textbooks with emotional design, those without emotional design secondly, and paper textbooks rank last. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, magnetic gradient tensor-based localization methods face challenges such as significant errors in geomagnetic field estimation, susceptibility to local optima in optimization algorithms, and inefficient performance. In addressing these issues, this article propose a two-point localization method under the constraint of overlaying geometric invariants. This method initially establishes the relationship between the target position and the magnetic gradient tensor by substituting an intermediate variable for the magnetic moment. Exploiting the property of the eigenvector corresponding to the minimum absolute eigenvalue being perpendicular to the target position vector, this constraint is superimposed to formulate a nonlinear system of equations of the target's position. In the process of determining the target position, the Nara method is employed for obtaining the initial values, followed by the utilization of the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm to derive a precise solution. Experimental validation through both simulations and experiments confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results demonstrate its capability to overcome the challenges faced by a single-point localization method in the presence of some errors in geomagnetic field estimation. In comparison to traditional two-point localization methods, the proposed method exhibits the highest precision. The localization outcomes under different noise conditions underscore the robust noise resistance and resilience of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Recognizing the most relevant seven organs in an abdominal computed tomography (CT) slice requires sophisticated knowledge. This study proposed automatically extracting relevant features and applying them in a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system to provide similar evidence for clinical use. Approach. A total of 2827 abdominal CT slices, including 638 liver, 450 stomach, 229 pancreas, 442 spleen, 362 right kidney, 424 left kidney and 282 gallbladder tissues, were collected to evaluate the proposed CBIR in the present study. Upon fine-tuning, high-level features used to automatically interpret the differences among the seven organs were extracted via deep learning architectures, including DenseNet, Vision Transformer (ViT), and Swin Transformer v2 (SwinViT). Three images with different annotations were employed in the classification and query. Main results. The resulting performances included the classification accuracy (94%–99%) and retrieval result (0.98–0.99). Considering global features and multiple resolutions, SwinViT performed better than ViT. ViT also benefited from a better receptive field to outperform DenseNet. Additionally, the use of hole images can obtain almost perfect results regardless of which deep learning architectures are used. Significance. The experiment showed that using pretrained deep learning architectures and fine-tuning with enough data can achieve successful recognition of seven abdominal organs. The CBIR system can provide more convincing evidence for recognizing abdominal organs via similarity measurements, which could lead to additional possibilities in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to elucidate molecular profiling in HER2-low tumors based on a promising dataset. A total of 615 consecutive HER2-negative breast cancer samples were assayed. The genomic mutations in the two groups with different HER2 expression levels (HER2-0 vs. HER2-low) were compared. The mutation types obtained via next-generation targeted sequencing were correlated with the clinicopathological features of the patients with HER2-0 and HER2-low breast cancer. The results showed that there was a significantly higher percentage of receptor-positive (ER/PR) tumors and more low-level Ki-67 tumors, but a lower incidence of stage I/II tumors in the HER2-low group compared to the HER2-0 group. There was a significantly higher frequency of 17.62% (65/369) for PIK3CA_SNA in the HER2-low group than in the HER2-0 group, which had a frequency of only 9.35% (23/246) (p = 0.006). When the called gene alterations in the triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) group were compared with those in the luminal-like breast cancer group, there was a significantly high frequency of 28.17% (140/497) for ERBB2_SNA in a luminal-like group than in the TNBC group(16.95% (20/118)).We conclude that the early detection of PIK3CA mutations is likely to be important and might help therapeutic decision making in patients with HER2-low tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Materials: In this study, we provided a simple method to extract the silicate species from the waste silica‐containing molding compounds from the semiconducting industry. Methods: Recycled sodium silicate solution was obtained from alkaline extraction of the silica fillers in the waste molding compounds and dried and redissolved in appropriate amount of water. Results: Porous silica of high surface area (>500 m2g−1) and tunable pore size (1.5–5.0 nm) could be feasibly synthesized by using the recycled sodium silicate as silica source and nature‐friendly homopolymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) as an organic template. The pore size of the PEG‐templating silicas was made tunable by hydrothermal treatment at different pH. Conclusion: To reduce the emission of CO2 gas from the removal of the PEG template, porous silica with a large surface area has been prepared at a low PEG/sodium silicate weight ratio of 1/20. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reported exciton binding-energy determination using tunneling-current spectroscopy of Germanium (Ge) quantum dot (QD) single-hole transistors (SHTs) operating in the few-hole regime, under 405–1550 nm wavelength (λ) illumination. When the photon energy is smaller than the bandgap energy (1.46 eV) of a 20 nm Ge QD (for instance, λ = 1310 nm and 1550 nm illuminations), there is no change in the peak voltages of tunneling current spectroscopy even when the irradiation power density reaches as high as 10 µW/µm2. In contrast, a considerable shift in the first hole-tunneling current peak towards positive VG is induced (ΔVG ≈ 0.08 V at 0.33 nW/µm2 and 0.15 V at 1.4 nW/µm2) and even additional photocurrent peaks are created at higher positive VG values (ΔVG ≈ 0.2 V at 10 nW/µm2 irradiation) by illumination at λ = 850 nm (where the photon energy matches the bandgap energy of the 20 nm Ge QD). These experimental observations were further strengthened when Ge-QD SHTs were illuminated by λ = 405 nm lasers at much lower optical-power conditions. The newly-photogenerated current peaks are attributed to the contribution of exciton, biexciton, and positive trion complexes. Furthermore, the exciton binding energy can be determined by analyzing the tunneling current spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The VGH-TAYLOR study comprised a subgroup of early-stage breast cancer patients. Targeted sequencing was performed for both fresh-frozen paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumor tissue and plasma. Common genes interrogated by both platforms were identified, and the concordance between paired targeted sequencing results from the same individual is reported. Only one-quarter of breast cancers were concordant between tumor and liquid biopsy from the same subject. Early-stage breast cancer might shed less circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) from the tumor and compromise the detectability of liquid biopsy. In this study, we evaluated the concordance of targeted sequencing between paired ctDNA and matched tumor samples from early breast cancers treated with curative intention. Molecular profiling was performed using the Oncomine Comprehensive Assay v3 and the Oncomine Breast cfDNA Assay v2. The liquid biopsy detection rate was 39% (all-stage breast cancers, n = 612). Among 246 early-stage patients assayed for both ctDNA and matched tumor, the cfDNA assay detected 73 (29.6%) and the comprehensive assay detected 201 (81.7%) breast cancers with at least one alteration (χ2 test, p = 0.001). In total, 67 (25.6%) cases tested positive on both platforms, while the cfDNA and comprehensive assays detected an additional 10 (4%) and 138 (56%) cases, respectively. The most prevalent mutant genes were TP53 (68.3%) and KRAS (53.5%), while the PIK3CA (39.4%), AKT1 (45.9%), and ERBB2 (17.1%) mutations constituted biomarkers for