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At present, COVID-19 is a global pandemic and is seriously harmful to humans. In this retrospective study, the aim was to investigate the interaction between CVD and COVID-19.A total of 180 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in Yichang Central People's Hospital from 29 January to 17 March 2020 were initially included. The medical history, clinical manifestations at the time of admission, laboratory test results, hospitalization time and complications were recorded. According to the medical history, the patients were assigned to the nonsevere group with non-CVD (In the severe group, compared with non-CVD patients, CVD patients had a significantly higher incidence of fever (CVD affects the severity of COVID-19. COVID-19 also increases the risk of severe CVD.La infección por SARS-CoV-2 está provocando graves consecuencias en la humanidad. El objetivo de este estudio retrospectivo fue investigar el impacto de las enfermedades cardiovasculares (ECV) en la gravedad de dicha infección.Entre el 29 de enero y el 17 de marzo de 2020, se diagnosticaron 180 pacientes con neumonía por SARS-CoV-2 en el Hospital Popular Central de Yichang. Se registraron los antecedentes, manifestaciones clínicas, resultados de laboratorio, tiempo de hospitalización y complicaciones. Los pacientes se dividieron en cuatro grupos: 1) infección no grave sin ECV (n = 90), 2) infección no grave con ECV (n = 22), 3) infección grave sin ECV (n = 40) y 4) infección grave con ECV (n = 28).La prevalencia de fiebre en los pacientes con ECV fue significativamente mayor que en aquellos sin ECV (P 0,05). Sin embargo, en comparación con los pacientes no graves, la proporción de pacientes con hipertensión, diabetes mellitus tipo 2, cardiopatía coronaria e insuficiencia cardíaca en los pacientes graves fue significativamente mayor (p 0,05). Los niveles de recuento de leucocitos, IL-6, PCR, dímero D, NT-proBNP y glucemia en ayunas (GA) en pacientes con ECV fueron significativamente mayores que en los de pacientes sin ECV, aunque los niveles de Hb fueron significativamente menores que los de los pacientes sin ECV (p 0,05). Sin embargo, los valores de NT-proBNP en pacientes con ECV fueron significativamente mayores que en los pacientes sin ECV (P 0,05). Además, el recuento de leucocitos y los niveles de IL-6, PCR, dímero D, CK-MB, ALT, AST, creatinina, NT-proBNPy GA en el grupo de pacientes graves fueron significativamente mayores que en el grupo no grave, mientras que los valores de Hb fueron significativamente menores que en el grupo no grave (p 0,05). La prevalencia de lesión miocárdica aguda, lesión renal aguda, arritmia y muerte súbita en el grupo con ECV fue significativamente mayor que en el grupo sin ECV (p 0,05). Los mismos resultados se encontraron al comparar los pacientes no graves con aquellos con infección grave. Entre los pacientes no graves, la duración media de la estancia hospitalaria fue de 25,25 (DE: 7,61) días en los pacientes sin ECV, mientras que la duración media de la estancia hospitalaria fue de 28,77 (DE: 6,11) días en los pacientes con ECV (p 0,05). Los mismos resultados se observaron al comparar los dos grupos con infección grave.La infección por SARS-CoV-2 es de evolución más grave en los pacientes con ECV.

Road segmentation in remote sensing images has been widely used in many fields. Semantic segmentation, based on deep learning, has become a hot topic for road segmentation. With the deepening of convolutional neural network (CNN) structures, features in the convolution layer that has more semantic information become more important for road segmentation. However, the spatial resolution of the convolutional layer reduced as the CNN network deepens, which causes the extracted roads to lose some important location information. To solve this problem, this letter proposes a novel end-to-end road segmentation method to effectively utilize the different levels of convolutional layers to enhance the model’s ability to precisely perceive road edges and shapes. The model includes an encoder and a decoder. The encoder encodes the image to obtain the features of different levels and scales. The decoder consists of two modules: scale fusion module and scale sensitive module. In the scale fusion module, features in pooling layers of different scales are fused to obtain a fusion feature. In a scale sensitive module, a weight tensor at the end of the network is learned to evaluate the importance of fusion features. This road segmentation network has been experimentally verified using public data sets, which greatly improves the road segmentation accuracy and achieves good performance.

