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Background Osteoarthritis (OA) is thought to be the most prevalent chronic joint disease, especially in Tibet of China. Here, we aimed to explore the integrative lncRNA and mRNA landscape between the OA patients of Tibet and Han. Methods The lncRNA and mRNA expression microarray profiling was performed by SurePrint G3 Human Gene Expression 8x60K v2 Microarray in articular cartilage samples from OA patients of Han nationality and Tibetans, followed by GO, KEGG, and trans-regulation and cis-regulation analysis of lncRNA and mRNA. Results We found a total of 117 lncRNAs and 297 mRNAs differently expressed in the cartilage tissues of Tibetans (n = 5) comparing with those of Chinese Han (n = 3), in which 49 lncRNAs and 158 mRNAs were upregulated, and 68 lncRNAs and 139 mRNAs were downregulated. GO and KEGG analysis showed that several unreported biological processes and signaling pathways were particularly identified. LncRNA-mRNA co-expression analysis revealed a remarkable lncRNA-mRNA relationship, in which OTOA may play a critical role in the different mechanisms of the OA progression between Tibetans and Chinese Han. Conclusion This study identified different lncRNA/mRNA expression profiling between OA patients of Tibetans and Han, which were involved in many characteristic biological processes and signaling pathways.

The metal wear debris generated by wear during the operation of the mechanical equipment can reflect the fault status of the equipment, and the online monitoring of the metal wear debris in the oil can timely understand the operation information of the equipment. Aiming at the effective response of metal wear debris under symmetrical magnetic excitation, an online monitoring system for metal wear debris with dual-coil balanced magnetic excitation was developed. Based on the spatial magnetic field distribution of the current-carrying element, an analytical model of the magnetic field intensity distribution of a single-turn current-carrying ring is designed, and it is optimized as a single set of coils made of a current-carrying ring, and the coupling of the magnetic excitation of the symmetrical double coil is deduced. The magnetic field distribution model is simulated and analyzed by numerical method. The flow channel of the system is 8 mm. After the semi-physical simulation test with the wear debris speed of 3.03-5.25 m/s, the sensor can realize the detection of 100 μm ferromagnetic metal and 1000 μm non-ferromagnetic metal. The experiment verifies the correctness of the simulation model of the coupled magnetic field distribution. This research provides technical support for the detection of hydraulic oil contaminants, which is of great significance for preventing hydraulic system failures and extending the working life of hydraulic equipment.

A flexible electrode is highly suitable for the acquisition of bioelectric signals. After the signal is acquired, an LSB-first SAR-ADC can be used to quantize it to reduce the power consumption. This paper proposes a new LSB-first algorithm. On the basis of previous advantages, the proposed algorithm can avoid the additional power consumption in certain situations. In comparisonwith the traditional algorithm, the proposed algorithm achieves a 98.8% reduction in power consumption when quantifying ECG signal.

In this paper, a real-time sampling and receiving algorithm based on time expansion is proposed. The algorithm has been verified by FPGA (field programmable gate array). Two sets of square wave signals, the phases of which can be controlled, are generated by using DTC (digital to time converter) to control the emission of the signal and receiving ADC (analog to digital converter) sampling. The phase difference between the two signals is an arithmetic sequence by adjusting the frequency multiplication ratio of the PLL (phase locked loop) and the reference frequency of the input signal, the minimum phase difference is 62 ps. The high-frequency signal is sampled by low-frequency ADC, which greatly reduces the design difficulty of the systems power and hardware system, and increases the maintainability of the system. The equivalent sampling frequency can reach 16 GS/s. The algorithm is implemented on FPGA with Verilog HDL, and the verification is completed.

Alkali-activated slag (AAS) cement activated by water glass (WG) has a high compressive strength, however, its high shrinkage restricts its popularization and application. In the present paper, hydrated lime (HL) was added to the AAS cement activated by WG. The influence of HL content on the mechanical properties, autogenous shrinkage and drying shrinkage was studied. The influence mechanism was discussed based on the results of hydration percentage, pore structure and microstructure of AAS paste by chemical binding water content measurement, nitrogen sorption, XRD, SEM and thermogravimetric analyses. The results show that the incorporation of HL affects the mechanical properties and increases the autogenous shrinkage, especially the early development in mechanical properties and autogenous shrinkage, while it reduces the drying shrinkage of AAS system. With the increase of HL content from 0 to 12%, the mechanical strength of AAS mortar first increase, then decrease, and reach the maximum value when the HL content is 5%. Compared with the specimen without HL, the flexural strength and compressive strength of the specimen with 5% HL at 3 days increase by 21.0% and 31.3%, respectively. With the increase of HL content from 0 to 12%, the autogenous shrinkage of AAS paste gradually increases. Compared with the specimen without HL, the autogenous shrinkage of the specimen with 12% HL increase by 58.0% and 41.4% at 1 day and 7 days respectively. This can be attributed to the fact that the addition of HL promotes the hydration of AAS cement, especially the hydration within 1 day. With the increase of HL content from 0 to 10%, the drying shrinkage decreases more. Compared with the specimen without HL, the drying shrinkage of the specimen with 10% HL decreases by 43.0% and 28.5% at the age of 28 days and 180 days respectively. This is due to the formation of more crystal-like hydration products and the reduction in the number of pores, especially the mesopores.