FDA-approved therapeutics. Our study showed that tumor tissue should be the source of actionable mutation detection for early breast cancers, considering that the concordance rate between tumor and liquid biopsy was only one-quarter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combustion processes taking place in large-scale burners may need to consider the impact of the recently identified very-large-scale motions (VLSM) appearing in wall-bounded turbulent flows. While VLSM in non-reacting, cold flows have been found to be important and noticeably impact turbulence statistics, the possible influence of VLSM on turbulent premixed flames has not been considered up to now to the best of our knowledge. The present study investigates the interaction of a turbulent flame with VLSM in a channel flow using direct numerical simulations (DNS). Detailed chemical kinetics have been used to compute a H 2 flame. The turbulent channel flow corresponds to Re τ = 280, while the premixed flame is associated to a Damköhler number Da = 0.167. First, VLSM have been identified for the non-reacting flow by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). Interestingly, the propagation of the turbulent flame is found to have a negligible effect on the VLSM, highlighting their resilience. At the same time, the VLSM do not modulate strongly the flame structure, while it is noticeably affected by small-scale vortices. This decoupling might be explained by the very different length scales of both processes, the VLSM covering the full channel length, while the turbulent flame is characterized by small-scale structures. In the same manner, the characteristic time scales also differ widely, the flame time scale being much faster than the characteristic time of the VLSM. The flame curvature is positively correlated with the fluctuating streamwise velocity when the flame is still far from the wall. When approaching the wall, flame quenching takes place in a complex process. Overall, it appears for the present conditions that VLSM do not impact directly the turbulent flame propagation, but there is still an indirect impact through the modifications of the turbulence statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The splenic span, splenic volume (SV), and SV/standard SV ratio decrease shortly after pediatric liver transplantation (LT), but they may rebound 6 months after surgery. • In pediatric LT patients, the portal vein diameter increased over time. • In successful pediatric LT patients, the portal vein flow velocity showed an immediate surge, decreased within 3 days, and stayed stable after 6 to 9 months until a 10-year follow-up. It may be difficult for pediatric patients to evaluate the impact of liver transplantation (LT) on splenomegaly due to the natural growth course. The long-term dynamics of portal vein (PV) size and PV flow after LT in pediatric patients are unclear. We aimed to evaluate the long-term transition of the splenic size, PV size, and PV flow velocity in pediatric patients who underwent successful living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) and survived >10 years. From October 2004 to December 2010, 39 pediatric patients (25 boys; 14 girls) underwent LDLT, received pre-LDLT and post-LDLT computed tomography scans and long-term ultrasound sonography follow-up, and survived >10 years without additional intervention at our institution. We analyzed the short- to mid-term and long-term impact of LDLT on splenic size, PV size, and PV flow velocity over time. The PV diameter increased throughout the 10-year follow-up (P <.001). The PV flow velocity increased 1 day after LDLT (P <.001); proceeded to decrease 3 days after LDLT, reaching a low point 6 to 9 months after LDLT; and remained stable throughout the 10-year follow-up. Regression of the splenic volume at 6 to 9 months after LDLT (P <.001) was noted. However, the splenic size steadily increased on long-term follow-up. Although LDLT has a significant short-term reduction effect on splenomegaly, the long-term transitional trend of the splenic size and PV diameter may increase along with children's growth. The PV flow reached a stable status 6 to 9 months after LDLT and remained so until 10 years after LDLT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reported exciton binding-energy determination using tunneling-current spectroscopy of Germanium (Ge) quantum dot (QD) single-hole transistors (SHTs) operating in the few-hole regime, under 405–1550 nm wavelength (λ) illumination. When the photon energy is smaller than the bandgap energy (1.46 eV) of a 20 nm Ge QD (for instance, λ = 1310 nm and 1550 nm illuminations), there is no change in the peak voltages of tunneling current spectroscopy even when the irradiation power density reaches as high as 10 µW/µm2. In contrast, a considerable shift in the first hole-tunneling current peak towards positive VG is induced (ΔVG ≈ 0.08 V at 0.33 nW/µm2 and 0.15 V at 1.4 nW/µm2) and even additional photocurrent peaks are created at higher positive VG values (ΔVG ≈ 0.2 V at 10 nW/µm2 irradiation) by illumination at λ = 850 nm (where the photon energy matches the bandgap energy of the 20 nm Ge QD). These experimental observations were further strengthened when Ge-QD SHTs were illuminated by λ = 405 nm lasers at much lower optical-power conditions. The newly-photogenerated current peaks are attributed to the contribution of exciton, biexciton, and positive trion complexes. Furthermore, the exciton binding energy can be determined by analyzing the tunneling current spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological stress is widely acknowledged as a major contributor to immunosuppression, rendering individuals more susceptible to various diseases. The complex interplay between the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems underlies stress-induced immunosuppression. However, the underlying mechanisms of psychological-stress-induced immunosuppression remain unclear. In this study, we utilized a restraint stress mouse model known for its suitability in investigating physiological regulations during psychological stress. Comparing it with cold exposure, we observed markedly elevated levels of stress hormones corticosterone and cortisol in the plasma of mice subjected to restraint stress. Furthermore, restraint-stress-induced immunosuppression differed from the intravenous immunoglobulin-like immunosuppression observed in cold exposure, with restraint stress leading to increased macrophage cell death in the spleen. Suppression of pyroptosis through treatments of inflammasome inhibitors markedly ameliorated restraint-stress-induced spleen infiltration and pyroptosis cell death of macrophages in mice. These findings suggest that the macrophage pyroptosis associated with restraint stress may contribute to its immunosuppressive effects. These insights have implications for the development of treatments targeting stress-induced immunosuppression, emphasizing the need for further investigation into the underlying mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to compare the costs of caring for patients admitted with a coronavirus disease (COVID)–related illness with non-COVID patients at one academic center in North Carolina. The authors hypothesized that the daily average cost of hospitalization would be higher among COVID patients compared with non-COVID patients. Objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a significant financial burden on the US healthcare system. The purpose of this study was to compare the costs of caring for patients admitted with COVID-related illness versus non-COVID patients. We hypothesized that the average daily costs of hospitalization would be higher among COVID patients compared with non-COVID patients. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study. Data were downloaded for patients who were admitted at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Hospital from January 1, 2020 through February 28, 2021. The study population was dichotomized by COVID and non-COVID patients, and the average daily hospital cost was calculated. Multivariate adjusted linear regression models were used to calculate additional "average daily cost" comparisons. Results: The COVID group was slightly older (mean age 61.0 vs 58.0 years), with longer mean length of stay (6.12 vs 4.95 days) and higher mean average daily direct cost ($1504.01 vs $1341.30) when compared with the non-COVID group, respectively (P < 0.001). After adjusting for various patient characteristics, the direct inpatient cost was $123.00 (95% confidence interval 74.4–171.5) higher per day in patients with COVID-19 (P < 0.0001). When indirect costs are considered, the combined indirect and direct cost may be four times greater. Conclusions: The average daily direct hospital cost is higher among patients with COVID compared with non-COVID-related illness. Many reasons contributed to this cost difference, including decreased nurse staffing ratios, lower physician censuses, and needed infrastructure changes. Studies with a larger sample size and more precise comparable study groups are warranted to validate our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce environmental pollution by plastic wastes, supercritical water gasification (SCWG) appears as a promising technology. The present study investigates the SCWG process of polypropylene (PP) plastic waste using particle-resolved direct numerical simulations (PR-DNS). A directional ghost-cell immersed boundary method has been used to solve the reacting boundary condition, including detailed molecular diffusion models. To validate the procedure, SCWG of a coal particle has been first investigated as a benchmark, analyzing in detail interphase momentum and heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions are analyzed. Surface reactions and the resulting Stefan flow expand the boundary layer around the particle, impacting the efficiency of heat and mass transfer. Adding then a suitable reaction mechanism, SCWG of PP plastic wastes leading to combustible gases is analyzed by PR-DNS and found to be very efficient. The gasification temperature is an important parameter to control SCWG efficiency. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first PR-DNS study investigating the SCWG process for plastic wastes, and it provides interesting information regarding transfer processes and their limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging ionic thermoelectric (i-TE) materials are promising for waste heat recovery and temperature sensors due to their huge ionic Seebeck coefficients. However, rare work concentrates on studying the intrinsic thermal conductivity of i-TE materials and the interfacial thermal conductance with electrodes, which could significantly affect the performance of i-TE-based devices. In this work, the thermal transport properties of polymer-based i-TE films at various temperatures were investigated by the time-domain thermoreflectance method. Interestingly, the thermal conductivity of the polymer i-TE films was found to decrease with increasing temperature, showing a similar temperature-dependent trend with crystalline materials. Moreover, the interfacial thermal conductance between i-TE films and the metal electrode is ~ 50 MW·m−2·K−1, which is related to the rotation speed during the spin-coating process. The above finding is important to optimize the performance of the i-TE devices in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sardine fish patty is a processed seafood product that easily spoiled because of oxidation. Oregano, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, and green tea contain antioxidant properties that could preserve the fish patty. This study aimed to incorporate these ingredients into sardine fish patties and investigate their effects on the physicochemical properties, sensory evaluation, and lipid oxidation of the patties. The fresh sardine patties were treated with 0.5% of oregano (PWO), cloves (PWC), cinnamon (PWCI), turmeric (PWT) or green tea (PWGT) before being cooked, cooled and chill-stored for 12 days. No significant effects of the treatments were observed on moisture content, cooking yield, and shrinkage of the patties. The incorporation of turmeric significantly (P<0.05) affected all colour parameters on the patties (PWT). Although PWGT showed slightly increased values in some texture profiling parameters, the PWGT also showed positive acceptability regarding sensory evaluation for most of the eating quality parameters. A significant (P<0.05) reduction in TBARS values in the patties incorporated with green tea (PWGT), while increased scavenging activity values of the PWGT and cloves (PWC) were observed. Thus, the study implied that green tea demonstrated a good effect on sardine fish patty, as compared to spices, which could be a potential natural preservative to preserve the fish product during storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still extremely challenging to endow epoxy resins (EPs) with excellent flame retardancy and high toughness. In this work, we propose a facile strategy of combining rigid–flexible groups, promoting groups and polar phosphorus groups with the vanillin compound, which implements a dual functional modification for EPs. With only 0.22% phosphorus loading, the modified EPs obtain a limiting oxygen index (LOI) value of 31.5% and reach V-0 grade in UL-94 vertical burning tests. Particularly, the introduction of P/N/Si-containing vanillin-based flame retardant (DPBSi) improves the mechanical properties of EPs, including toughness and strength. Compared with EPs, the storage modulus and impact strength of EP composites can increase by 61.1% and 240%, respectively. Therefore, this work introduces a novel molecular design strategy for constructing an epoxy system with high-efficiency fire safety and excellent mechanical properties, giving it immense potential for broadening the application fields of EPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amorphous-Ge (α-Ge) or free-standing nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized via hydrogen-free plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) were applied as transmissive or reflective saturable absorbers, respectively, for starting up passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFLs). Under a threshold pumping power of 41 mW for mode-locking the EDFL, the transmissive α-Ge film could serve as a saturable absorber with a modulation depth of 52–58%, self-starting EDFL pulsation with a pulsewidth of approximately 700 fs. Under a high power of 155 mW, the pulsewidth of the EDFL mode-locked by the 15 s-grown α-Ge was suppressed to 290 fs, with a corresponding spectral linewidth of 8.95 nm due to the soliton compression induced by intra-cavity self-phase modulation. The Ge-NP-on-Au (Ge-NP/Au) films could also serve as a reflective-type saturable absorber to passively mode-lock the EDFL with a broadened pulsewidth of 3.7–3.9 ps under a high-gain operation with 250 mW pumping power. The reflection-type Ge-NP/Au film was an imperfect mode-locker, owing to their strong surface-scattered deflection in the near-infrared wavelength region. From the abovementioned results, both ultra-thin α-Ge film and free-standing Ge NP exhibit potential as transmissive and reflective saturable absorbers, respectively, for ultrafast fiber lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a promising nanofiller, layered double hydroxides (LDHs) can advance the fire safety of epoxy resin (EP), but so far, due to the problems of dispersion and low efficiency, it has still been a challenge to incorporate the flame retardancy and mechanical properties of EP nanocomposites effectively under the circumstance of a low additive amount. In this work, we take LDHs as the template, via the adsorption of a catechol group and the condensation polymerization between catechol groups and phenylboric acid groups, to prepare a core–shell structured nanoparticle LDH@BP, which contains rich flame-retardant elements. EP/LDH@BP nanocomposites were prepared by introducing LDH@BP into EP. The experimental results indicate that, compared with the original LDH, LDH@BP disperses uniformly in the EP matrix, and the flame retardancy and mechanical properties of EP/LDH@BP are significantly improved. At a relatively low content (5 wt%), EP/LDH@BP reached the rating of V-0 in the UL-94 test, LOI was increased to 29.1%, and peak heat release rate (PHRR) was reduced by 35.9% in cone calorimeter tests, which effectively inhibited the release of heat and toxic smoke during the combustion process of EP. Simultaneously, the mechanical properties of EP/LDH@BP have been improved satisfactorily. The above results derive from the reasonable architectural design of organic–inorganic nano-hybrid flame retardants and provide a novel method for the construction of efficient and balanced EP nanocomposite system with LDHs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to develop an AI-based system for the detection and classification of polyps using colonoscopy images. A total of about 256,220 colonoscopy images from 5000 colorectal cancer patients were collected and processed. We used the CNN model for polyp detection and the EfficientNet-b0 