Timely responses to emergencies are critical for urban disaster and emergency management, particularly in densely populated mega-cities. Researchers and personnel involved in urban emergency management nowadays rely on computers to carry out complex evacuation planning. Agent-based modeling, which supports the representation of interactions among individuals and between individuals and their environments, has become a major approach to simulating evacuations wherein spatial–temporal dynamics and individual conditions need attention, such as congestion in urban areas. However, the development of optimal evacuation plans based upon agent-based evacuation simulations can be very time-consuming. In this study, to shorten the computation time to provide a timely response in an efficient way, we develop a knowledge database to store evacuation plans for typical population distributions generated by mobile phone location data. Subsequently, we use the prepared knowledge database (offline) to accelerate real-time (online) processes in searching for near-optimal evacuation plans. Our experimental result demonstrates that the evacuation plans generated with a knowledge database always outperform those that are generated without a knowledge database. Specifically, the knowledge database can reduce the computation time by an average of 96.76%, with an average fitness value improvement of 21.86%. This result confirms the effectiveness of our proposed approach in improving agent-based evacuation planning. With the rapid development of human sensor data collection and analysis, the estimation of a more accurate population distribution will become easier in future. Thus, we believe that the proposed approach of developing a knowledge database based on population distribution patterns will provide a more feasible alternative solution for evacuation planning in the practice of urban emergency management.

ObjectiveThe etiology and epidemiology of co-infection and secondary infection in COVID-19 patients remain unknown. The study aims to investigate the occurrence and characteristics of co-infection and secondary infection in COVID-19 patients, mainly focusing on Streptococcus pneumoniae co-infections.MethodsThis study was a prospective, observational cohort study of the inpatients diagnosed with COVID-19 in two designated hospitals in south China enrolled between Jan 11 and Feb 22, 2020. The urine specimen was collected on admission and applied for pneumococcal urinary antigen tests (PUATs). Demographic, clinical and microbiological data of patients were recorded simultaneously.ResultA total of 146 patients with a confirm diagnosis of COVID-19 at the median age of 50.0 years (IQR 36.0-61.0) were enrolled, in which, 16 (11.0%) were classified as severe cases and 130 (89.0%) as non-severe cases. Of the enrolled patients, only 3 (2.1%) were considered to present the co-infection, in which 1 was co-infected with S.pneumoniae, 1 with B. Ovatus infection and the other one with Influenza A virus infection. Secondary infection occurred in 16 patients, with S. maltophilia as the most commonly isolated pathogen (43.8%), followed by P. aeruginosa (25.0%), E. aerogenes (25.0%), C. parapsilosis (25.0%) and A. fumigates (18.8%).ConclusionPatients with confirmed COVID-19 were rarely co-infected with Streptococcus pneumoniae or other pathogens, indicating that the application of antibiotics against CAP on admission may not be necessary in the treatment of COVID-19 cases.

In this paper, we extend polar decoding function to our previous design, and propose a flexible quad-mode forward error correction application specific instruction-set processor (QFEC ASIP) that supports polar, low-density parity-check (LDPC), turbo, and convolutional code (CC) decoding with multiple code lengths and code rates. A unified polar/LDPC/turbo/CC quad-mode algorithm framework is presented. The top level architecture of QFEC ASIP and the polar data path are designed on the basis of the algorithm framework. A quad-mode confliction-free global memory system is proposed. 65.2% of global memory banks, 48.9% of global memory bits, and 29.7% of global memory area are saved via hardware sharing. Specially accelerated FEC decoding instructions make the decoding procedure fully programmable and ensure the high throughput. Synthesis using 65-nm technology shows that the total area of QFEC ASIP is 4.26 mm2. QFEC ASIP provides the maximum throughput of 1345 Mb/s for polar, 917 Mb/s for LDPC (WiMAX), 320 Mb/s for turbo, and 387 Mb/s for CC (64 states) at the clock frequency of 344 MHz. QFEC ASIP occupies much smaller silicon area than the sum of the silicon area of 4 single-mode FEC decoders that together provide a similar function range as QFEC ASIP.

