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Abstract Background This study aimed to compare the clinical outcomes of non-transecting urethroplasty and lingual mucosal urethroplasty in the treatment of iatrogenic bulbar urethral stricture. Results A total of 25 patients with iatrogenic bulbar urethral stricture were enrolled, 12 of whom underwent lingual mucosal urethroplasty, 13 patients who underwent non-transecting urethroplasty. All patients were followed-up and evaluated at 3 postoperative months. Evaluations included urethrography, maximum urine flow rate (Qmax), nocturnal erectile function testing, International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-5) assessment, and Anxiety Related Scale (SAS) assessment. In terms of operation time, there was a significant difference between non-transecting urethroplasty and lingual mucosal urethroplasty. However, there was no significant intergroup difference in intraoperative blood loss. Both techniques were associated with significantly improved Qmax relative to preoperative rates, but there was no significant difference between the groups in this regard over 3 months of postoperative follow-up. Nocturnal penile tumescence and rigidity results showed that there was no significant change in tip hardness after surgery in the non-transecting urethroplasty group. Moreover, IIEF-5 scores indicated that there was no significant intergroup difference in terms of subjective postoperative erectile function. According to the preliminary psychological evaluations during postoperative follow-up, the anxiety scores of patients undergoing non-transecting urethroplasty significantly improved, but there was no significant change in the mean SAS score among patients who underwent lingual mucosal urethroplasty. Conclusion Both surgical methods can achieve the clinical goal of treating iatrogenic bulbar urethral stricture. Non-transecting urethroplasty has the characteristics of short operation time, relative technical simplicity, and retention of the original erectile function of most patients, and the surgical outcomes of non-transecting urethroplasty are not inferior to those of lingual mucosal urethroplasty, and it is a promising technique for widespread use to treat bulbar urethral strictures.

Using an industrial CT scanning system, we observed the characteristics of micro-fracture Generation and expansion in coal under different gas pressure conditions, providing a new basis for revealing the factors controlling the gas flow output of coal seams. The results of the test analysis showed that: under the action of non-adsorbed gas, the growth rate of fracture volume and fracture area percentage decreases gradually as the pore pressure increases and the sprouting and expansion of microfractures inside coal becomes more obvious. Fracture expansion equation under the influence of pore pressure is satisfied; microfracture extension is mainly controlled by stress concentration effect and coal matrix shrinkage effect. Under the action of adsorptive gas, with the extension of adsorption time, generation and expansion in coal of micro fissures become more and more significant until the expansion equilibrium; the growth rate of fissure volume and fissure area percentage then gradually becomes smaller, in line with the fissure expansion equation under the influence of adsorption time; the fracture extension is mainly affected by stress concentration effect, coal matrix shrinkage effect, erosion effect and deterioration mechanism. The larger the adsorption pressure the longer the adsorption equilibrium time required for the coal; the micro fissure expansion equilibrium time is longer than the gas adsorption equilibrium time, and the fissure expansion has obvious hysteresis.

IntroductionImmunogenic cell death (ICD) is a form of regulated cell death that activates an adaptive immune response in an immunocompetent host and is particularly sensitive to antigens from tumor cells. Kidney clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is an immunogenic tumor with extensive tumor heterogeneity. However, no reliable predictive biomarkers have been identified to reflect the immune microenvironment and therapeutic response of KIRC.MethodsTherefore, we used the CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE algorithms to define three ICD clusters based on the expression of ICD-related genes in 661 KIRC patients. Subsequently, we identified three different ICD gene clusters based on the overlap of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) within the ICD clusters. In addition, principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to calculate the ICD scores.ResultsThe results showed that patients with reduced ICD scores had a poorer prognosis and reduced transcript levels of immune checkpoint genes regulated with T cell differentiation. Furthermore, the ICD score was negatively correlated with the tumor mutation burden (TMB) value of KICD. patients with higher ICD scores showed clinical benefits and advantages of immunotherapy, indicating that the ICD score is an accurate and valid predictor to assess the effect of immunotherapy.DiscussionOverall, our study presents a comprehensive KICD immune-related ICD landscape that can provide guidance for current immunotherapy and predict patient prognosis to help physicians make judgments about the patient’s disease and treatment modalities, and can guide current research on immunotherapy strategies for KICD.