model for polyp classification. Data were partitioned into training, validation and testing sets, with a 70%, 15% and 15% ratio, respectively. After the model was trained/validated/tested, to evaluate its performance rigorously, we conducted a further external validation using both prospective (n = 150) and retrospective (n = 385) approaches for data collection from 3 hospitals. The deep learning model performance with the testing set reached a state-of-the-art sensitivity and specificity of 0.9709 (95% CI: 0.9646–0.9757) and 0.9701 (95% CI: 0.9663–0.9749), respectively, for polyp detection. The polyp classification model attained an AUC of 0.9989 (95% CI: 0.9954–1.00). The external validation from 3 hospital results achieved 0.9516 (95% CI: 0.9295–0.9670) with the lesion-based sensitivity and a frame-based specificity of 0.9720 (95% CI: 0.9713–0.9726) for polyp detection. The model achieved an AUC of 0.9521 (95% CI: 0.9308–0.9734) for polyp classification. The high-performance, deep-learning-based system could be used in clinical practice to facilitate rapid, efficient and reliable decisions by physicians and endoscopists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a novel coupled meshless model for simulating acoustic wave propagation in heterogeneous media, based on the singular boundary method (SBM) and Kansa's method (KS). In the proposed approach, the SBM was used to model the homogeneous part of the propagation domain, while KS was employed to model a heterogeneity. The interface compatibility conditions associated with velocities and pressures were imposed to couple the two methods. The proposed SBM–KS coupled approach combines the respective advantages of the SBM and KS. The SBM is especially suitable for solving external sound field problems, while KS is attractive for nonlinear problems in bounded non-homogeneous media. Moreover, the new methodology completely avoids grid generation and numerical integration compared with the finite element method and boundary element method. Numerical experiments verified the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In highly connected financial networks, the failure of a single institution can cascade into additional bank failures. This systemic risk can be mitigated by adjusting the loans, holding shares, and other liabilities connecting institutions in a way that prevents cascading of failures. We are approaching the systemic risk problem by attempting to optimize the connections between the institutions. In order to provide a more realistic simulation environment, we have incorporated nonlinear/discontinuous losses in the value of the banks. To address scalability challenges, we have developed a two-stage algorithm where the networks are partitioned into modules of highly interconnected banks and then the modules are individually optimized. We developed a new algorithms for classical and quantum partitioning for directed and weighed graphs (first stage) and a new methodology for solving Mixed Integer Linear Programming problems with constraints for the systemic risk context (second stage). We compare classical and quantum algorithms for the partitioning problem. Experimental results demonstrate that our two-stage optimization with quantum partitioning is more resilient to financial shocks, delays the cascade failure phase transition, and reduces the total number of failures at convergence under systemic risks with reduced time complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

iBeacon systems have been increasingly established in public areas to assist users in terms of indoor location navigation and positioning. People receive the services through the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) installed on their mobile phones. However, the positioning and navigation functions of an iBeacon system may be compromised when faced with cyberattacks issued by hackers. In other words, its security needs to be further considered and enhanced. This study took the iBeacon system of Taipei Main Station, the major transportation hub with daily traffic of at least three hundred thousand passengers, as an example for exploring its potential attacks and further studying the defense technologies, with the assistance of AI techniques and human participation. Our experiments demonstrate that in the early stage of iBeacon system information security planning, information security technology and a rolling coding encryption should be included, representing the best defense methods at present. In addition, we believe that the adoption of rolling coding is the most cost-effective defense. However, if the security of critical infrastructure is involved, the most secure defense method should be adopted, namely a predictable and encrypted rolling coding method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional treatment for treating primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) has consisted of either whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) or methotrexate (MTX)-based combined modality therapy. However, delayed cognitive sequelae have emerged as a significant debilitating complication in PCNSL patients. A prospective observational case-series study with prospective assessments of neurocognitive functions (NCFs), neuroimaging, and activities of daily living in newly-diagnosed PCNSL patients was undertaken. A battery of neuropsychological measures, used to evaluate NCFs, is composed of ten standardized NCF tests, representing four domains sensitive to disease and treatment effects (executive function, attention, verbal memory, psychomotor speed), and activities of daily living. A total of 15 patients with newly-diagnosed PCNSL were consecutively enrolled in this study. Comparing the NCF scores between the baseline (before WBRT) and post-treatment (after combined chemoradiation therapy) intervals (Mean = 122.33 days, SD = 34.49, range = 77-196), neurobehavioral outcomes consistently remained improving or stable in almost each domain of NCF. Specifically, the scores on Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test-Revised (PASAT-R) were significantly improved between the baseline and post-chemoradiation assessment. Under the multidisciplinary treatment guidelines for treating patients with newly-diagnosed PCNSL, multi-domain NCF become stabilized and even improved after the course of conformal WBRT combined with or without MTX-based chemotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infiltrative non-GBM gliomas are common primary intracranial malignancies, and postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy is recommended for most adult patients diagnosed with this disease to enhance local control and prolong intracranial progression-free survival (PFS). However, RT-related neurocognitive function (NCF) consequences should not be ignored. Early neurocognitive decline principally includes episodic memory, associated significantly with functions of the hippocampus. This prospective study aims to investigate the impact of adjuvant brain irradiation on neurocognitive performances and relevant oncological outcomes.Twenty-five patients with intracranial infiltrative non-GBM gliomas were enrolled when postoperative adjuvant RT was recommended. All recruited patients should receive baseline brain magnetic resonance imaging, and neuropsychological assessments before and 4 months after the RT course. A battery of neuropsychological measures, mainly including executive functions, memory, psychomotor speed and visuoconstructive ability, was used to evaluate NCFs of interest.Analyzing the delta values between post-irradiation and baseline NCF scores, we observed a robust trend reflecting cognitive stabilization rather than deterioration in almost all NCF. Both verbal and visual memory functions exhibited significant differences in the corresponding scaled scores (Z = -2.722, p = .006, regarding verbal memory; Z = -2.246, p = .025, concerning non-verbal memory). Moreover, patients' neuropsychological performances associated with psychomotor speed and executive functions also disclosed a tendency toward stabilization/improvement.This prospective study demonstrated that patients with infiltrative non-GBM exhibited a marked tendency toward neurocognitive stabilization after receiving postoperative adjuvant RT. Clinical trial registration: Trial Registration with ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03534050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetic gradient tensor system configured by fluxgate magnetometers is subjected to different scale factors, three-axis nonorthogonality, bias, and misalignment