This paper presents a 10-bit ultra-low power successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) intended for use in wearable biomedical circuits. In order to achieve the nanowatt range power consumption, an energy-efficiency modified VCM-based switching scheme is proposed. In addition, a fully dynamic comparator and a dynamic register are used to eliminate the static power consumption. To improve the signal linearity in such a low supply voltage, a double-boost bootstrapped switch is proposed. A prototype of the proposed SAR ADC was fabricated in 0.18m 1P6M CMOS technology within a bio-sensor front-end circuit, which occupies an active area of 370390m2. The SAR ADC achieves 57.8dB SNDR and consumes 68nW at 0.5V supply voltage and 10kHz sampling rate, resulting in a figure-of-merits (FOM) of 10.8fJ/conversion-step.

This paper presents a low-power, low-noise CMOS instrumentation amplifier intended for use in wireless bio-potential monitoring system. It employs a capacitively-coupled topology to achieve high power efficiency. In order to depress the noise, chopper-stabilized technique is used and a transconductance-boost technique is introduced in low-noise amplifier (LNA). All MOS transistors implemented in LNA are biased in subthreshold region with a supply voltage of 0.5 V to reduce the power consumption. Moreover, a DC-servo loop (DSL) is implemented to realize a high-pass corner for electrode offset cancellation. Implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS process, the front-end circuit occupies 0.48 mm 2 and draws 1.5 μA. The capacitively-coupled chopper-stabilized instrumentation amplifier (CCIA) draws 800 nA and its input-referred noise is 3.5 μV rms integrated from 0.5 to 1 kHz, which results in a NEF of 3.8 and a PEF of 7.2 respectively. The whole circuit achieves 98 dB CMRR and 73 dB PSRR . The total input-referred noise of the front-end instrumentation amplifier including the DSL is 4.3 μV rms integrated from 0.5 to 1 kHz.

The alkali-activated slag (AAS) cement has the characteristics of high early strength and high strength, and is especially suitable for preparing repair mortar. The fluidity, setting time, mechanical properties, expansion properties and adhesive property of self-compacting alkali-activated slag repair mortar (SCAASRM) were mainly studied. Moreover, the influence of Dmax of sand on properties of SCAASRM and microstructure of AAS pastes were also studied. Sodium chloride incorporation can improve the fluidity of SCAASRM, especially the 30 min fluidity, although compressive and flexural strength decrease. Amount of Na2SO4 has little effect on fluidity of SCAASRM, although compressive and flexural strength of 1 day increase. With the increase of Dmax, both initial and 30 min fluidity increase a little. SCAASRM with active MgO exhibits microexpansion within 48 h after preparation. With the increase of Na2SO4, adhesive strength of SCAASRM increases. Higher water glass (WG) and higher Dmax of sand result in a little lower adhesive strength. Setting time of SCAASRM is between 65 min and 105 min. Considering the comprehensive properties of SCAASRM, the superior mix design is 4–5% NaCl, 5% WG, 1.5–2% Na2SO4, 2% MgO and 2% PCS. Dmax of sand is 2.36 mm. Water-binder ratio and binder-sand of SCAASRM is 0.40 and 1:1 respectively. Hydrotalcite is formed in the hydration products. NaCl and active MgO improve the crystallinity of the hydration product. With the increase of active MgO, more hydrotalcite appears and surplus active MgO exists in the form of periclase. Also, no brucite is detected. A kind of nepheline is formed in AAS pastes with NaCl.