We recovered a Campanian–Maastrichtian palynological record in transitional succession from the Sifangtai to Mingshui formations of the Songke Core-1 (North) (SK1 (N)) in the Songliao Basin, Northeast China. These formations are composed mainly of various colored mudstones and sandstones. The lithofacies variation suggests that the paleoenvironment changed from flood plain to lake. Most of the palynomorph assemblages are dominated by gymnosperm pollen, followed by spore of pteridophyte, and angiosperm pollen. On the basis of the first occurrences of marker genera within the succession, we identified four palynomorph interval zones (in ascending order): the Jianghanpollis, Chenopodipollis, Toroisporis, and Betulaceoipollenites interval zones. The first two interval zones are found from flood plain and levee deposits. The third one is recognized from lake basin plain–lake basin slope deposits. The last one is found in delta deposits within lakeshore. We consider that environmental changes are the major factors that formed component of Campanian–Maastrichtian assemblage in the Songliao Basin. In addition, the Jianghanpollis and Chenopodipollis interval zones are assigned to the Campanian, whereas the Toroisporis and Betulaceoipollenites interval zones date as the Maastrichtian. Thus, the Chenopodipollis/Toroisporis zonal boundary approximates the C/M boundary. Triprojectate pollen such as Aquilapollenites is regarded as marker taxa in the study section and other areas within the Aquilapollenites Province during the Campanian–Maastrichtian. However, Wodehouseia spp. have yet been confirmed within the study section, although this genus has appeared in Campanian–Maastrichtian deposits in other areas. This is one of the important clues to understand regional difference of local flora in these ages.

The incidence of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, has significantly increased throughout the world in recent decades, which urgently requires more effective dengue intervention strategies. Although both mosquitos and humans play critical roles in dengue transmission, commonly used dengue intervention strategies mainly depend on the control of the mosquito vector. Since intervention simulations by computers offer important scientific support for disease intervention policy-making, this study aims to simulate and evaluate the intervention strategies from the perspective of the human host. This study first develops a spatially-explicit, individual-based model that can simulate an intra-urban dengue outbreak by integrating the daily activities and travels of urban populations. Then, we examined two human host intervention strategies: a dengue vaccination program and early isolation of symptomatic infected people. Taking the dengue outbreak of Shenzhen in 2014 as a case study, our simulation results show that the reduction of symptomatic infected people increases from 60.21% to 94.39% as the proportion of the immunized population increases from 25% to 50%, while early isolation of symptomatic infected people can reduce total symptomatic infected people by 46.78%. Overall, this study provides an effective, spatially-explicit, individual-based model that allows dengue transmission simulations and human host intervention simulations, which can help guide policy-making to control dengue outbreaks at an urban scale.

Object detection is a challenging task in aerial images, where many objects have large aspect ratios and are densely arranged. Most anchor-based rotating detectors assign anchors for ground-truth objects by a fixed restriction of the rotation Intersection-over-Unit (IoU) between anchors and objects, which directly follow horizontal detectors. Due to many directional objects with a large aspect ratio, the object-anchor IoU is heavily influenced by the angle, which may cause few anchors assigned for some ground-truth objects. In this study, we propose an anchor selection method based on sample balance assigning anchors adaptively, which we name the Self-Adaptive Anchor Selection (A2S-Det) method. For each ground-truth object, A2S-Det selects a set of candidate anchors by horizontal IoU. Then, an adaptive threshold module is adopted on the set of candidate anchors, which calculates a boundary of these candidate anchors aiming to keep a balance between positive and negative anchors. In addition, we propose a coordinate regression of relative reference(CR3) module to precisely regress the rotating bounding box. We test our method on a public aerial image dataset, and prove better performance than many other one-stage detectors and two-stage detectors, achieving the mAP of 70.64. An efficiency anchor matching method helps the detector achieve better performance for objects with large aspect ratios.

Two new glycosides, 8-O-β- d-glucopyranosyl-6-methyl-1-carboxylate methyl ester xanthone (1) and 4′-O-β- d-galactopyranosyl djalonensone (2), together with four known compounds, 8-hydroxy-6-methyl-9-oxo-9H-xanthene-1-carboxylate methyl ester (3), cassionllin (4), djalonensone (5) and alternariol (6), were isolated from the endophytic fungus Penicillium sp. (NO.4) of Tapiscia sinensis Oliv. The structures of compounds 1–6 were elucidated by the analysis of 1D and 2D NMR and HRMS. The cytotoxic activities of these compounds were evaluated against four cancer cell lines, as well as antimicrobial activities against two plant-pathogenic microbes. Compounds 1–6 showed moderate cytotoxicity against the A549 cancer cell line with IC50 values ranging from 6.8 to 35.8 μg mL−1 and were found to be inactive against three other cancer cell lines MCF-7, Caski and Hep G-2.