errors. All those errors above will influence the measurement precision directly, so the magnetic gradient tensor system must be calibrated before use. In this paper, an error calibration method of the magnetic gradient tensor system is proposed. The procedure of the proposed method is as follows. Firstly, the error calibration model of the single fluxgate magnetometer is established and generated an ellipsoid mathematical expression. To simplify the calculation, the ellipsoid mathematical expression is transformed into a linear model of intermediate variables, and then, error parameters are estimated by the total least-squares method. Secondly, the orthogonal procrustes problem is adopted to calibrate misalignment errors. Finally, simulations and experiments with a cross magnetic gradient tensor system are carried out for verification of the proposed error calibration method. Results show that compared with the original least-squares method, the proposed method can increase the measurement accuracy of the cross magnetic gradient tensor system greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to develop a statistical method to generate high-resolution historical and future climate datasets for modeling plant distributions in mountainous area. Two climate datasets that were from Taiwan Climate Change Projection Information and Adaptation Knowledge Platform (TCCIP) and meteorological stations were used to construct two historical climate datasets with 50 x 50 m² spatial resolution, respectively. The two historical climate datasets presented similar temperature pattern but distinct precipitation patterns in northern Taiwan (NTWN). Random Forests (RF) had predicted similar distribution range of natural grassland along mountain ridge when RF were applied by the two climate datasets, whereas RF had predicted restricted distribution range when it was applied by true absence data. The two historical climate datasets were added to the relative changes of climate variables representing four future climate scenarios. RF method based on the future climate datasets predicted habitat loss of natural grassland at the mid and end of this century, regardless of climate datasets and four warming scenarios. Due to the altitudinal limits of NTWN, there is almost no chance for natural grassland to track their climatic requirements toward higher elevations under climate change. High-resolution historical and future climate datasets generated by the statistical method were useful for species distribution model to project species potential distribution range in mountainous area and were available to examine species range shifts under climate change. Model performances based on the high-resolution climate dataset may have better expressed the climatic requirements and exact climatic niches of species in mountainous areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Multi-gene expression assays have been advocated for treatment decision in breast cancer management. The most commonly used assays such as Oncotype DX, MammaPrint, which were developed from the Western population, were especially designed for the prognostication of early stage luminal-type breast cancer. The tabulation of multi-gene expression assay and clinical risk has become the research interest recently. The 23-gene signature was purposed for the Asian population and was validated for the discriminative ability regarding 5-year relapse-free survival and the objective of this study was to evaluate the performance across distinct clinical risk groups. Background: A 23-gene classifier has been developed based on gene expression profiles of Taiwanese luminal-like breast cancer. We aim to stratify risk of relapse and identify patients who may benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy based on genetic model among distinct clinical risk groups. Methods: There were 248 luminal (hormone receptor-positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor II-negative) breast cancer patients with 23-gene classifier results. Using the modified Adjuvant! Online definition, clinical high/low-risk groups were tabulated with the genetic model. The primary endpoint was a recurrence-free interval (RFI) at 5 years. Results: There was a significant difference between the high/low-risk groups defined by the 23-gene classifier for the 5-year prognosis of recurrence (16 recurrences in high-risk and 3 recurrences in low-risk; log-rank test: p < 0.0001). Among the clinically high-risk group, the 5-year RFI of high risk defined by the 23-gene classifier was significantly higher than that of the low-risk group (15 recurrences in high-risk and 2 recurrences in low-risk; log-rank test: p < 0.0001). Conclusion: This study showed that 23-gene classifier can be used to stratify clinically high-risk patients into distinct survival patterns based on genomic risks and displays the potentiality to guide adjuvant chemotherapy. The 23-gene classifier can provide a better estimation of breast cancer prognosis which can help physicians make a better treatment decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequency stability is an important factor for the safety and stability of the power system operation. In a traditional power system, the operation stability is ensured by the inertia response, primary frequency modulation, and secondary frequency modulation. In recent years, in order to achieve the goal of carbon neutralization and carbon peaking, China has made great efforts in new energy development. With large-scale new energy connected to the power grid, the proportion of traditional conventional synchronous units has gradually declined. At the same time, a large number of power electronic devices have been used in the power grid, which led to the capability decline of the inertia response and primary frequency modulation. For example, the East China Power Grid has experienced a sharp frequency drop in such an environment. In order to solve the above problems, the operation principle and control mode of various new energy resources are analyzed in this paper. Moreover, the process and principle of power grid frequency response are studied and the evaluation index of frequency response capability is proposed. The research results can quantitatively evaluate the system inertia response and primary frequency modulation level and provides a judgment tool for dispatching operators and system planners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients with unconsciousness and normal initial head computed tomography (CT) present a clinical dilemma for physicians and neurosurgeons in the emergency department (ED). We recorded how long it took for patients to regain consciousness and evaluated the patients' characteristics. Methods: From 2018 to 2020, TBI patients with unconsciousness and normal initial head CT [Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score < 13, negative CT scan and normal laboratory test results] were evaluated. Patients who regained consciousness were analyzed. Multivariate logistic regression (MLR) analyses were used to evaluate independent factors for regaining consciousness. Results: A total of 77 patients were included in this study. Fifty-eight (75.3%) patients regained consciousness, most within one day (43.1%). Nineteen (24.7%) patients never regained consciousness. MLR analysis showed that initial GCS score (odds 1.85, p = 0.017), early airway protection in ED (odds 25.02, p = 0.018) and 72-h GCS score improvement by two points (odds 0.02, p = 0.001) were independent factors for regaining consciousness. Overall, 94.1% of patients who received early airway protection and improved 2 points in 72-h GCS score regained consciousness. The association between days to M5 status and days to M6 status (consciousness) was highly significant. Fewer days to M5 status were highly associated with needing fewer days to regain consciousness. Conclusions: For TBI patients with unconsciousness and normal initial head CT, a higher probability of regaining consciousness was observed in those who underwent early airway protection and who improved 2 points in 72-h GCS score. Regaining consciousness within a short period could be expected in patients with M5 status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsupervised optical flow and stereo depth estimation are two fundamental tasks in computer vision. Current studies (Tosi et al., in: Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pp 4654–4665, 2020; Ranjan et al., in: Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pp 12240–12249, 2019; Wang et al., in: Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pp 8071–8081, 