C-ros oncogene 1 (ROS1) fusion is a pathogenic driver gene in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, clinical guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) have recommended molecular pathologic tests for patients with NSCLC, including the detection of the ROS1 gene. Crizotinib is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), ROS1, and mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET). In recent years, the efficacy of crizotinib in NSCLC patients with ROS1 fusion has been reported. Here, a 77-year-old woman was diagnosed with stage IVA lung adenocarcinoma harboring a novel low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR)-ROS1 fusion variant. This novel LDLR-ROS1 fusion was identified by targeted DNA next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel and then verified by RNA fusion panel based on amplicon sequencing. This patient benefited from subsequent crizotinib therapy and achieved progression-free survival of 15 months without significant toxic symptoms. Our case report recommended a promising targeted therapeutic option for patients with metastatic NSCLC with LDLR-ROS1 fusion and highlighted the importance of genetic testing for accurate treatment.

From the perspective of emotion, utilizing eye tracking technology, this paper proposes 12 different 3D hotel lobby models to investigate how would the light illuminance, wall color, decoration style and music genre affect the visual comfort specifically. The experiment results show that the illuminance of the lamp, the color of the wall, and the decoration style have a significant impact on visual comfort. The music genre would not affect consumer’s visual comfort perception of lamp illuminance, wall color and decoration style. Normal illuminance brings the most comfort, followed by bright illuminance, and then dim illuminance; Warm color brings more comfort than cool color; and Chinese style lobby brings more comfort than European style.

BackgroundThe tumor microenvironment (TME) primarily comprises cancer cells, cancer-infiltrating immune cells, and stromal cells. The tumor cells alter the TME by secreting signaling molecules to induce immune tolerance. The immune cell infiltrating the TME influences the prognosis of patients with cancers. However, immune cell infiltration (ICI) in the TME of patients with prostate cancer (PC) has not yet been studied.MethodsIn this study, we used Cell-type Identification by Estimating Relative Subsets of RNA Transcripts (CIBERSORT) and Estimation of Stromal and Immune cells in Malignant Tumors using Expression data (ESTIMATE) algorithms to identify three ICI clusters based on 1,099 genes associated with ICI in the TME. The patients were classified into three distinct ICI gene clusters based on overlapping differentially expressed genes in ICI clusters. Furthermore, the ICI scores were calculated using principal component analysis.ResultsThe results revealed that patients with high ICI scores had poor prognoses and reduced expression of immune-checkpoint genes and immune-related genes. Furthermore, the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) and WNT-β signaling pathways were enriched in the high ICI score subgroup, which suggests that suppression of T cells could contribute to poor prognosis of patients with PC. A positive correlation was observed between the high-ICI-score subgroup and the high tumor mutation burden (TMB) value. Patients with low ICI scores could benefit from immunotherapy, indicating that the ICI score could be used to predict the efficacy of immunotherapeutic response.ConclusionsIn summary, we provide a comprehensive overview of the landscape of ICI in PC, which could aid in designing the strategies for immunotherapy for patients with PC.

Compared with the on-axis vortex beam and the off-axis single vortex beam, the off-axis double vortex beam has more control degrees of freedom and brings rich physical properties. In this work, we investigate theoretically and experimentally the generation, topological charge (TC), and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of off-axis double vortex beams. It is demonstrated that the tilted lens method can detect not only the magnitudes and signs of two TCs of the off-axis double vortex beam but also the spatial distribution of the TCs. Moreover, the average OAM value of the off-axis double vortex beam decreases nonlinearly as the off-axis distance increases, although its TC is independent of the off-axis distance of phase singularities. The results indicate that the average OAM of the off-axis double vortex beam can be easily controlled by changing the relative position of two-phase singularities, thereby realizing the applications of multi-degrees of freedom particle manipulation, optical communication, and material processing.