To establish a MDS mouse model with iron overload and to study the effect of iron overload on MDS.The exogenous mutant gene RUNX1-S291fs was inserted into the mice bone marrow mononuclear cell's genome in mice by retrovirus and transplanted into C57BL/6 mice irradiated byCompared with the empty plasmid control mice, levels of leukocyte and hemoglobin as well as platelet were decreased in RUNX1-S291fs mutant mice; the peripheral blood cells and bone marrow cells showed pathological hematopoiesis; the liver and spleen enlarged significantly; the tissue structure of femur, liver and spleen was abnormal; the expression of bone marrow cell surface antigens was abnormal. Bone marrow cells and spleen tissue expressed the RUNX1-S291fs protein. Compared with the controlled mice injected with normal saline, iron deposition occurred in the bone marrow, liver and spleen stained with Prussian blue in the mice injected with iron agent.Mice engineered to carry exogenous mutant gene RUNX1-S291fs and injected with iron showed pathologic features of MDS and iron overload, resulting in establishing MDS iron overloaded mouse model successfully, which lays a foundation for studying the effect of iron overload on MDS.

Cretaceous climate was warmer than today. The Songliao Basin contains one of the most important Late Cretaceous non-marine deposits in China for the research of the paleoenvironment and paleoclimate. This research is based on core samples from the SK1(S) borehole. The strata sampled are the upper part of the Quantou Formation to member 2 of the Nenjiang Formation, where spores, pollen, dinoflagellates, and other microfossils are abundantly preserved. Based on analysis of the spores and pollen fossils from the core samples, the following six fossil assemblage zones have been recognized in ascending order: The Cicatricosisporites-Cyathidites-Pinuspollenites, Schizaeoisporites-Cyathidites-Classopollis, Cyathidites-Schizaeoisporites, Schizaeoisporites-Cyathidites-Proteacidites, Proteacidites-Cyathidites-Dictyotriletes, and the Lythraites-Callistipollenites-Schizaeoisporites zones. The six fossil zones range from the late Cenomanian to early Campanian. The Late Cretaceous dinoflagellate cysts in the Songliao Basin are of high abundance and low diversity. Specific phytoplankton types reflect salinity changes of the Songliao Lake. Paleoecology of the dinoflagellates suggests that sediments of members 2 and 3 of the Yaojia Formation (K2 y 2+3) were deposited in a freshwater environment, whereas members 2 and 3 of the Qingshankou Formation (K2 q 2+3) and members 1 and 2 of the Nenjiang Formation (K2 n 1+2) were deposited in freshwater to brackish water environments. Combined with the paleoecology of dinoflagellates and the palynomorph biozones, valuable information of the paleoclimate was provided. The quantitative analyses of spores and pollen fossils, such as vegetation type, climate type, and humidity type, diversity and dominance, indicate a relatively sub-humid, mid-subtropical paleoclimate, with slight climatic fluctuation and/or temporal change.

Whistle-blowing has long been a controversial topic encountered by auditing industry. The complex relationship between stakeholders affects the tendency and effectiveness of whistle-blowing. This paper conducted a systemic empirical research on the impact of evidence of wrongdoing and organization structure on auditors’ likelihood of whistle-blowing. A survey of 133 professional auditors who attended a national training program was undertaken. The results showed that auditors were more likely to report wrongdoing when the strength of evidence of wrongdoing was strong, and to report externally when the bureaucracy of organization structure was high.

The dyeing properties of ethylated Chinese fir powder with disperse dyes under high temperature and high pressure were investigated in this paper, the dyeing results indicated that the color shade of dyed ethylated fir is similar to that of dyed polyester fabric while PH value of dyeing solution is between 4~5, and the dyed sample is of a good wash fastness. At the same time, the characteristics of the samples were analyzed by FT-IR and SEM, it indicated that dyes molecules were adsorbed on the surface and went into the microporous of ethylated fir powder, so that brighter color were observed due to the fact that the ethylated fir powder leads to a smooth surface which being favorable for the reflection of light.