2019; Yin and Shi, in: Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pp. 1983–1992, 2018) demonstrate that jointly learning networks for optical flow and stereo depth estimation via the geometric constraints can mutually benefit the two tasks and in turn yield large accuracy improvements. However, most of these methods generate geometric constraints based on estimated camera pose, which are not applicable to scenarios with moving objects that have different motions from the camera. In addition, errors of estimated camera pose would yield inaccurate constraints for the two tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel and universal geometric loss function, named Subspace-PnP, which is based on the Perspective-n-Points (PnP) and union-of-subspaces theory (Ji et al., in: IEEE Winter conference on applications of computer vision, pp 461–468, 2014) to jointly estimate the optical flow and stereo depth. The construction of Subspace-PnP dose not rely on the camera pose, but implicitly contains information of camera pose and motions of all moving objects. Our experiments show that the Subspace-PnP loss can mutually guide the estimation of optical flow and depth, enabling better robustness and greater accuracy even in dynamic scenes. In addition, we propose a motion-occlusion simulation method to handle occlusions caused by moving objects in optical flow estimation, which in turn can yield further performance improvement. Our method achieves the state-of-the-art performance for joint optical flow and stereo depth estimation on the KITTI 2012 and KITTI 2015 benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb) positivity can contribute to inhibit thyroxine synthesis. Gut microbiota can interact with metabolic or immune diseases. However, dynamics of gut microbiota from the second (T2) to the third trimester (T3) in women with TPOAb-positive/negative subclinical hypothyroidism (TPOAb+/TPOAb- SCH) have not been reported. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether gut microbiota can be potential therapeutic targets for managing TPOAb+ SCH.Methods: In this single-center prospective cohort study, we observed gut microbiota dynamics by sequencing 16S rRNA from fecal samples collected in T2 (20-23+ 6 weeks) and T3 (28-33+ 6 weeks). TPOAb+/TPOAb- SCH were stratified depending on whether or not they used levothyroxine (LT4) during the pregnancy (LT4+/LT4-). Microbiome bioinformatics analyses were performed using QIIME2. The linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was used for the quantitative analysis of biomarkers. Functional profiling was performed with PICRUSt2.Results: Distinct gut microbiota dynamics from T2 to T3 were noted in the TPOAb- (n = 68) and TPOAb+ (n = 64) SCH groups. The TPOAb+ LT4- group was characterized by enriched bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) of Prevotella in T2 and Bacteria, Lachnospirales, Lachnospiraceae, Blautia, and Agathobacter in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Gammaproteobacteria, Enterobacterales, and Enterobacteriaceae in T2 and Actinobacteriota, Coriobacteriia, Actinobacteria, Coriobacteriales, Bifidobacteriales, Bifidobacteriaceae, Bifidobacterium, Dorea formicigenerans, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3. The TPOAb+ LT4+ group was characterized by enriched bacterial ASVs of Blautia, Streptococcus salivarius, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Bacteroidota, Bacteroidia, Bacteroidales, and Prevotella in T2 and Agathobacter in T3. Moreover, we identified 53 kinds of metabolic functions that were mainly involved in sugar, lipid, and amino acid metabolism.Conclusions: Our results indicated that low dynamics of gut microbiota composition and high dynamics of its metabolic function from T2 to T3 were associated with TPOAb+ SCH. We concluded that gut microbiota could be new targets for treatment of TPOAb+ SCH during pregnancy.Trial Registration: This study was retrospectively registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration number ChiCTR2100047175 ) on June 10, 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one of the most common compounds on Earth, and it is used in natural forms or engineered bulks or nanoparticles (NPs) with increasing rates. However, the effect of TiO2 NPs on plants remains controversial. Previous studies demonstrated that TiO2 NPs are toxic to plants, because the photocatalytic property of TiO2 produces biohazardous reactive oxygen species. In contrast, another line of evidence suggested that TiO2 NPs are beneficial to plant growth. To verify this argument, in this study, we used seed germination of amaranth and cruciferous vegetables as a model system. Intriguingly, our data suggested that the controversy was due to the dosage effect. The photocatalytic activity of TiO2 NPs positively affected seed germination and growth through gibberellins in a plant-tolerable range (0.1 and 0.2 mg/cm2), whereas overdosing (1 mg/cm2) induced tissue damage. Given that plants are the foundations of the ecosystem; these findings are useful for agricultural application, sustainable development and maintenance of healthy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore psychomotor performance and perception on task-centered hands-on STEM learning of educational robotics. The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed method to gather both quantitative and qualitative data in the same period of time. Participants were 42 tenth-grade students (25 male students and 17 female students) from one class at some senior high school. They were divided into 21 teams with 2 members in each team. The results showed that one-sample t-tests in each dimension of psychomotor performance all reached a significant level. Programming showed highest psychomotor performance, and sailboat design and mechanical assembly followed sequentially. One-sample t-tests for each dimension on perception all reached the significant level. Teacher teaching reached the highest perception, and learning material, learning difficulty, administrative service, learning activity, and course schedule followed sequentially. This study confirms that task-centered hands-on STEM learning approach is effective to students' educational robotics learning. Finally, the study proposes the implication and recommendation for robotics education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The insulation evaluation in converter transformer is a nonlinear thermoelectric coupling problem whose numerical solution is time consuming. To decrease the computation cost, a discrete empirical interpolation method (DEIM) is usually utilized to approximate the nonlinear term with a reduced order model (ROM), but it suffers sometimes from the unstable convergence problem. In this article, a local DEIM based on QR factorization (LDEIM-Q) is proposed. It has a better error bound and can avoid the unexpected instabilities. The LDEIM-Q is combined with the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) to deal with the nonlinear thermoelectric coupling. A converter transformer model is taken as an example to validate our method in terms of accuracy and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflammatory pseudotumor (IPT) is a non-neoplastic condition of unknown etiology. IPT with lower cranial nerve (CN IX, X, XI, XII) neuropathies is extremely rare. In this study, we systematically reviewed all previously reported cases regarding the management of IPT with lower cranial nerve neuropathies. We searched the PubMed/MEDLINE database for reports related to IPT with lower cranial nerve neuropathies. A total of six papers with 10 cases met the inclusion criteria (mean age 51.6 years, 70% male). The mean follow-up period was 15.4 months (range: 1–60 months). The most frequent treatment was corticosteroids alone (60%), followed by surgery alone (20%), and multimodal treatment (20%). Corticosteroid therapy was associated with an excellent (100%) response rate at 6 months of follow-up, and half of the patients were in complete remission after 9 months. Both cases who received surgery had persistent neurological deficits. Immediate complete remission of neurological symptoms and resolution on imaging after decompression surgery via an endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA) with corticosteroids was demonstrated in our representative case. This review suggests that EEA is a preferred method for diagnosis and treatment, a promising approach associated with favorable outcomes, and a viable first-line treatment for selected cases, followed by multimodal therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is