Innovation and entrepreneurship education practice teaching is an important part of cultivating talents with innovative spirit and entrepreneurial ability. This paper analyses the problems faced by the current practical teaching system of innovation and entrepreneurship education in local universities in cultivating high-quality characteristic software talents. It also puts forward the concept of open innovation and entrepreneurship education, and is based on the concept of integration of industry and education, and integration of specialization and creation. And with the cultivation of innovation and entrepreneurship spirit as the core, the putative innovation and entrepreneurship education practice teaching system is constructed.The system consists of two modules: in-class practice and extracurricular practice. It contains five practical aspects such as in-class experiment, curriculum design, extracurricular practice, enterprise practice and comprehensive practice. In order to cultivate course-level, project-level, competition-level, enterpriselevel and engineering-level professional practice skills respectively. It also integrates course ideology and politics throughout, realizing the organic integration of value leading, knowledge imparting and ability cultivation.

In the context of the new era, cultivating high-quality innovative talents and technical skills has become an urgent requirement to promote the development of the software industry. There are some problems in the training of specialized software engineering talents in local universities in China, such as unclear orientation, ineffective practical teaching effect and shortage of professional teachers. Based on the issues mentioned above, it is advisable to establish a clear professional orientation aligned with industry demands and develop a curriculum system and content that are in line with this specialized focus. Establishing a collaborative industry-education-research practical teaching system and deepening the collaborative innovation capability development model between industry, education, and research. By solving the two core problems of 'what kind of professional talents to cultivate ' and 'how to cultivate '. It aims to provide suggestions for the professional cultivation of software engineering talents in local colleges and universities in the era of industry-education fusion.

Under different confining pressures, gas seepage tests are carried out, and these tests are used to discuss gas seepage mechanism in coal. The tested and theoretical results show that under different confining pressures, gas seepage laws are consistent in coal. In the higher gas pressure section, the percolation curve of Q and △2p/L meets the linear relationship, but the gas pressure is lower, the seepage curve of Q and △2p/L deviates linear relationship of Darcy’s law. The critical point lies from nonlinear to linear segment of gas flow in coal, and it is a gradual process from non-Darcy flow to Darcy flow. At high Reynolds number, gas percolation obeys Darcy’s law, but at low Reynolds number, the gas seepage in different metamorphic grade coals is non-Darcy flow. The collision of gas molecules and coal wall is the physical mechanism of gas non-Darcy flow phenomenon, which is determined by the mean free path of gas molecules and pore structure of coal, and the theoretical calculation well reveals the mechanism of gas non-Darcy seepage in coal.

Summary: Understanding viral tropism is an essential step toward reducing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission, decreasing mortality from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and limiting opportunities for mutant strains to arise. Currently, little is known about the extent to which distinct tissue sites in the human head and neck region and proximal respiratory tract selectively permit SARS-CoV-2 infection and replication. In this translational study, we discover key variabilities in expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2), essential SARS-CoV-2 entry factors, among the mucosal tissues of the human proximal airways. We show that SARS-CoV-2 infection is present in all examined head and neck tissues, with a notable tropism for the nasal cavity and tracheal mucosa. Finally, we uncover an association between smoking and higher SARS-CoV-2 viral infection in the human proximal airway, which may explain the increased susceptibility of smokers to developing severe COVID-19. This is at least partially explained by differences in interferon (IFN)-β1 levels between smokers and non-smokers.

This paper proposes a new structure of the dual-rotor hybrid-excited axial-flux permanent magnet vernier machine (DR-HEAFPMVM) with the modular stator and the consequent-pole PM (CPM) rotor for low-speed, high torque density applications such as in-wheel electric vehicles. The tooth-wound non-overlapping armature windings and direct current (DC) excitation windings are, respectively, arranged in stator main-teeth and split-teeth to obtain the modulated and adjustable air-gap flux densities, resulting in high torque density and outstanding flux-weakening capability. First, the design considerations, operation principles, and air-gap flux density distributions of the proposed machine are elaborated based on the air-gap permeance function. Then, the influence of the pole ratios (PRs) and the DC excitation currents on the main electromagnetic performances of the DR-HEAFPMVM, such as the flux-weakening capability and back-electromotive force (back-EMF), on-load electromagnetic torque, loss distribution, and efficiencies, is investigated using the 3-D finite-element method (FEM). Results verify the feasibility of the flux adjustment of the DC excitation windings equipped in the split-tooth, and the design with a pole ratio of 8/1 tends to have higher torque density, higher machine efficiency, and considerable flux-weakening capability compared with the other two PRs.