Post-harvest diseases of raspberries affect their storage and subsequently the ability to provide consumers with fresh products. The antifungal activity of microbial volatile organic compounds (MVOCs) against both pre and postharvest diseases has previously been demonstrated, but the control of raspberry postharvest diseases caused by Botrytis cinerea and Rhizopus stolonifer using MVOCs has not been extensively studied. We have thus investigated the effects of Bacillus siamensis G-3 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on controlling the diseases caused by B. cinerea and R. stolonifer. Bioassays of the VOCs of B. siamensis G-3 exhibited significant control effects (89.4%) on the two pathogens. The VOCs composition was studied with solid phase micro extraction and GC/mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS), and 22 VOCs, different from the controls, were identified. Among these compounds, only 2, 6-di-tert-butyl-4-methylphenol (BHT), and 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol (2,4-DTBP) had significant control effects on the pathogens (*P

Oval cells, a kind of hepatic progenitor cell quiescent at normal condition, activates to proliferate and differentiate into hepatocytes under severe and long-term liver injury, which usually raises severe inflammation. However, how oval cell survives in the inflammatory milieu interne is still unclear. Tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), mimicking inflammatory hepatic milieu interne, was used to treat oval cell line, WB-F344, to test the protective function of matrilin-2. In this study, our data suggested that matrilin-2 prevented TNFα-induced apoptosis in WB-F344 cells via inhibiting ASK1/MKK7/JNK pathway. In conclusion, we determined that matrilin-2 plays the key role in maintaining the survival of oval cell and guarantees its proliferation under various injury factors.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a crystalline polymer with a high melting temperature (Tm) and glass transition temperature (Tg). Because of its good barrier properties, it is widely used in food, chemical, pharmaceutical packaging, electronics and many other fields. But due to the large number of ester bonds in the main chain of PET macromolecules, it is easily degraded by strong acids, bases and water vapor, and lead to the decrease of physical and mechanical properties. In this paper, PET was immersed in three different solutions (water, sulfuric acid, sodium chloride) to accelerate the aging. Combining with the mechanical properties test, the change of mechanical properties of PET before and after solution aging was studied to provide reference for improving the aging properties of PET. The results show that the tensile strength of PET increased by 12.7MPa, the flexural strength increased by 18.8MPa, the elongation at break decreased from 290% to zero with the aging time of solution, and the change of notched impact strength and hardness was not significant.

The study aimed to explore the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of chronic osteomyelitis observed in a northern China hospital. Clinical data of 255 patients with chronic osteomyelitis from January 2007 to January 2014 were collected and analyzed, including general information, disease data, treatment and follow-up data. Chronic osteomyelitis is more common in males and in the age group from 41–50 years of age. Common infection sites are the femur, tibiofibular, and hip joint. More g+ than g- bacterial infections were observed, with S. aureus the most commonly observed pathogenic organism. The positive detection rate from debridement bacterial culture is 75.6%. The detection rate when five samples are sent for bacterial culture is 90.6%, with pathogenic bacteria identified in 82.8% of cases. The two-stage debridement method (87.0%) has higher first curative rate than the one-stage debridement method (71.2%). To improve detection rate using bacterial culture, at least five samples are recommended. Treatment of chronic osteomyelitis with two-stage debridement, plus antibiotic-loaded polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) beads provided good clinical results in this study and is therefore recommended.

A high linearity energy-efficient switching scheme for successive approximation register (SAR) analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed. Monotonic switching scheme and split-capacitor technique are combined. This scheme has no reset energy consumption, and achieves purely 98.05 % less switching energy and 75 % reduction of the total capacitance over the conventional architecture. Moreover, the proposed scheme also improves the linearity of SAR ADC. The differential nonlinearity and integral nonlinearity of the proposed scheme are 0.116LSB and 0.083LSB, respectively. The proposed scheme achieves a well trade-off between energy and linearity.

The design of wireless sensor networks for signal detection applications has to consider the limited battery power of the sensor nodes. Considering the scenario of using distributed radar-like sensors to detect the presence of an object through active sensing, we formulate the problem of power allocation between sensing and communication for signal detection under the Neyman-Pearson criterion. An allocation scheme of node’s power budget between sensing and communication is presented. The objective is to maximize the global probability of detection under a fixed node’s power constraint and a given global probability of false alarm. Simulation results show that the proposed method leads to a big gain in performance.

For wireless sensor network specialized in distributed detection application, communication power of each sensor should dedicate to improve the total detection performance of the system and its utilization should be energy efficient. There is a balance point for communication power. Above the point, it is difficult to improve the system's detection performance. Below it, it is easy to improve system's detection performance by increasing the communication power of sensor node. Therefore, a method was given to guide the seeking of the balance point. Specifically, the objective is to determine the balance point according to the variations of global probability of detection versus channel SNR and allocate the communication power of each node according to the point. Numerical simulation shows that the method is practical and feasible.