generally considered a substitute for cranial cavernous malformations (CCMs). However, prognostic factors for post-radiosurgery CCM rebleeding and adverse radiation effects have not been well evaluated, and the effect of timing and optimal treatment remains controversial. Therefore, this study evaluated prognostic factors for post-radiosurgical rebleeding and focal edematous changes in 30 patients who developed symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage due to solitary non-brainstem CCM and received linear accelerator (LINAC) SRS in a single medical center from October 2002 to June 2018. An overall post-radiosurgical annual hemorrhage rate with 4.5% was determined in this study. In addition, a higher marginal dose of >1600 centigray and earlier LINAC SRS intervention were correlated with a significantly lower post-radiosurgical annual hemorrhage rate. A lesion size larger than 3 cm3 and a coexisting developmental venous anomaly were significant risk factors for post-radiosurgical focal brain edema but mostly resulted in no symptoms and were temporary. This study demonstrated the efficacy of LINAC SRS in preventing CCM rebleeding and suggests that earlier radiosurgery treatment with a higher dose for non-brainstem symptomatic CCMs be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb) positivity can contribute to inhibit thyroxine synthesis. Gut microbiota can interact with metabolic or immune diseases. However, dynamics of gut microbiota from the second (T2) to the third trimester (T3) in women with TPOAb-positive/negative subclinical hypothyroidism (TPOAb+/TPOAb− SCH) have not been reported. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether gut microbiota can be potential therapeutic targets for managing TPOAb+ SCH. Methods: In this single-center prospective cohort study, we observed gut microbiota dynamics by sequencing 16S rRNA from fecal samples collected in T2 (20–23+ 6 weeks) and T3 (28–33+ 6 weeks). TPOAb+/TPOAb− SCH were stratified depending on whether or not they used levothyroxine (LT4) during the pregnancy (LT4+/LT4−). Microbiome bioinformatics analyses were performed using QIIME2. The linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was used for the quantitative analysis of biomarkers. Functional profiling was performed with PICRUSt2. Results: Distinct gut microbiota dynamics from T2 to T3 were noted in the TPOAb− (n = 68) and TPOAb+ (n = 64) SCH groups. The TPOAb+ LT4− group was characterized by enriched bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) of Prevotella in T2 and Bacteria, Lachnospirales, Lachnospiraceae, Blautia, and Agathobacter in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Gammaproteobacteria, Enterobacterales, and Enterobacteriaceae in T2 and Actinobacteriota, Coriobacteriia, Actinobacteria, Coriobacteriales, Bifidobacteriales, Bifidobacteriaceae, Bifidobacterium, Dorea formicigenerans, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3. The TPOAb+ LT4+ group was characterized by enriched bacterial ASVs of Blautia, Streptococcus salivarius, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Bacteroidota, Bacteroidia, Bacteroidales, and Prevotella in T2 and Agathobacter in T3. Moreover, we identified 53 kinds of metabolic functions that were mainly involved in sugar, lipid, and amino acid metabolism. Conclusions: Our results indicated that low dynamics of gut microbiota composition and high dynamics of its metabolic function from T2 to T3 were associated with TPOAb+ SCH. We concluded that gut microbiota could be new targets for treatment of TPOAb+ SCH during pregnancy. Trial registration: This study was retrospectively registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration number ChiCTR2100047175) on June 10, 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate the catalytic performance of palladium (Pd) nanocatalysts with different surface atomic structures for activating electroless copper (Cu) deposition on liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrates. These nanocatalysts include Pd nanocubes featuring {100} facets of square atomic arrangement as their predominant surface structure and Pd spherical nanoparticles characterized by random atomic arrangements, synthesized using an aqueous method. Our electrochemical measurements reveal that the induction time for the growth of Cu films is significantly shorter when utilizing Pd nanocubes compared to Pd nanospheres. This shorter induction time signifies a quicker initiation of Cu growth, primarily due to the presence of Pd {100} facets. Furthermore, we also develop a surface modification approach involving a crosslinking reaction that utilizes the highly branched polyethylenimine and linear polyvinylpyrrolidone on the Pd nanocubes. This method not only facilitates the adsorption of Pd nanocubes onto the LCP substrates but also achieves a robust peel adhesion strength (630 gf/cm) of the resulting Cu films, exceeding the industrial adhesion goal of 500 gf/cm. Moreover, in-depth synchrotron X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis provides valuable insights into the depth-dependent chemical changes within the Cu films and proves the removal of Cu oxides after the acid treatment. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anti-thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb) positivity can contribute to inhibit thyroxine synthesis. Gut microbiota can interact with metabolic or immune diseases. However, dynamics of gut microbiota from the second (T2) to the third trimester (T3) in women with TPOAb-positive/negative subclinical hypothyroidism (TPOAb+/TPOAb− SCH) have not been reported. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate whether gut microbiota can be potential therapeutic targets for managing TPOAb+ SCH. Methods: In this single-center prospective cohort study, we observed gut microbiota dynamics by sequencing 16S rRNA from fecal samples collected in T2 (20–23+ 6 weeks) and T3 (28–33+ 6 weeks). TPOAb+/TPOAb− SCH were stratified depending on whether or not they used levothyroxine (LT4) during the pregnancy (LT4+/LT4−). Microbiome bioinformatics analyses were performed using QIIME2. The linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was used for the quantitative analysis of biomarkers. Functional profiling was performed with PICRUSt2. Results: Distinct gut microbiota dynamics from T2 to T3 were noted in the TPOAb− (n = 68) and TPOAb+ (n = 64) SCH groups. The TPOAb+ LT4− group was characterized by enriched bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) of Prevotella in T2 and Bacteria, Lachnospirales, Lachnospiraceae, Blautia, and Agathobacter in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Gammaproteobacteria, Enterobacterales, and Enterobacteriaceae in T2 and Actinobacteriota, Coriobacteriia, Actinobacteria, Coriobacteriales, Bifidobacteriales, Bifidobacteriaceae, Bifidobacterium, Dorea formicigenerans, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3. The TPOAb+ LT4+ group was characterized by enriched bacterial ASVs of Blautia, Streptococcus salivarius, and Bifidobacterium longum in T3 and by depleted ASVs of Bacteroidota, Bacteroidia, Bacteroidales, and Prevotella in T2 and Agathobacter in T3. Moreover, we identified 53 kinds of metabolic functions that were mainly involved in sugar, lipid, and amino acid metabolism. Conclusions: Our results indicated that low dynamics of gut microbiota composition and high dynamics of its metabolic function from T2 to T3 were associated with TPOAb+ SCH. We concluded that gut microbiota could be new targets for treatment of TPOAb+ SCH during pregnancy. Trial registration: This study was retrospectively registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (registration number ChiCTR2100047175) on June 10, 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks have become increasingly popular and are commonly used in everyday life. They also become the most convenient places to send information or receive advertisements. The multiplex network is an important study topic in social networks, in which many features could be appropriately represented in different layers. In this paper, we propose an approach to find the multiplex interaction relationships based on the action records of users on social networks. The multiplex user interactions are found and divided into three levels: high, normal and low. They are then used to check the friend and the follower relations such that users can find which friends or followers are active or not. In the experiments, the parameters are chosen based on Dunbar's number, which is the number of social relationships