Based on the multi-layer assumption of gas adsorption in coal, the multi-layer adsorption theory of gas in coal is deduced, with this theory, the test laws of gas adsorption are fitted, and the theoretical analysis are carried out. The results show that the multi-layer adsorption theory of gas is well fitted by gas adsorption isotherm, and the fitting correlation can reach more than 0.99. On the surface of coal body, the gas monolayer adsorption volume Vm increases linearly with temperature decreasing. The difference value of adsorption heat Q and gas condensation heat QL is linear correlation with temperature T. The number of gas adsorption layers on coal surface increases linearly with temperature decreasing.

In this study, we studied the synergetic effect of potassium oxysalts on combustion and ignition of nano aluminum (Al) and nano copper oxide (CuO) composites. Potassium periodate (KIO4) and potassium perchlorate (KClO4) are good oxidizers with high oxygen content and strong oxidizability. Different contents of KIO4 and KClO4 were added to nano Al/CuO and the composites were assembled by sonication. When the peak pressure of nano Al/CuO was increased ~5–13 times, the pressurization rate was improved by ~1–3 orders of magnitude, the ignition delay time was shortened by ~0.08 ms–0.52 ms and the reaction completeness was adjustable when 30–70% KIO4 and KClO4 were added into the composites. The reaction of Al/KIO4 and Al/KClO4 at a lower temperature was helpful to ignite the ternary composite. Meanwhile, CuO significantly reduced the peak temperature of oxygen released from the decomposition of KIO4 and KClO4. The synergetic effect of binary oxidizers made the combustion performance of the ternary composites better than that of the binary composites. The present work indicates that KIO4 and KClO4 are promising additives for nano Al/CuO to tune and promote the combustion performance. The ternary composites have potential application in energy devices and combustion apparatus.

The yokeless and segmented armature axial flux machine is considered an excellent topology for electric vehicles application. However, its performance is severely limited by the stator cooling system. The heat pipe, as the small size, lightweight, but highly efficient passive phase-change cooling element, has been attracting more and more attention in the thermal management methods of electric motors. Therefore, the relationship between the thermal performance of the heat pipe with temperature is measured in detail through an experimental test platform in this paper. Further, a novel stator cooling structure that combines the heat pipe with the housing water-cooling method is introduced to improve the temperature distribution of the stator. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation verifies that the proposed cooling structure can accelerate the release of heat from the stator and reduce the temperature of the stator significantly.

Short-term photovoltaic power forecasting is of great significance for maintaining the security and stability of the power grid and coordinating the utilization of resources. As one of the Deep Learning Methods, Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is widely used in time series prediction but lacks the ability of parallel computing. With good prediction effect, RNN is faced with the problem of long training time. In this paper, Sliced Recurrent Neural Network (SRNN) is applied to PV power prediction to guarantee the ability of parallel computing. The research result shows that compared to other commonly used models, SRNN can greatly speed up the training of Deep Learning Network with over 4 times higher training speed of the application of PV power prediction than that of ordinary RNN structure like LSTM and GRU. The accuracy of SRNN model is also improved by 0.1102 mae, which is significantly ahead of the others, as its parallel structure causes the more efficient parameter update, thus achieving ideal effect in PV prediction.

The carbonation rate of reinforced concrete is influenced by three parameters, namely temperature, relative humidity, and concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the surroundings. As knowledge of the service lifespan of reinforced concrete is crucial in terms of corrosion, the carbonation process is important to study, and high-performance durable reinforced concretes can be produced to prolong the effects of corrosion. To examine carbonation resistance, accelerated carbonation testing was conducted in accordance with the standards of BS 1881-210:2013. In this study, 10–30% of micro palm oil fuel ash (mPOFA) and 0.5–1.5% of nano-POFA (nPOFA) were incorporated into concrete mixtures to determine the optimum amount for achieving the highest carbonation resistance after 28 days water curing and accelerated CO2 conditions up to 70 days of exposure. The effect of carbonation on concrete specimens with the inclusion of mPOFA and nPOFA was investigated. The carbonation depth was identified by phenolphthalein solution. The highest carbonation resistance of concrete was found after the inclusion of 10% mPOFA and 0.5% nPOFA, while the lowest carbonation resistance was found after the inclusion of 30% mPOFA and 1.5% nPOFA.