In this study, ethylated wood powder/polystyrene plastic composite (WPC) was obtained by combining ethylated Chinese Fir powder with polystyrene foam in DMF or CHCl3, and was dyed with disperse dyes. The results show that the compatibility of ethylated fir powder with polystyrene was good when the ratio of wood to plastic ratio is beyond 3:1. The color shade of dyed wood-plastic powder is close to that of dyed polyester fabric and high temperature is favorable for the dyeing of wood-plastic powder. Moreover, dyed wood plastic powder has good washing fastness, which depends on the molecular structure of disperse dyes, dye concentration and dyeing temperature.

As a special kind of image, the grid-based digital elevation model (DEM) is directly related with the landform and topography feature. In the real word, there are various landforms, and the results of different methods for DEM processing vary greatly. However, the discussion of using different methods in different landform areas in DEM generalization is needed. Numerous methods have been proposed previously for DEM generalization without taking topographic factors into consideration, and the setting of threshold value of most algorithms is very subjective. Therefore, we investigate the DEM generalization, using two methods (z-tolerance method and compound method) in different landform areas and propose a new way for threshold values setting in generalization. The results show that the method we proposed is feasible and the compound method offers a better performance over z-tolerance method in most conditions, especially when comparing their performances of keeping streamline shape.

Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) has been brought into wide use in image processing, but it cant fit the demand of the hugeimage data because the time of computing is vast. The GPU is an attractive platform for a broad fieldof applications,which remains asignificanthigharithmetic processingcapability. Therefore itcan beusedasa powerful accelerator without extra cost.CUDA(computeunifieddevicearchitecture) providesahardwareandsoftwareenvironment touse the GPU to accelerate the DWT for images. In this paper, we use the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M that complies with the CUDA to improvethe execution time of theDiscrete Wavelet Transformfor images. TheresultofexperimentsindicatesthattheCUDAtechnology hastheadvantagesof parallel processingandtheefficiencyofimagetransform isimprovedgreatly. Whats more, it performs better on the larger size image (the max speedup is 15.9).

Four di-cyanoethyl azo disperse dyes based on N,N-bis(2-cyanoethyl)-m-methylaniline were synthesized using four different heterocyclic aromatic amines as the diazo components. They were characterized by UV-Vis, IR, 1HNMR, MS and EA. The dyeing performance of these dyes were assessed on polyester, fir powder, and acetylated fir powder. On polyester, the results showed that the maxinum absorption of four heterocyclic azo disperse dyes were from 414 nm to 599 nm(acetone), they were also found to show a wide range of colour shades followed as yellow, bright crimson, bulish violet and blue shades, the dyed fibers also presented good light fastness and excellent fastness to wash. Simultaneously, the dyeing performance of the dyes were also assessed on acetylated fir powder and they were found to give the similar color shades comparing with the dyeing on polyester fiber.

The color cyanoethylated wood were preparated by means of dyeing under high temperature and pressure. The results indicates that the percentage of dye exhaustion (%E) on cyanoethylated fir powder is 95.3~98.8%. The color shade of dyed modified wood is similar to that of dyed polyester fabric. Compared with the dyed polyester fabric, the color difference (∆E) of dyed modified wood is smaller than that of dyed unmodified wood under the same dyeing condition. Unmodified fir powder, cyanoethylated fir powder and dyed cyanoethylated fir powder were characterized by Fouriertrans- form infrared (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

The dyeing properties of acetylated fir powder and acetylated poplar spill with 8 red disperse dyes were studied in this paper. The dyeing results indicate that the percentage of dye exhaustion (% E)on acetylated fir powder is 96~99%. As for acetylated poplar spill, the percentage of dye exhaustion reaches 58~78%. The color shade of dyed modified wood is similar to that of dyed polyester fabric. Compared with the dyed polyester fabric, the color difference(∆E) of dyed modified wood is smaller than that of dyed unmodified wood under the same dyeing conditions. Furthermore, modified fir powder has excellent color fastness to washing, the dye removal of dyed acetylated fir powder is 0.4 ~ 1.8 % at 80°C for 2 h in the water. Both the Infrared (IR) spectra and microscopic images of fir powder, acetylated fir powder and dyed acetylated fir powder were investigated.