that humans can have with high confidence. The results show the proposed approach is effective in helping users know the truly close friend relationships on a social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of small molecules or ions within polymeric materials is critical for their applications, such as polymer electrolytes. Cross-linking has been one of the common strategies to modulate solute diffusivity and a polymer's mechanical properties. However, various studies have shown different effects of cross-linking on altering the solute transports. Here, we utilized coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation to systematically analyze the effects of cross-linking and polymer rigidity of solute diffusive behaviors. Above the glass transition temperature T g , the solute diffusion followed the Vogel–Tammann–Fulcher (VTF) equation, D = D 0 e − E a / R (T − T 0) . Other than the conventional compensation relation between the activation energy E a and the pre-exponential factor D 0 , we also identified a correlation between E a and Vogel temperature T 0 . We further characterized an empirical relation between T 0 and cross-linking density. Integrating the newly identified correlations among the VTF parameters, we formulated a relation between solute diffusion and the cross-linking density. The combined results proposed the criteria for the optimal solute diffusivity in cross-linked polymers, providing generic guidance for novel polymer electrolyte design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traumatic intraventricular hemorrhage (tIVH) is associated with increased mortality and disability in traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the significance of tIVH itself remains unclear. Our goal is to assess whether tIVH affects in-hospital mortality and short-term functional outcomes. We retrospectively reviewed the records of 5048 patients with TBI during a 5-year period, and 149 tIVH patients were analyzed. Confounding was reduced using the inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) based on propensity score. The association between IVH and outcomes was investigated using logistic regression in the IPTW-adjusted cohort. In our study, after adjustment for analysis, the in-hospital mortality rate (11.4% vs. 9.2%) and the poor functional outcome rate (37.9% vs.10.6%) were significantly higher in the tIVH group than in the non-tIVH group. Factors independently associated with outcomes were age ≥ 65 years, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) severity score, and the Graeb score. The Traumatic Graeb Score, a novel scoring system for predicting functional outcomes associated with tIVH, comprised the sum of the following components: GCS scores of 3 to 4 (=2 points), 5 to 12 (=1 point), 13 to 15 (=0 points); age ≥ 65 years, yes (=1 point), no (=0 points); Graeb score (0–12 points). A Traumatic Graeb Score ≥ 4 is an optimal cutoff value for poor short-term functional outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective was to evaluate the efficacy of increasing supplementation of Yarrowia lipolytica (YL) up to 3.0% replacing 1.6% poultry fat and 0.9% blood plasma for growth performance, intestinal health and nutrient digestibility of diets fed to nursery pigs. Methods: Twenty-four pigs weaned at 24 d of age (initial body weight at 7.2±0.6 kg) were allotted to three dietary treatments (n = 8) based on the randomized complete block. The diets with supplementation of YL (0.0%, 1.5%, and 3.0%, replacing poultry fat and blood plasma up to 1.6% and 0.9%, respectively) were fed for 21 d. Feed intake and body weight were recorded at d 0, 10, and 21. Fecal score was recorded at every odd day from d 3 to 19. Pigs were euthanized on d 21 to collect proximal and distal jejunal mucosa to measure intestinal health markers including tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-8, immunoglobulin A and immunoglobulin G. Ileal digesta was collected for apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of nutrients in diets. Data were analyzed using Proc Mixed of SAS. Results: Supplementation of YL (1.5% and 3.0%) replacing poultry fat and blood plasma did not affect growth performance, fecal score and intestinal health. Supplementation of YL at 1.5% did not affect nutrient digestibility, whereas supplementation of YL at 3.0% reduced AID of dry matter (40.2% to 55.0%), gross energy (44.0% to 57.5%), crude protein (52.1% to 66.1%), and ether extract (50.8% to 66.9%) compared to diets without supplementation. Conclusion: Yarrowia lipolytica can be supplemented at 1.5% in nursery diets, replacing 0.8% poultry fat and 0.45% blood plasma without affecting growth performance, intestinal health and nutrient digestibility. Supplementation of YL at 3.0% replacing 1.6% poultry fat and 0.9% blood plasma did not affect growth performance and intestinal health, whereas nutrient digestibility was reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the dynamics of a 90‐base pair‐long DNA minicircle with the sequence of (AT)45/(AT)45 using the all‐atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The simulation was run for a duration of 5 μs and the internal dynamics was analyzed in terms of the poloidal rotation and the in‐plane circular vibration. The poloidal rotation was defined by the directional variation of each base pair relative to the plane of the DNA minicircle, and its correlation time was estimated to be 61 ns. The in‐plane circular vibration was measured as the radial distance variation of each base pair from the center‐of‐mass of the DNA, and the correlation time was 6.3 ns. The characteristic time scales determined for the poloidal rotation and the radial fluctuation suggest that the internal motion of a small DNA minicircle is highly dynamic. This work provides a new set of dynamic information for small DNA minicircles, available for future applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detection of acoustic tonals from surfaces and underwater vehicles is important for passive sonar systems. Enhancements of the tonals are usually necessary in passive sonar prior to detections. Conventionally, passive sonars employ adaptive line enhancers (ALE) in order to realise enhancements of the tonals. However, ALEs have requirements on their input signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNR). When the SNR inputs are too low, the ALEs cannot perform well. Therefore, for the purpose of overcoming the limitations of the SNR inputs to ALEs, this study proposes to enhance tonals using unsupervised deep‐learning techniques. The proposed deep‐learning‐based line enhancer (DLE) is based on an autoencoder neural network. The simulation results show that when the input SNR is −28 dB, the proposed DLE still achieves an SNR gain of 15 dB. However, the reference ALE fails. The experimental results also demonstrate the superiority of the proposed DLE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ion pair amphiphile (IPA), a molecular complex composed of a pair of cationic and anionic surfactants, has been proposed as a novel phospholipid substitute. Controlling the physical stability of IPA vesicles is important for its application developments such as cosmetic and drug deliveries. To investigate the effects of IPA alkyl chain combinations and the cholesterol additive on the structural and mechanical properties of IPA vesicular bilayers, we conducted a series of molecular dynamics studies on the hexadecyltrimethylammonium-dodecylsulfate (HTMA-DS) and dodecyltrimethylammoniumhexadecylsulfate (DTMA-HS) IPA bilayers with cholesterol. We found that both IPA bilayers are in the gel phase at 298 K, consistent with experimental observations. Compared with the HTMA-DS system, the DTMA-HS bilayer has more disordered alkyl chains in the hydrophobic region. When adding cholesterol, it induces alkyl chain ordering around its rigid sterol ring.Yet, cholesterol increases the molecular areas for all species and disturbs the molecular packing near the hydrophilic region and the bilayer core. Cholesterol also promotes the alkyl chain mismatch between the IPA moieties, especially for the DTMA-HS bilayer. The combined effects lead to non-monotonically enhancement of the membrane mechanical moduli for both IPA-cholesterol systems. Furthermore, cholesterol can form H-bonds with the alkylsulfate and thus enhance the contribution of alkylsulfate to the overall mechanical moduli. Combined results provide valuable molecular insights into the roles of each IPA component and the cholesterol on modulating the IPAbilayer properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]